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I did my best to keep myself busy the following morning, getting a good jump on the final Hannah I owed Vivian. But by one o’clock, I couldn’t stand the suspense any longer—or the plaintive mea culpas Billy kept repeating every time I checked my voice mail. I called Hank to let him know I was on my way over.

When I arrived, the brownstone was a hotbed of activity. Plasterers were fanned out on both floors.

“I didn’t realize it would be so… frenetic around here,” I said.

“It’s got to be. Pretty much all the surfaces are done, ’cept the walls.”

I looked into the parlor and up the stairs. Hank was right. The house had really come together over the past few weeks, so gradually I hadn’t realized it until now. All the floors were sanded and stained; the partitions upstairs had long been demolished to re-create the original layout; the bathrooms were glitzy showplaces.

Hank leaned in to kiss me. I kissed him back, but then I pulled away. “Listen—I have… something I need to tell you.”

He assessed my expression, which I could only assume was doleful. “This got anything to do with Jolene and Gordo?”

“Not at all.” Now I felt even worse, if that was possible. His first instinct had been to shoulder the blame for whatever bad news he was about to receive. “Your family’s not the problem—I am.”

His brows knitted together. “Guess we better talk out back.” He turned and started down the corridor to the little room off the kitchen.

Stay calm,
I instructed myself.
Remember what Dad always says: When under pressure, always answer a question with a question.

When we got inside, Hank shut the door and turned to face me. “This is about that guy you were with last weekend, isn’t it?”

“How’d you know?” I said, before realizing that the question I should have answered his question with was, “What guy?”

But it was too late.

“I didn’t know,” he said, averting his eyes. “I do now.”

“Hank, I—I made a terrible mistake. I wish I could undo it. I wish…”

But what else was there to say? No words could justify my behavior.

He looked at his feet, shaking his head slowly from side to side. “I don’t know, Dana. Last month you’re crying over a dead boyfriend. Now you got a live one, too. Anybody else I should know about?”

“It isn’t like that. I’m not—”

Yes it was. Yes I was.

Then he did something I could never have anticipated. Still refusing to meet my eyes, he began to unbutton my shirt.

“What are you doing?”

“Show me what he did to you.”

“What?”

“Show me. How did it start?”

Despite my trepidation, I was becoming dizzy with arousal. “He… put my legs around his waist.…”

“Like this?”

It went on for hours, just as it had with Billy. But this was different. This was hostile sex. For which I had no one to blame but myself, of course.

Although “blame” was hardly the correct word. More than once I found myself biting on the quilt to stifle a scream—of pleasure, not terror. I really was shameless. If Hank thought he was punishing me, my responses made it obvious he’d failed in his mission.

Or was he trying to show me what I’d be missing out on from this day forward?

“I do love you, you know,” I said, once it was over—even though it had become glaringly obvious to me I didn’t know the meaning of the word.

“Yeah, well.” He was still looking anywhere but into my eyes.

“Hank, is this—it? Did I ruin everything?”

He shrugged and reached for his clothes. “You’re going to have to give me some time to figure that one out.”

“Well… you know how to get hold of me,” I said, slipping on my jeans.

“Yeah, well…” He opened the bedroom door. “Guess everybody else does, too.”

Ouch.

I walked into the kitchen, where Dinner regarded me solemnly from his kennel, then through the corridor and out the front door, past a sea of smirking workmen.

“I suppose it could have been worse,” Elinor Ann said as I made my way home up Avenue A. “He could have just thrown you out.”

“I think he just did. But first he had to—”

What was that all about, anyway?

“I guess he had to mark his territory,” I surmised. “You know—the way dogs have to pee all over their neighborhood.”

“Please—whatever you do, don’t mention pee.”

“Still?”

“The vet said Lurch should be house-trained any day now, as long as we stick to the walking schedule.” She hesitated. “Dana? Maybe this would be a good weekend for you to come visit. You know—see the puppy, get away from all… that. Them.”

“I don’t know. If Hank decides he’s ready to talk, maybe I should be in town.”

I turned the corner onto Ninth Street and jumped when I found myself looking into the eyes of the meanest woman I’d ever seen. She was the subject of a formal portrait—a very old one, based on the weathered, ornate frame—that had been set out with the trash for tomorrow morning’s pickup.

“Elinor Ann, you wouldn’t believe what I just found.” I described the photograph.

“Who would throw out an ancestor? That’s terrible. Bad karma, too.”

“If this was your ancestor, you’ve probably got worse things to worry about than incurring the wrath of a dead woman. Like how to pay for your nose job, for starters.” I picked up the portrait. “I’m taking her home with me.”

“Why? She sounds creepy.”

“She is, but… maybe I can do something with her.”

Or with the frame, I concluded after I’d been in my apartment for about ten minutes. The woman’s steely gaze was undeniably unsettling, as if she were saying, “I know what you did, you unscrupulous miscreant. See you in hell.”

I turned the picture around so it faced the wall and went to check my email. As I’d expected, there was one from Billy, with “Please, please read this” in the subject line:

Despite my anger and remorse, I couldn’t help but go a little gooey when I got to the part about Saturday night. Billy’s shirt—the one I’d borrowed on Sunday to conceal the sweater I’d been wearing Saturday—still hung from the bedpost. I picked it up and breathed in his scent.

Maybe, seeing as how I’d already screwed things up so disastrously with Hank…

Maybe I should pick up a damn paintbrush and get back to work.

But before I did, maybe I’d put Billy out of his misery.

I read it over, deleted the sentence referring to Saturday night, hit Send, and went into the kitchen to finish the final Hannah.

“Well, halle-fucking-lujah,” Vivian said when I walked in with the painting Tuesday afternoon. “Thought I’d be dead by the time you turned up with that thing.” She was surrounded by cardboard boxes.

“What’s all this?”

“My picker down in Tampa hit the eighties mother lode.” She slit open one of the cartons and pulled out a hideous sequined jacket in a zebra print, fashioned from thousands of glittering paillettes. “Bob Mackie. How Alexis Carrington can you get?”

“Are your customers actually going to… purchase this stuff?”

“The decade’s having a bit of a moment in the clubs these days. And of course the drag queens will pounce on anything they can squeeze into.”

I gave the jacket another look, and an idea began to germinate. “Do you mind if I borrow that for a little while?”

“Knock yourself out.”

“And how about some necklaces? Is any of that sixties costume jewelry still around?”

In response, she opened a drawer of the flat file used to store accessories. “I definitely overestimated the market for this crap. Pile it on. The pig will look fabulous in that getup.”

But it wouldn’t be the pig this time.

I went upstairs and laid the portrait of the evil ancestor on the bed, where I positioned the jacket and necklaces on top of her. It was high time she received a makeover.

Work was a godsend. Having something to focus on besides Hank’s lengthening silence allowed me to maintain my stasis, and re-creating all
those paillettes in paint required it. Under a watchful glare and a heartache that throbbed all day, I worked nonstop to transform the somber portrait into a riotous hybrid of two centuries.

When I finished, I stepped back and smiled for the first time since Sunday. If anything, the woman’s expression was rendered even more malevolent by the addition of zebra print and the colorful strands of beads that cascaded down her neck.

She just needed one finishing touch.

I picked up a pair of coral-colored starburst earrings and, after making two tiny incisions in the surface of the photograph, affixed them directly to my subject’s ears.

Perfect. Now I was done.

As soon as I spotted the mannequin outside Vivian’s shop on Friday morning, I took the piece downstairs.

Initially, her expression rivaled the portrait’s for sheer peevishness. “What the hell is going on here? Where’s the damn pig?”

“On sabbatical.”

She drew closer to inspect the surface of the photograph. “Actually, this is pretty clever. I love what you did with the earrings—and the Mackie jacket really pops. Guess this is a whole new direction for Hannah.”

“That’s not a Hannah,” I said. “It’s a Dana.”

“But—”

“Sorry to break the news like this, but Hannah passed away last week. Complications from pneumonia.”

“You can’t do that! It’s like—it’s like throwing away a fortune!”

“I see it differently. You’ll save a fortune not having to hire an attorney to defend you against a fraud indictment.” Tom-Tom had done some additional research on the matter. As he’d informed me during our recent dinner, Vivian and I, as well as Graciela, were very much liable if Hannah’s true identity was ever exposed.

But it was more than fear of prosecution that had caused me to lay Hannah to rest.

“I’ve finally decided to lead a completely honest existence. Which means I’m no longer willing to paint under an alias.”
Or lie to another boyfriend,
I thought.
Or derail my future in some new, unprecedented manner.
I tilted my head in the direction of the canvas. “Take it or leave it.”

She paced back and forth for a minute or so, eyeing the portrait and cursing under her breath. “What the hell,” she finally said. “Let me put it in the window this weekend and see how it goes over. We’ll stick with our usual fifty-fifty split, of course.”

“Sixty-forty.”

“What?”

“Whoever buys the painting is likely to spring for the jacket as well. That’s pure profit for you.”

“All right,
fine
. Sixty-forty.”

“Unless it sells by the end of the weekend. Then we’ll know we’re onto something, and I’d say that entitles me to seventy-thirty.” Before she could unleash a fresh torrent of venom, I added, “I’m sure the volume will make it worth your while.”

“Sixty-five percent, and you’re lucky I’m in a good mood. And speaking of volume, where do you expect to find a steady supply of old portraits?”

“I have an idea about that.”

When the 7:42 Bieber bus pulled into Kutztown that evening, Elinor Ann was waiting in the parking lot. I’d called right after my meeting with Vivian to let her know we had some major antiquing to do that weekend.

“You’re skinny,” she said after hugging me.

“I’m aware.” I’d lost nearly five pounds since my confrontation with Hank. I looked over at her idling car. “Where’s Cal?”

“At home.” She paused. “
With
the boys.” She stood there, beaming, while the meaning of her statement sank in.

“That’s fantastic! Was it the jumping jacks?”

“Not this time.” She rolled her eyes. “It was Lurch.”

During the drive home, she explained how her miraculous cure had come to pass.

“Cal had to go see one of our suppliers in Harrisburg a couple of days ago. He was already running late, and he couldn’t find his cell. Turns out Angus has a new girlfriend, and he’d borrowed the phone for some late-night pillow talk. Well, Cal was mad enough about that, but when they turned the bedroom upside down and couldn’t find the phone—you can imagine. By that point the boys had to get to the school bus stop, so Cal stormed off in the truck with my cell, and it was time for me to take the dog out.”

“That reminds me—how’s the house-training going?”

“It’s—don’t ask. So anyway, Lurch, uh, assumed the position, and right after he was done and I was scooping up his, uh, deposit, I heard the faint strains of Iron Butterfly coming from inside the dog.”

“What? Why?”

She shot me a meaningful glance. “ ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida’ happens to be Cal’s ringtone.”

“Oh no.”

“Oh yes. Well, by then the bus had already picked up the boys, and Cal was westbound on Route 22, so what choice did I have? I didn’t have time for jumping jacks. All I could do was grab Lurch and rush him to the vet. And ever since then”—she shrugged, smiling—“I’ve been making myself go out at least once a day ever since, no matter what.”