Page 55 of His Untouchable Heart

That was a lie.

My heart had already slipped backward into stories I’d never lived but somehow always carried. I didn’t look at him when I spoke again.

“There’s something I need to tell you. About the painting.A Lady and Gentleman in Black.”

That easy, restful stillness shifted. The night air didn’t move, but I felt it differently—like the moment itself had paused to listen.

Anthony didn’t speak right away, which I appreciated more than I could say. He just let the silence stretch for a beat, and then said gently, “Okay. I’m listening.”

I nodded once and tried to find a place to start.

“My great-grandfather’s name was Bram Van Den Berg,” I said slowly. “He owned a small gallery in Antwerp before the war. He dealt in private collections—mostly Dutch painters and some smaller impressionists. His gallery wasn’t big, but he loved it. He had this knack for finding paintings that made people stop and stare. Not the flashiest pieces, but the ones that… held you.”

Anthony’s gaze didn’t waver. I could feel him listening, not just out of interest but with quiet respect.

“He was Jewish,” I went on. “Which, of course, made everything more dangerous. When the Nazis invaded, they started shutting down Jewish-owned galleries almost immediately. Bram tried to protect what he could, but by ’43, it was over. He was arrested and deported to Auschwitz.”

The words tasted like ash in my mouth.

“He didn’t come back.”

I wrapped my arms around my knees.

“My great-grandmother, Esther, was pregnant at the time. My grandfather was born not long after she escaped. She hid with a friend for a while and then—somehow—got on a boat to New York. She had almost nothing. A forged passport. A suitcase with three baby outfits. And a list of family names she never saw again.”

When she arrived at Ellis Island, her paperwork was altered—whether by accident or design, no one knows. That’s when she became Esther Vanderburg. The name stuck, and my father’s changed too—to Dirk Vanderburg.

Anthony didn’t move, but I saw his jaw flex. His eyes didn’t pity me, though. They were soft. Steady.

“My family lost nearly everything,” I said. “Not just people, but identity. Place. Language. It’s like we’ve lived our whole lives in translation.”

He leaned in slightly. “But the painting was always part of the story?”

I nodded. “It was the only piece my grandfather remembered by name.A Lady and Gentleman in Black.He used to describe it like he had actually seen it. As a kid, I thought he was making it up. Now I think… he just needed to hold onto something.” I shifted in my seat, “We didn’t just grow up hearing about a painting we never actually laid eyes on,” I said. “We were shaped by it. Juliette and I both pursued art history because of it—not that we admitted that out loud for a long time. But it was always there. Every paper we wrote, every internship, every unpaid archival project we took just for a chance to sift through forgotten files—it was all part of the hunt.”

Anthony gave me a half-smile, small but sincere. “You turned your inheritance into a mission.”

“That’s one way to put it,” I said. “Or maybe we just didn’t want the past to vanish without a trace.”

He nodded like he understood that instinct all too well.

“There were times we really thought we’d found it,” I continued. “We followed leads into basements of provincial museums in Belgium. We pored over poorly photographed auction catalogs from the sixties. There was even a moment I wassureI saw it—hanging crooked in the background of a blurry photo someone took at a dinner party in Vienna. We emailed the host. He never responded.”

Anthony chuckled softly. “Remind me never to stand between you and a lead.”

“Wise choice.”

We fell into a brief pause, but this time it was laced with something gentler. Then I said, more quietly, “I was starting to think it wasn’t out there at all. That maybe it had been destroyed or stolen so many times it was untraceable.”

“And then it turned up in the Devereux vault,” Anthony said.

I nodded, still remembering the jolt of it. “When I saw the name on the inventory list… I honestly thought it was a mistake. I kept blinking like the words might rearrange themselves. But it was there. And suddenly, all those years of chasing smoke had substance.”

He didn’t interrupt. Just let me feel the enormity of my words.

“But as you know, we couldn’t claim it,” I went on. “Not without documentation. We knew that. And we didn’t have it—until today.”

I reached for my phone, still resting on the small table between us. Swiping it open, I pulled up the email that had come in during dinner.

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