Claudia crouched, her fingers brushing dust away from the warped slat in the corner of the studio. Something had caught her eye—a jagged break in the floor, almost imperceptible beneath the edge of an empty canvas frame. She pried the board loose with a palette knife. The smell hit her first. Old paper. Damp wood. Time. Inside the narrow crawlspace was a wrapped bundle. She pulled it free, unwrapping layers of brittle cloth to reveal a leather-bound notebook—Elise’s. The first page was blank, but the second wasn’t. Claudia read the faded writing aloud, her voice barely above a whisper: “Something followed me back from the marsh.” “I didn’t paint it. It painted itself.” “Claudia can’t see this. Not yet.”

The studio was too quiet. Not empty—Elise’s presence still lived in every brushstroke, every canvas left leaning like witnesses—but still, it felt abandoned. Not in the sense of someone leaving, but of something being taken. Claudia stood at the center of the room, surrounded by Elise’s final work. The air was heavy with turpentine and something else—acrid, faintly metallic, like a breath held too long. Then she saw it.

Claudia hadn’t cried. Not when Rourke called. Not when she told Jordan to pause the show. Not even when she packed away the painting—Elise’s last gift, smeared red like a warning—and folded it between sweaters like it was something sacred. But now, as the train pulled through the damp woods of coastal Maine, and the gray of Boston gave way to autumn's fire, something twisted in her chest. Not grief exactly. Not yet. It was suspicion.

In a quiet coastal town in Maine, renowned painter Elise Marlowe is found dead in her studio, an apparent suicide. The local police closed the case quickly, citing a note and no signs of forced entry. But Elise’s estranged sister, Claudia—a skeptical true-crime podcaster from Boston—refuses to believe it. Elise was on the verge of a career resurgence, preparing for a major gallery opening. Why would she end her life now?