A-Splendid-Ruin(84)

“That might be difficult.” I gestured to the two soldiers guarding the door.

Dante started up the stairs. I followed him, still curious, but with increasing tightness in my chest, fed by his wariness or regret or whatever it was.

At the door, he pulled his pass from his pocket. “Reporter for the Bulletin. My associate is an illustrator. We’re doing a story about the library. Since it’s one of the most notable surviving buildings.”

The soldiers glanced at his pass. One of them opened the door. “We’ll have to search you when you come out,” he informed us.

Dante nodded. He stepped back to usher me before him. I gave him a curious glance, but he only offered a small, sad smile, as mysterious as everything else about this.

The foyer was marble, the light sconces on the walls dark, which wasn’t unusual; there was no city light. On either side of the foyer, stairs led to a second story. Another set of wooden doors were before us, light leaking from beneath. I went to them, hearing our footsteps echo forebodingly into the stairway.

I opened the door and went inside.

The room reached the full three stories, with mezzanines at every level. Wooden flat files and bookcases lined the walls, though there were no books—either they’d been taken to save from the fire or they hadn’t yet been shelved. In the center, a squared pillar rose to spread into an arched ceiling. Desks were positioned all around it.

I knew every detail of this room, every single line, though I’d never stepped foot in it before.

“You could put in a few statues.”

“The books are the decoration. Imagine their colors. Calfskin bindings and morocco and gold-leaf—”

“All with uncut pages, no doubt. What’s the point of a book if no one reads it? Are there any paper covers on those shelves?”

The memory of Goldie’s voice, mine, as we looked over the drawing in my sketchbook, that same drawing reproduced here in marble and stone, wood and glass. The only thing missing was my signature. “They are so beautiful you must claim them as your own.”

I could not breathe. I put out my hand, thinking to touch it, but it was not paper.

“It’s yours, isn’t it?” Dante asked quietly.

Mine, yes. My imagination somehow made real. My throat was so tight I could only nod. This was impossible. How could it be?

As if he’d read my mind, Dante inclined his head toward a bronze plaque on the wall.

Designed by Ellis Farge, 1905.

Shock first, then disbelief and pain. Ellis’s flattery, his admiration, my gratitude at the chance to learn, and all the time, this was what he’d intended. Stealing what was mine. Everything I had been through, everything I had borne, and yet this . . . this was the worst of it. He’d taken something no one had ever touched, because how could they? How safe and certain and unreachable I’d thought it, my mind and my history, and yet, how easily he’d stolen it, and how much more it was than simply a design. My solace and my hopes. Everything. More than he could possibly know. Furious tears blurred my vision.

Dante took my arm, steady and solid, and my rage gathered and hardened, no longer a hot burning, but icy and growing more frigid every moment, a rallying force, a foundation. My family had begun my destruction; if Ellis meant with this to finish it, he had done exactly the opposite. My voice did not sound like mine when I said, “I’ve made him an artist, you said. This is what you meant.”

Dante nodded. “I suspected it, but I wasn’t certain until now. Over the past year, he’s reinvented himself. He’s doing interiors. They’re different from anything he’s done before. Because they’re yours. Tell me how he’s doing it.”

“My sketchbooks.”

Dante frowned, not understanding.

“I had sketchbooks. A dozen at least. He asked to see them. I wanted his opinion.”

“He still has them.” It was not a question.

“Well, I don’t. So . . . He told me once that it was a pity I was a woman.”

“A pity for you. Not for him.”

“He stole my drawings.” No wonder Goldie had been so insistent that I show them to him. Her words that night in my bedroom as the Blessington attendants waited to take me away echoed painfully. “She knew of our attachment, and . . . tried to come between us.”

I remembered Ellis in the camp at Nob Hill, coming to speak to Goldie in the communal kitchen.

Goldie had entangled Ellis in her plot against me because they were together. Yet I’d thought she hadn’t even known him. In the asylum, I’d dismissed Ellis as a pawn. Everything made sense now, except—“But why? Why did he need them? He’s an architect himself. They say he’s a genius.”

“Yes, that’s what they say.” Dante’s voice dripped sarcasm.

“You hate him,” I remembered. “He hated you too. I knew it even at Coppa’s. Why?”

“I don’t like him because he’s a liar. Because he’s weak. Because he pretends to be something he’s not, and he doesn’t care who he hurts to get what he wants. He’s a hophead, you know.”

It was hardly a surprise, given what I knew about Goldie. Their attachment. The way they’d kept it so quiet. But of course Dante would know that about them.

“When he first came to San Francisco, everyone loved him,” Dante explained. “That was six years ago, maybe seven. He was already well regarded in Philadelphia, and John McKay had seen one of his buildings there and hired him to build the Yeller Block here. Farge came out and stayed. I have to admit that he was worth praising. But then he smoked away his talent and his buildings became disasters. Have you ever seen the Hartford? It looked like an Egyptian nightmare, with all these corridors and tiny rooms. You expected to come upon a secret entrance guarded by a mummy. The earthquake is the best thing that could have happened to it. I wrote the review of the reception for its opening, and I reported what everyone was saying. He never forgave me for it.”