Artist Faith Crowell is nearly forty and feels—with some relief, some regret—that she's now safely past the age of passion, obsessive love, and unsatisfied longings. Concentrating on contenting herself with a solitary life in Manhattan, complete with cat, comfy apartment, and a successful if hardly brilliant career, Faith is shocked when grande dame Frances Griffin drops in to her studio to ask her to paint murals for the ballroom of her legendary Long Island mansion. Flattered, Faith accepts. She eventually learns of the brutal, unsolved murder of Frances's daughter and begins to wonder why she was chosen for this project, why her employer seems intent on confiding all her secrets to her, and what, exactly, lies beneath the surface of Frances Griffin's public life.