“You think something happened to her.”
Caitlin met her eyes.
“I think we don’t know what happened to her,” she said. “And I’m not okay with that.”
She looked once more at the cabin—the paintings, the bed, the life that had been left behind.
“Burke can run her name,” she added. “Find out if there’s anything on record. Where she went. If she’s… anywhere.”
Izzy was quiet.
“Yeah,” she said.
Standing in that room, it didn’t feel like a story that had an ending. It felt like one that had been cut off.
“And if there’s not?” Izzy asked quietly.
Caitlin’s gaze moved once more over the cabin—the paintings, the bed, the life that had been left behind.
“Then we find out ourselves.”
Izzy nodded once.
“Okay.”
And like that—this wasn’t just a discovery anymore.
It was something they weren’t going to let go.
15
Big Red Barn — Afternoon
By the next afternoon, the long farmhouse table sat dead center beneath the string lights, no longer set for a party but for something far more deliberate—less celebration, more investigation.
Grant had sent Jose and one of the other hands up to the cabin that morning, hauling canvases and sketches down in careful trips until the barn looked more like a pop-up gallery than anything else.
Every inch of the table was covered.
Canvas after canvas lay carefully arranged, some propped upright, others laid flat beneath light cotton sheets to protect the paint. Charcoal sketches were arranged in ordered rows, separated by size, subject, and recurring locations.
They’d improvised labels—sticky notes tucked at the corners, dates guessed and penciled lightly, arrows drawn, connections marked.
It wasn’t perfect, but it was becoming something.
Izzy stood at one end of the table, arms folded, studying the spread.
“You see it, right?” she said.
Caitlin didn’t look up. She was bent over a cluster of sketches, her finger hovering over one, then another.
“Yeah,” she said quietly. “She’s not just painting what’s in front of her.”
Izzy nodded.
“She’s returning to it.”
“The same vantage point,” Caitlin added. “Same line of sight. Same framing—just… different days. Different light.”
