It’s André who chose the frame. He found a frame.

And a week later I picked it up.

I KEPT IT WITH ME in my bedroom, propped on the wall beneath its cloth cover, next to my bed. I kept it there for several days. I couldn’t look at it, I didn’t lift the cloth cover to look at it, but I didn’t want to move it, or take it from there.

I slept better those few nights, I remember that. I felt I was sleeping next to a solved problem, I felt I had resolved something. But what had I resolved? Impossible to say, I cannot say.

And then, one cold afternoon, I took the painting covered with its cloth and carried it down the grass under my arm, to the garden room. I knocked on the door.

Joseph answered, at once. My breath came frosted, in a cloud, as I said: I have your painting. And I stepped in.

I’d had Josias carry down his toolbox and leave it at the garden room’s door, the day before. André had attached the picture wire. Joseph and I would hang the painting, that was my plan.

Jacqueline, he said. I’m . . . and he turned away. He seemed lost for words. I lifted the cloth from the painting. I walked to his chair and pulled it out, and set the painting on it, propped against the chair’s back. I stepped back, and gestured Joseph to join me. Here it is, I said.

We both stood looking at the painting. Joseph was silent for a long time.

I felt, in that moment, I must turn and embrace him, his wool sweater would scratch against my face.

It’s the Vaal, the Vaal River, you know, I said.

I know, Joseph said. I know. He bowed his head and covered his face with his hands, in that movement I remembered from a few days before.

And instead of saying something, but saying what, what — I fled, I fled the room. I ran up the grass, into the house, and into my bedroom. And I wept.

I WOULDN’T HANG the painting. I couldn’t. I had an idea it was something I was incapable, incapable of doing.

I told Josias later to pick up his toolbox from its place outside the door, and return it to the garage. I watched Josias carry it up, it was an old battered thing, navy blue.

A ND THEN WINTER started to turn. The grass was no longer white with frost in the mornings. Emily stopped making her soups.

I told Emily to wash the windows of the garden room, it doesn’t look like you washed them long ago when I told you to, I said. I did ma’am, I did, they get dirty again, that’s what happens, that’s what happens to windows, she said. It sounded like a conversation my mother would have had with Emily, or with Maggie, I recognized it at once, as I spoke. I disliked myself then. I turned away.