Chapter 4 - THE SEVENTEENTH PAINTING
“Sixteen?”
I looked from Maya to Harold.
“My grandmother's collection had seventeen original designs?”
Maya nodded.
“That's what the old inventory says.”
Harold immediately objected.
“There were only sixteen finished pieces.”
“Then why,” I asked, “did someone make an inventory with seventeen?”
He didn't answer.
Nina put away her notebook.
“We need to establish what happened to the missing piece. Until then, nobody should remove, sell, or modify any remaining material.”
Ryan gave a bitter laugh.
“You're making an international business deal sound like a stolen jewelry investigation.”
I turned toward him.
“Your company is about to sell artwork you don't own. One of the original pieces is missing. And the debt you begged me to erase was connected to questionable payments to the workshop handling those pieces.”
He stopped smiling.
“You don't know what those payments were for.”
“Then explain them.”
His silence was becoming familiar.
We left the house twenty minutes later.
Nina had arranged for a specialist to inspect the collection with the workshop's cooperation. The board's independent auditor was also involved.
Ryan and his parents were instructed not to interfere with the company's records.
As we walked outside, I saw the locksmith still waiting beside his van.
Nina spoke quietly.
“He'll help secure the trust's separate storage areas and document the existing locks. Ryan's residential access will be handled through the proper legal process.”
I nodded.
I wanted Ryan gone.
But I wasn't going to become the kind of person who believed owning something meant I could ignore everyone else's rights.
That afternoon, I visited Pine & Reed Restoration.
It occupied an old brick warehouse near the river.
The building smelled of varnish, paper, and wood polish.
An elderly woman named June Ellis greeted us at the entrance.
I recognized her immediately.
“June?”
Her eyes widened.
“Little Claire?”
June had worked with my grandmother for years. When I was a child, she used to let me arrange scraps of colored paper in the studio.
I hadn't seen her since Grandma's funeral.
She took both my hands.
“Your grandmother would be proud that you came.”
I almost cried.
But there was too much to understand.
June led us into a temperature-controlled room.
Sixteen copper printing plates rested on padded shelves.
Each plate contained a delicate botanical pattern.
One showed a rose climbing around a broken window.
Another depicted wildflowers growing through cracks in old factory bricks.
They were beautiful.
And familiar.
I suddenly remembered my grandmother's green silk robe.
The tiny embroidered vines around its cuffs matched one of the designs.
She had worn her own artwork.
For years, I'd never noticed.
June watched me study the plates.
“Evelyn used to say those flowers weren't supposed to be decorative.”
“What were they supposed to be?”
“Reminders that beautiful things could grow in places people had abandoned.”
I thought about my marriage.
About all the years I'd spent making something beautiful out of Ryan's broken promises.
Then I noticed an empty space between two shelves.
A brass label read:
PLATE 17 — THE OPEN DOOR.
“Where is it?”
June's expression changed.
“That's what I've been trying to find out.”
She explained that Harold had arranged the restoration through a contract with Whitman Creative.
Most of the plates had arrived in sealed wooden cases.
But the seventeenth case had been marked as temporarily removed for digital reproduction.
“Who signed it out?” Nina asked.
June opened the tracking log.
“Ryan Whitman.”
The date was nine days earlier.
The same week Ryan had told me his company was finally recovering.
The same week he'd taken Maya to a luxury hotel using our joint credit card.
I stared at his name.
Everything had been happening while I was still cooking his dinner.
June led us to a long examination table.
“There was another problem.”
She placed several digital reproduction proofs beneath a bright lamp.
“These designs weren't simply cleaned up. Someone modified them.”
I compared the images.
On the originals, the leaves were imperfect.
Some edges were rough. Several flowers leaned slightly.
But the reproductions were smoother, brighter, and more commercial.
“They removed the flaws,” I said.
June shook her head.
“They removed the history.”
She pointed to a small handwritten initial near the bottom of one painting.
P.V.
Patricia Vale.
On the reproduction, the initials were gone.
I felt something cold settle in my stomach.
“Who made these changes?”
June hesitated.
“The files came from Whitman Creative's design department.”
Maya.
I wanted to hate her.
For sleeping with my husband.
For wearing my grandmother's robe.
For smiling in my kitchen while my life was being packed into trash bags.
But hatred wasn't going to explain a thirty-year-old secret.
June brought out a final folder.
“This is the last proof Ryan approved.”
Inside was a reproduction of the missing seventeenth painting.
Unlike the others, it didn't depict flowers.
It showed the entrance to an old brick building.
The door stood open.
A woman wearing a green coat held a little girl's hand as they stepped into the sunlight.
Beneath the doorway, two words had originally been painted in gold.
But someone had covered them with a thick black rectangle.
June placed the proof under the examination light.
The old lettering was barely visible.
OPEN DOOR.
Then she pointed at the lower corner.
“There's something else beneath that black paint.”
I leaned closer.
Two names had been deliberately hidden.
One belonged to my grandmother.
The other belonged to Patricia.
May you like
And beneath them, in smaller letters, was a sentence that made June cover her mouth.
FOR EVERY DAUGHTER WHO WAS TOLD SHE DIDN'T BELONG.
