“That your place?” she asked quietly, nodding toward the wider, softer canvas.
He moved closer. Looked.
“Yeah,” he said after a second. “That’s mine. Before I bought it from Sam Talley. Before the barns. Before any of it.”
Izzy’s eyes moved over it again. “Oh,” she said softly. “Yeah… I see it now. Wow. She was good.”
“Was?”
Izzy gestured lightly around them. “She didn’t take this with her.”
Grant said nothing.
She picked up a sketchbook from the table. Careful, she flipped it open. Charcoal. Quick lines. Figures. Landscapes. Studies of light and shadow. And then—a man. Standing near a fence. Turned slightly away. Unaware he was being drawn.
Izzy paused. Something about it felt… personal. She closed the book halfway.
“Clara Vale,” she said. “That name mean anything to you?”
Grant shook his head. “No.”
She looked at him, then back at the room. “I know this work,” she said quietly. “Or something very close to it.”
His gaze shifted to her. “What do you mean?”
“I mean…” she hesitated, searching, “I’ve seen this before. Not this name. But this style. This—“ she gestured toward the canvas ”—this eye.”
Izzy held the sketchbook in both hands, then looked at him. “Would you mind if I took some of these back to the house?”
He didn’t answer right away. He glanced around the cabin again, then back at her.
“No. Have at it.”
“Thank you.”
“Alright,” he said. “Just be careful. Floor’s not solid in places.”
She smiled faintly. “Noted.”
Izzy glanced once more at the canvas of his farm—the before version—and at the mountain ridge repeated on every wall. “You should have some of these in your barn office,” she said. “Just for the history.”
Grant’s gaze stayed on the painting a second longer. “That’s not a bad idea.”
Outside, the light had dropped lower. The mountains behind the cabin darkened at the edges. Grant stepped back toward the door.
“Let’s get you out of here before it gets dark.”
Izzy took one last look around. At the paintings. The sketches. The life paused in place. A woman’s hand on every inch of it.
“What a mystery,” she murmured.
Then followed him out.
* * *
Bridlepath Farm — That Night
The house was still, the only sound the rhythmic ticking of the clock in the hallway. Izzy sat at the kitchen island, the sketchbook spread open under the warm glow of the pendant light.
