Chapter 33
Erica could still leave.
The thought had followed her all the way down the lane, quiet and persistent. She had already tried once before. Maybe this was the sign she’d been waiting for, proof that she wasn’t meant to stay anywhere too long. Some people were built for motion.
Forward. Always forward.
That was what she knew.
What was left for her here now? Especially knowing her mother was somewhere in the world – alive – choosing silence. Choosing absence.
What did staying solve?
Everything inside her felt tugged outward, as though invisible threads were pulling her to something beyond the town, beyond the cottage, beyond the complicated ache of family.
All she had to do was follow.
And yet.
Something held.
She didn’t remember the walk back to the cottage.
Only the cold.
And the echo.
Just like Mum.
The gate hit the stone wall with a sharper crack than usual. It swung back as if offended.
Lucky appeared briefly in the window, a small pale shape, then vanished from sight.
Inside, the cottage felt overly warm, but she didn’t take off her coat.
She stood in the middle of the kitchen as though she’d entered someone else’s home. The table. The Rayburn. The mug she’d chipped. All of it slightly unfamiliar.
You let Maisie down.
It stayed there.
Not Mum, not Steven.
Maisie.
She pulled out a chair and sat heavily, elbows on the table, head in her hands.
For a moment she thought she might cry.
Instead, she let out a short, brittle laugh.
“Obsession,” she muttered to the empty room. “That’s what it is, apparently.”
The word stung because it wasn’t entirely wrong.
Lucky padded in then, tail high, and circled her legs with a questioning chirrup.
She bent automatically to scratch behind his ears.
“I found you in worse weather than this,” she said softly. “Remember?”
He blinked up at her.
“I’m not very good at leaving things alone,” she murmured.
Lucky butted his head against her palm as if in agreement.
Her gaze drifted to the window over the sink, to the garden that lay dark and uneven beneath the moon. Its stone wall ran along the edge like a spine, pale in the gloom.
The initials were still there.
I. G.
Unapologetic.
She could just make out the small square of earth she had disturbed when she first uncovered them properly. A messy patch she hadn’t made neat again. She was too distracted then, too certain she was onto something.
There was more, she had thought.
There was always more.
She leaned back in the chair, staring at the faint outline of the old stone wall. The same stone that had built the cottage itself, she realised. Not separate at all, just an outer edge of the same structure. The same hands, perhaps. The same history running through both.
If something had been hidden in the garden, it could just as easily have been hidden within the house.
Maisie had found the empty box in the bedroom wall that afternoon weeks ago – her small fingers prising at loose plaster, triumphant at the discovery. They had both expected something extraordinary inside.
But it had contained nothing.
And yet it had led to more. One small discovery always did.
It had been Maisie who started the talk about initials, after Erica’s discovery in the garden.
They had been sitting at the table, chocolate melting on her fingers, talking about names – about marriage, about how letters rearranged themselves depending on who belonged to whom.
“Mine would be M. S. Maisie Stein,” she’d said proudly, as if reciting a spell.
“Your mummy’s would be different,” Erica had teased.
“L. H. Leah Hayes,” Maisie replied promptly. Then paused. “Actually … L. C .H. Charlotte’s her middle name.”
Then a small shadow had crossed her face.
“What’s wrong?” Erica had asked.
“Just … Mummy and Daddy not being married. I’m the only one in my class whose parents aren’t.”
Erica had put an arm around her. “That doesn’t matter. They love you. That’s what counts.”
Maisie had thought about that seriously, chocolate still on her lip.
“Well,” she’d said finally, “I’m still hers.”
Still hers.
It had sounded simple then.
Now it felt weighty.
Names shifted. Papers were signed. Rings removed. Mothers vanished across continents.
But something in that small declaration had been steadier than all of it.
Belonging without ceremony.
She looked back at the wall.
I. G.
Not hidden. Not disguised beneath a married name.
Just there.
Isobel Grant.
That was insistence, of a woman saying: I was here.
Not: I belonged to him.
The thought unsettled Erica.
Because what had she been carving, metaphorically, all these years?
Proof of achievement. Control. Independence. That she was Steven’s?
Not necessarily presence.
Not necessarily staying.
The kitchen felt very small.
Leah’s voice remained.
I think you’re scared.
Erica pressed her fingers to her temples.
Maybe she was scared.
Not of ghosts. Of repeating. Of being the one who left.
The urge to change something prickled under her skin.
She stood and crossed to the window.
The garden had disappeared into shadow, the old stone wall barely visible now.
She couldn't see the carvings anymore.
She didn't need to.
If there had once been two sets carved, then perhaps something else had been left behind. Something small. Something practical. A token. A letter. A fragment.
Evidence.
A small, insistent hope nudged its way through her.
Lucky leapt onto the windowsill, tail flicking.
She looked down at him.
“Don’t,” she said quietly. “Don’t tell me not to.”
He blinked.
The sensible part of her knew this was exactly what Leah meant.
The other part – the part that had to follow threads – could not leave a seam unexplored.
She turned away from the window.
Paced once.
Twice.
Sat again.
If there was nothing, she would know.
If there was something …
Either way, it would surely quiet the noise in her mind?
Not running, but checking.
She reached for the torch on the counter.
Her hand hovered at the door latch for a fraction of a second.
Still hers.
“I’m not leaving,” she said under her breath, though whether to Leah, to Maisie, or to herself, she couldn’t say.
The wind hit her sharply as she stepped outside, carrying salt and the low rumble of the sea. Clouds dragged across the moon, plunging the garden into moving shadow.
The stone wall loomed pale and patient, wrapping around the cottage as it had for centuries.
She found the small trowel by the back step where she had abandoned it days earlier.
She knelt.
The earth was colder than she expected, and for a moment she simply pressed her palm flat against the soil, as if feeling for a pulse.
Then she began to dig.