ARIA'S POV
The gallery was mine on Thursday afternoons.
Vincent had regular meetings from two to five, part of the work that came with running a serious gallery, and I had learned to protect those hours. No appointments, no unnecessary calls. Just me, the artwork, and the silence that filled the gallery between events, when the pieces on the walls seemed to settle into themselves and no longer needed to impress anyone.
I was doing final placement checks for the show. We were four weeks out now. Clara had approved the sequence two days ago and I'd spent this afternoon measuring sight lines, checking the spacing between pieces, making sure the conversation between them worked in the actual physical space the way it had in my head.
The large canvas was going on the north wall. I'd known t
