Page 16 of On Thin Ice

“Thank you, Mr. Whittier.”

Soon, we were eating and Sinclair was telling me about his days at Columbia—and how his father had wanted him to major in business but he chose to major in finance, something he said was stupid in retrospect because he never intended to work as a financial advisor. But investing interested him, as did math, and he considered finance to be “business-adjacent.”

And, although his words were upbeat, I got the feeling that his choice had become a wedge in his relationship with his father. But had there already been a gulf between them? I had no idea, but one thing I suspected, the more that he talked about his family, was that they weren’t like a family at all.

The only thing that had kept me going over the past several weeks was the thought of being able to see my father at some point—and talking to him helped as well. If I believed I’d never see him again, I would lose all hope, all motivation. That was what family meant to me.

But we were soon taking our walk and I still felt like I was floating on cloud nine…because Sinclair believed in me. He believed in me enough to spend thousands and thousands of dollars on me, all while I was working for him to repay him for the damage caused at the college. In the back of my mind, I was certain he probably got some kind of tax break for paying for employees’ education—but that didn’t dampen my spirits, because it meant that he didn’t feel any less about me than he did the employees he’d hired to work at his office, wherever that was.

Near the end of our walk as we entered the iron gate in the front yard, he said, “I just hope you understand that I’m willing to reward hard work—and I see you’re making a real effort.”

“I am. And is it possible for me to earn as a reward the chance to personally take my father to his appointment in October?”

“Possibly. I’m still considering it.”

“Thank you.” And then, to remind him of my true value, I said, “Do you want to look at the Downey painting before you…?” I was at a loss for words, because I didn’t know what he usually did after dinner if it wasn’t playing chess with me. Did he read a book? Work in his office? In this gargantuan mansion, he could be almost anywhere and I wouldn’t know, because most times I would go to my bedroom where I could relax and be myself.

To my delight, he agreed. “No better time than the present, I suppose.”

Soon we were walking down the stairs to the place where I spent a third of my day every day of the work week. I led him to the area near the back east wall where I kept the artwork. I’d draped a sheet over the paintings, hoping that would keep them from getting dustier, but I didn’t feel confident about cleaning them. I’d remembered hearing horror stories about well-meaning people trying to clean old paintings and ruining them in the process. I didn’t want to be one of them.

When I pulled the sheet off, the Downey painting was the top one. Sinclair stood back, eyeing it, cupping his chin as if deep in thought. “The lighting down here is poor. Why didn’t you say anything?”

“It’s okay over by the stairs. That’s where I do most of my writing and stuff.”

“Well, I’ll have Edna get someone in here to work on it.” That gave me huge relief that it wouldn’t be Henry. I’d already grown to love that man and didn’t want him hurting himself on a ladder.

“New lightbulbs might do the trick.” The chandelier brightened up the place when it was on, but there were plenty of other lights, especially in the back of the room, that just didn’t work.

“You’re right. But we’ll let the experts check it out.”

Had the ceilings not been so high, I would have offered to change them myself—and I wondered if Sinclair called this space the dungeon not just because it was in the lowest level with no windows but also because it was dark and shadowy.

“In the meantime,” Sinclair said, “if I were to keep this painting, where do you think it should be displayed?”

“Like I said, I think it would go great in the west side of the main hall.”

“I don’t disagree, but I like the way the art is arranged there. If we put this painting there, we’d have to make a lot more changes. But why don’t we take this upstairs and see if we can find a place?”

Once we arrived back in the main hall, I asked, “So you don’t want to sell it?”

“You already told me its value. How many people have an early Picasso or O’Keeffe or Warhol and then sell it? I see the value in keeping it.” We’d been walking down the west side of the hall but he paused and looked right in my eyes. “When you find a hidden treasure, you don’t give it away to the highest bidder.”

Why did I feel like he was talking about me?

But then he continued walking. “I think we might find a good place for this in either the study or the library. What do you think?”

“Let’s try the library.” I spent more time in there than in the study…and I thought it would be nice to see it regularly.

When we walked in, he flipped on the light switch because the sunlight was fading. And he must have had a good idea about where he wanted the painting, because he crossed the room to the outer north wall where a smaller painting already hung. “We put this painting here where it would never get direct sunlight—and I think,” he said, holding up the Downey painting, “we could place this here and move the other painting either over here,” he added, nodding to the west wall, “or keep it here, arranged around this one.”

I tried envisioning it in my head—and I liked what I saw. “I think it would look nice to have the smaller painting diagonal from it on the other wall like you said.”

“I do too. It shouldn’t get direct sunlight here…but I’m not the expert there. And I believe we’ll need someone to clean it up a little bit.”

“All the paintings downstairs are like that—dusty and kind of grungy.”

“Well, we’ll get them all cleaned then. Are any of them worth as much as this beauty?”

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