I was giving her permission to explore the studio, but she said “I wish you wouldn’t take that. Do remind me of your name.”

“It’s still Patrick.”

“I should have remembered. One of the few men in her life.”

Remembering the discussion downstairs made me ask “How well did you know the last one?”

“Her inspiration, you mean.”

“That’s what you think he was.”

“That’s what Thelma said he was, and her work did take a new direction.”

“You sound as if you weren’t so happy with it.”

“It sold. It must have spoken to people, even if they weren’t sure what they were being told.” Barbare left her mouth ajar as a preamble to adding “It felt as if she’d started hiding details in her work she didn’t want the rest of us to understand.”

“And you’re blaming her partner.”

“If that’s what he was. I don’t know what else he could have been. She did say she wouldn’t have visited quite a few of the places she painted without him.”

“What did you make of him yourself?”

“Do you know, I thought of mentioning him in the church, but I couldn’t find a single thing to say about him. I’m sure I met him several times and yet it feels as if I hardly did.”

I had a disconcerting sense that the imprecision of her memory had infected mine, and I turned to my aunt’s last canvas, a version of the woods beyond the window. Every season of the year was represented by foliage or its absence. Just one detail looked incomplete, a figure beneath a distant tree that was skeletal with winter despite bearing blossoms on some of its branches, not to mention leaves in every state a year would bring. The figure had been left without a face, and even its gender was unclear. “What do you think she was trying to do there?” I said.

“I’m afraid we’ll never know, even if we think she finished it. I’m not sure she meant to fill in whoever’s in the background.”

The longer I gazed at the rudimentary shape among the trees, the more it suggested a bid to erase or at any rate lessen the power of a presence. I was making to leave it and the studio behind when Barbare said “Do you really need that book, Patrick? What does it mean to you?”

I was increasingly unsure but equally determined not to give it up. “It reminds me of staying here with her.”

“I just think we should keep as much as possible together for posterity. Someone’s already had her landscape specimens.”