The Cloisters(79)

Leo looked around the gardens—the drooping grasses and blooming flowers, the pink marble columns that ringed the cloister.

“Sure,” he said. “Seems like I don’t have a choice.”

“I’m glad we understand each other.” Detective Murphy used her arm to guide Leo toward the back gate, where all their cars and vans had been parked, out of sight of the visitors.



* * *



We didn’t learn until later in the day that Leo had been arrested, but by then we were in Central Park, accompanied by a picnic dinner tucked into a basket. Rachel had suggested it—a new start, she said. But I wasn’t ready to put it all behind me. Laure was right about one thing: Rachel moved on quickly from things. The year after my father passed away, I was often on the verge of screaming or tearing apart anything friable nearby. Those moments would be followed by normal ones, but the grief came from the fact that I knew I had to keep living, even though he was gone. It was the way time kept on that was the hardest, the way my heart beat: steady and insistent, even against my fiercest desire to see it stop.

I unfurled a blue checkered blanket on the grass and smoothed its edges, flicking bits of leaf and cuttings off the felted wool. Rachel opened the basket and began arranging items: a little glass pot of terrine, a handful of cheeses wrapped in wax paper, a baguette, a knife, plates. There were also ripe nectarines and a handful of grapes, a sliver of chocolate bar. All items tenderly packed in the apartment, purchased at shocking expense from the gourmet deli on Columbus Avenue.

The text message came from Moira as the sun dipped below the wall of trees that framed the western edge of the great expanse. Leo has been arrested. Please refer all press requests to Sarah Steinlitt, [email protected]. Rachel pulled off a piece of bread and meditatively ran the knife back and forth against its interior, spreading the cheese.

“Do you want some?” she said, holding it out to me, a bite missing.

“They arrested him,” I said, my appetite gone.

“Of course they did.”

“You don’t really think he did it, do you?”

Rachel shrugged as if it didn’t matter. And I realized that to her, it didn’t.

“Probably,” she said, slicing one of the nectarines. Its juices ran red and yellow across her thumb. “Aren’t you hungry?”

She passed me a slice and I took it. Rachel licked her fingers clean.

“Eat it. It’s good.”

I put the fruit in my mouth, tasting its sweetness and warmth. It reminded me of home—the late-summer stone fruit that dropped from trees around Walla Walla, until the smell in the air became jammy and fermented, mixed with the dry grasses of the fields. The nostalgia rushed over me, unbidden.

“You shouldn’t worry about Leo,” said Rachel, breaking my reverie. “Leo rarely worries about Leo.”

“I can’t help it.”

Rachel looked at me. “You’ll grow out of it,” she said, slicking a piece of bread into the glass pot of terrine to extract what remained. “Actually, I thought you already had.” Rachel dusted her hands and pulled a small, wrapped package from her bag, tied neatly with yellow and white string.

“For you,” she said, passing it to me.

The weight felt pleasant and substantial in my palm. But a gift hardly seemed appropriate, considering the moment in which we found ourselves. Rachel pushed on.

“Open it,” she said, packing away a few of the odds and ends that remained after a picnic—the ragged pits and rinds.

I slipped the yellow and white thread off the kraft paper and peeled open its corner, where it had been primly taped, to reveal a wooden box. Inside the box was a set of tarot cards, deftly painted with watercolor fools and chariots, sets of wands and swords. The cards themselves were slightly worn, used, in fact. I pulled out the top one and fingered its corner. They had been printed on unfinished paper, which, combined with their imagery, dated them to the eighteenth or nineteenth century. The illustrations were meticulous, rendered in the typical occult style with delicate flourishes of paint and gold leaf. On the back, a light, pale blue marbling mixed in swirls of pink.

“They’re French,” said Rachel, brushing a handful of crumbs into the grass and not meeting my eyes. “Probably from Lyon. Early nineteenth century. Maybe 1830?”

“They’re gorgeous.”

“They’re a gift.”

“I can’t accept something like this,” I said, moving to hand her back the cards. A deck like this was easily a few thousand dollars, maybe more.

“You can, and you should,” she said, now looking at me squarely. “It’s time for you to have a deck of your own.”

I pulled a few more cards to see their illustrations. “Where did they come from?” I asked, lingering over the illustration of the Hanged Man, dangling from his foot.

“You mean did I steal them?”

“No, I—”

“They’re from a rare book dealer in Midtown. Not Stephen. Although, don’t tell him,” she said. “And their provenance is impeccable.”

I spread a few on the blanket between us, noting the connections between these symbols and the fifteenth-century deck that sat at home.

“Why don’t you try them?” Rachel said, lifting her shoulders a fraction with the suggestion.