“Come on, Amelia,” Edward calls softly from the outer room.
I read the caption beneath the photo again. The article must have been written before the son got his PhD and joined the family business.
I’m determined not to leave this room empty-handed. So I tuck the article into my pocket alongside my lock-picking kit and follow Edward outside.
25Amelia Blue
In the cold air, I recognize the beat of one of my dad’s songs coming from the third cottage, a hit called “Mortality Salience.” Georgia told me she came up with the title, but it’s a theory from psychology, so I know that’s just another one of her stories. For years, I tried to parse the lies she told from the truths she let slip, like my own private, endless game of two truths and a lie.
Eventually, I gave up.
I place a hand on my chest, feeling my thready heartbeat. Silently, I promise my heart that tomorrow, I’ll add extra strawberries to my yogurt. The building behind me can’t possibly be the only place where they keep patient information. Georgia’s file has to besomewhere.
I spin in a circle like another building might materialize in front of me if only I take the right steps.
At once, the air is bright white.
“Shit!” Edward grabs my arm, tugging me backward, but then I see it, unmistakable in the brightness: the silhouette of a Cape Cod–style structure nestled in the woods ahead of us.
I try to take a step, but Edward’s grip is tight, pulling me in the opposite direction, back toward the cottages.
I don’t turn to follow, because there’s a figure coming out of the structure in the woods. Whoever it is looks ghostlike, long hair streaming, white like a halo. I blink, and the figure becomes sharper, its arms outstretched, pale feet bare. Before it can take another step, someone else, someone tall, throws their arms around it from behind. For a second, I think I’m seeing a romantic embrace, but the smaller figure squirms beneath the tall person’s grip, almost thrashing. I’m too far away to know for certain, but I think it’s a woman being restrained by a man.
Edward tugs me down into a crouch until all I can see are the bushes and brambles surrounding us. I hear him gasp with pain as he kneels at my side.
“Floodlight,” he says breathlessly, pointing to a light nailed to a tree above us. “Must be motion activated.”
The light turns off abruptly, plunging us back into darkness.
“They must not have seen us,” I say, pressing myself up to stand. They were too focused on each other to look into the woods.
“Who?” Edward sounds alarmed.
“The people outside that house!”
The weak light from my phone falls across the building in the distance. It’s completely dark, not even a lamp over the front porch.
“There’s no one there.” Edward sounds relieved. “Your eyes must’ve been playing tricks on you. Believe me, trees cast weird shadows when a light pops up like that. I remember once, I snuck out in Scotland and thought I was surrounded by ghosts and goblins.”
“I don’t think we’re surrounded by ghosts and goblins. I saw two people. A woman and a man.”
I try to sound reasonable, but my voice is shaking. I did think, at first, that the woman looked like something from a ghost story, otherworldly without a coat, hat, gloves, or shoes.
And the man. He was enormous. He threw his arms around her like a creature from a horror movie.
“If there’d been someone there, they’d have come running for us the minute our steps activated the floodlight,” Edward points out.
Maybe the lightwasplaying tricks on me. Or maybe my brain is sending hallucinations to punish me for depriving it of the nutrients all the doctors and therapists tell me it needs so badly.
“We should go,” Edward says urgently, taking a step toward the cottages.
Reluctantly, I follow.
26Lord Edward
Being inside a gym didn’t bring back memories ofpumping ironandgetting ripped—those absurd phrases I’d use to motivate myself—instead, all I saw was the machinery that my physical therapists had been coaxing me onto for months. I used to run on treadmills, my heels landing so hard the entire machine would shake; just months ago, a therapist set me on a treadmill so I could learn to walk again.
Amelia seemed ill at ease in the gym as well. She walked on her toes, as though trying not to make a sound. She seemed much more comfortable going through patient files, while I couldn’t so much as step inside the room. The thought of my sister coming across my therapist’s notes, even after I’m gone, makes me shudder. Yet I recognized something in the desperate look on Amelia’s face. After all, I asked Anne if she could include updates on Harper’s condition in the deal she cut with Harper’s parents. (Anne laughed at my request, refused to even ask.)
