Page 67 of The Light Between Worlds

I take the stairs up to the restoration room and pointedly ignore the stags still hanging on the wall. There’s a fan set up in the far doorway, in a vain attempt to keep plaster dust from the construction out of the room, and three restorers are at work. A middle-aged woman with black hair pulled back into a tidy knot bends over a table, using a heated spatula to repair damaged bits of canvas. An older man in spectacles stands nearby, mixing colors on a palette and inpainting damaged areas of another picture.

Jack Summerfield sits in front of an easel, closest to the far door. I cross the room as if I’m meant to be there, as if I haven’t just been turned out by Presswick and left to my own devices.

Jack’s intent on his work, cleaning the painting before him with a cotton swab and some sort of fluid that smells sharp and astringent. It’s my old nemesis,A Woman Bathing in a Stream, who Presswick did promise would be getting a cleaning. I watch for a moment, lips parted, mesmerized by the slow, assured motion of Jack’s hand, working in small circles, revealing details that were previously obscured by dirt and discoloration. The rich colors of the tapestry mounded behind the bather show brighter, glowing orange-red and gold. The deft folds of her linen shirt stand out in clear relief, and the shadows on her upper thighs have deepened, grown more alluring.

“Hello, you,” Jack says when I clear my throat softly so as not to startle him. He sounds so pleased to see me I could melt. “This is a nice surprise.”

“Presswick’s kicked me out of the office for a while,” I answer. “She and Director Hendy are having an impromptu meeting so Ithought I’d come see what you do.”

Jack nods. “Pull up a stool. You can stay as long as you like.”

I do as I’m told and by the time I’m back Jack’s picked up his swab and is working again, smoothing the bather’s hair, moving slowly toward her face.

“What do you want to know?” he asks, and I shrug.

“Whatever you can tell me. I don’t know a thing about restoration, to be honest. I was at school for art history, in America, until—well, until I had to come home.”

The bather’s hair isn’t the dark brown I thought it was. There’s more red to it, and an undertone of gold. Jack’s swab moves steadily down, brushing against her forehead. “Is your coming home something I shouldn’t ask about?”

“Yes,” I say tartly. “And this isn’t a lesson in Philippa Hapwell, anyhow, it’s a lesson in restoration work.”

“Duly noted. In that case, it’s not a particularly difficult thing to understand. Do you see how clouded the uncleaned bits look?”

I nod. There’s a muddied, yellow appearance to the untouched parts of the canvas, a sort of golden haze that darkens the shadows and obscures details. It still sits like a veil across the bather’s face, and I chew on my lower lip as Jack’s swab touches her eyes.

“That’s varnish. It’s applied to protect the paint layer, but it discolors over time—goes yellow. It darkens warm colors, and changes cool ones entirely. Blue looks green, that sort of thing. Layers of varnish have built up over the years, so now I’m cleaning them off, but I’ve got to take care not to touch the paint layer.”

“And how do you know when to stop?” I ask. “How do youknow when you can’t go any further, or you’ll damage her?”

Jack smiles, though he keeps cleaning, keeps his eyes on the bather. “A great deal of practice, and a bit of intuition.”

“What are those?” I point to a trio of spots marring the smooth curve of the bather’s legs.

Jack glances down. “We call them losses. They’re places where the paint has cracked a bit, and someone’s patched the damage. But it’s likely the original loss isn’t anywhere near that large—the patches discolor, and have to be patched themselves, and so on and so forth, until you end up with an ugly mark that’s much larger than the loss that started it all.”

I let out a small breath. Damage breeds damage. That’s a familiar story. “Can you fix a problem like that?”

“Yes.” The bather’s eyes are unveiled now, and there’s a wistfulness to her expression, as if her thoughts are very far away. “But you’ve got to get back to the original loss. I’ll scrape away all the added paint,very carefully—if only Presswick was around to hear me say that—until just the original paint layer and the original loss are left. Then I’ll fill the crack with something we call gesso, and paint it over again, but the repair will be much smaller and unnoticeable, and hopefully won’t discolor as the paints we’ve got now are a far sight more advanced than those they had around the last time this piece was cleaned.”

The whole of the bather’s face has appeared. I’d hoped she’d tell me something true, something about my sister or myself or the unbreakable bond between us, but she only stares into the water with that bittersweet smile, her thoughts an eternal mystery.

“What’s this?” I point to a faint gold line along the bather’s shoulder, like an aura, or the imprint of a ghost.

Jack squints. “It’s original. It may have been intentional, or it might be pentimenti—sometimes it’s impossible to know.”

“Pentimenti?”

Setting down his swab, Jack wipes his hands on a rag and presses two fingers to the bridge of his nose, as though his head’s started aching. “Something the artist changed. It means ‘repentances.’ Sometimes you can see the ghost of what it was they meant to do, underneath what they’ve painted over.”

The ghost of what I meant to do faces me every night in the form of Ev’s empty bed, and it sometimes seems my whole life is a series of repentances. Repentances for all the promises I’ve broken, both here and in the Woodlands. Repentances for bringing my sister home, repentances for leaving her behind. Repentances for not being strong enough to bear either her absence or her presence.

“Fancy a walk?” Jack asks, taking his cane from where it’s hooked over one of the easel’s supports. “I need some air.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

I stare at the bather as Jack clears things away, putting lids on solvent bottles, disposing of cotton swabs. She won’t meet my eyes, won’t tell me her secrets, no matter how badly I want her to. She just stands, poised in the river, about to take another step.

“Ready?” Jack asks. “Mrs. Zhang, Mr. Haas, we’re stepping out for a minute.”