“I heard it,” she said.
Without another word, Ryan held out the duck to her.
Laurie held it in her hands. Whatever Rocky had done to clean it had made it look a little better, a little smoother, a little nicer. She ran her fingers down the back, over the tail feathers, back up to the head, the green crest, the lively eyes. When she looked up at Ryan, she was surprised to find herself a little teary. “Thank you,” she said.
“Hey, I’m just the actor. This was all you.” He took his hat off and put his shades back on. “Let’s get out of here. I don’t want him to change his mind if somebody looks in the window and thinks I’m Matt Bomer.”
“Mm, optimistic,” she said.
“Hey, don’t be mean,” he said. “I just saved your duck.”
“Wait, what did he show you? What picture, what lady, what letter?”
“Oh boy,” Ryan said. “We have to talk.”
Chapter Nineteen
Dot had a whole collection of collections, and one was a collection of sunglasses. Laurie had found ten or twelve pairs around the house in drawers and purses and peeking out from behind the coffeemaker. Round green frames the size of a tennis ball, square red frames with gold flecks, tortoiseshell cat-eye frames with sparkly gems in the corners. None looked expensive; they all looked like they could have been picked up in drugstores or at gas stations, and more were likely abandoned in cabs and left behind on café tables. In Polaroids taken by her traveling companions, she wore them at the Eiffel Tower and the Grand Canyon, and they perched on her head as she sipped a cocktail at a table sheltered by an umbrella.
So when Ryan told her that Rocky had showed him a picture of a woman he was certain was Dot in a long print dress, wearing a pair of huge mirrored lenses in bright blue frames, she wasn’t the least bit surprised. In the picture, he said, Dot was next to a gray-haired man, her arm wrapped around his waist, her head resting on his shoulder. From the research Laurie had brought home from the library and showed to him, Ryan had recognized the man as the esteemed artist Carl Kittery. And Carl was holding a wood duck decoy, unmistakable with its bright green head and the crest Laurie had memorized with her fingers. He was extending it toward the camera a little with both arms, Ryan said, like Carl was presenting it as a gift.
Rocky had also shown Ryan a letter that Ryan could not quote precisely, but that he could paraphrase. It said that this duck had a few variances from Kittery’s other work and he’d never carved wood ducks otherwise as far as anyone knew, but the one Rocky had in his possession was made in his style and the mark was a variation of his, likely one applied to personal gifts. It seemed by all appearances to be the same one Kittery was holding in the photo. He had most likely given it to the woman in the picture as a gift, which explained why it was found in her home. The picture itself was recovered from Kittery’s house in Bar Harbor, from a box in his office, after he died. On the back, in faded ink, it said, D, 1972.
During his life, the letter said, Kittery had talked about being friends with a woman who lived in Calcasset. Although he hadn’t shared her name, he had indicated that they were close, and that they had spent a lot of time together. It seemed reasonable to conclude that the duck had been carved by Carl Kittery somewhere around 1972, and that he had given it to Dot, and that she had kept it in her home until it was found by Matthew Pell during the collection of her possessions.
The last sentence said the letter was being written by Kittery’s granddaughter, who had lived with him and his wife for a time. It was signed Rosalie W. Kittery-Kane.
Ryan explained all of this with the duck on his lap as the car wound its way back toward Calcasset. And when he was finished, Laurie just stared at the road, the little houses, the lighthouse in the distance, thinking about Dot taking this duck from this man and tucking it in the bottom of a chest. What Ginger had said about rumors of Dot and a married man; it had to be this.
Maybe this piece of his work was the only thing of his that Dot ever had. If their relationship was a secret, if he was cheating on his wife, then she couldn’t have had his company in public, she couldn’t have had him all the time. Maybe that’s why she had this, this precious thing. For all its value, for all the fuss over it, for all the stealing and stealing back, maybe this was a consolation prize. That would explain why she hadn’t told anyone she had it. It would explain why she hadn’t told anyone what it was or how valuable it was. That was why she’d hidden it. He never left his wife （of course）， so she got the parting gift.