Jean waited until she heard the front door open and shut before she checked her watch.

“Goodness me, look at the time. Your dad’s probably got to get dinner on, Immy!”

Immy’s dad checked the time as well. “Oh, yes. I should. Katie will be home soon.”

“You head off. I’ll just get Immy to help me set the hedgehogs up and then I’ll send her on home.”

“Of course . . .” Immy’s dad was already backing out of the room toward the conservatory. “And I am sorry . . . about all the bother.”

“It’s no bother at all,” Jean said. “Injured animals day and night. That was my life for decades!”

Immy’s dad disappeared without another word.

As for Immy, she fixed her eyes upon the table and tried to remember to breathe. In and out. In and out.

“Oh, dear.” Jean sat down beside her. “I can see you’re angry, Immy, but some people simply aren’t animal people, dear. It’s just the way it is.”

Immy’s expression remained set. “It’s not that.”

“No?”

Immy’s eyes met Jean’s, and she realized she could tell her. She took a deep breath. “Something happened. In Australia. To one of his patients. It wasn’t his fault, but it’s why . . . why he isn’t working anymore. Why he can’t do anything anymore. Or doesn’t want to, I mean.”

“Ah, I see,” Jean said.

There was something in her voice that made Immy look over at her.

“That happens sometimes, you know, with medical people. It’s the same with vets. There are some patients who are different. Special. Who stay with you forever. I don’t think it matters if they’re people, or horses, or cats, or dogs. Maybe even hedgehogs. My husband once cared for a dog that was particularly special. It belonged to a woman in the village whose son was a soldier. It had been his dog, and when her son died, the dog was all she had left of him. The day my husband had to put the dog down, oh, it was awful. Just awful. It was no one’s fault. It was just . . . life. But it was awful just the same, and he retreated inside himself for some time. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that sometimes people who care can care so much that it affects their own lives. Their own families. Do you understand?”

Immy nodded. But the truth was, she didn’t understand. She didn’t understand why her dad couldn’t help with the hedgehogs because Bob had killed two people.

She didn’t understand at all.

Immy tried to remain composed as she helped Jean with the heating pads, and then she left. She closed the conservatory door gently. The rain had started now, and the wind whipped around her. She zipped up her school sweater and walked as normally as she could to the little gate in case Jean was watching. The gate clicked shut behind her.

And then she ran.

Immy was as furious as the wind, which was battering the garden this way and that. She sprinted across the garden, heading straight for the French doors of Lavender Cottage.

She was almost at the doors when it happened — one of the tree’s branches strained in the wind, bent down, and whipped her on its way back up again.

“Oh!” Immy grabbed at her arm, where the tree had clipped her. She stopped and, slowly, looked up.

The tree towered above her, its branches thrashing about violently. It looked almost as angry as she felt. Well, that meant that each was as angry as the other. “He didn’t mean to do it,” she yelled up at the tree. “It was an accident!”

The tree didn’t listen. It continued to hurl its branches around above her, making Immy angrier still.

“It’s all about you, isn’t it? I don’t know what your problem is, but other people have problems as well, you know. It’s been . . . it’s been hard for him. Not that you care!”

She took off then, bursting through the French doors, leaves flying everywhere.

Her father was in the kitchen, and it looked like her mother had just arrived home, because she was standing with her handbag still on her shoulder, the car keys in her hand.

Immy didn’t even close the French doors behind her. Instead, she stood there, the wind hurtling past her into the house.

“You didn’t even try!” Immy yelled at her dad. “You hurt the hedgehog, and you didn’t even try to help her! A tiny little hedgehog. Bleeding! On our lawn. You cut her head open, and you just stood there. What is wrong with you?”

Both her parents stood stock-still.

When it became clear that neither of them had any idea what to say, Immy burst into tears. She ran past the table and bolted for her room. She made it halfway up the stairs before her parents moved into action, her father crossing the room in an instant.

“Come back here, young lady,” he said to her, standing at the bottom of the stairs.

Immy stopped where she was on the stairs, her back to her father.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

Immy turned. Her mother had followed and was hovering behind him, looking uncertain. She was still holding her bag and her keys. She looked like she’d love nothing more than to open the front door, get back in the car, and drive off. Probably back to work.

“You do not storm out of the room like that.” Her father continued to lecture her. “That is not who you are.”

Immy stared down at her dad with cold eyes. “How would you know?” she said. “How would you know who I am? You don’t even know who you are anymore.”

And then she ran the rest of the way to her room and slammed the thick wooden door behind her.