“Here,” a man’s voice says. “I could be wrong, but I think you need this.”

I turn and see the man who bumped me holding out his large yellow umbrella.

“Thanks.” I smile gratefully and shake my head. “But I can’t take your umbrella.”

“Not the umbrella,” the man says as he holds out his other hand. Clasped between his fingers is a folded piece of paper. “This is for you.”

Four

The man thrusts the folded paper into my hand, then turns on his heel and hurries to the sidewalk that leads back toward the bridge.

“Wait! What is this?” I call, almost tripping over my bicycle as I turn it around to go after him. By the time I finally am ready to ride in his direction, the man and his brightly colored umbrella have disappeared.

Lightning streaks white against the sky, illuminating the heavy gray clouds. A crash of thunder follows. Rain streams down my face. My heart drums as I continue to search the street for any sign of the strange man.

Nothing. And he could have gone almost anywhere. Down the steps to the walkway by the river. Across the bridge. Into a building. There was no way to know. The page in my hand is the only proof that he was ever here. And even that will disappear if I don’t get out of the rain, which is now coming down hard and fast.

Quickly, I fold the page into a smaller square and shove it into my pocket. Then I turn my bike and, with dozens of questions swirling through my mind, pedal to my house.

Why would someone give me a piece of paper? Why would they give anyone paper? Especially now when the city had joined the national effort to buy back any paper that had not yet been recycled. Technically, I should go to one of the centers and turn the page in. It’s what anyone who loves our city and country would do.

Instead, I steer toward home.

Several times I have to stop under a tree or an awning as water pours from the sky in sheets. I am soaked and shivering when I finally pedal up my driveway and lean my bike against the back of the house. The windows of my father’s bedroom are dark, and when I step inside the house it is completely quiet. I strip off everything but my underwear and use a dish towel to get the worst of the wet out of my hair. Now that I’m not dripping, I dig the sodden piece of paper out of my pocket and start to unfold it.

Damn.

The paper immediately starts to tear. There is no choice but to wait until it dries out before I can see what the man handed me.

Frustrated, I dry off, change my clothes, then go to my mother’s studio and flip on the light. The paper has to dry. Obsessing about it won’t help me. Time will. So I try to focus on the other thing I gained while I was out. I now know the source of almost all of my mother’s final mysterious paintings. Carefully, I rearrange the small canvases in the order I saw them tonight, starting with the combination of the lamp and the white posts and ending with the arrows and diamonds. At the end of the line I place a canvas of deep red contoured rectangles all lined up next to each other. Gold lines divide each of the shapes. Shimmering gold images—which look sort of like winged trees—are lined up like sentries at the top.