Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 75748 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75748 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
“Are any of these his?” Danny asked, flipping through the canvases leaning against the wall.
“In what world would Danny have an art collection?” Nico asked.
“Yeah, he was never into that highbrow shit.” This was said with a glance toward me.
“Come on. Go help your mom with the boxes,” Nico said, clamping a hand on Danny’s shoulder and forcibly leading him out of my office. When Danny walked off, he turned back to me. “Why don’t you hang here? I will try to rush them on and get them out of here.”
I knew I shouldn’t accept his help. Or trust a man I didn’t even know.
But I did both.
CHAPTER FIVE
Nico
By the time I managed to get the Ferraro family out of Blair’s place, it felt too awkward to invite myself back up.
So I just left with them.
It was a move I’d been regretting the past four days. While I tried to busy myself with trying to find Matt’s killers to keep my mind off thoughts of Blair.
Especially off thoughts of her in those tiny silk shorts and the matching tank top that put a tantalizing amount of skin on display. And hinted at what was beneath. Especially when the air kicked on and she took a cool drink, making her nipples press out against the material.
“Fuck,” I grumbled, raking my hand down my face, my palm catching on three-day-old stubble.
Zeno did eventually get some hits on the taillight from the CCTV.
And it was just my luck that it was the most popular model from the most popular make in the United States.
It left us with, on the low end, about thirty thousand cars across the five boroughs. Add on more if we needed to factor in Staten and Long Island, upstate, or Jersey.
I had a list a mile long of names to go over.
I’d been crossing them off one by one for days.
With no end in sight.
But the letters were starting to swim.
So what did I do instead?
Something I had no fucking business doing.
Bringing up Blair’s social media account.
I knew it from back when Matt first met her. He’d mentioned her working at an “art store” and had “some blog called The Tenth Muse.”
It was clear from day one that Matt had no idea the kind of woman he had hooked. How educated and worldly she was. How passionate she was about her vocation.
It’d been clear to me from the first time I checked out her blog and socials. The special angles of the artwork—both classics and amazing pieces she found on the walls of coffee shops or from street sellers—and the long, gorgeous captions that made you look at even the most mundane things—like brushstrokes—as poetic and meaningful.
I’m embarrassed to admit that I’d been keeping an eye on her accounts ever since. So much so that I could pinpoint the moment when it was clear she’d given up on her marriage. A solid three months before she’d finally kicked Matt out.
It was a picture of the L’Absinthe painting by Degas. It featured a couple sitting together but seeming worlds apart. The man’s attention was focused outward away from the woman—distracted, disinterested. The woman was staring downward, focused inward, her expression sad.
Blair’s caption?
What loneliness looks like in brushstroke form.
Not long after, there was Nighthawks by Hopper. A picture of a diner at night. It was stark, embodying the concept of urban isolation.
A study in stillness. Highlighting the way solitude can cling to the corners of everyday life.
After that, it was The Seated Woman with Bent Knee by Schiele.
A portrait of unraveling. Nothing softened.
Then, reaching her resolve and determination phase, it was Christina’s World by Wyeth, featuring a woman in a dress in a field, seeming about to crawl her way home.
It’s not helplessness. It’s persistence with the volume turned down.
I couldn’t help but wonder as I scrolled down and down if all of her posts represented deeper meaning in her life.
There’d been one post since Matt’s death. It was The Funeral of Shelley featuring a funeral pyre and those left watching the flames.
Some grief is as tender as it is permanent.
The comments were filled with sympathy. It seemed that even though Blair had gone to great lengths never to display much about her personal life (she rarely even had her own face in her posts), her followers had somehow found out about the death of her husband.
I tried to talk myself out of it, but I found myself scrolling down until I got to one of the rare snaps that featured Blair herself.
It was a candid picture of her at her former gallery. She was in a simple black dress that was the subtle kind of sexy. It was form-fitting without being skintight. It was neither short nor cut low in the front. Still, she was exuding confidence and passion as she smiled at something someone out of the frame said, her delicate hand curled around a champagne flute as she stood in front of a massive painting.