Taken in by a school friend's wealthy yet emotionally chilly family on Park Avenue, and still grieving for his mother, he finally remembers to track down Hobart and Blackwell and ring the green bell. Since Theo's reprobate father ran off some months ago, he is effectively an orphan. Now, bloodied and dying, this same man presses an antique ring on Theo, which he tells him to take to a place called Hobart and Blackwell – "Ring the green bell!" He also urges him to grab Fabritius's painting, lying there frameless and unguarded, and take it home. Though Theo was stirred by the painting, he was even more stirred by a feisty red-haired girl whom he'd seen accompanying an elderly man around the exhibition. Caught in a rainstorm, ducking into a museum to take in an exhibition of old Dutch masters, she has just shown him her favourite, Fabritius's The Goldfinch – "the smallest in the exhibition and the simplest" – when the explosion hits. Theo is 13 when he survives a bomb attack that kills his mother.
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