The rain had been falling for twelve days when the clock in my living room broke. I watched as the storm rolled in off the coast like a wounded beast, dragging with it a curtain of grey that swallowed the last light of the day. My hair was still wet from the shower earlier, the rain had brought with it a sombre petrichor which now filled my tiny cliffside cottage in its entirety.
It was pounding the glass like desperate fingertips wanting to break in.
I walked back to the wall, trying to reach for the clock hanging just an inch away from my grasp. Time had already stopped for me two years ago when my sister disappeared. We were the closest in our family, Elena and Clara. Clara was younger than me, but she was as talented as me when it came to painting. “The Marris sisters” is what people called us.
I was still not over my thoughts when there came a knock.
Three sharp raps. Not frantic, but urgent.
I froze mid-air. No one ever visited, especially not after dark. Pulling my cardigan tighter around my frame, I crossed the room and slowly opened the door.
A man stood in front of me, soaked to the bones, blood trickling down a cut on his forearm. His eyes were a strange colour— storm grey, like the sky behind him.
“I was mugged,” he said, his voice low and grainy, limbs trembling. “I didn’t know where else to go.”
I hesitated. The sensibilities lay in shutting the door and ringing the police. But something in his voice, something haunted, stopped me.
________________________________________
I made tea while he dried off. His name was Lucas Vale. He was 28 years old, the same age as me. Said he’d been travelling through the town when he was jumped. He didn’t wish to visit the hospital. Didn’t want the police to be involved.
Red flag — I thought — but there was a gentleness in him that confused me. He wasn’t presumptuous or intrusive at all. Just quiet and observant. He asked about my painting — the one I have been working on — a swirling seascape of violet waves.
“You’re talented,” he said, studying the brush strokes.
“It’s just how I process.”
Over the next few days, Lucas stayed. The storm had taken out roads and electricity in parts of town. No one was going out unless it was absolutely necessary. He helped me fix the clock, carried firewood, and cooked breakfast, but there was a quiet familiarity to them all which unsettled me. It was almost as if he knew of all my preferences, my likes, my dislikes. And then there was the chemistry. Subtle at first — a brush of the fingers, a shared laughter. How he looked at me like we knew each other for years, almost like Clara did… I had closed off my heart since her disappearance, but now I was questioning it again.
Little did I know that the coming morning would change it all.
________________________________________
“Local Woman Found Dead”, the headline read. I blinked at the grainy photo on my phone. The article said Margot Clair, a private curator, had been murdered in her home. The suspect fled the scene. Neighbours reported seeing a man nearby around the time of death, tall, dark-haired.
My blood ran cold.
That night, as I watched Lucas sleep, I wondered if someone so quiet yet lively could be a murderer. He wasn’t extraordinarily kind, but he had empathy, or so I thought.
“You were in the town that night, weren’t you?” I had asked him earlier that day.
“Yes.”, he said without a flinch.
I felt guilty for thinking all this about him. I stared at him the longest I ever have, his long ebony black hair, chiselled features, chapped lips and his eyes which shone a dull lavender under the lampshade but a stormy grey in the dark. Who are you is what I wanted to ask, but I knew he wouldn’t tell me. I silently apologised to him as I stood up to inspect his bag. I knew it was unjust, but it was the only way to save the Lucas I knew in my eyes — I didn’t want to lose him like my sister.
I took his duffle bag to my room and locked the door. With a last sigh, I started digging into it. An ID — Lucas Vales, 28/M — pheww, at least he wasn’t lying about his identity, I thought to myself. I dug deeper, inside, tucked between clothes, was a worn leather folder.
Inside: Photos. Names. One of them stopped my breath. Clara. My sister.
Younger by three years, brilliant and impulsive. An artist just like me, but bolder. People called us “Yin and Yang” because of how different our styles were. One day she disappeared out of the blue, I was 26 then. The police found no leads and pronounced her dead. Two years later, I was still mourning her death.
There was a photo of Margot Clair. Smiling, a glass of wine in her hand. On the back, scribbled with a pencil: “She knew where Clara was.”
I was terrified. What did he mean by Margot knowing of Clara’s disappearance? Why did he approach me? Did he know where Clara was? Is she alive? Was he the one who killed Margot?
So many questions circled in my head, and my heart was galloping through my ears.
I went back to the living room. Lucas was still in a deep slumber. I looked at the clock as it struck two in the night, and I knew I had to do something before Lucas woke up.
I packed my small backpack, my passport, some loose cash, our family photo from five years ago when my parents were still alive and Clara hadn’t disappeared, a photo album from when I was little, keys to my parent’s now-abandoned house and a bracelet that Lucas had given me as a keep-sake in case he dies. How dramatic of him, I had thought back then. I wore it on my wrist regardless.
With that, I left my home in the middle of the night with only one place which would decide my final destination, Margot’s house.
________________________________________
The plan was simple: I enter the abandoned crime scene, search for any evidence linking Margot to Clara’s disappearance and finally figure out if it is still safe to go to the cottage or just run away to somewhere safer.
I came out of my house. The storm was heavier than usual; the weight of each raindrop burdened my shoulders as I half sank into the impending grief of yet again losing someone I had started to love.
Nevertheless, I reach the doorsteps of the now-abandoned house Margot used to live in. As I stepped into the hallways, I saw pictures of Margot around the house. Her graduation. The first auction she hosted. Her childhood picture. Everything seemed so normal, and that hurt me more, to think that Lucas had killed such a harmless person.
I proceeded to her kitchen. Everything seemed usual, but just as I was about to leave, I saw a flight of stairs going below the ground level towards a door. I presumed it was a basement of sorts and thought I would pass on it.
But as I was leaving, I heard footsteps progressing from the main door. My body went into panic mode, and I sprinted towards the basement door. As I shut it behind me, I could hear my heart racing, the footsteps coming closer to me by the second. I had lost all hope of making it out of that house safely when suddenly they stopped, and after a few minutes, I could hear them going farther and farther away from me.
A breath of relief left my lips. I was about to leave when my eyes landed on a pile of canvases lining the walls, which were slightly lit up on the edge by a ray of light coming from the clerestory window. I switched my flashlight to see the paintings in greater detail, and just as I did, a tear slipped down my cheek. They were Clara’s, the paint strokes, the way she always avoided painting the trees in detail, the abstractness, it was all too clear. The paint was too fresh for them to be among old pieces; it all pointed to one thing: Clara was alive.
“So, you figured it out.” I jumped at those words.
Lucas was standing just a couple of feet away from me. He was drenched from head to toe, and so was I. The silence was too loud to handle.
“Did you kill her?” I said it. I felt a sharp pain down my throat as I fought with tears threatening to fall any minute.
He did not deny it. “I did.”
“Was that why you were avoiding the hospital?”
“Yes”, he whispered,” but I didn’t mean to hurt her. I needed to know. I had to find Clara.”
Lucas was now looking me straight in the eyes. He wasn’t lying. His eyes were a beautiful lavender under the moonlight that shone on them, eyes that glistened with tears, almost like he was whispering to me — Please believe me.
“Then tell me all that you know.” I could hear my voice trembling as the words escaped my lips.
Lucas had come clean. He’d been a private investigator once. He was hired to find Clara by my parents. He found Clara within a month of her disappearance, but she pleaded to make it look like she had died so no one could hurt her family — Us. Her art was being used to launder money for an underworld circuit, and she was alive, hiding from the people who used her art for their dirty schemes. When she found that the culprits were after her painting and were ready to kill her family to get their hands on her work, she decided to flee. Lucas was an orphan and had no family, and so did Clara; they became each other’s support. Lucas saw a sister in Clara and vice versa, but when Clara realised that the goons were dangerously close to finding out her whereabouts, she left again.
“I have been trying to find her for nearly a year”, he said. “Margot works under the man who appears to be at the centre of this dealing.”
He found Margot. Confronted her. She pulled a gun. They struggled. She died. He ran.
“I didn't mean to kill her. I didn’t.”
In the quiet of the dawn, the only sound to be heard was that of Lucas’s sobs as he buried his face into the palms of his hands.
I did not know what to believe anymore.
I stared at Lucas for a long time. In that moment, his face bore the guilt of a man who’d seen too much, done too much and loved too deeply.
“Why didn’t Clara come to me?” she asked.
“She wanted to protect you. Said you were the only thing in her life untouched by this mess.”
“And now I am in it.”
“I’m sorry”
She believed him. But that wasn’t enough.
“I should turn you in.”
“I know.”
He stood, shoulders heavy.
“But I won’t.” I finally said.
I crossed the room, pressing the bracelet he had given me against his chest.
“We find her. Together. You won’t lie to me again. Ever.”
His eyes filled. He nodded.
“Let’s go home. Shall we?”
________________________________________
We headed back home, hand in hand. I had no idea what was to come ahead of us, but I knew as long as we were together, it would all work out.
When we reached the doorstep, a package was waiting. No address. No sender. Inside: a charcoal sketch of me sitting at my easel, eyes distant, lips curled slightly. Clara’s signature in the corner.
With a note:
“You found him. Now you find me.”
“Do you think she wants to be found?”
Lucas took my hand.
“I think she already has been.”
________________________________________
Somewhere, Clara watched them from the shadows of a gallery in Prague, sketchpad in hand, smile playing on her lips.
The violet hour had just come.
And her story was far from over.
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