Page 94 of The Clifftop Cottage

“Gabe,” she added quietly, the baby gurgling faintly behind her, “just be careful. I want you happy. But this sounds messy.”

For a moment he felt like a child again. Being cautioned. Being managed.

He took a breath.

“Thanks for telling me,” he said evenly. “Everything’s fine.” A pause. “Maybe focus on your own life, aye?” He ended the call before she could reply.

Chep leaned against his leg.

He felt foolish.

Gabriel stood in the thinning light, mist curling and uncurling around him. The world felt … wrong. Tilted. Like something had shifted off-axis and no one had noticed but him.

He turned in the direction of the fields.

Tonight would bring something. He could feel it.

And this time, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to outrun it. Whatever it was.

31

The dreams were worse again.

Erica woke up in a cold sweat, tangled in damp sheets, her heart punching beneath her ribs. The dreams were more vivid, more clingy.

But they were dreams, weren’t they? Or were they memories?

Steven, standing at the end of her hospital bed. The distant, crackling whine of monitors. Her own voice, hoarse and pathetic, calling out for her mother and being answered only by static.

And then, one that had lingered:

A woman with the long red hair.

Walking too close to the cliff’s edge.

Silent and unreachable.

Erica lay still for a moment, staring at the pale ceiling. The light was slinking in around the curtains, thin but insistent.

She tried to recall the exact look on the woman’s face. Tried to hold on to the feeling. But like sand in water, it drifted away.

If she admitted it, the dreams had started not long after she moved into the cottage. Now they followed her like a shadow.

Her suitcase lay open in the hallway like a mouth, half-spilled. She hadn’t unpacked since returning from Margery’s. She couldn’t.

In the kitchen, Lucky curled in a patch of heat beside the Rayburn. His spot. The fire had shrunk to a few orange eyes blinking in the ash. His purring was the only real sound in the house.

Erica stepped into the shower, letting the hot water work its way down her spine. It didn’t do much. Her skin still prickled, nerves still tight like violin strings. Something was off.

Isobel.

She thought of the woman in her dreams. Her red hair, the sea wind, and danger.

Why did her mind keep circling to Isobel and why cliffs and women walking into nothing?

But it was a distraction, even now. And she let herself be. She’d behaved abominably towards Maisie. And Leah. But she couldn’t face them. It was as if something was turning her away, pulling her backwards, deeper into something she couldn’t name.

She needed air. She needed out of the house with its silence and strange shadows. Her mind still scattered, thinking of Andrew Peters waiting for her to quit her research, and Steven.