“Storage,” Tilda said.

“Right.” Nadine rolled her eyes.

“Nadine.” Tilda pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and looked down at her, and Nadine swallowed and sat up a little straighter. “You are not in a position to push your luck here. The painting.”

“Dad made me clean the back storeroom,” Nadine said. “It was full of furniture painted with animals. Dad said you did it when you were my age. It was pretty cool, especially the bed when we’d cleaned it off and set it up-”

“We?” Tilda said.

“Ethan and me,” Nadine said. “You didn’t think I cleaned that whole place out by myself?”

“So Ethan knows.” Tilda consigned Andrew to the lowest circle of hell for criminal stupidity, in sending not only his daughter down there but also her non-family best friend.

“Well, he knows there’s furniture down there, yeah,” Nadine said. “What is it with you and the basement? It’s furniture.”

“Right.” Tilda realized her lungs were closing up again and got her inhaler out. “Are we close to the painting yet?”

“It was in there,” Nadine said. “It was wrapped in paper and stuck in a cabinet, the one with the turquoise monkeys on it. Did you really paint all those animals?”

“It’s junk. I was going through a phase.” Tilda hit the inhaler. “So you pulled the painting out and then what?”

“We thought it was good,” Nadine said.

“So you sold it,” Tilda said.

“No. We put it back in the cabinet and put dustsheets on everything and went to Cup O‘ Joe’s. And then today, Grandma had to go to the bank, and this Mrs. Lewis came in and asked if we had any paintings by somebody named Scarlet, and I said no, all we had was Dorcas Finsters.” Nadine turned to Gwen. “Are we ever going to get rid of those? I know she lives here, but they’re really depressing, and I think we could-”