"Love and Pain" by Edvard Munch (1893), also called "Vampire", one of several versions of the painting, stolen in 1988, recovered 1988 - value of an 1894 version was $38.2 million

Chapter Fifty-One

My name was a whisper on his lips. Haunting and delicate.

He tried again, "Eleanor, are you—"

Yet he broke off, again. What he wanted to ask was broken glass around me; again. I was a frequent flier at crime scenes I'd never been prepared to be found at. Besides, we both knew the answer. I didn't need a mirror to know what I looked like. I didn't need a heart to know what I felt like. I didn't need a soul to know what I'd done, what I'd taken, and what I had to admit to.

I had the Widows surrounding me, a field of poppies beside me, and hands soaked in red.

It was time to tell him the truth.

It was time to tell Simon how every kiss had been poisoned. How every touch had been corrosive; how every heartbeat had been untruthful. There were always pyrite truths embedded in stone: fool's gold, at best. There were verities in my ribs and lies in my teeth. Every inch of me loved him—and every inch of him had been hurt because of it, carved with ghoulish wounds. Perhaps he didn't feel it yet.

He would.

Because I was the best definition of a traitor. I'd damned the keeper of my heart and the bearer of my sins. And I wished I could say I'd done it kicking and screaming. I wished I could swear I'd clung those sins to my chest until I couldn't hold on any longer, that he'd shared the burden against my wishes, that I was a traitor because he'd made me be. I wished I could promise he'd pried them from my stiff fingers and clenched arms; that I'd guarded him from the perils until he'd claimed them as his own, despite my shrill objections.

Had I?

Or had I welcomed him with an open embrace and eager lips? Had I tried to correct his unexpected presence, or had I made room for him on my canvas?

I realized it all, I realized everything. I'd betrayed the one person I never should have betrayed. And I'd betrayed her, too.

She'd kicked the weak, so I'd leapt for her throat. Now it's my own I offer the guillotine, boot crushing the necks of the ones I love.

His eyes flicked down to the red on my skin. His expression twisted, giving him the push he needed to cross the threshold and approach.

"Your hand," he murmured. He was already reaching. I tried to pull away, to shy from the touch that'd make this real, but he was faster. He caught my wrist in a gentle grip. His hold was soft, yet unrelenting; he wasn't letting me go.

He has to let me go.

"Simon—"

"C'mon," he said, taking the knife from me.

He wasn't looking at the paintings. He wasn't looking at anything but me as his feet carried him on a path to the kitchen, pulling me in tow. He was ignoring everything: every red sign I'd ever given him, every warning I'd silently uttered between my touches, every hiss and scrape of scales I'd hid under moans and flustered wails. He was ignoring the spear in his chest because of the droplets of crimson on mine.

His grip held my hand under cold water. I closed my eyes. He was so close. Tension lulled and lapped at our edges, mellow tickles of waves bubbled at our feet, the longing of tsunamis yet to come. His body brushed my side as we stood by the sink; my shoulders ached with the weight of his world as it leaned on mine. I could feel him pulling me in, tempting me, wanting me, but I could no longer feel my heart in my body. It'd ached and ached and ached—it always had. Except, now, I knew I'd only ever felt phantom pains in the space where my heart used to be. He'd had it the entire time.

Or maybe I never had one at all.

"What happened?" he asked. He was careful with my injury as he pressed a clean towel to it. It just kept bleeding and bleeding and bleeding and bleeding—

"Simon," I whispered, throbbing, apologizing. I couldn't feel the pain of my fingers because my nerves were so overwhelmed with another kind of agony coursing through my body and soul.

He was looking at my hand.

I was looking at him.

Concentration was his shield; he was defending what he had left—and I would soon gun for it with these tears on my cheeks. Simon startled when he looked up and saw the torrents. He apologized like he was the one who'd hurt me, like I hadn't been found with my own bloody knife in front of my crimes.

"I think I have bandages in the car—" he started, urgent. His gaze was already looking for where he'd put his keys, but I shook my head. I leaned—as close to his warmth as I could get without touching him—and closed my eyes again. As I did, his body slowed until no longer moving; I felt him become the rival to marble monuments I'd always known him to be; felt him turn to stone as he waited.

The greats I'd once studied had carved their legacies with alliances and cunning catering, with subbia tools and gleaming eyes. He, too, must've been the work of someone worth a legacy. The expert hands that'd chiseled him, the longing fingers that'd shaped him, the motherly grief that burdened him.

I saw mythology wrapped around his spine in tangled caresses, and goddesses's kisses on the corners of his lips; I saw destruction in his teeth, and violent memories in his arms, yet tenderness in the palms that cradled my heart. I saw Simon as more than he could ever hope to be here.

Just one more moment.

Simon sucked in a ragged breath above me. At the sound, I opened my eyes.

When I did—as soon as my own met his—Simon crashed down. The mountain I'd weathered and worn seemed so fragile now as he enveloped me.

I was stone, too, like the other statues that'd witnessed my crimes. Two-faced Janus, the granite girl who yearned for the touch of stars, the countless works scattered throughout the museum's holy corridors. I didn't want to hurt him. I'd never wanted to hurt him. But I... I needed just one more moment. His hands held me gently, but desperately, like he was too afraid to clench me tightly, yet too afraid to let go.

I was too in love to stop him. I wrapped my arms around him and fisted his shirt in my hands, trembling.

I mouthed the confessions that throbbed in my gut, in my chest, in my neck and veins. My throat was closing. Part of me was empty, cold, and desolate. Part of me was decaying, choked up by the end I'd avoided for so long. Part of me was dying, knowing I'd killed him, too. Part of me was relieved, and too afraid to say it.

"Simon," I repeated thickly. I was suffocating through the silent tears on my cheeks, voice muffled by his shirt, but I knew he heard me. "We need to talk."

Simon shook his head and held me tighter. He spoke a whisper, a plead, a beg for mercy. It was a shameless request for another moment of lies. I'd made a lot of those before, and I wished I could grant him the same mercies I'd been given.

"Please," he breathed.

"Simon."

I half-pulled away, tasting his name on my lips. Blood, rust, paint, desire. Everything was red. He shook his head again, and I glimpsed his eyes squeezed shut. "Simon—"

"Don't. Please. Because the moment we go in there," he murmured against me, his voice starting to shake, "then we can't just be Simon and Eleanor anymore. We'll have to talk, and I'll have to ask—"

His voice broke. In my mind, I recited what he really meant.

You'll have to be Simon Gatz, and I'll have to be Eleanor Vaycker.

I gazed up at him. I could hammer the words I needed to say in his sides, chiseling them into stone, but I wasn't sure they would withstand the test of time. He might take his own hammers to any creations of mine when the dust settled.

It was worth the risk.

"I love you," I told him.

His breath shuddered in his lungs as he took another deep puff. I inhaled his vulnerability, because in a moment I wouldn't get the luxury. In a moment, I'd lose him.

So my nerves like steel cables, all that remained from burned bridges, I pulled him towards where he needed to read my charges, to stand where I needed to be sentenced. If there was anyone I wanted to be the judge, jury, and executioner of my trial, it was Simon.

Of course, I knew that wasn't fair. I'd never been fair to him. Though, he'd never complained; it was just who he was.

And like I'd expected, he hadn't been lying. Simon never did. He was never a liar; when we crossed the threshold to where the Widows waited, his hand loosened in mine. It lingered for a half-breath—another brush of skin, all for me—before he untangled and pulled away. He wouldn't look at me now. He was focused on the evidence of my crimes. Simon Gastapolous was becoming Simon Gatz. My love became loss, and my truth became known; my name became something other than what used to spill from his lips in the dark. He was the embodiment of Riverwide—but the stones that guided his path were all my doing. He would know that soon, if he didn't already. Simon stood over the table, a pillar of strength I teased with a match, to take in the canvasses and deconstructed frame.

The red of the poppies, the pink of the Widow, the duplication of hues. Grief, potent and unbottled, as loud as the weeping laments of a women without.

His hand reached as if to touch the rightful Widow. He leaned, then pulled away, as if to touch her would be to fist fire. Instead, he dug his nails into his palms. "What is this?"

"The Weeping Widow."

"And that?" he asked, gesturing to the other canvas. He did touch a painting then, running a finger along the sharp edges where the imposter had been cut from her frame in haste. The downturn of his lip made me wonder if even he, a man who often held art as far from him as he could, knew deep down she wasn't entirely right. We didn't need education to marvel beauty, only to truly deconstruct it.

"The one that was stolen that night in September," I answered.

His hand stilled. He looked at me sharply, expression hardening. "What?"

My heart was aching, because to say it out loud would be to condemn the dead; to let it hang in the air would be to voice her crimes and read the charges; to tell him would be to make it true.

But it was true.

Geraldine Whitehill had been a proud woman. A proud, graceful woman who'd hung fakes in her halls and hid truth under poppies. A woman I'd loved, lost, and lied to.

My hand rose to brush his. I watched him fight the flinch, battling his sigh, trying to hide how my touch showed him the colors he'd shown me, too. "Do you remember when we went to the Ponting Gallery, and we talked about replicas?" I asked.

Simon nodded.

"The Widow that hung at Whitehill was a fake."

Simon blanched. My hand fell.

"I didn't know," I quickly clarified, seeing his expression. My heart spat its distaste for the revelation, for the truth, for what he probably thought. Not all of it was true, not all of it was false, not all of it was forgivable. "For a long time, I had no idea. I said all that shit about replicas and all this time... I'm sorry. I didn't know."

Simon didn't believe me; I knew it.

"Simon, it was a fake for years. Maybe even the whole time," I tried again, quiet.

My voice was shaking so hard I couldn't continue. But I had to.

"The entire time, Geraldine Whitehill was a hypocrite," I snarled, glaring down at her lies. I was furious, but my tongue wasn't just sharp, it was bitter, too. I didn't know what was more seductive as it beckoned; anger or grief. "Geraldine took the real Widow and hid the canvas under the poppies. I don't know why. I don't, without a doubt, know why she would do that, or why she wouldn't tell anyone. Hell, I don't know what gave her the right, or the effing audacity to pretend she was a martyr when it was taken!"

Flames nipped at my throat, shame swelled on my tongue, and exhaustion rolled across my collarbones. It soaked my shoulders, gushed down my wrists, and sagged in my fingertips. I was tired of my anger.

I lifted the letter, and the faded photo, and outstretched them to Simon. "I don't know for sure, Simon, but I... I think this has something to do with it."

Simon took the stack then, his eyes flicking as he read the cursive on the page. The letter from Marigold Lebroff, Clara Vouten's granddaughter, was full of her own furious heartbreak, poured out for the once nurturing hands of her longtime friend, Geraldine.

Simon looked up, then read aloud from the letter, beginning at the start.

"Dear Geraldine, I hope this letter finds you well. I shall keep it brief, for I find we have little else to discuss—a change I wonder if you view as disheartening as I do. For over forty years, I called you a friend. I called you a lover of art. I gave you my mother's most prized possession, given to her by her own mother, and hoped the poppies would bring color back to your life after the passing of your husband. I told you about Grandma Clara, how she was forced to hide behind the mantle of a man, pressured to paint her story in a light they thought would sell better. And I thought there was no one more deserving to give the field of poppies to; no one else better suited to protect and cherish them. But last week, I discovered this was not the case. You invited me over for dinner, do you remember? How the night started as fun as it always was? Your husband wasn't there to pour wine and share his scars of battle with my own husband, who used to oblige with his. Mine wasn't there to admire your husband's collection of African masks, and tell me his plans of following suit. No, it was only us left. We could've been trampled by our grief, but instead you poured sherry until our shoes dangled from the chandeliers. You let us laugh. Then, you invited me to your room to show me your dress for your grandson's graduation. Except, there, on the wall above your bed, was the painting my family had been looking for, all this time."

Simon briefly glanced up, blinking, but kept reading. "I called you a friend, Geraldine. How can I call you that, now? For decades, we've searched for my grandmother's portrait. You knew this. You knew it was lost, you knew my family was unfairly taken advantage of, you knew how desperately we searched for it. You knew we'd lost hope when the war started, when art was lost in rubble or hidden away in fear, or pain because the colors were too cheerful for the times. So why now, is it on your walls? Why now, do you avoid my calls, and close your door in my face? I don't know how you found it, or who had it all those years before Artie bought it for you. I only know I called you a friend. I called you a lover of art. I don't think I can call you either of those things now. You can't tell me you didn't recognize it when Artie gave it to you. Your proof of receipt means nothing to me. It wasn't theirs to sell, and it certainly wasn't yours to buy. Yet, because my heart won't let me feel otherwise, I hope for your sake you never feel such a pain of loss as my family does. If you do... I want you to know it was never yours to lose. And I confess, if you change your mind, you know I will be waiting to call you a friend again. Your longtime acquaintance, Mary."

He was silent again when he finished. I drew closer and pointed to the photo. "That's Geraldine and Marigold, or 'Mary', the granddaughter of the Widow's artist. They were friends, but Geraldine never gave her family back the Widow. She hid it. She put it under the same poppies her friend gave her and hung up a fake. Maybe she was worried something would happen to it. I-I guess she was right."

His head tilted as he looked from the letter to me. Simon's expression would haunt me forever. "That doesn't explain how they're both on your table." he said slowly. "If the fake was stolen, how do you have it?"

Yet, the answer was as complicated as he'd once predicted.

It was never a question of who, it was a question of why.

I took another breath, rattling my lungs with the pained gust. It was agonizing, but I admitted, "Because Geraldine left it to me in her will."

His eyes widened, and with a glob of satisfaction in my gut, I knew he understood the truth. The only successful theft that night had been done by the hands of Geraldine, or at least by her orders. Geraldine's influence was a fog in every head and a grinning devil on every shoulder, even now.

"Geraldine Whitehill stole her own painting," I muttered, clenching my jaw against my own disbelief. "She stole the imposter off the walls while the real one was hidden under the poppies."

"You had the poppies."

"I know. This whole time, I had it. I had the real Widow, Simon, but I wasn't supposed to, I swear," I rattled, my pulse suddenly squeamish from its rampage. "August gave the painting to me a few years ago, but Geraldine didn't know!"

Simon was suspicious. I just kept talking. The truth sputtered out from the cracks in my lies. "She didn't know he'd given it to me. She thought it was in her vault, and she was at the museum that night in November looking for it after she discovered it wasn't. Then she got confused, and started looking to see if she'd put the Widow under another painting instead. She set off the alarms."

"You had the Widow this entire time," he repeated.

I couldn't read his tone. I couldn't decipher his expression. But I could recognize the unknown in his eyes, in how he looked at me, and it made my chest tighten.

"The real one, yes," I faltered. "But did you hear me? I didn't know until just now!"

Silence snaked between us, wrapping its vines from my wrists to my neck. On Simon it was worshipful as it trailed his frame, on me it throttled with vindictiveness only rivaled by my past self; like ivy, I feared the damage it'd do to his solid stature. Simon unraveled himself first.

"Why?" he asked flatly. "Why did she steal it?"

Did he know the layers, the winding rabbit hole, the underground cities of opened doors under that one question manhole cover? Surely, he did. Geraldine had risked it all by stealing the painting. The museum's reputation, her legacy, even the very museum itself. Either Geraldine had acted brashly, or she'd gotten desperate, and had run out of time.

Why would she risk it? Why would she let Whitehill stumble? Why would she do it?

"I think she stole it because of me," I mumbled, sniffling. "I was on a warpath of exposing replicas. I was out for blood; I didn't care whose it was. I'd started ripping apart anyone and anything that wasn't participating in the repatriation of wrongly lost paintings. But I had no idea Geraldine fit both of those descriptions. Maybe she knew she was running out of time, and didn't think she could covertly take the Widow down without raising questions. Or... or maybe she knew."

"Knew what?" he asked quietly. He already knew. I heard it, saw it, felt it. But I owed him honesty, as clear and as true as I could give him.

"Why I was there that night."

"Eleanor," he warned.

He knew.