Above the fireplace hung a painting of a red barn beside a quiet creek, with a crooked blue gate. My hands began to tremble, because I knew every brushstroke. My late husband, Frank, had painted it the year we married, and it hung in our hallway for decades. After the funeral, it vanished, and my children swore they had never touched it. Gerald walked in carrying two mugs, and his smile faded when he saw my face. “You know that painting?” he asked.

“Where did you get it?” I whispered. Gerald set the mugs down. “A dealer sold it to me years ago at a market in Auckland,” he said. “But something was hidden behind the canvas, and I never felt right keeping it.” He lifted the frame from the wall, and a folded envelope slid onto the rug, my name written across it in Frank’s handwriting.