She could almost see the place in reverse—before the barns, before the arenas, just pasture and potential.
Driven by a sudden flare of curator’s focus, Izzy slipped the sketchbook under her arm and lifted the canvas carefully in both hands.
The angle bothered her.
The mountain ridge in the painting sat higher than it should’ve from the cabin porch, the line of the trees different somehow. Clara hadn’t painted this standing here.
Izzy stepped off the deck and into the tall grass beyond the clearing, her eyes moving between the canvas and the ridgeline behind the cabin.
The woods swallowed her quickly.
Under the dense canopy of ancient hemlocks and oaks, the afternoon light vanished almost entirely, plunging everything into a cooler, dim green twilight. Dampness clung to the air. Massive boulder faces rose from the earth, carpeted in thick emerald moss that muffled the sound of her boots. Fallen trees lay rotting into the forest floor, their trunks softened by years of rain and mountain weather.
It was beautiful in a way that felt untouched by the modern valley below.
Ancient.
Wild.
She kept moving, climbing slowly until she reached a steep ridgeline where the heavy branches finally split apart.
Through the narrow opening in the canopy, a jagged gray rock face cut sharply against the sky.
Izzy stopped cold.
Her breath caught as she slowly raised the canvas, aligning the painted ridgeline with the distant peak.
Clara had stood here.
The realization slid cold across her skin.
Then the woods fell silent.
Izzy lowered the painting slowly.
No birds.
No wind moving through the branches.
Nothing.
A sharp crack echoed somewhere deeper in the trees.
Izzy spun toward the sound.
“Who’s there?”
The mountain gave nothing back.
But the feeling stayed.
Watching.
The memory hit hard and fast—Evan Cole’s shadow against the riverbank, the roar of white water below them, the sickening certainty right before he shoved her.
Her lungs seized.
Her skin flashed hot, then cold.
