The creak of floorboards made her look up.
Grant stood in the doorway of his office, his shirt untucked, looking exhausted. He watched her for a moment before walking over, leaning his weight against the counter.
“Still at it?”
“I can’t stop looking at them,” Izzy admitted. She turned the book toward him, pointing to a quick charcoal study of a man leaning against a heavy black truck. “Do any of these people look familiar to you? You’ve lived here your whole life.”
Grant squinted at the lines. He went still. He reached out, his rough finger hovering just above the paper.
“That looks just like Cal,” Izzy murmured, studying the strong jawline.
“It can’t be,” Grant said, his eyes narrowing as he looked at the date at the bottom of the page. “This was August of ninety-nine. Cal and I were only five years old back then.” His voice dropped. “That’s not Cal. That’s Wade. That’s Wade Hollis, twenty-seven years ago.”
A chill settled in the room. Izzy looked from the sketch to Grant.
“The man who owns half the valley?”
“The same,” Grant said. He flipped the page, stopping at a sketch of a distinctive wrought-iron gate. “And that’s the entrance to the Hollis estate before the renovation.”
Izzy pulled her laptop closer. “Grant, look. I’ve been comparing the brushwork in the cabin to an artist named Julian Thorne. He’s a legend in the landscape world. The style is… it’s hauntingly similar. The way the light is handled, the restraint. It’s not an exact match—Thorne is more polished, more commercial—but this feels like the raw version of his soul.”
She looked up at him, her eyes bright with a mix of professional curiosity and genuine unease. “If Clara Vale was out here painting like this in ninety-nine, and then just… stopped… what happened to her?”
Grant didn’t answer right away.
He was still watching her.
Not the sketchbook.
Her.
The way her eyes lit up when she talked about art, the way she leaned into the mystery without even realizing she was doing it. For once, she didn’t feel like a sharp Denver polish; she justfelt like herself, stripped down to curiosity and candlelight and exhaustion.
Izzy’s voice trailed off, the sudden quiet filling the room.
“What?” she asked softly.
Grant shook his head once, almost like he was irritated with himself for thinking it.
“You’re pretty when you do that.”
The words landed between them before either of them could take them back.
Izzy blinked.
“What?”
“When you talk about something you care about.” His voice stayed low, roughened by exhaustion and something harder to name. “You get this look on your face.”
The warmth rising into her cheeks caught her completely off guard.
For one brief second, she looked younger somehow. Less composed.
Grant seemed to realize what he’d said about half a second too late.
He looked away briefly, like he wasn’t used to saying things like that out loud.
Izzy looked down at the sketchbook, smiling despite herself.
