The Butterfly and the Violin (27 page)

W
ell, I’ve got to hand it to you New Yorkers,” William said on a contented sigh, and tossed a piece of pizza crust back in the cardboard box on the worktable. “You make a mean pizza.”

Sera cocked an eyebrow as she brushed the crumbs from her hands. “Oh yeah? So I’ve finally convinced you that New York–style crust is better.”

“Miss James.” He leaned in and placed his hand over hers casually, as if he’d had the liberty to do so for years. “I may never find the owner of the painting, but at least I can say I’ve been well fed for one of the best weeks out of my life.”

She smiled at the warmth of his hand and welcomed it, but felt nerves kicking in. William had cleared his calendar and after their dinner the first night had become something of a fixture in her gallery. They’d talked. Researched the painting. Laughed plenty. And had walked through the spring evenings along the sidewalks of Manhattan, hand in hand, not looking or thinking past tomorrow.

But now, tomorrow was before them. Saturday night had rolled around. It stared them in the face—he was leaving the next day. Sera felt his eyes on her and popped up from her chair. She’d welcome anything other than talking about what they were both trying so hard to ignore.

The workroom had canvases scattered around. Some were
painted. Others had been started and left with large spots of unpainted canvas. There was the occasional sculpture on the back bookshelves, positioned as a bookend between enormous stacks of art history books. Tall windows nearly two stories in height gave a backdrop of city lights and the deep recesses of the spring sky outside, the one they’d walked under for hours that week.

Sera began busying her hands with cleaning up pizza plates and soda cans instead of thinking about what could be on his mind. She moved around the room, picking up their trash and organizing folders—anything to stop her heart from beating wildly at the thought that her affection for him had grown by leaps and bounds.

“So what’s that over there? Medusa?”

She blinked and turned to him after tossing their plates in the trash.

“What?”

William pointed to a tall sculpture with long, snakelike appendages that reached out in a screaming shade of garish purple. “That thing that looks like an alien coatrack.”

Sera laughed. The sculpture still managed to demand attention even from a hidden corner of the back room. “Not quite,” she said, remembering the day Penny had wheeled it into the gallery on a dolly. She too had likened it to a work of mythic proportion, though the young assistant’s comparison had spoken more of her fascination with the young man who created it than admiration for the sculpture itself. “It was one of Penny’s finds. A piece by a brilliant new sculptor she met in one of her art circles a few years back.”

“And you kept it . . .” He cocked an eyebrow with the playful words.

“Not by choice, I assure you,” she admitted, reaching her hands out in mock surrender. “Translation? Penny was dating a
new guy and brought in that horrible thing to convince me to give him his own one-man show.”

“And did you?”

Her head began shaking along with her hearty laugh. “Not on your life.”

William whistled under his breath. “The professional hazards of being the owner of an art gallery. I never would have guessed.”

“It all worked out. Penny broke up with him a month later. We keep the purple alien around for laughs.” She took a stool across the table from him. “It holds our coats in the winter and we get a smile when we need one. It’s served its grand purpose, I suppose.”

William seemed to notice her choice of a seat that was no longer at his side but said nothing. Instead, he tilted his head to one side, as if looking quite hard to find something she was trying to hide from him.

He pointed to the painting of Adele through the French doors. It was hanging in the shadows of the gallery with only a soft stream of light from the workroom to illuminate her face. “That kind of art I like. The other”—he again looked over at Medusa and clicked his tongue—“I’m not sure I get it. I’m afraid I’d have to get a new hobby if the modern stuff were the only kind of art out there for sale.”

“Ah—art as a hobby. It started out like that for me, but one day . . .” She shrugged. “I don’t know. It just changed. Somehow this gallery and the things in it became the center of my world.”

“Why is that?”

“I guess it was because . . . well, it was after I had to cancel my trip to Paris. Going was the only thing I’d ever really wanted.”

His eyebrows arched and his features started a bit. “You’ve never been to Paris?”

“I’ve been there once, as a kid. I didn’t get to see much. I was
there with my dad, on a layover back from a speech in Germany. He was an art historian and we stopped by a gallery to see one of his colleagues. Didn’t have time for anything else before our flight.”

“I can see why you’d want to go back.”

Leaving out mention of the painting she’d seen there, Sera continued.

“Yes. Dad and I were close. I traveled with him sometimes. My mom didn’t like it much because I missed school,” she remembered, smiling, lost in thought as she stared at a spot of ink that had been absorbed into the top of the ancient worktable. “But he always made me write a research report out of it, so Mom was happy.” She looked up at him then and found he’d been watching her all the time. “I was happy too. Even if I never saw Paris again.”

“I wouldn’t have guessed it about you.”

She shook her head. “Surprising, I know. An art gallery owner who’s only peeked at one of the hubs of the entire art world. It’s . . .” She could have laughed over her embarrassment, knowing that he was watching as every inch of her face tinged in a warm blush. Her hand went up to partially shield it from him, resting on the side of her cheek. She looked up warily. “It’s not pathetic, is it?”

“No.” He did laugh then, in a casual expression of amusement that was fast becoming familiar to her. “Not pathetic at all. You’ve got a lot going on here, right? Manhattan is booming. And what better place to find your beloved art than New York? It’s not like this city is lacking in the culture department. And you’ve still got time to go back there—to Paris.”

“Most people would think a gallery owner had spent summers there in an exchange program or something, you know? Paris for a semester, at the very least. Especially if you want to really know what you’re talking about. But it’s more than that.”
She paused, biting her bottom lip before she could find the courage to say the words out loud. “We were supposed to go there on our honeymoon. Michael and I.”

William inhaled long and low, then nodded to her, urging her on without words. She understood. Even with a table between them, he wasn’t so far away that he couldn’t read her like a book.

“I’d always dreamed about it. What art historian doesn’t, right? Getting lost in the Louvre and finally seeing my favorite work of art, the
Winged Nike of Samothrace
, so beautifully guarding its portico. Traveling out to the Palace of Versailles. Spending time looking up at every corner of Notre Dame’s magnificent vaults. All of it came together in this one dream Michael and I shared. I’d always thought it would be the two of us experiencing it together. We’d talked about it. Planned everything out down to the last detail. But after the wedding was called off, I just couldn’t bring myself to go there alone.”

“Why didn’t you go back with your dad?”

Sera wiped a tear that escaped to her cheek, crushing it with the back of her palm. “My dad died shortly after our trip.”

William inclined his head toward her and with feeling said, “Sera, I’m so sorry.”

He sounded genuine. It was enough to keep her talking through the tears.

“I was eight years old. At that age, a girl’s hero is her dad. I have the memories to prove it’s true. And that life can change in the blink of an eye . . .” Her voice trailed off for a moment. The memories were flooding back. “And so, the tickets Michael and I bought meant more to me than just a plane ride overseas; they connected me to the girl I used to be once upon a time. I’d hoped to share those memories with my husband. But the tickets and the memories ended up going to waste. It felt like living half a dream somehow if I’d gone on my own.”

“And you wanted the whole dream.”

She felt the awkward fluttering in her heart, almost like she was in junior high again. Although she didn’t remember the boys in eighth grade having eyes like his.

“I guess I did. But then after everything that happened with Michael . . .” She paused. Their conversations over dinner hadn’t made it to the subject of her ex-fiancé since that first night. “The gallery . . . it sort of became my savior. It was wrong, but I threw myself into work here so I wouldn’t have to feel anything. It was much safer to avoid all risk.”

Sera felt the tingles of nervousness turning her hands cold in her lap. She twisted them under the table where he couldn’t see.

“Safer to avoid risk. I know what you mean.”

“You do?”

He nodded. “Who else would understand but someone who’s buried himself in work at the expense of any kind of life? I wasn’t close to my grandfather. That’s something I sincerely wish I could change, but now that he’s gone . . . I’m not sure how to dig out of this career pit I’ve found myself at the bottom of.”

“As of late, I’ve taken up scripture reading again. It’s helped me.” She wondered how he’d receive such a remark. She’d been wanting to share that part of her life with him for a while, but . . . well, she’d been scared. So it hadn’t come up.

He looked startled.

“Really?” he asked with no emotion on his face except for the tinge of warmth that remained in his features. He looked back at her with eyes widened and lips pursed.

“Well, yes. It was an important part of my life—the central part of it really, until Michael and I broke up. I can’t say I’ve been as close in my relationship with God, but I feel I need to be again. I wasn’t mad at God. But I was mad at my fiancé. He was a Christian, and I guess I thought that meant he wouldn’t hurt me.”

“But we do hurt each other sometimes, don’t we?”

She nodded. “Yes. I think what happened to Adele is proof of that.”

William didn’t say a word.

Instead, he hopped off his stool and, with a sideways glance that connected his eyes with hers, walked over to the chair that held his jacket and laptop bag. He unzipped the top of the bag and retrieved a small, leather-bound book. He came back to the worktable and sat on the stool next to her.

He set a worn Bible down in front of her.

She couldn’t help but be shocked. She’d never have guessed this wealthy businessman had another side that followed Christ with a worn Bible in his hand.

“You’re a Christian?”

He gave her a half smile to accentuate a slight nod. “Guilty. Since I was sixteen.”

Sera exhaled as she ran her hand over the cover of the Bible. “And you’ve had this since then?”

He nodded. “Yeah. A gift from my grandfather when I was baptized.”

Sera sat and listened to William as he took her back to his teenage years. He told her how he’d been a troubled kid early on. Because of too much money and too little responsibility, he got caught in the wrong crowd and found himself headed down a troubled road. But Christ turned his life around and he never intended to look back.

“So they actually called you Preacher?”

“Yeah. My friends were creative with the nicknames, huh? Must be where Paul and I got the notion to try nicknaming people ourselves. But it fit. I’d always thought that was my calling, even back in school. I wanted to preach in some fashion.”

“And why didn’t you?”

“Are you kidding? A Hanover in the pulpit?” He shrugged his shoulders. “My family had other needs. Expectations. They
needed a leader. I was groomed to take over for the elder Hanover men, when the time was right, of course. And when my father left the business, it was sink or swim. Paul had no interest and Macie was obviously too young, so . . .” William sat tall on the stool, his baby blues staring through her.

“So you did what they wanted.”

“I did what I had to do to keep my family together. They saw it as putting aside Sunday school and having a real career.”

She laid her hand on the top of the Bible. “And now you carry this around with you to all of your board meetings.”

“A Bible in hand doesn’t fit the picture of the company president intimidating unsuspecting gallery owners in his office, does it?” William laughed aloud, so much so that his smile revealed the laugh lines only occasionally visible around his eyes. She noticed. Warmed to his openness. And on instinct, leaned in a bit closer to his side.

“It doesn’t,” she said. “And you weren’t that intimidating.”

He’d continued smiling at her but suddenly stopped short, his face falling to seriousness like a stone through water. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever told anybody that. No one really knew what I felt like I was giving up.”

“No?”

“No, Sera.” His voice dropped to a soft and sweet, barely there whisper. “I think that was my Paris. God was always calling me back, but I never would go.”

William was so different from Michael. So open. So unashamed of his interest in the pursuit that spelled something other than power and success. This man had them both in spades, but he didn’t seem affected by either. He looked like he could have given up everything without a parting glance.

He had a heart that she’d never imagined when they’d first met.

“And so after all of this”—he placed his hand atop the stack
of files they’d been keeping on Adele—“we’re in a different place now than when this whole thing began, aren’t we?”

“I think so.” With her heart thundering in her chest, Sera turned back to their research. “We don’t have anything new on Adele or Vladimir. Both of their trails go cold around October 1944. The only link I can think of is your grandfather.”

“And we don’t know what that is.”

No. She didn’t have a clue.

They’d talked about Edward Hanover all week. William told her what he knew, that his grandfather was a student at Oxford when the war broke out. He’d been taking photographs all his life and had been called into service as a photojournalist for the British army.