“This has to be done now, Scott. I have to get back to Aurelia. She needs me.”

Emily pulled her arms over her head, bracing herself. It was coming. The flurry. The thousands of wings all beating at once, the awful thing that had never gone away. It was twitching and stirring. Waking up.

“I promised I would protect her.” Nina raised the gun.

“So, protect her,” Scott said. “If she needs you, go. I swear to you I will take care of this.”

Emily dragged in more and more air, dragging everything up and under her clavicles until she thought they might crack. The flurry was overwhelming her, consuming her, transporting her somewhere she’d been before but had left behind, somewhere she’d never wanted to go again. It dragged her back like a rip in the ocean to a place where there were no words, just a terrible asphyxia and unknowable darkness.

Emily’s eyes closed then flickered open. Closed. Open. Closed. Open.

“Will you, Scott?”

“I will, I swear.”

“Because if you don’t—”

“I know.”

“There’s no other way.”

“I know.”

She saw Nina let go of the gun. Pass it to Scott. Turn and walk away.

Scott, standing motionless. The gun in his hand.

Nina, looking back. Just once.

The tremble of Scott’s shoulders. The dead look in his eyes.

The gun.

The gun.

The gun.

Everything tipped. Emily thrashed, trapped once again under a heavy object. She tried to push it away but couldn’t. Bright green and orange spots appeared in front of her eyes and she was dropping, and the ground became the sky and the sky became the ground, and the earth came rushing up to meet her like the surface of an icy lake …

… and at the very same moment, a firecracker went off right near her ear—no, not a firecracker, another gunshot—accompanied by the sound of splintering wood. Pain exploded in every part of her body. She began to scream.

Her head hit the forest floor with a sickening smack and everything went dark.

* * *

Briefly, she came to.

A light among the trees. Pain. Pressure in her back.

“Stay down,” said a voice. “Don’t move.”

The sweep of headlights over dead leaves.

Silence. Footsteps. Voices.

“Is she…”

“Yes.”

“I brought the car. And a shovel.”

“Where’s Yves?”

“I don’t know. Can’t get hold of him, not since he called this morning.”

“Fine. Don’t call him, don’t text him. Leave him out of this.”

Hands slid under her arms, dragging her backward. She was lifted into the air. Placed gently on a bed of leather.

Then the slam of a door, a jangle of keys, and the growl of an engine.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

SCOTT

ABOUT HALFWAY back along the track, Scott found an area that was just about clear and flat enough to accommodate the SUV. He veered off, steering the car through the trees and bushes until he reached a small clearing.

Looking out of the windshield, Scott imagined a ring of blue tape, mounds of freshly dug earth, and a swarm of anonymous figures in white hazmat suits. He bit down on his lip and tasted blood. What the fuck was happening? Why was he parked in the woods in the middle of the night with a body on the backseat? Why had his wife, her face unrecognizable, given him a shovel?

Behind him, Emily lay still. Her face was slack and smooth like a child’s, mouth parted, lips askew, and Scott fought a sudden flood of memories. Squeaky linoleum floors, starched sheets, and those stiff white blankets with holes in them. The beep of machinery and the clatter of a clipboard falling to the ground. Then the bare walls and stripped floors of Querencia, all their belongings stuffed into crates and left to rot in the basement.

Another memory slithered close, clear and sharp. He is creeping across the landing in the predawn light, thinking of those crates, about what they contain; the whisper-soft things that no longer smell of her. In a pink bedroom, he picks his way carefully over toys and stands at the foot of the bed. A small hand peeps out from the covers, one delicate finger pointing, accusingly, at him—and at the pillow he is holding in his sweaty, shaking hands. He lifts the pillow. You’re not her, he thinks, moving closer, raising the pillow higher, holding it over the bed. You’ll never be her …

At the very last minute, though, he crumbles. The pillow falls to the floor, and the pointing finger disappears back under the blanket as its owner rolls over, sighing in her sleep.

Scott collapsed over the steering wheel, his mouth stretched wide in a silent scream.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

EMILY

OPENING HER eyes, Emily saw familiar upholstery and tinted windows. She was on the backseat of the SUV, lying supine with a rolled-up picnic blanket under her knees. Outside, it was still dark.

In small stages and with difficulty, she hauled herself up onto one elbow.

Scott was sitting in the front seat.

She pressed her fingers to the back of her head and they came away wet. “Have I been shot?” Her voice came out gravelly, as if it hadn’t been used for years. Her own words startled her. Shot? Who’s been shot?

Scott coughed and rubbed his eyes. “No. I aimed high. Up into the trees. You fainted again, hit your head on a rock. Bashed yourself up pretty badly, too, when you were running.”

Emily struggled to sit up. Her head throbbed. She touched her left shoulder and felt raw, bloody flesh.

“That looks nasty,” Scott said. Their eyes met in the rearview mirror. “Your ankle is swollen, too.”

Emily lifted her foot. It was thick and puffy. “What happened? Where’s Nina?”

“Back at the house. Don’t worry, it’s just us.”

Just us. She couldn’t focus. A chill was spreading through her bones. Feeling around at the back of her head again, she found a squelchy, matted lump. She dimly recalled being dragged backward. Instinctively, her hand went to the car door, and her fingers closed around the handle.

“It isn’t locked,” Scott said, watching her in the mirror.

Emily pulled and sure enough, the door cracked open, ushering in the damp smell of fallen leaves. It took her straight back to Hoxley and the field behind the train station where she’d had her first kiss: fifteen years old, bottle of cider in one hand and the lank hair of some boy tangled in the other. Home. My real home. She thought of her parents worrying and waiting for her to call.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” Scott said as Emily began to cry. “Come on, let’s get some fresh air. I’m suffocating in here.”

Slowly, warily, they both climbed out of the car and faced one another. Leaves crunched under their feet. Scott stood with his hands shoved in his pockets and his head hung low, like a schoolboy in detention.

“I don’t know where to start,” he said.

Emily wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. She couldn’t speak. An unbearable tension had seized her body and locked her jaw tight.

Scott looked at the ground, the sky, the hood of the car. “That day we drove to the airport? I was telling the truth. We did have a daughter, and her name was Aurelia. And she did get sick. But she didn’t survive.” He blew out his breath slowly. “Our daughter’s death changed everything. It shattered Nina, and … well, it’s hard to explain if you don’t…” He searched the air for the right words.

Emily shivered, feeling vulnerable in her shorts and thin T-shirt. “How long has she been … like that?”

Scott shrugged. “I honestly couldn’t tell you. She hid so much from me, and for such a long time. I know that sounds impossible—how could I be so blind, right? But she saw doctors in secret, she lied about her medication … I mean, it was bad after the funeral, but I had no idea just how bad; at least, not until it was too late.

“You mustn’t think badly of her,” he continued. “She doesn’t remember what happened in Nice, not exactly. She’s lived the lie for so long that she’s starting to believe it. A lot of the time, she thinks that girl is our daughter.”

“How have you lived with it? Why didn’t you go to the police?”

Scott shrugged. “In the beginning, I panicked. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t turn her in. I just couldn’t. So I did nothing. I played along because I was scared. And then one day I realized there was no going back.”

“That’s not true.” Emily was shaking. She wrapped her arms around her body, trying to keep warm. “You can still make it right.”

“Oh, yes. Because prison will fix everything.”

“But if you turned yourself in, I’m sure that—”

“That we’d be let off the hook because we came clean? That a judge might see what nice people we are and let us off with a slap on the wrist?” Scott leaned in, his neck muscles suddenly straining and stretching like cables. “You have no idea what I would lose. No one can ever know about this. Not ever.”

The words fell between them, heavy as snow.

“Yves knows,” said Emily quietly.

“Yes. Yves knows. But two of his sons are now receiving a private education, and a third is top of the list for a brand new heart, so I doubt he’s in any hurry to play the responsible citizen.”