I had time to kill before any self-respecting bar would be open, so I decided to check out the beach. Growing up in Florida, I'd spent most of my free time sunbathing on sand as fine and pure-white as flour, with a poetry chapbook propped up on my chest.

I had a feeling this place would be different.

After driving through a gingerbread village of antique lampposts and shuttered, snow-dusted storefronts, I parked in a deserted lot and walked along a winding path to the beach. From here, the island curved away from me like a crescent moon, narrowing as it went north. At the top of the crescent, dark mountains curled into the bay.

It was stunning. And freezing. And very, very different from home.

With a sigh, I sat down on the hard, gold sand. My phone found its way into my numb hands, and I dialed the number of my dad's flat in London.

"Professor Stephen Lewis speaking."

At the sound of his voice, my shoulders relaxed a fraction. "Hi, Daddy."

"Hello, Miramax." I pictured him leaning back in his burnt-orange office chair the way he always did, with a stack of papers to grade in one hand and a Shakespeare play in the other.

"Awfully loud where you are," he said. "What are you up to?"

"Just out for a walk on the beach."

"That sounds nice. Are you visiting friends from home?"

I'd considered it while I'd packed my suitcase, piece by precious piece. But I'd fallen out of touch with my friends from home, even my best friend, Rosa. Rhys didn't like them. They wouldn't want to hear from me after all this time—not like this.

"Yeah," I told him. "Visiting friends."

"How's the weather there?" my father asked.

"Nice. Sunny." I frowned up at an ash-gray sky.

"How's Rhys?"

"He's okay. I'm not sure I'll be seeing him for much longer, though."

"Oh, yes? Why is that?"

"I don't know... Time to move on, I guess."

"Hmm." I could hear him mulling this over. My mother died when I was eight. For years, my father and I had had no one but each other.

Rhys changed both our lives. When I met him, he'd just graduated with a Bachelor's degree in political science and was about to start his first year at Yale Law. He asked me to move to Connecticut with him, and at last, my father felt all right about leaving me alone in the States and returning to London, his favorite place in the world. I didn't blame him for leaving. I was happy for him. I just worried about him all the time.

"How's school?" I asked.

"Going splendidly. I have some exceptionally bright students in my class this year. Talking of which, my merry Miranda, I'm having a few students over for lunch, so I had better go."

I thought of his messy flat and was relieved to think he wouldn't be eating lunch alone. "What are you having for lunch? A nice, big salad, right?"

He laughed. "Of course!"

I smiled in spite of myself. "You are taking care of yourself, though, aren't you? You're taking your medicine?"

"I'm getting on all right." He sounded more sincere this time.

"Okay, well, I'll talk to you soon."

We hung up. I dropped my phone back into my purse and wiped my face on my sleeve, pretending my cheeks were wet from the salt spray. At least he sounded like he was doing okay. That was a relief, because I didn't know when I'd have enough money to visit him again, after what Rhys had done.

With a sharp breath in, I jerked to my feet. I'd been running all night, but I couldn't rest. Every time I thought about Rhys, I imagined him coming home and finding the house empty. Terror jolted through me, electric and painful. He would try to convince me to come back—and I would listen to him, the way I always listened to him—

I set off down the beach as if I could outrun his imaginary voice. I'd feel better, more secure, after I went to the Widow's Walk to ask the Viking's friend about a job. Once I had a few applications in, I'd be able to imagine starting over from nothing, making myself a home here, until I was as much a part of this place as the sand on this beach.

The toe of my boot connected with a plank of wood, and I glanced up, startled, at a crooked, rickety staircase leading up to the sand dunes. A run-down Victorian perched in the scrub. A sign beside it read, in chipped, colorful paint: Welcome to the Fall Island Artist's Lodge! Open to the public.

I hesitated, staring longingly at the sign. Painting used to be my passion, even my calling; but more than that, it was my peace, a flower that bloomed inside my heart in the darkest of nights. It was gone now. I hadn't finished either of the two paintings I'd started during my year with Rhys.

I knew, suddenly, that if Step Two after leaving Rhys was getting a new job, Step Three was painting again. The island, it seemed, was providing for me.

Gathering my courage, I walked up the path and onto the Victorian's ramshackle front porch. "Hello? Is anyone here?"

I slipped through the slightly open front door into a spacious living room. Crowded bookshelves lined the walls, and threadbare Oriental rugs lay strewn across the scuffed hardwood floors. A coffee maker burbled on a card table in the corner. I sidled up to it and furtively poured myself a coffee in a paper cup. I had no idea how much coffee I'd had last night and this morning, but it wasn't enough.

Next to the card table, honeyed light glimmered around the edges of a wooden door carved with vines and flowers. I knocked, and the door clicked open, as if it had been waiting for me.

In the small, octagonal room beyond, framed oil paintings covered every inch of the eight walls. The largest, an Impressionist seascape, showed the dawn light piercing through violet clouds, striking the sea and arcing towards the black spine of the mountains along the northern curve of the island.

Even when I'd been painting all the time, I'd never done anything so bold and vivid. I walked up close to it, my mouth hanging open, with even the coffee in my hand forgotten. I wanted to learn how to paint like this artist, who'd signed her name in slashing black capitals: SUZANNA.

Eventually, shaking myself, I turned to the next: a small portrait, twelve inches square, with a background of cheerful, cloud-like swirls in bright colors. It wouldn't have been especially noticeable next to that magnificent seascape, except that it was a portrait of the Viking, Owen Larsen, with his lips curved into a secretive smile and his blond hair falling forwards into his downcast eyes. He looked younger and shockingly happy, but it was unmistakably him.

I leaned in until I was so close to his portrait I could have breathed on it, if I'd still remembered how to breathe. I desperately wanted to touch it, as if I could run my hands through his hair.

"Hello."

I jumped, sloshing lukewarm coffee onto my hand, but, thank God, not on the artwork. A man had wandered into the art gallery. He wore a sweater-vest and black-framed glasses. A bushy beard and a thick mop of hair warred for dominion over his face.

"Er, hi," I said.

"Welcome to the Lodge!" He smiled vaguely. "I'm Matthew, the curator. Are you in town for the weekend?"

"Actually, I've just moved here."

"Ah! Well, welcome!" He sounded pleased, but also a bit perplexed, as if I'd told him I was a Marmite enthusiast. "Are you an artist?"

"I'm a painter."

"No wonder you were drawn to this exhibit," Matthew said. "Isn't it wonderful?"

"Incredible," I agreed, glancing around the room and wishing I could be alone with the paintings again, to pore over each and every one. There were distant mountains, sunlit forests, a sun shower in a meadow, and, finally, a second, much smaller seascape showing four people on a rainy beach, wading in icy water. The Impressionist style washed out the subjects' features, turning them into dappled columns of light and rain.

"Suzanna White was one of the most brilliant painters I've ever had the pleasure to meet," Matthew said.

"You know her?"

"I did. She was older than me, of course."

I nodded, glancing back at the Viking's portrait, trying to imagine him looking so happy in real life. That smile was intoxicating.

Matthew followed my gaze. His face reddened behind his bushy beard. "This exhibit is...controversial. That painting in particular."

"Which painting? The portrait?" It was different from the other paintings, with its happier mood and single human subject, but it didn't look like a fake. It had that same sense of life as the others.

Matthew paced the room. "Such depth to her paintings... I hate to exclude a single one... To turn down a donation would be unthinkable." He turned back to me. "Did you say you were a student at Bellisle?"

"Oh, no, I'm not a college student. I'm new in town."

"Ah, okay." He gave a solemn nod, as if being new in town made all the difference.

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