Page 70 of Taken Away

Time to fix what she still could.

Time to bring her girl home.

SEVENTEEN

Blackwood Winery

Aubrey

The irritation followed her all the way down the mezzanine stairs and straight out of the production barn.

The June heat had settled over the valley, thick and close. Aubrey shoved her sunglasses onto her face and marched down the stone path with no destination in mind, desperate to outrun the contradictions clawing at her ribs.

Nothing matched. Not her mother’s stories. Not Walter’s quiet version of events. Not the kingdom spreading out around her.

The lane curved past the tasting room toward the vineyard blocks. Rows of vines marched across the hillsides in perfect formation, their leaves catching the sunlight in a thousand shades of green. Aubrey had spent years negotiating luxury projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars. She knew expensive. She knew curated. She knew how to sell the illusion of permanence.

Blackwood wasn’t an illusion.

Blackwood was permanent.

The path narrowed into an older stone walk through a secluded corner of the property. Boxwoods crowded the trail. Hydrangeas exploded in white and pale blue. Climbing roses twisted around an iron arbor weathered silver with age. At the end of the path sat a gazebo overlooking the valley.

A faint, irrational sense of déjà vu brushed the back of her neck. As if she’d been here once before, much smaller, with skinned knees and someone’s warm hand wrapped around hers.

The white paint had faded soft at the edges; the roof shingles had gone silver in the sun. Aubrey climbed the steps. Shade wrapped around her in a cooler hush. She sat on the wooden bench, leaning her head back against a corner post, eyes tracing the terraced rows rolling down the mountain.

From here, the estate didn’t look like a resort or a line item. The mountains rose layer after layer toward the horizon, sunlight flashing off a distant sliver of water while a hawk wheeled high above the vines. Wind moved through the leaves like a ripple across a green ocean.

Beautiful.

Her mother had spent thirty years describing Blackwood as a wound. Standing here, Aubrey couldn’t reconcile that with what she was seeing. The place didn’t feel like a prison or a legal hostage situation.

It felt like something that had been waiting for her.

A faint mark in the wood near her shoulder caught her eye.

Carved into the gazebo post were dozens of initials. Generations of them. Dates. Names. Memories. Near the bottom, one set looked older than the rest.

A.M.

Beside it, cut at the same depth:

M.M.

The letters sat side by side.

Aubrey stared, her pulse giving a sharp, disbelieving kick.

Anne McAllister. Mabel McAllister.

The photograph from Walter’s office flashed behind her eyes—her mother laughing, Mabel’s arm hooked around her shoulders, Harold in the background with a bottle held high.

A family. Not enemies. Not yet.

Maybe her mother hadn’t told her everything. Maybe nobody had.

“They used to hide out up here when Harold’s father was tearing up the lower pastures,” a rough baritone rumbled. “Mabel told me she and Anne practically lived up here some summers.”