Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland Read Free Book Online

distrust of this wolf in sheep's clothing, this mountebank with the queer smell, by plunging his way between Fritz and Johanna's legs, but Laurens did not gloat. Something moved him about the way they paid homage to each other with their eyes, Jo hanna shining with the intoxication of the unknown, and he wanted them to have a moment's peace. Only a thrown stick, well aimed along the narrow bank, would tear Dirk away from his self-appointed office of protecting Johanna. Laurens called to Dirk, threw the stick and missed the grassy bank. Dirk bounded into the lake to chase the splash, and Digna laughed, making it all worthwhile.
    She squeezed his arm. "I know! The painting. Girl With a Sewing Basket." Her bright expectant eyes and open-mouthed smile shot through him. "She's always loved it."
    "No."
    Dirk brought him the stick but he did not take it.
    Digna turned to him, a look of bafflement on her sweet ivory face. He watched a breeze blow strands of her chestnut hair out from her chignon, waving like sea grass in a current. She pulled him along, laughing through her words. "What makes you so ungenerous? She's our only daughter."
    "I'm sure we can think of something else."
    "Why not the painting?"
    "Because I gave it to you."
    "But it would be a touch of our home in theirs."
    "No, Digna."
    "Why not?" She put her hand in his, urging his agreement.
    "I wouldn't want to be without it."
    "I never knew you were that attached to it. It isn't worth much, though I do like the way it mimics a Vermeer."
    He grabbed on to that. "More like a de Hooch. The dealer said de Hooch painted floor tiles the same way."
    She smiled a teasing reprimand, a smile recog nizing the transparency of his diversion. He felt foolish and exposed. She knew him too well. No doubt she had some adage from Erasmus to warn about people who try lamely to change the subject. Digna rendered favorite epigrams from Erasmus's Adagia as embroidery samplers, sometimes keeping the Latin if she liked the way it sounded, like "Tem pus omnia revelat." So earnest there by the fireside, over the years she stitched onto stretched cloth as if onto her heart Erasmus's religion of rational thought: Trying got the Greeks to Troy. An ill crow lays an ill egg. No one is injured save by himself.
    "Why don't you give them an embroidery adage?"
    Her smile turned to scornful laughter. "Why don't you want to give them the painting?"
    He looked ahead toward the osier beds along the lakeshore. In the veiled atmosphere of a light fog blowing in, the osier heads bending and rustling seemed to him like ghosts beckoning.
    "It . . . I bought it to commemorate a period in my life, and for that reason I can't let it go."
    "I thought you bought it for me? Our anniver sary. Remember?"
    She pulled away and wrapped herself in her cape. A slight tremor passed through him.
    "I did. I—" He was losing her now, but held onto the belief that they'd always trusted each other with truth. "It reminded me of someone I knew once."
    Digna stopped.
    "The way the girl is looking out the window," he said. "Waiting for someone. And her hand. Up turned, and so delicate. Inviting a kiss."
    Digna turned. "Let's go back."
    He looked ahead at his daughter and her man. "What about them?"
    "They'll come."
    When they headed back toward the house, Dirk
    ran before them, bounded back, and sprang for ward again, knowing that at home he would be fed. Laurens felt a mild annoyance at his wild, glad movements.
    Digna did not question him anymore, but slowed her pace, waiting. He looked out to the pewter-colored lake, agitated into peaked claws by gusts of wind, where he had courted danger many times, skating before the ice was ready.
    "Her name was Tanneke. It was when I was working at the Haarlemmermeer pumping plant back in '74." He knew he should give this to her right then, to set the time, so long ago, years before he met Digna. "She lived in Zandvoort. I met her at The Strand, at the poffertjes stand. I elbowed my way ahead