CHAPTER 14

Professor Linden's office smelled of coffee and old books.

Elena stood in front of the desk with her hands folded tightly. Chloe waited outside the door, pacing the corridor in her red boots, and Elena could hear the soft thump of each step.

Professor Linden did not ask her to sit. She looked at her for a long moment, then took off her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose.

"Elena. I will be honest with you."

"Please."

"I stood in front of that painting this morning before it went up on the wall. Vanessa carried it in herself." She paused. "I have looked at your work for three weeks. I know your hand. That is your painting."

Elena's heart jumped. "Then you can tell the dean."

"I wish it were that simple." Professor Linden sighed. "The list was approved yesterday afternoon. Mr. Reed called the dean personally last night. He is a very large donor, and he says his daughter worked on that piece for months. The dean does not want a scandal. Without proof, the school must follow the paper."

"But it is not true."

"I believe you. But belief is not proof." The professor put her glasses back on. "I have arranged a hearing for Friday morning. Three teachers and the dean will listen to both of you. Bring everything you have."

"I have nothing. The paint was still wet. I did not sign it."

"Then find something. You have until Friday."

Elena walked out of the office with her face white and her knees weak. Chloe caught her at once and held her by both arms.

"What did she say?"

"Friday. A hearing."

"Then we fight."

"With what?"

Chloe was quiet for a moment. Then her eyes went wide. "Wait. Wait, wait, wait." She dug into her pocket and pulled out her phone. "Last night, when I came to the studio, I took a photo. You were standing next to the painting with the lamp behind you. I wanted to remember it."

She tapped the screen and held it up.

There it was. Elena in her old paint shirt, smiling tiredly, with her hand on the edge of the canvas. The Fifth Year stood behind her, glowing in the lamplight. In the corner of the photo, small white numbers gave the date and the time. 12:47 in the morning.

Elena stared at it. Hope rose in her chest like a bubble.

"That is good," she whispered. "That is very good."

"But?"

"But you are my friend. They will say you took it after the fact, or that you lied. Vanessa's side will say anything."

Chloe's face fell. "Yes. I know. I thought of that too."

They sat on a bench in the courtyard. The morning sun had come out, but it felt cold. Students walked by in twos and threes, whispering. Elena kept her head down.

*I need someone who is not my friend,* she thought. *Someone who knows my work better than anyone.*

She closed her eyes and tried to remember. Before she came to Westbrook, before the scholarship, before everything, there had been only the small paintings she sold online as Quiet Hands. She had sold forty in three years. She remembered them all.

Then, suddenly, she remembered one.

Two years ago, in the long cold winter, she had painted a single hand resting on the arm of a chair. Nothing else. Just a hand, small and pale and waiting. She had sold it for a tiny price and almost forgotten it.

That small painting was the first sketch for The Fifth Year. The same fingers. The same stillness.

And she remembered who had bought it.

"Alexander," she said aloud.

"What?"

"Chloe, I have to make a phone call."

She ran to the quiet corner behind the library and dialed his number with trembling fingers. It rang four times. Five. She was about to hang up when he answered, with the hum of a busy airport behind his voice.

"Elena? Is everything all right?"

"No." Her voice broke on the word. "Alexander, I am so sorry to bother you. Someone has taken my painting."

She told him everything. The long night in the studio. The empty easel. The name on the list. Vanessa's smile. She did not say a word about her husband, or her past, or anything that lay behind her. She only told him what had happened at Westbrook.

When she finished, there was a long silence.

"Describe it to me," he said quietly.

"A long dining table. Many empty chairs. And one hand resting on the arm of a chair, beside a cold plate."

"A hand."

"Yes."

"Elena." His voice had changed. It was gentle, but under the gentleness there was something hard as iron. "I have that hand. It hangs on my wall. The first painting I ever bought from Quiet Hands."

Her eyes filled with tears. "You still have it?"

"I look at it every morning. If someone says that painting you described belongs to another person, I will go to that hearing myself and show them the original. The brushwork, the grey and rose, the way you let the light fall on the knuckle. No one else paints like that. Not in a hundred years."

"But you are traveling."

"I am. My flight has been delayed. I may only land the night before the hearing, but I will be there. I promise."

She pressed a hand over her mouth. For the first time that day, she let herself breathe.

"Thank you," she whispered. "I do not know how to thank you."

"Win," he said simply. "That is all I want."

She nodded, though he could not see. She was about to say goodbye when he spoke again, more slowly.

"Elena. Before you go, there is something you should know."

"What is it?"

"Vanessa's father, Mr. Reed. He is the man who invited our main sponsor to visit Westbrook this Friday. He wants to impress him. The dean also wants the hearing finished before the sponsor arrives, so there is no embarrassment."

A cold feeling crept slowly up Elena's back.

"Our main sponsor?"

"You remember. I told you in the corridor, the day we met."

She remembered.

"Blackwood Group," she said, and her voice came out very small.

"Yes. And Elena, Mr. Reed's assistant mentioned it to me this morning. The chairman himself has decided to come. He will tour the college on Friday, in person. It seems he has some personal business in this part of the country."

Elena did not answer.

"I only wanted you to know," Alexander said gently. "The room on Friday may be crowded. I do not want you to be surprised."

The line went quiet. In the distance, she could hear a bell ringing at the front gate of the college and the soft laughter of students crossing the grass.

Personal business.

She thought of Adrian standing on the television, with his calm face and his lie. She thought of the long search. The missing phone card. The bus station, and the black car, and the man holding a wedding photo.

He had looked for her everywhere. He had not found her. And now, by some terrible accident, he was walking toward the very place she was hiding.

"Elena? Are you still there?"

"Yes," she whispered. "I am here."

"Are you all right?"

She looked up at the grey stone walls of the college, with the ivy hanging over the windows and the narrow stairs she climbed every morning.

In three days, a hearing would decide whether her painting was hers.

In three days, her husband would be standing in this courtyard.

"I do not know," she said.

The wind turned a page of the sketchbook in her bag, and a little cold crept in beneath her coat.

"But I think I have just run out of time."