Eleanor’s gaze swept Heather’s face and softened. “You’ve her eyes. Your mother.”
Heather’s throat tightened. “So I’ve been told.”
“And her stubborn streak.”
A faint smile. Quickly gone.
Silence stretched taut.
Finally, Heather spoke. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what?” Eleanor said carefully.
“That my mother didn’t die in a car crash,” Heather whispered. “That she drowned in Scotland. That you sent her chasing the treasure.”
Flynn sat up straighter.
Eleanor winced.
Heather pressed on. “Did nobody think I deserved to know who she really was?”
Eleanor braced her hands on the back of a chair. “You were a child. Your father—”
“Don’t,” Heather cut off, narrowing her eyes. “Don’t make excuses for him.”
Eleanor’s expression flickered with pain. “He loved her, hen. Madly. And he loved you.”
Heather let out a small, humorless laugh. “He had a funny way of showing it.”
“Aye,” Eleanor said quietly as she nodded. “He did.”
She hesitated a long moment before adding, “Your father knew what happened.”
Something in Heather’s chest jolted. “He… knew?”
“Aye,” Eleanor murmured. “I called him myself. He flew out within hours.”
“I—” Heather shook her head. “No. That can’t—he never—he didn’t leave. I would’ve remembered.”
But even as she said it, something flickered—thin as smoke, buried so deep she wasn’t sure it was real.
A memory shifted.
Not a full picture, just fragments.
Her mother kneeling in front of her, smoothing Heather’s hair behind her ear.
“It’s just a short work trip, lambie,” she’d said. “Two weeks tops. I’ll be back before you know it.”
The brush of a kiss to Heather’s forehead.
Then another—aimed at Charles but landing on his cheek when he turned his head slightly, quiet and stiff.
Heather hadn’t understood that then. She only remembered Eilidh laughing softly, tapping his jaw, saying, “I love you both. I’ll be home soon.”
Then… normalcy. Or something like it. School. Cartoons. Her dad burning dinner twice in a row.
And then, a week or so later:
