Her coughing finally subsiding, Lia took a deep, fortifying breath and straightened, bracing herself for what she might find. She turned slowly away from the window. And discovered that, upon her death, Grandmère had not left Lia an apartment after all.

She’d left Lia a museum.

Dust still swirled but the brilliant light illuminated walls covered in patterned wallpaper the grey-blue of a stormy sky. Dozens of painted landscapes and seascapes in gilded frames were hung on the wall opposite the windows, some capturing images of bucolic country scenes, others freezing ships forever in their quest across the horizon, and each one bursting with saturated color.

In the center of the room, upholstered Louis XV sofas in dust-covered turquoise faced off against each other across a wide Persian rug. A long writing desk bridged the ends of the sofas closest to Lia, and it was against the desk that the tall, nude canvas had been propped, facing the door to greet anyone who entered.

On the back wall adjacent to the windows, an elaborate marble mantelpiece swept over an empty hearth. A bracket had been mounted to the wall high above the fireplace, suggesting that a piece of art had once hung in the tall space, although whatever was once there wasn’t now. And above her head, a chandelier hung in the center of the room, its dripping, dazzling crystals muted only partially by dust.

On unfeeling legs, Lia headed deeper into the apartment. She stopped at a dainty side table at the far end of a sofa and examined a collection of framed photos. With care, she picked up the first and wiped the glass. A young woman had been captured leaning against a light post in front of a jazz club, wearing a silky, beaded dress that clung to each and every curve like a second skin, a fur stole draped carelessly over her shoulders. She held a cigarette holder in one hand, eyes meeting the camera’s lens with smoky, sensual indifference. Lia turned it over. Estelle Allard, Montmartre, 1938 was written in pencil across the back.

Lia swallowed hard.

Though she had been told repeatedly by the estate lawyers that this apartment was the domain of Estelle Allard, Lia realized that she hadn’t truly believed it until right now. She hadn’t truly believed that her grandmother, who had not once in her life mentioned that she had ever travelled to Paris, much less lived here, had kept a secret of this magnitude for this long.

And Lia couldn’t even begin to imagine why she would have done so.