Bone House_ A Novel - Betsy Tobin [83]
“She must have loved her mother very much,” I say.
“They could not have been more different,” the painter murmurs. “The woman who wrote this was consumed by fear.”
I think of my mother’s words: Dora, too, had met with fear and in the end it killed her. Perhaps they weren’t so different after all.
“What did she fear?” I ask.
“Her husband. According to the diary she’d inherited a small fortune that by rights was owed to him. But she’d contrived a means of withholding it, so that on her death it would go instead to Dora. He hated her for it and disputed Dora’s birthright: he claimed she was the product of an earlier affair. But Dora greatly resembled him, especially in her size, so it was plain enough to see that she was his, a fact which infuriated him even more. Toward the end he threated to kill them both.”
“What happened?”
“Her mother eventually fell ill from the strain. She writes that she would rather surrender herself to the arms of God than remain within her husband’s house. Dora pleaded with her to flee the country, but she refused, saying she had not the strength nor the courage to defy him.”
“But Dora did,” I say.
“Yes.”
“Did she kill him?”
“I do not know. She told me once that her parents never should have come together on this earth, and that the proof of this was lodged somewhere deep inside her.”
“What did she mean?”
He shakes his head. “She refused to explain.”
I think of Dora and her peculiar blend of brawn and grace: almost as if her parents fought to preserve themselves through her very flesh and blood.
“I felt . . . almost a sense of shame when I read it,” says the painter quietly. “All these years I have struggled to find the truth in people’s faces . . . but here, in these words, there is so much despair. I almost could not bear to read.” He glances up at me self-consciously. “That does not say much for me, I suppose. For my compassion.”
I open the miniature and stare at the portrait of her mother. For the first time I see the shadow of despair behind her eyes. “He has found it,” I say. “The painter of this miniature.”
The painter nods. “He was not afraid to paint what he saw. But he loved her in spite of it.”
“Your teacher.”
He nods. “She mentions briefly their affair some years before. Her husband learned of it and she was forced to break it off.”
“Dora must have known,” I say, thinking aloud. “For otherwise she’d not have sought his help when she fled the country. Or yours.”
The painter looks at me. “She never asked for my help,” he says slowly. “It was I who sought to help her.” His tone is confessional, as if he feels compelled to say this, and the past spreads out between us like a vast ocean.
I nod toward the diary. “How does it end?”
“Abruptly. She fell ill from consumption and ceases to write. She must have died soon after. Though whether it was the illness or her husband that finally killed her, it is impossible to know.”
“Perhaps both were to blame,” I say. I think of Dora, and the money stashed beneath her floorboards: money that she took but would not use. And too, I think of the rumors that followed her across the sea. Perhaps she’d killed him then: her mother’s tormentor. Or perhaps she’d only wanted to.
The painter takes a step forward in the half-light and I am suddenly aware that we are but two bodies close together in a room. It is as if someone struck a flint within me, and the slow burn that follows banishes all thoughts of that other time. I search his face for those things which still remain hidden, for I am determined to unearth the truth. I think of his words that night on the road—his swift and chilling purposefulness.
“You lied that night on the road,” I say. “The commission was not your only interest.”
His expression softens, but he does not offer any defense.
“I found the sketches in your room,” I continue.
“I left them there for you to see,” he answers.
“Why?