Why hasn’t someone found him?
Maybe she’d made a mistake, putting him in the closest facility to Edgewood. Maybe she should have found something better. Taken him to the city with her …
“Except the doors are locked,” Maisie continued, lowering her voice to a whisper. “There are cameras in every corridor. He couldn’t have walked out. It’s not possible.”
The pub darkened as the pungent scent of the forest thickened.
You’re imagining it, Emeline told herself.It’s not really there.
“I’m so sorry, baby girl,” Maisie said. “But your grandfather’s been tithed.”
Tithed.
The word clanged through Emeline, dragging her back to a childhood full of superstition. The Wood King’s tithes were one of many ridiculous rituals she’d grown up with in Edgewood.
It was just another reason Emeline left as soon as she could.
And yet, if tonight was any indication, perhaps she hadn’t escaped soon enough. Whatever madness had infected Pa and his neighbors was clearly starting to infect her too.
Emeline shook her head.
NothingtookPa. Her grandfather’s mind was fettered by dementia. He had wandered off. That was all. He simply needed to be found.
He’s a seventy-five-year-old man. How far can he go?
Emeline thought back to April, the last time she’d seen Ewan Lark. She remembered the confused look on his face as she walked him into the dining area of Heath Manor and left him there. Remembered the discordantflop-flopof her Birkenstocks against the blue tiles as she walked away, down the whitewashed halls. Remembered the piercing ache as she stepped outthe doors, abandoning the one person she loved most in the world, handing him over to strangers.
Emeline squeezed her eyes shut.
What else could she possibly have done? Pa himself told her to go.
But she’d heard the longing in his voice. He wanted to be in his own house with his vineyards around him. The ones he planted with his own two hands.
He’d wanted to stay in Edgewood.
“Emmie? Are you there?”
Her fingers tightened around the phone, still pressed to her ear.
I have sets to perform. I have a tour to prepare for. I can’t just leave.
But the thought of her grandfather, lost and afraid, overrode everything else.
“I’m coming home,” she said.
TWO
EMELINE SAT PARKED INfront of Pa’s stone farmhouse, her hands clenching the steering wheel. She’d gone to Heath Manor first, to speak with the nurses. But they only told her the same thing Maisie had.
So she texted Joel, asking him to cancel her gigs this week.
Emeline hated leaving people in a lurch.
As she stared through the windshield at the For Sale sign on the lawn, she thought about everything she’d accomplished since leaving her childhood home. She would never have made anything of herself in this backwards town. She couldn’t chase her dream here or live the life she longed for.
That’s why two years ago, when she was just seventeen, Emeline packed up her rusty blue hatchback—the one she and Pa saved up to buy—and drove to Montreal. She’d had nine hundred dollars to her name, and a lease for an apartment shared with three art students.
Back then, Emeline took every gig that came her way—birthday parties, weddings, fundraisers—and when she failed to make ends meet, she busked in the streets. She ate instant noodles and drank instant coffee. She slept on a secondhand mattress on the floor.
