Midnight at the Museum

Every morning the portrait faced a fraction toward the east window. Every evening Rowan straightened it. On Friday they decided to ask why.

The museum was empty when the clock struck midnight. Rowan stood beneath the portrait with a cup of tea and a list of sensible explanations. None of them explained the voice that said, ‘You keep moving the sunrise.’

The painted woman had lowered her eyes toward them. She looked less frightening than inconvenienced.

Rowan checked the label. The portrait had spent forty years in storage before the new exhibition opened. Its subject had been a gardener who planted the museum’s first orchard.

‘I wanted to see whether the trees survived,’ she said.

Rowan carried the picture to the east gallery. Beyond its window, the orchard waited in silver moonlight. The woman leaned forward within her painted frame.

‘They are taller,’ she said, very softly.

The following morning Rowan wrote a new conservation note. The portrait was to remain at a slight angle, where direct sunlight would never touch the canvas but the orchard could always be seen.

That autumn, the old trees bore more fruit than anyone remembered. Rowan left an apple on the windowsill. By morning it had become a perfectly painted apple at the edge of the frame.