I drove home with Ruth.
We left the beach before noon.
Emily stayed behind to check out of the hotel.
She sent one message.
I will give you the space you asked for. The accounting records are being preserved.
I didn't reply.
Ruth drove for the first hour.
My sketchbook rested on my lap.
Every so often, I opened it to a page and closed it again.
I had brought the book because I wanted to start drawing for pleasure.
I had not expected to spend the trip learning what my drawings had been doing without me.
At a service station, Ruth bought two bottles of water.
She put one in my cupholder.
“You don't have to make a decision about Emily today.”
“I know.”
“You sound like you're trying to.”
I watched a family unload a stroller beside us.
“I keep looking for the moment when I should have noticed.”
Ruth started the car.
“You weren't responsible for detecting two people withholding information.”
“Daniel showed me the card samples once.”
“What?”
“Years ago. He said he saw something similar to my work in a gift shop.”
I could picture the afternoon.
We had stopped for petrol during a visit to his aunt.
There was a wire rack of cards near the register.
Daniel held one up.
“Look, Claire. Someone else loves robins as much as you do.”
I had glanced at it and smiled.
The drawing wasn't identical to mine.
The colors were different.
I never thought a manufacturer might have adapted my original sketch.
“He was showing it to me,” I whispered.
Ruth's jaw tightened.
“Perhaps he wanted to know whether you'd recognize it.”
The possibility made me feel ill.
But we couldn't know his motive.
I was learning how easily guesses could become new injuries.
We drove the rest of the way in silence.
At home, I found the front garden overgrown.
The rosemary by the door needed cutting back.
The recycling bin had been left open.
Ordinary maintenance had waited while I was gone.
Inside, Daniel's chair stood beside the window.
His jacket hung near the hallway cupboard.
Emily had helped me decide to leave both where they were.
I had thought she understood why I wasn't ready.
Now I wondered if she'd been afraid that clearing the house would uncover something.
I hated the thought.
I hated that I could no longer stop it.
Ruth carried the bags upstairs.
I went to the spare room that had once been my studio.
After Daniel's promotion, we turned it into a guest room.
My drawing table had been moved to the attic.
Boxes of old artwork sat beneath a quilt.
I pulled them out.
The first folder contained sketches for a children's alphabet book.
The second held botanical patterns.
The third included greeting-card ideas.
In the corner of one page, I found a note in Daniel's handwriting.
Ask Claire about rights before ordering samples.
I sat down on the floor.
He had known.
At least once, he had known to ask.
The date beside the note was eleven years old.
I photographed it.
Then I photographed the folders.
Ruth found me there after half an hour.
“Do you want help?”
“I want to count everything.”
We made three piles.
Original sketchbooks.
Loose drawings.
Receipts and correspondence.
Some illustrations had been made for paid clients.
Those needed separate review because I might have transferred rights under contracts I'd long forgotten.
Others were personal work.
I kept the categories distinct.
For most of the afternoon, Ruth read dates while I entered them into a spreadsheet.
I had always been good at organizing things.
That skill had once made me useful to Daniel.
Now I wanted to use it for myself.
At five, my phone rang.
It was an unfamiliar local number.
“Mrs. Mercer? This is Anne Keller, the bookkeeper for Blue Lantern Paper.”
I remembered the name from the lawyer's records.
“Hello.”
“I understand you've been informed about the company.”
“Yes.”
“I wanted to make clear that I am keeping the records exactly as they are.”
“Thank you.”
She hesitated.
“There are original design files stored in a separate archive. Some came from your husband's old computer.”
“Do you know whether he copied them from mine?”
“I don't know.”
“Please don't delete anything.”
“I won't.”
After the call, I walked into the kitchen.
The framed robin still hung beside the pantry.
I had stopped noticing it years ago.
Now I took it down.
On the back, Daniel had written a date and the words For Claire, who sees small things.
I placed it carefully on the table.
For seventeen years, I'd understood the inscription as love.
I wasn't certain what it meant anymore.
Ruth watched me from the doorway.
“Do you want to throw it away?”
“No.”
I wrapped it in brown paper.
“I want to decide later.”
For the first time since the beach, that seemed like a decision I could live with.
The first night back home, I opened the window in the studio.
Cool air entered carrying the smell of wet leaves.
Daniel had always complained that the room was too cold.
I liked it that way.
I remembered the afternoon we'd decided to turn it into a guest bedroom.
He'd said it would be useful when Emily came to stay.
I agreed because I was no longer using the room regularly.
I had stopped after we moved for his work.
There were long commutes and family appointments.
There were weekends spent repairing the house.
I kept telling myself I'd return to drawing when life slowed down.
What I hadn't known was that my old work had continued traveling through shops while I waited.
The following morning, I visited my mother's former home.
It belonged to Ruth now.
She had kept the attic boxes after Mom moved into assisted living.
Mom died three years before Daniel.
I hadn't searched those boxes since the funeral.
Ruth found the attic key.
We climbed a narrow staircase beneath the roof.
There were Christmas decorations, school exercise books, and photographs in broken frames.
In a plastic folder marked Claire's Art, I found drawings I'd made before marriage.
Some contained signatures.
Some had notes from teachers.
Several carried dates from old exhibitions.
I photographed the pages.
I also found a letter from my mother.
She'd written it after my first small gallery show.
You always notice things the rest of us rush past, she said. I hope you never stop.
I sat on an old trunk with the paper in my hands.
I hadn't realized how long I'd gone without making anything new.
Ruth sat beside me.
“Mom was proud of you.”
“I know.”
“You say that as though you're convincing yourself.”
“Maybe I am.”
We spent the afternoon cataloging drawings.
At one point, Ruth discovered a watercolor of our father asleep in his armchair.
The proportions were terrible.
His feet were much too large.
We laughed until we cried.
I placed that one in a separate folder.
Not everything valuable needed to be commercial.
Some things existed because someone had paid attention.
When I returned home, I put the folder beside my drawing board.
The next morning, I would call the attorney.
That evening, I simply wanted to look at the pages.
Click here to continue reading: PART 6: The Accountant’s Ledger Showed Ordinary Expenses, Missing Agreements, and a Payment Daniel Had Never Explained
The Last Photograph Emily Asked Me to Take Beside the Water Before She Told Me About Daniel
Part 5 of 16
