“It is. But how do I know you aren't fibbing us?”
She sounded a bit like Miles. “A doctor had me tested. He told me that.”
“I can see special things, too.”
“You can?” I asked.
“Yeah. Dad says so. He says I can see hearts.”
I crouched down and looked into her sweet eyes. “You mean people's hearts?”
She pushed aside a strand of her red hair that had peeked out from beneath her hat. “He says I can see when people are bad and people are good. I once told my mum that the gardener had an ugly heart and then they found him peeping in people's windows a few weeks later.”
I looked up at Amy, who bugged her eyes at me. “Huh. Well, maybe you really can see hearts.”
“I can see Amy's. It's purple with yellow and white swirls.” She patted Amy's jacket and then turned to me. “Daddy's is dark red with black stripes.”
“Oh, my. That sounds very colorful. What about mine? What does mine look like?”
Fiona's eyebrows drew together tightly and she stared right into the center of my chest. Her lips were pursed, like she was trying very hard at something. “I can't see yours. I've looked for it, but I can't see it.”
I glanced over at Amy again, who now seemed bewildered. “Katherine sent her heart to the shop for some mending,” she said.
“My heart ran off to the circus. To train lions and elephants.”
“Or maybe it’s hiding.” Fiona cupped her hands around her mouth. “Hello! Katherine’s heart, are you in there?”
I laughed. Fiona was being clever and cute, after all. But on the inside, I felt so helpless, like being here was always going to drag me back into the past. I wanted to look ahead, but everything around me—the house, the cold, the woods—was telling me that it didn’t matter how hard I tried to ignore history. It was always going to be here. Whether I could accept it or not.
Chapter Eighteen
My invisible,quite possibly non-existent heart and I were the last ones inside the house after our hike through the woods. I was doing my best to dig in my heels and prevent a downward spiral, but when a sweet, adorable kid tells you she isn’t sure you have a heart, it sticks to you like glue. It wasn't that I believed Fiona could truly see hearts, but she was an intuitive kid, an old soul. Maybe she saw things in me that no one else could see. The things no one elsewantedto see. The parts I’d been desperate to hide. The parts that made it so unbelievable to my sister that Eamon ever saw me asSunny Girl.
“I’m bloody freezing,” Fiona said, working her spindly legs out of her boots.
Amy hung Fiona’s jacket on the hook. “How about some hot cocoa?”
“Yes, please.” Fiona bounced on her toes in her many layers of socks.
I followed them into the kitchen. Eamon and Dad were sitting at the table, talking and laughing. “What'd I miss?” I asked.
Eamon practically sprang out of his chair and pulled me into his arms. “I missed you.”
“We weren’t gone too long, were we?” I wanted to ask him exactly how certain he was about Fiona’s ability to see the good and bad in a person, but I knew how ridiculous it would sound the instant I said the words.
Eamon shook his head and pressed the back of his warm hand against my icy cheek. “Nah.”
I leaned into his touch, drinking in his body heat. “That feels so good.”
“Cocoa coming up.” Amy ripped open a paper packet and dumped it into a mug.
“Did you and Dad have fun?” I asked Eamon.
“We talked about you the whole time.” He turned and cast my father a conspiratorial look, which made me all kinds of nervous. Once you got my dad talking, he didn’t tend to stop.
“You've got quite a guy here, Katie-boo. Hold on to him.”
“I’ll do my best.” I looked into Eamon's eyes, trying to decipher what in the heck was going on. He and my dad were so happy it was like they'd been huffing helium while Amy, Fiona, and I were gone. But maybe I was seeing things, too stuck on Fiona’s appraisal of the state of my heart.
