Tom breathed deep, running one hand through his windswept hair. “No good will come of this, sweetheart. Leave it be.”
Emeline stepped between Tom and the woods. No way was she leaving this be. Digging the folded photograph out of her pocket, she unfolded it and thrust it at him.
“The back is dated a year before I was born. How can she be looking at you like that—like you are everything she wants in the whole world—mere monthsbefore she gets pregnant with someone else?”
Tom’s fingers gripped the photo. As if he were drowning and it were a life raft.
“I wanted to impress her,” he whispered. “Or maybe I wanted to impressthem.” He glanced to the woods. “I don’t know.” His Adam’s apple bobbed as he gulped. As if getting the words out was a fight he was losing. “I took her to the King’s City. I wanted her to see it. To love it the way I loved it. And she did. But she also …”
Folding up the photograph, he handed it back to Emeline.
“You need to tell me all of it.” Emeline stared him down. “She was my mother.”
He nodded, eyes shining.
“She fell in love with someone else.”
“Who?”
“She wouldn’t tell me.” From the look that darkened his eyes, though, he had his suspicions. “She was utterly enchanted by him. She stopped showing up for her shifts at the diner. Like she didn’t care anymore. She’d forget to eat. Wouldn’t sleep. She was … unreachable. Living in a dream. So, when she came home pregnant after months of being at court, I couldn’t bear to see her. I … I left.”
“Because the baby was his,” Emeline murmured.
But that meant …
My father came from the woods.
She suddenly felt unbalanced.
Tom touched her arm—as if to steady her. The sorrow in him fled, replaced by a warm tenderness. “When I got back after those three years away, I didn’t want to look at you. I avoided Ewan’s house for months. I avoided everyone’s houses—in case you were there. And then one day, Ewan stormed over. ‘Enough is enough,’ he said. ‘This is Emeline Lark, my pride and joy.’ I took one look at you, and it all went up in smoke. One shy smile, and you melted my anger away.”
Emeline’s eyes burned as he pulled her to him, hugging her tight.
“Why did no one tell me any of this?” she whispered against his jacket, breathing in the familiar tobacco smell.
“She didn’t want anyone to know. So I promised to keep her secret.”
Emeline pulled away, glancing up at him.
He was staring into the woods again, eyes clouded. “Sometimes I wonder if I misinterpreted the signs. She looked so …hollowby the end. Like love was eating away at her. Making her forget all the things that were once important to her. Almost as if …”
Tom shook his head like he was trying to shake away a bad dream. “I’m sure I was imagining it. Just seeing what I wanted to see. And anyway, it’s over now. Rose made her choice.”
“Did she go back to him? After she left me?”
He raised his hands, palms upturned. “I assume so. I’ve always thought she was living happily with him in the King’s City.” Without Emeline. Without either of them.
They both stared into the trees.
Was it possible her mother was still there?
Grace had told her that humans weren’t allowed to reside in the King’s City, and few exceptions were given. Emeline was under the impression that she, Grace, and Pa were those exceptions. But maybe there were others. Maybe Rose Lark was living in the King’s City, too.
“If she’s there,” said Emeline, “I’ll find her.”
TWENTY-NINE
TOM’S WORDS TRAILED HERlike a shadow as she skirted around Eshe and Abel’s orchards. The sun hung low in the sky as she hurried past Pa’s vineyards, turning their green leaves to gold.
