1
The house looked different.
Rose Winter had an image in her head of how it used to be. A lot had changed since then, and not just with the house.
The key that was supposed to unlock the chained gates hadn’t worked. She’d had no choice but to leave the car outside and continue on foot.
It felt odd being back after so many years away. The driveway was covered in moss. The trees that surrounded her looked different. Maybe that was just because she was no longer a child looking up at the towering giants of the forest.
Her feet made no sound as she approached the house. The gravel was buried somewhere underneath the moss but it no longer crunched as she walked.
The wind that howled relentlessly all last night had died away, leaving only a light breeze that rippled through the trees like gentle ocean waves, the leaves twinkling and shifting to welcome her back home.
Her mother used to say that the ghost of a Highland warrior haunted these woods, the shimmering figure of Lennox MacGregor, taking form on the darkest of nights. His spirit ran through the trees as if they weren’t there, sneaking away from MacGregor Castle up to the mountain top, and then out of sight down the other side.
Could it be true?
Her mother had told her so many stories about the MacGregor Clan, it was impossible to know which of them were true and which were lies. Maybe they were all a bit of both.
The tall tales had scared her when she was little, even as she enjoyed the happy endings she always knew were coming. They were the reason she’d managed to make a success of a writing career. Turning her mother’s stories into books.
The track climbed steeply after a couple of minutes walk. There was a curve to the left and then it flattened out onto a plateau.
There was the house, emerging like a monolith above the surrounding woodland. A monolith? Or a carbuncle? Who built a house on top of a mountain other than a stubborn English Lord with more money than sense? A man who wanted to prove a point to the Scots. This is my land and you better get used to it.
Rose had never liked the house growing up, despite it being home to her family for generations. It was filled with dark corners and drafty windows. Too many spiders lurked in the back of every cupboard.
The house was little more than a ruin, the roof missing, half the walls crumbled to nothing.
She looked up at the thick growth of ivy covering most of the frontage as if it was trying to suffocate the life from what was left of the building. Nature reclaims, her mom used to say.
The door was still there. The ivy had grown around it but not over it. Her inheritance. A bitter reward for what had happened.
She dug the letter out from her backpack and reread it.
Dear Rose Winter,
As the appointed representative of Momby and Sons Law, I enclose full details of your late mother’s estate, namely the property known locally as Lennox’s Escape. As a result of the timeline and coroner’s procedures specified in Appendix II, your mother, Anthea Winter, has now been declared officially deceased. I offer you my sincerest condolences on behalf of Momby and Sons.
As the sole living heir, the executors have established legally that you are entitled to the entirety of your mother’s estate. Please find enclosed the sole key to the property named above. The property and all possessions to be found therein transfer to your ownership upon signature being received from yourself on the attached form accepting the terms listed in Appendix III.
More details can be found in Appendix I, along with a full transcript of all legal proceedings that have taken place in the period since your late mother’s disappearance from the property named above. For any further information, please do not hesitate to contact the office on the number listed overleaf.
Yours sincerely,
Quinn Hawthorne.
Her mother had been missing for a decade and all of a sudden by the stroke of a pen, she was officially dead. It was surreal. Especially because she was sure her mother was still out there somewhere. If only she could work out where.
For the entire time she’d been missing, Rose had indulged in fantasies of the two of them being reunited. That Anthea would reappear from some forgotten room in the house and hug her daughter, beg her forgiveness for vanishing.
Rose remembered that day well, not that anyone believed her when she told them what happened. "She unlocked the door to the attic and vanished," she said again and again.
They searched the attic. They found nothing. They convinced themselves it was the ramblings of a traumatized child. Rose never forgot, though she tried to. She looked back at Rose, saying, "I wonder if the key will actually work." And then she was gone.
Rose was alone in the world. Too young to be left in the house, she’d been taken into care. Technically, the house still belonged to her mom but by the time she was old enough to leave her foster family and return to take over the place, it was too late. The place was a ruin.
Folding the letter neatly, she returned it to the envelope, retrieving the key they’d sent a moment later. She turned it over in her hand. It wasn’t the key to the house. She knew that much. She’d tried contacting Momby and Sons to tell them that they’d sent her the wrong key but there’d been no response.
