CHAPTER TWENTY
I FOLLOWED JEAN-FELIX into a storage room. He went over to a large case, pulled out a hinged rack, and lifted out three paintings wrapped in blankets. He propped them up. He carefully unwrapped each one. Then he stood back and presented the first to me with a flourish.
“Voilà.”
I looked at it. The painting had the same photo-realistic quality as the rest of Alicia’s work. It represented the car accident that killed her mother. A woman’s body was sitting in the wreck, slumped at the wheel. She was bloodied and obviously dead. Her spirit, her soul, was rising from the corpse, like a large bird with yellow wings, soaring to the heavens.
“Isn’t it glorious?” Jean-Felix gazed at it. “All those yellows and reds and greens—I can quite get lost in it. It’s joyous.”
Joyous wasn’
