She must have told her boyfriend John, the one from the “ducks, darling” letter, what had happened. She must have confided in him, and so he had made a joke about selling it if she ever got desperate. But she didn’t sell it; she kept it. It would only have gotten more valuable over the years, but she kept it.
When Laurie’s fingers wrinkled and her face started to sweat, she stood up in the tub and was suddenly hit with the chill of being wet and naked in an air-conditioned house. She wrapped a big bath towel around herself. “Talk about The Spy Who Came in from the Cold,” she muttered, briefly pleased at her dumb joke and disappointed that no one was there to hear it, since she was, after all, a sort of a spy, and—
Laurie stopped drying her hair and froze. She remembered a ticket falling out of a book, money falling out of a book, a clipped newspaper article falling out of a book. She pulled on the stretchy joggers and the clean T-shirt she’d folded on the clothes hamper. Out in the living room, she ran her finger down several of Dot’s towers of books until she found it: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. She’d picked up Persuasion from right next to it only a few days ago. She’d been right next door.
It was a beat-up paperback that looked like it had probably been read a lot, maybe lent to reluctant friends and reread during terrible moments. And ultimately, it was a beat-up paperback that bonded her to someone she loved. Laurie thumbed the pages, letting them flutter past, until something floated to the floor. She put the book down.
She carried the picture to the couch and sat down. In the photo, Dot was in a long print dress. Sunglasses. Mirrored lenses. Big blue frames. She was exactly as Ryan had described her in the photo that Rocky showed him. But in this photo, Dot was alone. It had to have been taken at the same time, because in her hands, she was holding the duck. The entire time Laurie had been here, there was a photo of Dot holding this duck, right in this book. Right under her nose. It would have told her that given Dot’s age, the duck could not be a contemporary reproduction that was sold in airports. It would have told her that Dot had this duck so long ago that she cradled it in her arms while she still had dark hair.
And as she peered at the photo, she realized there was something written on the back. Something peeking through just a little. So she turned it over. On the back, in what she now knew must be Carl Kittery’s handwriting, it said:
I have never been so proud. —C
Laurie frowned at it. Proud? Oh God, not another clue. She wasn’t even sure she wanted another clue. She wasn’t sure she wanted the clues she already had. But she had come this far, and now she had to go a little further with this ghost: He had given this to Dot to mark some kind of an accomplishment. She thought back across what she knew and came up empty. What was he so proud of her for?
And while she was squinting at it, what was that on Dot’s hands? She picked up the magnifying glass on the coffee table. Dot had something on her hands. Something…green? It was like makeup or—
It was paint. Dot had green paint on her hands. Laurie slid the magnifying glass across the duck Dot was holding, over to its vibrant green head. She looked across the living room in which she was sitting, to the duck that was on the mantel. To its vibrant green head.
I have never been so proud.
She looked at the paint, at the duck, at the paint, at the duck.
And then, Laurie put down the picture and the magnifying glass and almost tripped over her own shoes running down the hall to Dot’s bedroom, where she threw open the closet doors and took down boxes of paints and markers and beaded bracelets until she got to the big blue plastic bin with the permanent marker writing on the side: IN PROGRESS/UNFINISHED. She’d never even opened it. She pried off the lid.
The top layer was seven or eight rough carvings of ducks. They looked half expertly done and half not, precisely as they might look if one person started one and the other person finished it, maybe one demonstrating and one practicing. The ones near the bottom were small, crude, done on cheap wood blocks, not much more than roughed-out silhouettes. Toward the top of the bin, they got better, sharper, with less of a clear distinction between the more perfect and less perfect sections. In the bottom of the bin, there were pictures of ducks that looked like they were cut out of magazines. One was a big full-page shot of a majestic wood duck, with its green head held precisely at the angle Laurie had spent so much time admiring.
A few of the unfinished carvings were painted—several nice-looking examples. Laurie turned one of the nicer ones over and looked at the flat bottom, where a mark would belong, and in what looked like it was probably just black Sharpie, it said, DOT B. Another also said DOT B., but someone had drawn a heart around it.