Chapter 1 – THE BACK OF THE CANVAS

“That’s enough,” Richard said. His voice was low, but the charming smile he usually reserved for wealthy donors was completely gone.

He looked at the two gallery assistants. “Put the painting back on the easel. Now.”

The young men froze, caught between the anger of their boss and the fourteen-year-old girl standing her ground on the stage.

“Dad, move,” Hannah said. Her voice trembled, but she didn’t take a single step back.

“Hannah, you’re causing a scene,” Richard hissed, leaning in so the microphones wouldn’t catch his words. “This is a multimillion-dollar evening. Go sit with your mother.”

I didn’t realize I was moving until I was already halfway across the room. My heels clicked loudly against the hardwood floor. The murmurs of three hundred wealthy guests faded into a dull roar in my ears.

“Catherine,” Richard warned as I stepped up beside our daughter. “Control her.”

“Let them turn it around, Richard,” I said.

Vanessa stepped forward, her burgundy gown rustling. She placed a manicured hand on my husband’s arm. “Richard, it’s fine. The poor girl is just confused. We can show them the canvas backing.”

She sounded so reasonable. So perfectly, infuriatingly calm.

Richard hesitated, then slowly lifted his hand from the frame. He shot me a look that promised a terrifying argument later.

“Turn it,” I told the assistants.

They carefully rotated the heavy canvas.

The back of the painting was exposed to the crowd. It wasn’t the smooth, modern backing that professional conservators usually applied. It was the original, slightly frayed canvas my mother had stretched herself.

And right in the center, written in thick black ink, was my mother’s unmistakable, looping handwriting.

For Catherine. The only masterpiece I ever truly created. May 2019.

A collective gasp rippled through the front row of guests. The art critics from the Chicago Tribune were already furiously typing on their phones.

Vanessa’s confident smile faltered for exactly one second before she composed herself.

“Well,” Vanessa said loudly, her voice projecting to the crowd. “I suppose the secret is out.”

I stared at her. “What secret?”

“I didn’t want to say anything, Catherine,” Vanessa said, her eyes brimming with sudden, manufactured tears. “I know how much you’ve struggled since your mother passed. But when Richard commissioned me to restore the piece, we found that message. Your mother was… well, her mind was deteriorating at the end, wasn’t it?”

“Don’t you talk about my mother,” I whispered.

“She thought I was you, Catherine,” Vanessa said gently. “When I visited her in hospice, she asked me to finish the painting. She gave me her blessing to claim it, so her work could finally be seen on a grand stage. Richard and I just wanted to protect you from the pain of knowing she didn’t recognize her own daughter at the end.”

The crowd murmured in sympathy.

I felt the blood drain from my face. It was the most brilliant, vicious lie I had ever heard. My mother hadn’t even been in hospice—she died at home. But these people didn’t know that.

Richard stepped forward, wrapping his arm around Vanessa. “It’s true. Eleanor transferred the copyright to Vanessa in her final weeks. I have the signed documents in my office.”

I looked at the man I had loved for two decades, realizing I didn’t know him at all. He had a forged document. Of course he did.

“You’re lying,” Hannah said.

“Hannah, enough!” Richard snapped.

“Grandma never met Vanessa,” Hannah said. She reached into her green sketchbook and pulled out a small, folded piece of paper. “Because Grandma didn’t write that message in black ink.”

Richard froze.

Hannah held up the photograph from her sketchbook—the picture of my mother standing beside the finished painting.

“Grandma took a picture of the back of the canvas the day she finished it,” Hannah said, turning the photo so the front row could see. “She wrote her message in blue paint. Someone sanded it off and wrote over it in marker.”

The gallery went dead silent.

Vanessa took a step back, her heel catching on the microphone cord. As she stumbled, her silver evening bag slipped from her shoulder and crashed onto the wooden stage.

The clasp popped open. Lip gloss, a compact, and a cell phone scattered across the floor.

And something else.

A heavy, silver charm bracelet rolled out, coming to a stop directly at the toe of my shoe.

I couldn’t breathe.

It was my mother’s bracelet. The one with the little silver paint palette charm. The one that had mysteriously gone missing from her jewelry box the day she died.

I looked up from the bracelet to Vanessa’s panicked face, realizing this went far beyond a stolen painting.

Share