Through one of the side windows, a lamp turned on, drawing my eye. James sat by the window, alone. His jacket was gone, his shirt unbuttoned halfway, a glass of wine balanced in his hand. The candle beside him had burned down to a pool of wax, its flame blinking weakly against the glass.
He rubbed at his temple, slow and deliberate, then leaned back in his chair. The candlelight caught his reflection in the window, pale and faint, layered over the darkness outside. In that moment, he seemed like two people at once, one visible, one fading.
When he turned, his eyes lifted towards the glass. I couldn’t tell if he saw me or if he was simply staring past his own reflection.
Either way, he smiled. Small. Polite.
The feeling I’d been trying to ignore nudged at me again. Whatever was happening between them wasn’t just a rough week or too many last-minute decisions.
Inside, the sound of laughter carried down the hall, Caroline’s voice among it, lighter now, as though she’d successfully stepped back into the part she was born to play.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
I pulled it out, expecting something ordinary.
Cleo’s message filled the screen:
“Tomorrow. Sunrise. Come alone. I found something.”
Chapter Fifteen
I didn’t sleep much.
Cleo’s message looped through my head. The wording, the urgency, the ‘come alone’of it all.
It wasn’t just what she’d said. It was how she’d said it. Cleo didn’t do urgency. She did rambling updates and voice notes about things that didn’t matter. Not short, sharp messages that felt like they’d been sent quickly—or worse, after too much thinking.
Every time I closed my eyes, my brain replayed it, trying to make it sound less like a problem.
It didn’t work.
Come alone.
I turned onto my side, then onto my back, the sheets twisting around my legs. At one point I reached for my phone and reread the message, as if it might have changed overnight.
It hadn’t.
By the time the sky began to lighten, I’d given up on sleep entirely.
I slipped out of my room early, easing the door closed behind me.
I found Cleo hunched over the table in the library in her robe. When she saw me, her expression was equal parts pride and guilt.
“I kind of… went exploring,” she blurted, before I could even open my mouth. “I couldn’t sleep, so I went for a walk. I wasn’t snooping, I promise! I just ended up here and… well, this sort of fell into my hands.”
She held out a photograph, looking both guilty and intrigued. “It was tucked underneath one of Noah’s grandfather’s oldledgers. There’s a whole shelf of them in there, weather charts, wine-making notes, even receipts for barrels from the seventies.” She gestured helplessly at the bookcase.
“Cleo!” I exclaimed.
“Okay, fine,” she said, wincing a little, “maybe I was snooping. A tiny bit.”
I leaned in to have a look. The black-and-white image was faded at the edges, the kind of photograph that had spent too many summers in a frame.
Time had given it a faint haze, as if the moment itself was beginning to dissolve. A young man in a sharp suit stood with easy confidence, his tie slightly crooked, as though he’d started laughing before the photographer was ready.
Beside him, a woman in a fitted dress leaned in, beaming at the camera, her expression bright and unguarded.
His hand hovered near the small of her back, not quite touching but close enough to suggest it was familiar. The light caught the edge of her smile and the glint of something at her collar, a moment that felt far more intimate than posed, especially for a time when most portraits were stiff and deliberate.
