Chapter 31
The dreams were worse again.
Erica woke up in a cold sweat, tangled in damp sheets, her heart punching beneath her ribs. The dreams were more vivid, more clingy.
But they were dreams, weren’t they? Or were they memories?
Steven, standing at the end of her hospital bed. The distant, crackling whine of monitors. Her own voice, hoarse and pathetic, calling out for her mother and being answered only by static.
And then, one that had lingered:
A woman with the long red hair.
Walking too close to the cliff’s edge.
Silent and unreachable.
Erica lay still for a moment, staring at the pale ceiling. The light was slinking in around the curtains, thin but insistent.
She tried to recall the exact look on the woman’s face. Tried to hold on to the feeling. But like sand in water, it drifted away.
If she admitted it, the dreams had started not long after she moved into the cottage. Now they followed her like a shadow.
Her suitcase lay open in the hallway like a mouth, half-spilled. She hadn’t unpacked since returning from Margery’s. She couldn’t.
In the kitchen, Lucky curled in a patch of heat beside the Rayburn. His spot. The fire had shrunk to a few orange eyes blinking in the ash. His purring was the only real sound in the house.
Erica stepped into the shower, letting the hot water work its way down her spine. It didn’t do much. Her skin still prickled, nerves still tight like violin strings. Something was off.
Isobel.
She thought of the woman in her dreams. Her red hair, the sea wind, and danger.
Why did her mind keep circling to Isobel and why cliffs and women walking into nothing?
But it was a distraction, even now. And she let herself be. She’d behaved abominably towards Maisie. And Leah. But she couldn’t face them. It was as if something was turning her away, pulling her backwards, deeper into something she couldn’t name.
She needed air. She needed out of the house with its silence and strange shadows. Her mind still scattered, thinking of Andrew Peters waiting for her to quit her research, and Steven.
Steven. Always there underneath everything.
What if he found her? What if he arrived with lawyers and that carefully rehearsed sorrow.
Erica bundled up in her thickest knits and a scarf. After filling a flask with hot chocolate and grabbing her notepad, she slipped out, leaving Lucky sleeping oblivious in the warmth of the cottage.
By the time she reached the next town over, mist had wrapped itself around the buildings like cotton. A wet hush. As if everything was just slightly out of reach.
She walked slowly, her boots squelching over wet leaves, breath fogging up around her scarf.
What was it with the mist lately? It felt like it hadn’t lifted in days.
She cupped her hands to her flask and took a sip. Warmth spread down her throat, but didn’t settle her.
The black plaque caught her eye. This time she knew it’s exact location – low to the ground, half hidden behind an overgrown hedge by the roadside. A pathetic excuse for a memorial.
A car shot past, spraying slush. Erica flinched.
Being in this spot, by the road, felt deliberate. Like they didn’t really want anyone to notice. Apart from an occasional passing car, the street was empty.
Erica turned, rubbing her gloved fingers together.
Then she saw him.
The statue. Just visible through the mist. She crossed the road and circled behind him, studying him.
A stern face, long robes, a judge’s wig, carved stiff and self-important. One hand resting on a book. The other holding a rolled parchment, or a decree.
He looked like he was still deciding someone’s fate. Maybe that was exactly what he had done to the nameless women behind her? Maybe they would be facing each other on either side of the main road for eternity. A cruel joke.
She stepped closer, eyes narrowing at the plaque beneath his booted feet.
CHARLES WILLIAM GRIGOR
First Mayor
Founder of the Highland Reform League
She stared at the surname.
Grigor.
Where had she heard that before?
She reached into her coat pocket, her fingers suddenly clumsy against the cold, and pulled out her phone.
Charles William Grigor, Highland Reform.
A scroll of results. Museum references. Formal portraits, stiff with self-importance. And then, something buried.
A genealogy footnote.
Born 1770. Mother unlisted. Rumoured illegitimate child. Raised in anonymity by a widow healer on the northern coastlands.
Widow healer.
Erica’s thumb hovered.
Known locally only as “The Red.” Skilled in herbs. Reclusive. Subject to informal accusation in 1791. Records suggest a private appeal prevented formal charges.
Red.
Her gaze lifted slowly to the statue.
Was this the thread?
She returned to the page.
Charles William Grigor, later advocate for Civil Evidence Reform. Patron of the Caileanbray Women’s Infirmary.
She clicked.
Maternal care. Midwifery. Preservation of traditional botanical remedies native to the northern coastlands.
Botanical remedies?
Erica could feel something spread over her.
The mother unlisted, known as a healer.
“The Red.”
And him. This man, Charles William Grigor, years later pushing for evidence.
Erica stepped back.
Something about it didn’t fit the story she’d been told.
A cold rush shot through her, followed by a flash of heat that made her breath catch. Something was here. Not certainty, but direction.
Like a rope dangling in front of her, waiting to be grasped.
She didn’t hesitate.
Erica turned on her heel and ran across the street, into her car, her boots slipping slightly on wet pavement. The ignition roared to life. She was already moving before her seatbelt clicked shut.
She didn’t know exactly what she was chasing. Only that she was close.
So close.
The museum would have more. It had to. There had to be something – records, letters, anything.
Her hands gripped the steering wheel tighter. Her breath fogged the inside of the windscreen.
And then, a thought came to her. She reached for her phone. Gabriel. She could tell him, she wanted to. But stopped herself.
She swallowed.
Things between them were too uncertain for that.
But she needed to tell someone before she lost the thread.