Chapter 32
Leah jumped at the sudden knock.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Not a neighbourly tap. Not patient, but urgent.
For a second she couldn’t move. Just stood there in the small sitting room, heart racing, listening to the echo of it through the cottage walls.
“Maisie?” she called instinctively, already moving towards the hallway. But the house was quiet. Only the soft hum of the fridge and the wind pressing faintly against the windows.
Another knock. Harder.
Leah pulled the door open.
Erica stood on the threshold, breathless, one hand braced against the pebbled stone wall as though the earth itself had shifted. Her hair was wind-tangled, cheeks flushed deep pink. Her eyes were bright. Fever-bright.
“Are you okay?” Leah asked at once. Something didn’t feel right.
Erica gave a tight, crooked smile. “I’m fine. I’m fine. I was driving … I just kept driving after … ” She shook her head. “Needed to think.” She pushed a hand through her hair, restless. “Leah …” She stepped forward slightly, like she couldn’t keep still. “I found her. It all makes sense now.”
Leah froze.
Her.
The word slid straight under her ribs.
For one wild second, panic bloomed. Mum? Here? Alive? Dead? What did that mean? Had she come back? Had something happened?
Leah stepped aside anyway. “Come in.”
The muted television flickered from the corner … some late news bulletin … but Leah crossed the room quickly and clicked it off. She couldn’t have any distractions.
“Maisie’s asleep,” she said unnecessarily. “Dylan’s out with the dog.”
Erica nodded, barely listening. She couldn’t keep still, holding in something – excitement, shock, revelation. Leah couldn’t yet tell.
Leah went to the old drinks cabinet by the fireplace. It was squat and dark, the hinges stiff with disuse. Their father’s pride. He’d open it at Christmas with a mock-ceremonial flourish. Leah rarely touched it now. It felt like disturbing sediment.
Tonight, she lifted the lid.
Inside: two dusty whisky bottles, an unopened gin with its wax seal intact, and the crystal decanter of brandy with a ridiculous antler-shaped stopper. “For emergencies,” their father used to say.
Her hands were steady as she poured.
Apparently, this counted.
She handed a glass to Erica. Up close now, she could see the tremor in her sister’s fingers.
“Are you cold?” Leah asked, already reaching for the wool blanket slung over the back of the sofa.
“No, I’m fine.” But she didn’t protest when Leah draped it around her shoulders. Erica clutched it absently.
They sat.
Leah cleared her throat, suddenly unsure which version of this conversation they were having.
“So … she’s been in touch with you too?” she asked carefully, each word placed down like stepping stones across water. “I swear, Eri – I didn’t know she’d write. That letter … it came a while ago. I don’t even know how she found you.” She paused, frowning. “Or did you say you found her?”
Erica blinked slowly.
She swirled the brandy once. Watched it.
“What?” she said at last.
Leah felt something tilt.
“Who?” Erica asked.
“Mum,” Leah said, almost laughing at the obviousness of it. “Who else?”
Erica went utterly still.
“Mum?” she repeated – and the word sounded wrong in her mouth. Raw and barely used. “I wasn’t talking about Mum.”
The air shifted.
Leah felt it physically, like a floorboard giving way under her weight.
“Oh.” The sound came out small and useless. She tried to patch it with a smile that didn’t hold. “Right. Well.” A faint, brittle laugh. “Then … who were you talking about?”
But Erica wasn’t answering.
She was staring.
Not confused, or surprised. Just wounded.
“You’ve been in touch with Mum?” Erica asked. Her voice had dropped low, controlled in a way that was far more frightening than shouting.
“She wrote to me,” Leah admitted.
“You’ve been writing back?”
“No.” Too fast. “No, I haven’t.”
“Behind my back?” Erica’s voice cracked – barely, but it was there. The fracture.
Leah saw it. This wasn’t anger, but betrayal.
And it knocked the breath from her.
“It’s not like that,” Leah said, leaning forward. “Eri, I swear. I haven’t written back. I didn’t know what to say.”
Erica’s jaw tightened.
“I just …” Leah’s voice thinned. She hadn’t meant to say any of this tonight.
Not like this. “After she left that day – after Dad …” She swallowed.
The old ache rose fast and hot. “I couldn’t sleep.
I kept thinking maybe she’d died. Or been hurt.
Or lost somewhere. I couldn’t just let her disappear. ”
She stared down into her glass. The brandy caught the firelight, amber and accusing.
“And then something arrived. For Maisie. On her birthday.”
Erica didn’t move.
“It was small. Wrapped badly. Brown paper and too much tape.” Leah’s throat tightened despite herself. “Inside there was this little wooden cross. Hand-carved. Crooked. And her old St. Christopher. The one she wore when we were kids.”
Still nothing from Erica. But her breathing had changed.
“No note,” Leah went on. “No explanation. Just ‘Nepal’ stamped on the envelope.”
The word felt foreign even now.
“I started searching. Church groups. Aid networks. Anyone who might recognise her name. Eventually someone said she might be living under religious vows. Some kind of lay sister. Remote convent.”
She let out a humourless breath.
“A calling,” Leah said. “That’s what they called it.”
The word tasted bitter.
“She left us with a dying father,” Leah said, quieter now. “And called it salvation.”
The fire shifted in the grate.
Erica’s gaze had dropped to the flames. She looked smaller suddenly. Not furious. Just … cracked.
“She must’ve been notified,” Leah said, gentler now. “About Dad … when he finally …” She stopped. “Or about me trying to find her. I don’t know. But then I got this.”
She slipped her hand into her inside coat pocket – the one she kept close to her heart – and drew out the folded letter. The paper was softened at the edges from being opened, reread and refolded too many times.
For a moment, she hesitated.
Then she handed it over.
“Read it.”
Erica took it slowly, carefully as if it might burn.
She moved to the far end of the sofa and sat, then immediately stood again. Too restless to stay still. The paper trembled between her fingers as she unfolded it.
She turned it over. Her eyes lifted, confused, already glossed with tears. “I don’t understand.”
Leah stepped forward instinctively. Every muscle in her wanted to pull her sister close. To smooth this over. To undo the years.
“She ran away,” Erica whispered. The words were fragile, like glass. “To a nunnery?”
Leah nodded.
“Yes.”
And the house felt colder for it.
“All this time …” Erica’s voice faltered for the first time. “Part of me thought she had d-died.”
Leah nodded once. “Me too.”
The admission sat heavy between them.
“But she didn’t,” Erica said with letter still in hand, turning into a fist. “She just ran away?” Her voice rose. “When Dad was—” She couldn’t finish it. “She left. And just stayed away?”
“Yes,” Leah said. Not unkindly. Just true. “We suspected that much though, didn’t we?”
Erica began pacing again, faster now. The blanket slipped from her shoulders and dropped to the floor.
“Well I’m going to track her down,” she said. “She doesn’t get to do this. Disappear. Send you letters like breadcrumbs and leave me with nothing. Not a call. Not even a bloody birthday card.” Her breath was coming too fast. “I’ll find her.”
Leah stepped into her path, not blocking – just trying to be there. “You can see why, though, can’t you?” she said gently. “She wasn’t well. She couldn’t even look after herself.”
“She could have called,” Erica shot back. “She could’ve told me.”
“She doesn’t want to be found, Erica. That’s what the letter says. She asked me to stop looking. Not in direct words, but it’s there.”
“I don’t care. She’s our mother.”
“And she left us,” Leah said quietly. The quiet was worse than shouting. “She left me. While I watched Dad die.”
Erica opened her mouth, then closed it.
The words hung there.
“I’m going to her,” Erica said after a beat, stubborn and shaking. “I’ll go tomorrow.”
Leah let out a disbelieving breath. “You’re going to hop on a plane to Nepal? Trek into the mountains with a photograph and a name?”
“Why not?” Erica demanded. “I can’t stay here. Not now. Not with this shadow over everything.”
Leah heard it then, that word. Shadow.
Not just Mum.
Everything.
“She doesn’t want to be found,” Leah said again, more tired than angry. “That’s what you don’t get.”
Erica’s jaw tightened. “Maybe she just doesn’t know what she’s missed. If I show her – if she sees us – maybe she’ll realise.”
Leah stepped closer. Lowered her voice. “Or maybe you’ll be hurt all over again. Are you really ready for that?”
Erica’s eyes flashed. “What are you trying to say?”
Leah hesitated. She hadn’t meant to say this. But something had been building for years.
“I’m saying,” she began slowly, “that maybe you’re looking for an excuse to run.”
The word landed.
Erica went very still.
“You’re here now,” Leah continued, her voice unsteady but determined.
“You moved back. And I thought – I hoped – that meant something. I thought maybe we’d finally stop orbiting each other and actually be a family again.
” Her throat tightened. “But you’re still half gone.
Even when you’re standing right in front of me. ”
“That’s not fair,” Erica said, but it lacked heat.
“You let me down,” Leah said, and now her voice did shake. “You let Maisie down.”
Erica blinked as if struck. “I’m sorry I did,” she said quickly. “It won’t happen again.”
Leah let out a breath that was almost a laugh. “Until the next thing pulls you under,” she said. “This time it’s ghosts. Next time it’ll be something else. Some new obsession.”
“It’s not an obsession,” Erica snapped. “It’s history.”
“It’s escape.”
“Don’t put this all on me.”
“I’m not,” Leah shot back. “I know what she did to us. I know what that did to you. But you don’t get to disappear because she did.”
“I don’t disappear.”
“You do.” Leah’s voice broke. “You always do.”
Silence.
“I stood by you,” Leah went on, more quietly now. “When Steven left.”
“Don’t say his name!”
The words rang through the room. But Leah pushed on, because this was the truth, and it had sat unsaid for too long.
“When Mum vanished. When you buried yourself in work, marrying Steven without inviting us to the wedding.”
“It was just a small ceremony.”
“And you wouldn’t answer your phone,” Leah continued, knowing the excuses too well. “In hospital and still you didn’t tell anyone.”
Erica flinched.
“We are your family,” Leah said. “We love you. And sometimes it feels like you toss us aside the moment something, or someone from the past calls louder.”
“I don’t do that,” Erica said, her voice fraying. “My career matters. It’s not a crime to care about my work.”
“So does mine,” Leah replied. “But it has its place. It shouldn’t cost everything else.”
“I said I was sorry.”
“And I believe you.” Leah’s eyes shone now. “But sorry doesn’t build trust. It doesn’t show up to school plays. It doesn’t answer messages. It doesn’t stay.”
Erica’s shoulders sagged a fraction. “You think I’m selfish.”
“I think you’re scared,” Leah said. “And in your own head too much.”
Erica shook her head.
“You say you want connection,” Leah continued, quietly. “But every time someone gets close – really close – you brace for impact. And then you’re gone before they can leave you.”
Erica turned away, staring at the dark window.
“You remember when we came to London?” Leah continued.
“Just for a weekend. Me and Maisie. She was so excited – kept asking if you’d show her your office, the studio, that bookshop you mentioned.
And you—” Leah laughed, but there was no humour in it.
“You squeezed in one rushed dinner. You didn’t even stay for dessert. ”
Erica’s hand tightened around her coat. “I had deadlines.”
“No, you had walls. I should’ve known, you weren’t yourself,” Leah whispered. “Pale. Like you were fading. And then you stopped answering messages. You vanished.”
“I was in hospital,” Erica said, low and defensive and ashamed all at once.
“I know. Eventually.” Leah’s voice trembled. “But by then you’d already shut us out.”
The fire cracked in the grate.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Erica said.
“I know,” Leah replied. “That’s the worst part. You never mean to.”
A long silence stretched between them.
“I don’t want to keep doing that,” Erica said finally. And this time it sounded honest. Almost frightened.
“Then don’t,” Leah said, stepping closer again. “Stay. Let us in. We’re not ghosts. We’re right here.”
Erica’s eyes filled. “I’m not choosing ghosts,” she said. “I’m choosing truth.”
“And what if the truth costs you the people who are still alive?” Leah asked quietly.
Erica didn’t answer. She moved to the door instead. “I need to do this.”
Leah felt something in her chest give way – not anger now, just exhaustion.
She nodded once and stepped aside. “Then go,” she said. The words were barely louder than breath. She hesitated. “Just like Mum.”
Erica paused.
For a heartbeat, Leah thought she might turn back.
But she didn’t.
The door closed with a small, ordinary click.
Leah stood in the silence afterward, staring at the door as though it might open again.
The fire cast unsteady shadows across the walls. Upstairs, a floorboard creaked – Maisie turning in her sleep.
Leah pressed her fingers to her eyes and hoped fiercely that her daughter had heard none of it.
And that she would never learn how easily love could feel like abandonment.