She winces as she scrolls down.
“Following the devastating fire and near loss of life at Raven Hall a mere six months ago, many locals feared the house would once again fall into disrepair. But under the meticulous guidance of its proud new owner, the transformation is truly remarkable.”
Leonora’s smile is sour as she scrolls through the photos. How has it come to this? Nina, her only daughter, is languishing in a prison cell. And this stranger is now the legal owner of Raven Hall.
Leonora knows how hard Nina will be finding her loss of freedom. After Markus died, Nina never did settle at the seaside cottage. She moved out as soon as she turned sixteen, and she led an itinerant lifestyle for years: traveling with a loose group of friends, picking up temporary work, visiting Leonora only when it happened to suit her.
Sometimes, on those unannounced visits, Nina would bring gifts that hinted at where she might have been living—punnets of strawberries, baskets of apples, trugs of parsnips with the soil still clinging to them. Occasionally, she brought people with her, and Leonora would feed them all a hearty meal while sneaking glances at their matted hair and unwashed clothes. On one memorable occasion, Nina set down an apple basket in the hall as she came in, and it took Leonora twenty minutes to realize there was a baby inside it. Leonora dashed to the shop for formula milk, and the infant guzzled it as if it hadn’t been fed for days.
Hoping to encourage Nina to settle down, Leonora transferred a hefty chunk of her inheritance into Nina’s bank account. But if Nina ever spent more than a bare minimum of it on herself, Leonora saw no evidence of it, and Nina continued to disappear for months at a time.
Until last year.
Perhaps it was Leonora’s relief at seeing Nina on her doorstep that made her drop her guard, last summer. She had no one else to share her secrets with, after all, but this time she went too far. She mentioned her ongoing desperate hope that Nina would one day inherit Raven Hall, and Nina’s face had instantly hardened. Leonora kicked herself; Nina had accused her more than once of loving the house more than she loved Nina—Raven Hall was always a sensitive subject between them.
So Leonora had resigned herself to not seeing Nina for another few months after that. But to her surprise, Nina returned a few days later, and she carried on visiting weekly. She began to ask Leonora endless questions about her childhood, scrawling notes in her old daisy notebook, until Leonora felt decidedly uneasy.
“I’ve decided how I want to spend my Averell inheritance money,” Nina announced one afternoon. “And you’re going to help me, Mother—don’t look at me like that. By the end of it, Raven Hall will belong to us again . . .”
Leonora should never have trusted her. But Nina was her daughter; what else could she do?
She still doesn’t understand where she went wrong with Nina. Despite all the terrible things that happened to Leonora when she was younger, she never sought revenge—not on Roy Everett, not on Hendrik, not on anyone. All she wanted was to see Raven Hall returned to the Averell family. She’s not even sure which caused her more pain—Nina’s attempt to kill her, or Nina’s attempt to destroy Raven Hall.
Raven Hall will always belong to the Averells, whatever the lawyers say. It seems unlikely, now, that Nina will ever set foot in it again, but Leonora hasn’t lost all hope—quite the opposite. Her dreams about Raven Hall are stronger now than they’ve ever been.
She reaches out a trembling finger and touches the image of the house on the screen.
“Hold on a little longer,” she whispers. “You will be ours again soon. I promise.”
Beth
Raven Hall’s gray facade gleams, untarnished, in the gentle Fenland sunlight. As Sadie brings her car to a halt on the gravel, I can’t help thinking of Caroline: the way she drove me here on that first day, fully aware I was her daughter, unmoved by the fact that neither Markus nor I had the faintest idea we were related.
A stocky man with a broad smile bounds down the stone steps—Mr. El Daly, the new owner. And suddenly this visit feels absolutely right.
“You go and look around inside,” I say to Sadie, “but I want to stay out here.” I glance at the lake, thinking of Markus. “I’d like to be by myself, to say good-bye.”
So Sadie and Mr. El Daly head into the house, and I stroll down the grassy decline, remembering all the times I ran down here with Nina and Jonas. I smile when I think of Jonas; after a lifetime of masking my feelings, I’ve discovered the power of talking, and Jonas is a patient listener. Only this morning, I rang him about an odd phrase of Nina’s that was niggling at me: I’m not obsessed with Raven Hall like them.
“Why did she say them?” I asked Jonas. “Why not her? As in, Leonora.”
Jonas had given it some thought. “She must have meant Markus, I guess—who else could have been as obsessed with Raven Hall as Leonora?”
I’m not convinced, but perhaps that’s because I like to think better of Markus. As I approach the dock, sunlight dazzles on the water, and my eyes sting at the injustice of not knowing Markus was my father while he was alive. But I remind myself that the future is bright.
A noise up by the house makes me turn, and I see a dark-haired young woman slipping out through the front door. She trots down the steps, and when she notices me watching her, she presses a hand over her heart and gives a startled laugh. I hurry up the grass toward her.
“Sorry!” I call out. “I didn’t mean to make you jump.”
She frowns as I come closer. “Are you from the hot tub company? Only we weren’t expecting you ’til three . . .”
“No, I was just . . .” A glint of jewelry catches my attention, and, without intending to, I reach out. “Do you mind—can I see—?”
Her guarded expression gives way to delight, and she springs forward with her hand outstretched to show off a glittering diamond ring. “It’s a beauty, isn’t it? We’re getting married next week. Just a small wedding—my grandmother on my side, and his parents on his . . . And then I’ll be Mrs. El Daly of Raven Hall.”
But it’s not her ring I’m gazing at. “No, where did you get your bracelet from?”
“Oh, this?” She hooks up the delicate gold chain. “From my mum—it’s the only thing she ever gave me. We’re not close. I mean, she left me with my gran when I was a baby—in an apple basket, of all things. Gran brought me up. But my mum did show that she cares about me, in her own way, a few months ago. She dragged me into some crazy plan she’d dreamed up, but then she warned me to leave before it got too dangerous . . .”
She twists the bracelet around to show me the charms.
“Flag iris,” I murmur, trying to hide my astonishment while my mind races to understand the implication of her words. “Greylag goose. Reed warbler.” Jonas’s question resounds in my ears—Who else could have been as obsessed with Raven Hall as Leonora?—and my heart pounds with the suspicion that the answer is standing right here in front of me.