I run my thumb over a smudge in one corner that I never noticed before: something yellow poking up through the snow—an abandoned toy, perhaps, or early daffodils?
“I can almost remember it being taken,” Edwin says quietly.
Danny grunts. “What is it you remember exactly—the chocolate cake they gave you afterward to warm you up?”
Every time something makes me smile, fresh tears slide down my cheeks. It’s exhausting. My thoughts are disjointed. I don’t want to think about Vera and her crimes. The fact that she imagined she was in some way protecting us, protecting me, even as she wrote that warning on my bathroom mirror to frighten me. And I don’t want to think about Alex tonight, and yet how can I not? He’s my father. But I’m still mourning Dad.
We talk, and cry, and talk some more, until the room is in darkness. A thin crescent gleams in the sky outside the window like a glint from a silver locket.
“We’re still family, us three. Aren’t we?” I say as we head upstairs.
“Absolutely,” Edwin says firmly.
Danny rolls his eyes. “Whatever you say, sis.”
I pad away to my bedroom. The night is cooler than we’ve been used to, and I drag my sheets and duvet from the floor and make myself a nest on the bed, sighing as I curl up inside it to wait for the new day. We are still family, us three. I am still Seraphine.
EPILOGUE
Seraphine
Early December 2017
EDWIN HELPS LAURAout of her coat as Joel bounds up the steps and joins them in the warm Winterbourne hallway. Steam from the kitchen wafts up the stairs, carrying the aroma of rosemary and garlic to the turn of the staircase where I hover in the shadows, watching them. Edwin kisses Laura on both cheeks. Joel declines to take his coat off.
“I’ll get going to the station,” Joel says. “It’s a long enough journey down from Leeds. Much nicer if I can pick Kiara up, rather than her getting a taxi. Especially if she’s by herself.”
He glances up the stairs then, although he doesn’t give any indication he’s seen me.
Laura says, “Thank you, Joel,” and then, “This smells so good,” as she follows Edwin into the kitchen. They’re discussing goose fat and oven temperatures as they pull the door closed behind them.
I dash down the stairs to catch Joel before he leaves, and he’s still standing by the grandfather clock, a half smile on hisface, as if he was waiting for me all along. I haven’t seen him often enough since I moved into Winterbourne three months ago—I have a long commute to work in the week, and he’s been doing weekend shifts while he looks for a permanent position. He looks well today, his eyes shining, his freshly shaved skin glowing above his scarf. I stand close enough to feel the cold December air drift from his coat.
“Hi,” he says. “How are you?”
“Good,” I whisper, and then the slow widening of his smile knocks whatever else I was intending to say out of my mind. We study each other as the clock ticks.
“It’s great you managed to talk Danny into agreeing to this,” he says eventually.
“It was Brooke, really. She’s good for Danny, I have to admit. She told him he has to give Laura a chance. He has to be here to support Kiara.”
Joel glances at the kitchen door. “But Alex is still refusing to speak to Laura?”
I’m grateful that Joel still calls him Alex. I’m still prickly about Alex being referred to as my father, even though we have been talking, making tentative steps toward forming some kind of a relationship.
“He’s struggling,” I say. “He told himself all those years he’d done the right thing, and now—he feels guilty about my mother, guilty about me. He and Kiara are okay, I think, but the fact that Lauraknewhe was taking the wrong baby... It’s just easier for him not to see her at the moment.”
Joel nods. “And you’re feeling okay about today? Having Kiara and Laura here?”
“Well. As Brooke says, we’re all related one way or another. And we might actually like each other, if we give it a chance.”
“True.” He’s so close to me I could reach up and stroke the scar on his jaw if I wanted to.
“Edwin said you’ve been looking at houses in the village?” I say. “To be closer to Michael?”
“Yeah, I wanted to talk to you about that, actually.”
“Oh?”
