Page 67 of The Lies We Play

Chapter Eleven

Livia

Now . . .

We walk to the institute together.

Bianchi Conservation occupies the second and third floors of an old building with uneven stairs, unreliable heat, and windows that make every room look blessed if you stand in the correct spot. Inside, the air changes. Outside is exhaust, espresso, rain-soft stone. Inside is linen, solvents, old wood, varnish, dust.

The scent of patience.

Of things broken slowly.

Of things repaired with hands that know better than to rush.

I love it here.

I do.

That is the problem.

People think survival looks dramatic. A woman standing on a cliff. A suitcase in hand. Rain, naturally, because apparently, weather loves symbolism. But survival, in my experience, looks like a workbench cleaned every night. A lamp angled just so. A cotton swab rolled between gloved fingers. Learning the difference between what can be restored and what should remain marked because pretending damage never happened is just another kind of lie.

My current patient—because yes, I think of paintings as patients, and no, I'm not taking feedback—is a nineteenth-century portrait of a woman in a dark dress with a dog at her feet and an expression suggesting she knows where all the bodies are buried. The varnish has yellowed. Someone, decades ago, attempted a repair near the left shoulder with the confidence of a drunk uncle and the technique of a raccoon.

I respect her deeply.

I hang my coat, set down my coffee, and put on gloves.

Moises moves to his own table, but his attention stays half on me. I can feel it.

“I’m fine,” I say without looking up.

“I didn’t ask.”

“You thought it.”

“I think many things.”

“Dangerous habit.”

“Apparently.”

Just before the day is over, Sofia from administration appears in the doorway with a folder against her chest and a look on her face suggesting paperwork has become personally offensive.

“Livia,” she says, “do you have a moment?”

I straighten. “If this is about the customs forms, I maintain that the phrase miscellaneous cultural objects is both vague and threatening.”

“It’s not customs.” She glances at Moises, then back at me. “It’s the new project. The one we routed to your bench last week. The funder amended the access protocols this morning, and the language is—well. They want our senior provenance researcher to sign off on it before they release the next phase of documentation. Which, as you may recall, is you.”

She says it like she is breaking bad news.

She is not wrong.

The new project came through the foundation channel two weeks ago. A nineteenth-century landscape with water damage and decent provenance gaps that wanted a careful eye.

I had glanced at the funder line, registered the words Saint Claire Foundation, and felt my stomach do the small unhappy turn it does whenever the name appears in correspondence.