An Illustrated Death by Judi Culbertson Page A

was shaking and put my fork down quickly.
    He stopped eating too. “Of course not without love. Loving you isn’t the issue, you know that I do. All I’m asking is to see how things develop.”
    My face was burning. “I can’t. Because if I give up the life I’ve made, I need to know that you won’t decide in a year or two that you need fresh inspiration elsewhere.”
    “Then you’ll be missing out on the most fantastic adventure we’ve ever had. You’ll be consigning yourself to a lonely old age.”
    “Colin, I’m only forty-five! And they’re my kids too.”
    “You’re forgetting something: If we’re not married, you can’t stay on in the farmhouse and barn. It’s university property.”
    Marty’s proposition about running the Old Frigate crept into my mind. No . “You know what? That sounds a lot like blackmail.”
    He gave me his disappointed-professor glance. “That is exactly the kind of fallacious thinking that you fall prey to. With more education—”
    “Oh, don’t lecture me; I’m not your ethnography class. You know why I dropped out of college. By the time we were settled in one place and the kids were older, I was more interested in other things. So just stop.”
    He raised his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. It’s just that you’re so bright you could do whatever you want.”
    “I am doing whatever I want.”
    How did we get from buying a house together to getting a degree I didn’t care about? Colin was the most infuriating man I’d ever known.
    I had had enough ravioli and too much conversation. “We’re going to be late.”

 
    C HAPTER S IXTEEN
    G UILD H ALL WAS on Main Street in the center of East Hampton, a pretty village divided by a narrow canal and an ancient burial ground. The cemetery, which had been there since the 1600s, lent a certain gravitas to the shops and restaurants that sprang up like toadstools after rain and were mowed down just as quickly. The taste for delicacies from Provence and fat-free yogurt might wax and wane, but Lion Gardiner, stretched out on his tomb like a medieval knight, was eternal.
    The lobby of Guild Hall was solid with bodies, a mélange of beautiful people discovering each other with little cries, kissing the air beside each other’s heads as if afraid of disease. More than once I heard the words, “Truly a sad occasion.” Not all of the men had on tuxedos—several were wearing beautifully tailored dark suits—but I was sure that even the shortest, skimpiest dresses around me cost more than a Hemingway first edition. This was the kind of occasion that my twin sister, Patience, and her husband, Ben, who had a summer home in Southampton, would try to be seen at. We didn’t share information about our social calendars though.
    “Think Pat and Ben will be here?” I asked Colin.
    “I wondered about that. I haven’t seen them in a coon’s age.”
    On several easels near the auditorium doors were photographs of the Eriksons. One, from a Beaux Arts Ball, showed them recreating the painting of Spanish royalty, Las Meninas . Nate, as the artist, Velázquez, wore a black mustache and held paintbrushes, and Eve was a beautiful Queen of Spain, her black hair shining under a coronet. Puck, in a rust-colored velvet suit with a lace collar, was the little boy with his foot on the dog in the painting. A pretty little girl as the golden-haired princess in an elaborate ivory dress with a huge skirt could only be Regan. Bianca hovered over her along with Rosa, who in adult makeup was perfect as the dwarf. Gretchen was the adult attendant. Only a gawky Claude standing beside Eve, dressed to look older and represent the king, took a leap of imagination.
    A copy of the original painting has been posted for comparison, and it was uncanny how well the Eriksons replicated a portrait painted over three hundred years ago. Only the dog was missing.
    Another exhibit showed scenes of Hampton life, with Nate playing in Artists vs. Writers softball games