The numbers exposed another part of Claire’s story.
The envelope she left in my studio contained twelve thousand euros.
Under our actual agreement, that was nowhere near my share of a sale of sixty eight thousand.
In a statement sent afterward, she claimed substantial expenses and an exceptional placement fee.
Neither appeared in our contract or in any discussion with me.
I had spent years thanking her for negotiating hard on my behalf.
Now I wondered how many times I had mistaken a summary for a complete account.
Elise requested records for the other sales Claire had handled.
I dreaded the answers.
Some transactions matched.
Others contained charges I had never approved.
Each discrepancy was small enough to be explained away in an ordinary conversation.
Together, they formed a pattern.
Claire had been relying on my reluctance to ask questions.
The portrait was simply the first time she had taken something I could not replace by working harder.
A week later, she asked to meet privately.
Her message was brief.
“Lawyers will make this ugly. We can still resolve it between ourselves.”
I read it while standing beside a new blank canvas.
My first instinct was to agree.
I wanted to hear her admit what she had done in the room where she had done it.
I wanted an apology that sounded like the person who once brought soup.
Then I forwarded the message to Elise and replied that any discussion would take place through our advisers.
Claire answered almost immediately.
“After everything I did for you, this is how you repay me?”
I placed the phone face down.
The sentence had worked on me before.
It had persuaded me to accept inconvenient exhibition dates, unexplained deductions, and introductions that made me feel small.
This time, I heard the assumption beneath it.
Because she had helped me once, she believed my future decisions belonged to her.
I did not reply.
