Owen Pell arrived for our scheduled meeting with a notebook and a thin folder. Tessa had introduced him by telephone as a recovery liaison, and he introduced himself the same way at my mother's dining table. He did not offer a badge or a reassuring speech. He asked whether I was comfortable beginning with what I had found.
I had put the photographs in order and made a clean copy of Caleb's list. Beside them sat a page I had written after midnight, explaining the kind of woman my mother had been. I turned that page face down before Owen sat.
"Tell me what you personally know," he said. "If something is a recollection, say that. If somebody told you, tell me who. We can leave an unanswered question unanswered."
The simplicity of it made me suspicious. I had expected questions with narrow openings, things I could answer badly without knowing it. "I found the painting in the back bedroom," I said. "It was wrapped in that quilt, behind books. I didn't know it was there before I opened it."
He asked me to describe finding it without guessing how it had been placed there. I did. When I said the books had probably hidden it for years, he looked up. "Do you know that, or does it seem likely?"
"It seems likely." I drew a line through probably on my copy. "I don't know when it went there."
He asked about photographs. I showed him the bedroom photograph and the pictures I had taken after unwrapping the canvas. I had not found an older photograph showing the painting. He asked whether anyone else remembered it, and I said Caleb had given me no memory that established when it arrived.
"As a child, I remember that room being full of things," I said. "Books. A sewing basket. A rolled rug for a while. But that's a memory of the room, not this painting."
Owen wrote, then read the distinction back to me. Hearing it in another person's voice made it sound less like an evasion. I nodded. He asked if there were any papers specifically describing a purchase or gift. I handed him the inventory of our search and the papers we had actually found.
"I brought the will," I said. "It doesn't answer the question. I understand that now."
"It's useful to know what you relied on," he said. "It doesn't have to answer a different question to belong in the account."
I turned over the midnight page. My mother's name sat at the top, followed by three paragraphs about pupils she had taught without payment and meals she had taken to neighbors. I could have passed it across. Instead I folded it once and put it under my handbag.
"I want to explain that we weren't trying to sell something stolen," I said.
"You can explain your actions. I can't turn today's conversation into a legal conclusion. And I can't promise what money, if any, might be connected with any process. You shouldn't make financial plans around this."
The mention of money embarrassed me more than a direct question would have. I told him about seeking an appraisal and canceling the later sales appointment. I did not describe the studio as a deserving use for proceeds. It had nothing to do with whether I knew the painting's history.
He asked what I wanted clarified before we finished. My first question was almost whether he thought I would be all right. It rose with the force of a child's plea. I set both feet on the floor and asked instead for the next steps in writing, including what further information he wanted from me.
"I can send you a limited summary and requests," he said. "Review anything attributed to you. Correct it if it's wrong. Don't let a neat sentence stand because it sounds better than the truth."
After he left, I compared my notes with the list Caleb and I had made. I added the date of the meeting and recorded which copies I had supplied. Then I read my folded defense of my mother. I didn't tear it up. It belonged to me, not to the account I had been asked to give.