The Madonna Panel

Chapter 2: A Missing Image

I went back to the community arts center the next afternoon with the panel in my tote bag.

Ruth was teaching a class on French knots. She took one look at my face and set down her needle.

"Family trouble?"

"Maybe."

"Did they hate it?"

"I think they were scared of it."

I showed her the part I'd finished. The stitches were plain, but even and small. I had used a mix of cotton floss and a strand of silk thread left over from a kit she'd given me.

"Did you use any antique thread?" she asked.

"No. The silk was in your supply box."

"Good. Then we can rule out the possibility that you accidentally embroidered with a three-hundred-year-old relic."

I smiled despite myself. "My parents acted as if I had."

Ruth studied the postcard image I'd brought from home, now safely photographed on my phone.

"What's the family history?"

"The painting was in a chapel that burned. I guess it's associated with my grandmother's family. My father says it was destroyed."

"Do you know who painted it?"

"No. It wasn't famous. The postcard says Madonna of Bellwether Chapel, circa 1910."

Ruth's expression changed slightly. "That isn't the same image you copied."

"What do you mean?"

"The posture is close, but the face is different. The postcard is a reproduction of an old photograph, not a painting. Look at the background. You can see the weave."

I leaned over her shoulder. The image was faded, and the Madonna's face had the blurred quality of a photograph made from a painted panel.

"So it was a textile?" I asked.

"Possibly. A banner or an altar hanging. The original may have been embroidered."

I felt my stomach draw tight.

Ruth tapped the photograph on my phone. "Where did you find this?"

"In my mother's desk. I thought it was just a postcard."

"Maybe it was. Maybe it's a reproduction of something more interesting."

That evening I searched online for the Madonna of Bellwether. The chapel had a small website maintained by my family's foundation. It described the 1989 fire as a "devastating loss of sacred art and records." There were no photographs of the altar hanging.

A local newspaper archive had a short article from the week after the fire. The chapel had been closed for renovations, and no one was injured. Several items were listed as destroyed. The Madonna banner was not among them.

I called my father.

"Do you have any records about the chapel banner?"

"What records?"

"The Madonna. The one in the postcard."

"I thought I told you not to bring that up."

"I'm trying to understand why you reacted like you'd seen a ghost."

"You're being dramatic."

"Was it a painting or an embroidered banner?"

He paused. "The old record calls it a painted cloth."

"That doesn't make sense."

"It was a long time ago."

"I found the postcard in Mom's desk."

"Where it belongs."

"Does the foundation have a photograph of the original?"

"Not that I know of."

"You run the foundation."

"I chair the board. That doesn't mean I can produce every document ever filed in its name."

The call was becoming familiar: a question, a neat dismissal, a silence that made me feel childish for asking.

"I want to see the archive," I said.

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because there's nothing there for you."

"That isn't a reason."

"It's the reason I'm giving you."

He ended the call.

I took the panel back out. Beneath the stitched border, I had planned to add a tiny inscription. Ruth had warned me that beginners often put their names on everything before they knew where the work belonged. I had considered writing my initials and the date.

Now I left the lower edge blank.

Evan called the next morning.

"Can you meet me at the old boathouse?" he asked.

He was six years older than I was and still lived in Bellwether, on the other side of the harbor. When we were kids, he spent every summer fixing the old skiff behind my grandparents' place. After our grandmother died, he stopped going down there.

"Are you going to tell me why our parents panicked?" I asked.

"I'll tell you what I know."

The boathouse smelled of damp boards and motor oil. Evan stood beside the empty cradle where our grandfather's skiff had once rested.

"Mom used to make altar cloths," he said.

I blinked. "I thought she did accounting for the foundation."

"She did. Before that, she studied textile conservation. She was good at it."

"She never told me."

"She doesn't like talking about the chapel."

"What does the Madonna have to do with her?"

He rubbed at a patch of paint on the railing. "The foundation was in trouble after the fire. People had donated money to restore the chapel. The insurance money was tied up. Mom said the Madonna was lost, but some of the older records were missing. Dad had a local dealer help catalog what survived."

"What does that have to do with the image?"

"After the fire, Mom showed Dad a piece of embroidery. He said it was the Madonna banner. She said it wasn't. They fought for a long time."

"Who was right?"

"I don't know."

"You were there?"

"I was a kid."

I leaned against the wall. "Did Mom make the piece?"

"I don't know."

He had answered too quickly.

"Evan."

He looked at me, then away. "I saw her working on something blue and white in the basement one winter. She said it was a table runner. Dad said she was making a copy of the chapel image for an exhibit."

"Was it the same image?"

"I couldn't tell. I only saw the back."

"So why did they act like my version was dangerous?"

"Because your version is closer to the lost banner than the piece they have."

I stopped breathing for a second.

"What piece?"

"The foundation has a framed Madonna textile in storage. They've shown it to donors. I haven't seen it in years."

"Is it an original?"

"I don't know."

"You've had this information and let me walk into that house without warning?"

His shoulders tightened. "I thought you were making a picture from a postcard."

"I did."

"But yours looked like the old one."

"Why does that matter?"

"Because if the foundation is using the other piece to raise money, and it isn't genuine, your work could make people ask questions."

I looked down at my hands. There was a thread caught at the cuff of my sweater, bright blue against the gray.

"Why didn't you ask?"

"I wasn't sure."

"You said Mom told Dad the piece wasn't the Madonna."

"She did."

"And Dad said it was?"

"Yes."

"What happened after that?"

Evan folded his arms. "Dad put it away."

A gust of wind rattled the boathouse door.

I took out my phone and opened the photograph of my embroidery.

"Would you recognize the old banner if you saw it?"

"Maybe."

"I want to see the archive."

"Dad won't let you."

"Then I'll go through the board records."

"That'll put you in the middle of a fight you don't understand."

"I already am in it."

He had no answer.

When I left the boathouse, I had one clear thought: my mother had seen my work and recognized more than the image.

She had recognized the stitches.