Lisa Miscione - Twice

“Maybe it’s not about money. Maybe it’s about revenge,” said Lydia.

“The curse, you mean?” said Jeffrey.

“Yeah.” The quest for justice, no matter how twisted, was something that Lydia could understand better.

“So who’s invested in the fulfillment of the curse?” asked Jeffrey.

“Maura and Annabelle Hodge. The daughters of the daughters of Annabelle Taylor. Cops found that knife at the scene.”

Jeffrey shrugged. “Without prints or blood evidence. I mean, you could probably find a knife in our kitchen that was consistent with the knife that killed Richard Stratton.”

Lydia nodded. “But still, it’s something.”

They were quiet for a minute.

“If you ask me-” said Dax sullenly, “and you didn’t-whether it’s about the money or it’s about the curse, whether it’s Annabelle or Maura Hodge, or the goddamn ghost of whoever, there’s only one person left to get any answers from.”

They both looked at him.

“Julian Ross.”

Sitting on an orange plastic chair in the Payne Whitney waiting room, Lydia, in spite of everything, felt a strange lightness, like the relief that comes after the blinding pain of a migraine subsides.

She had come to Payne Whitney unaccompanied. And though it was a grim errand, the fact that she had traveled here not stalked by Jed McIntyre, not watched by the FBI, and not guarded by Dax and Jeffrey gave her a sense of freedom she didn’t remember feeling for years.

As she’d stepped off the train, moved through the platform, and jogged up the concrete steps to the street, she had the sudden thought: Jed McIntyre is dead . And something inside her shifted. She had the powerful sense that a higher justice had been served. The grief and numbness she’d been feeling wasn’t gone exactly, but she could see thin fingers of light splitting the gray she’d been dwelling beneath. Then she wondered, was it the satisfaction of a vengeance that made her feel this good-vengeance for her mother, for herself, for all his victims living and dead-or was it just relief? She looked into her own heart and didn’t find the answer. But she did realize that, for her, revenge had been a powerful motivator-love, even greater. And, sitting in the sterile clinic waiting room, that thought led her to draw the conclusion that love, revenge, and money were probably the most powerful drives she could think of, outside of survival. It applied to everyone she could think of, including Jed McIntyre. She wondered which of those things were at play in the Ross case; she was starting to suspect all three.

Every time Lydia had come to see Julian Ross, she seemed smaller and grayer. Her lips were cracked and her eyes were dull, side effects, Lydia imagined, of her medications. The woman who had turned into a demon before her eyes just days earlier seemed incapable of even sitting up straight. Still, a burly orderly stayed in the room during their interview this time.

“What do you want?” asked Julian, looking at her with darting, paranoid eyes.

Lydia sat down so that they were eye-level. She held eye contact and made sure her voice was clear and strong. “Listen, Julian. This is your last chance to play straight with me.”

Julian narrowed her eyes. “They sent you, didn’t they?”

“No, Julian, they didn’t. Listen to me,” she said, using the voice she would use to speak to a child. “The destroyers have your children. You need to tell me how to help them. Right now, before it’s too late.”

Dax was right. Julian was their only hope for answers, their only hope for a direction that might lead to Ford and the twins. Maybe, by speaking Julian’s language, she might get something that they could use.

But Julian stared blankly at Lydia, blinked her eyelids heavily, slowly, as though they were filled with sand. A long minute passed and Lydia wondered if she’d made a mistake. She looked into Julian’s eyes, searching for something there that she might appeal to, but they were flat and glassy.

“Your mother is dead and the twins are gone,” she said finally. “If you don’t help me, I can’t help find your children.”

She didn’t seem moved by the information, but something flickered on Julian’s face and then she rose and walked over to her bed, casting a glance at the guard by the door. She reached beneath her mattress and withdrew a large sketchpad. Some black ink pens clattered to the floor.

“She’s not allowed to have that,” said the orderly quickly, moving toward Julian.

“It’s okay,” said Lydia, reaching her hands out to Julian. “I’ll take it. Please.”

Julian handed it to her. “Now get out,” she whispered venomously. “I have nothing left to say.”

Remembering their last encounter, Lydia didn’t have to be told twice.

“ Iwondered when you’d find your way back to me,” he said, with just a hint of smugness. The gallery was empty and Orlando DiMarco was alone in his office. He’d risen to greet her, but she’d made it to his office before he’d reached the gallery floor. Lydia noticed that Julian Ross’s last canvas still leaned against the wall where she and Jeffrey had viewed it on their first visit.

“I thought it might be gone by now,” she said.

“No, there will be an auction when it goes on sale.”

“It’s not on sale yet?”

“No. Not yet.”

“What are you waiting for?”

He shrugged. “I’m not sure. Maybe I’m having trouble parting with it. Afraid it might be her last. Believe me, I’m not very popular right now. There are a lot of very wealthy people who are dying to get their hands on this canvas. But I just…” His voice trailed off.

Lydia regarded him carefully. He was expensively dressed in a beautifully cut black suit, with a white collarless shirt. His dark, thick hair hung loose around his shoulders. In his handsome face, tanned dark brown, with a strong nose and thick red lips, she saw the lines of grief. It was a tightness at the corners of his mouth, a slight upturn of the tips of his eyebrows. She wondered, of the three major motivators she had recently been contemplating, which was his.

Lydia held up the sketchpad Julian had given her. He looked at her blankly for a moment and then seemed to recognize what she held.

“Where did you get that?” he asked, moving toward her quickly.

“Julian Ross gave it to me.”

“Why would she do that?” he said, and he looked hurt.

“Did you bring this to her?”

“Yes,” he admitted. “I smuggled it in the back of my jacket. They wouldn’t let her have any paper or pens. She was miserable. I brought her that and some charcoal pencils and some fine artists’ pens. I thought, at least then she could draw. You cannot separate an artist from her art. It’s the cruelest punishment, like cutting out someone’s tongue.”

“Because this is how she communicates.”

“Of course,” he said, as if she were some kind of philistine.

“I’m glad you see it that way. I was hoping you might have some insight into what she was trying to tell me in giving me these drawings.”

He looked at her and then down at the sketchpad as though it were an infant he believed Lydia might drop on its head.

“An artist’s paintings are like dreams… the symbols often mean something only to her,” he said with a shake of his head. “Especially Julian’s work. Even she wasn’t always sure where those images came from.”

Lydia looked at him for a second and their eyes locked. In his face, she saw the same love she had seen when she first visited his gallery. Unrequited, she thought now. Maybe they’d been lovers once, as Ford had claimed. But Julian had never loved Orlando the way he loved her. Lydia could see the longing and the pain and she appealed to that part of him.