“That did occur to me,” Tess said.
“I was holding out hope . . . until I got a look at the photos you sent. Then, I knew.”
“How did you know?”
“Daisy, for one,” Indigo said. “My father didn’t like her. She and Grey had been sweethearts since they were children. They were one of those couples. Destined to be together. But when she married that odious Frank Erickson, Sebastian wrote her off. My mother did, too. They were furious. And Grey was heartbroken.”
“So, he wouldn’t have painted her portrait?”
“Dear God, no,” Indigo said. “He never painted portraits, much less of someone he despised. Don’t you see—all of his depictions of people are captured from the side, or from the back. He never painted a traditional portrait in his life.”
Tess thought back to all the paintings by Sebastian Bell that she had seen—she knew every one. Indigo was right. There were no traditional portraits.
“I never knew Grey was a painter,” Tess said.
“He was. Quite a good one, as you saw. His style was much like my father’s, but darker. Much darker. But then again, that was Grey. He was always brooding.”
Tess thought about the obsession the paintings implied. “Grey was the one obsessed with Daisy?” she said.
And as soon as she got the words out, they made perfect sense to her. Of course he was. She had married another man. That alone could turn love into obsession. But to know she was desperately unhappy? That would stoke the fire even more.
Of course a spurned lover would have been the one peering into her windows and following her down the street. Not his father. The very thought of it being Sebastian Bell sounded ridiculous to Tess now.
“So, what happened here?” she pressed on. “Grandma closed off this studio. There’s blood all over the place. Who died, Dad? Was Daisy murdered here? Who did it? And, Grey disappeared. Did they run away together or . . . I mean the blood suggests they didn’t, right?”
Indigo let out a great sigh. “The truth is, honey, I don’t know. I was away at college. You know Grey was a few years older than me. He went missing around the same time that my dad died. Your grandmother had already closed up the studio by the time I got home, and that was that.”
“You didn’t even—”
“Tess,” her mother interjected. “You need to remember something. When Indy was away at school, his brother disappeared, and his father died. His whole world—our whole world, because I was a part of it by then—had been turned upside down. Serena was inconsolable. You can’t imagine the grief in this house. I’m surprised all of that emotion isn’t still here, filling up the cracks in the foundation and the holes in the ceiling.”
Maybe it was, Tess thought. Maybe it was.
Tess hurried downstairs to retrieve her parents’ bags. They were exhausted by everything they had been through that day, the trip, the discovery of the studio, all of it. She wasn’t going to press her father for more information before he got a good night’s sleep.
While they were getting settled in their guest room, Tess made a tray with two snifters of cognac—her father’s traditional nightcap—a pitcher of water and two glasses, and some chocolates. Back in their room, she found them both in bed, propped up against their pillows, a book in her mother’s lap. Tess set the tray on their dresser’s marble top and brought their glasses to their respective nightstands. Then she lit a fire in their fireplace.
“Darling, you’re too good to us,” Jill said, taking a sip of her cognac.
“A perfect innkeeper,” Indigo said, smiling weakly. “You have found your calling.”
Tess smiled at him. What a kind thing for him to say. But, then again, her parents, for all their faults and eccentricities, had always been supportive of anything she had ever wanted to do.
And in a way, she could understand Sebastian and Serena’s disdain for Daisy when she had spurned their son, because she knew her own parents felt the same about Matt.
Curled up in bed in his （no doubt, designer） pajamas, Indigo looked small. Vulnerable. Not the giant of a man Tess had grown up with. She thought of Joe in his assisted-living apartment, having to sign in and out, and hoped it would be many years before her own parents needed that kind of care.
After hugging and kissing them both, Tess retreated to her room and started to shut her door, but then decided to leave it open a crack. Just in case her parents woke in the middle of the night and needed anything. She lit a fire, brushed her teeth, washed the day off her face, and put on her pajamas. After slipping into bed, she grabbed her phone, which she had set on her nightstand earlier with the intention of plugging it in for the night. When she glanced down at it, she saw she had two messages.