“Did you know Michelangelo had someone helping him work? A patron, they called it… someone making sure he was supplied so he could focus on what he was good at.”

In postwar Boston, James Emory is young, handsome, well-educated, and heir to a Beacon Hill fortune that often feels more like a burden than a privilege. One morning, he stumbles upon a forgotten cigarette case in his family's Marblehead summer home. Inside the case: a stack of little papers covered in drawings; among them, an unfinished story.

What begins as a mystery turns into a day of reckoning.

At one time, James imagined himself a patron to the artist of these little papers... a benefactor of her growing talent. She lived on meager wages. He had more than enough.

But his generosity and small acts of kindness soon blur into something neither of them can name without consequence.

Their connection—part friendship, part refuge, part mistake—unfolds against the backdrop of a city divided by class and reputation, faith and ethnic tension.

As James races to fix what he’s broken, he is confronted with this truth: What we hide can reveal who we are.