Behind the counter Josh grabs a big round mug, pours tea and then milk in, and takes it over to the steamer. He does it automatically, like he’s not thinking about it, so much as just going through the motions. I stop my deep character analysis when he turns with the mug on a saucer and heads my way. I pretend to be looking at a picture to my right. It’s part of the patchwork of art covering the walls. The still lifes and abstracts, paintings and sketches, all form the constantly evolving backdrop in the café. I’ve watched so many of my favorites move around on the walls to make places for new art, which is what I think this one that I’m looking at is. I’ve never noticed it before.
Clink. Josh sets the chai on the table and I look up into warm brown eyes. “Thought that one might be cold by now.” He nods at my full cup, and then his eyes flick to the journal, which is sitting facedown on the table. “Must be some absorbing work there.”
“Thanks,” I say, and look back at the painting because if I don’t focus on something besides him, I won’t be able to keep all of my questions to myself. And I need to think about all this before I say anything. If I say anything.
“That one’s something, isn’t it?” He’s looking at the painting too.
I nod. Where so many sunset paintings look peaceful and calm, melancholy is woven into every brushstroke of this one. It’s a twilight image of the familiar dark razor peak silhouettes of the Minarets, looking icy and stoic. The only warmth in the painting comes from a barely visible sliver of golden light behind the mountains. The last of the sun. Above that the sky pales, then deepens to violet, faintly lit by a delicate wash of stars and the tiny sliver of moon. It’s a skyline I’ve fallen asleep looking at most nights of my life, but the feeling in it is so lonely and sad it’s hard to believe it’s the same one.
Josh tilts his head one way and then the other, looking at it from slightly different angles. “It’s called Acquainted with the Night.”
“Like the Robert Frost poem,” I say, still looking at the painting. At the stars. “That fits.”
And it does. I can’t take my eyes off it. Not only does it capture the feel of the poem perfectly, but it seems to embody Frost’s whole view of nature, with its austere but beautiful indifference to us and our comparably tiny lives. The little control we actually have over them. “It’s a sad poem,” I say, glancing at Josh.
“Yeah? I don’t know it. But it feels like that, doesn’t it? Sad.”
His question hangs in the air above us a moment, and I’m not sure what to say. I want to ask him who the artist is. My eyes search the canvas for the answer, but there’s no signature that I can see. There is, however, something else. Something that takes my breath a second time, because I’ve already seen and recognized it once today. It’s tiny—barely discernable if you didn’t already know what it was: a set of three swirling spirals brushed into the dark silhouette of a mountain. It matches the one sketched on the pages of Julianna’s journal—like a signature, almost, beginning with the day she wrote about seeing it on Orion’s arm. The day that she said she knew something had changed in her.
“Did you paint it?” I ask him. It’s an innocent enough question, but I watch closely for his reaction, because I think he’s going to say no. Because I think I know who did.
“No,” he says evenly. “My uncle brought it back for me from his last vacation.”
He hasn’t given me any reason to doubt his honesty. He told me the truth when I asked him about the sketch, but I don’t believe him about this. That spiral in the corner has to be Julianna’s. I search my memory for any mention she may have made of doing a painting for Orion. I don’t recall anything, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t. Maybe that was what she meant when she said she tried to fix it. Maybe she went home and painted this, and wanted to give it to him. To see him again. Maybe she did, and that last entry wasn’t the end of the story. And he’s kept it all these years—his secret and hers.
“It’s funny. I’ve never noticed it before,” I say. “Is it new? Did he just give it to you?” Somewhere inside my head I realize I sound more like I’m interrogating than making polite conversation, but the questions come out before I can stop them.
“It’s new to the wall,” he says. “I just put it up a few days ago. But he brought it back from a trip last summer.”
Now it feels like he’s covering. “Trip to where?” I ask. “Where did he get it?”
He looks at me, mildly surprised, or maybe annoyed by my sudden interest. “Some little hippie town on the coast near Hearst Castle. I don’t remember what it’s called. He goes every year.”
It’s quiet as we both look at the painting again. And that’s when I notice something else about it that cannot possibly be a coincidence. Or an accident.
“Anyway,” he says, filling the silence, “I’ve got a lot to do before I close tonight.”
He turns to go, and I know I should just leave it at that. Figure out exactly what I think is going on before I go any further or ask any more questions, but I can’t stop myself. “Hey, Josh?” I say, though now it sounds wrong to me.
He pauses. Looks over his shoulder at me. “Yeah?”
“Did you ever notice the constellation in that painting?”
He glances at it, then back to me. Shakes his head. “No. You see one in it?”