At nine that evening, my friend Luc called.

He restored paintings and old paper for a small workshop, and he had known me long before Claire.

I answered because I needed to hear a voice that expected nothing.

He listened without interruption.

When I told him about the slap, he did not soften his response.

“You were wrong.”

“I know.”

“Knowing is the beginning. You still have to deal with it.”

Then he asked whether I knew where the painting had gone.

I said Claire would not tell me.

“Have you checked the shared folder?”

I had not.

Until that question, the folder had seemed like part of the life that existed yesterday.

I opened my laptop.

Under completed sales, there was a new document bearing the title of my mother’s portrait.

My stomach tightened before I opened it.

The sale price was sixty eight thousand euros.

Claire’s envelope contained much less.

There was an authorization page attached to the invoice.

At the bottom was my signature.

Or something shaped like it.

I had seen that signature before.

It came from a scanned exhibition agreement signed months earlier. The slight upward mark at the end, caused by my pen slipping against a folder, appeared in exactly the same place.

Above it were words saying I authorized Claire to negotiate and complete the sale of The Light She Kept.

The date was from the previous week.

On that date, I had been in Lyon delivering two commissioned portraits.

I had messages, train tickets, and photographs from the client’s house.

But distance alone would not prove that I had refused permission.

The identical signature mattered more.

So did the inventory.

I downloaded the documents, saved the messages in which I had refused to sell, and made copies on a separate drive.

Luc stayed on the phone while I worked.

“Do not write to everyone tonight,” he said. “Do not post anything. You need advice before you decide what to do.”

The buyer’s name appeared on the invoice.

Adrien Moreau.

I recognized it from an arts magazine Claire had once left on my table. He owned a private collection and supported several exhibitions.

I found an email address in the transaction documents.

My fingers hovered over the keyboard.

I wanted to ask how he could purchase a face without asking the person who painted it.

Then I remembered he might have asked.

Claire might have answered for me.

That possibility was worse because it meant my anger had more than one convenient target and only one known cause.

I closed the draft.

At midnight, Claire sent a message.

“You will receive formal correspondence about today’s assault. Any further communication must be in writing.”

I read it several times.

Then I replied with two sentences.

“I accept responsibility for hitting you and will cooperate with the process concerning that incident. I did not authorize the sale of The Light She Kept, and I require its location and the transaction records.”

I did not add an insult.

I did not threaten her.

For once, I let the words do only the work they were meant to do.