The Last Days of Summer

The cottage lay at the top of the cliff path, looking out over the waves and the sand, and the tiny village below. On a wild night, the wind swept up from the sea, over the cliff, and rattled the tiles of the cottage roof. But the night that Rachel and Ursula met Sebastian wasn’t wild. It was warm, and clear: a classic British summer’s evening, with Pimm’s in the garden, the buzz of the insects in the long grass, and the fading sting of too much sun on one’s skin. The night they met was perfect.

It was only after that everything started to go wrong.

On A Summer’s Night, by Nathaniel Drury (2015)

It was late by the time we finished talking, but I had one more, urgent thing I needed to take care of.

Checking the hallway to make sure no one else was near, I let myself into Nathaniel’s study. Placing the file with Mum’s letters on the desk, I pulled the newspaper clipping about Matthew Robertson’s death from my pocket. I needed to make sure Edward wouldn’t find this until I was ready. Until I knew what had really happened.

I grabbed the photo of Isabelle, Matthew and Therese from the journal I’d hidden it in, and stuffed both clippings into an empty envelope. Then, with one last check over my shoulder at the locked door, I crawled under Nathaniel’s desk and pulled up the loose floorboard I was pretty sure no one else knew about.

Nathaniel had used the hiding space for his secrets: for keepsakes he wanted to hide from the world, for notes on books so top secret he hadn’t even mentioned them to his agent yet, for chocolates he wasn’t supposed to eat, and an emergency bottle of whisky for when the writing got hard. He’d shown me the space under the floorboards when I was sixteen, swearing me to strictest secrecy.

If he’d had any other information about Matthew’s death, information he’d wanted to keep from Edward, this was where he’d have put it. And it was where I planned to hide the little information I had found.

But when I looked, the hiding space was empty, except for a half full bottle of whisky and an envelope with my name on it.

For a moment, I hoped it might be some final instructions from Nathaniel, sent from beyond the grave. But then I realised – the handwriting on the front wasn’t his.

I took the envelope and replaced it with my hurriedly sealed one. Then I stared at my name, written in Ellie’s neat, precise hand. Whatever it said…I wasn’t sure I was ready to read it. Not when we’d just managed to find our way to a sort of truce. I couldn’t do anything that might unsettle that, not now.

I pushed it back into the hidey-hole and replaced the floorboard. Straightening up, I put my hands on my hips and stared around the study. If the information I needed wasn’t there, then where was it? There was a journal or at least a diary with extensive notes for every single year since Nathaniel turned eighteen – except for 1968, the year he and Isabelle moved to Rosewood. It couldn’t be a coincidence. Had he destroyed it? Or had Isabelle found it?

I crossed the room to the large, heavy oak bookcase, situated between the door and the comfy chair where Nathaniel liked to do his reading. Running my fingers across the spines of his novels, I stopped at Going Home, and pulled it out. It was the book I’d been reading, the day Nathaniel called and invited me home for the Golden Wedding. I flicked through the pages, soaking in my grandfather’s words once more, searching for…something.

Glancing at the clock, I knew it was past time for me to go to bed. But somehow, it seemed easier to curl up in Nathaniel’s comfy chair and lose myself in Agnes and Grace’s story again. If he hadn’t left the answers I needed in his journals, I couldn’t help but think Nathaniel might have left them in his fiction. He always claimed not to write about his life, but anyone who’d met him knew it wasn’t true. Every single word he wrote said something about him, his life, his beliefs and thoughts. And even if they didn’t solve the mystery of Matthew’s death, perhaps they could tell me something else – what he believed about me. What I needed to do next, what he wanted for me in this world, what my truths were, from the man who knew me best.

At that realisation, I paused, my finger on the page. I was reading the wrong book. Going Home had been published in 1980, ten years before I was even born. If I wanted the truth, I needed to read his last book. Nathaniel once told me that the completion of one book was what led him to start the next – that as soon as the last words were down, he realised what he should have been writing about all along, and that was what spurred him to begin a new book, to try and say all the things he’d failed to in the last one.

I needed the book he’d written just before he decided to write his memoirs. Somewhere in those pages there had to be an explanation, a reason for his decision to publish the family secrets now. Something that would help me decide whether to go ahead with the project.

Rushing back to the bookcase, I replaced Going Home and pulled out the newest, shiniest hardback on the shelf: On A Summer’s Night. The story of two sisters, stuck together in some crumbling seaside cottage, both in love with the same – married – man. The book had received middling reviews, I remembered vaguely. I’d only read it once, the day it came out, but it was too soon after leaving Rosewood, and too close to the bone, for me to take it in properly.

Now, I raced through the pages searching for something else – yet all I found was more of myself. The sisters weren’t me and Ellie, not really. But there were flickers of familiarity spread through the book, enough to prick my conscience and distract me from my search.

Edward perched on the arm of my chair. “You think the family secrets are in there?”

“Probably not,” I admitted. “But I think I’ve had enough secrets for one day, anyway.”

“Better than I’d expected.” I leant my head against his side, and felt the warmth of him through his shirt. In moments like this, the quiet, private ones, I knew exactly what I wanted for my future. The rest of the time…I couldn’t even admit that to myself. “She told us everything.”

“Ellie is Dad’s daughter too,” I said. Then I remembered my promise. “But…we can’t include this story in the memoirs if we go ahead with them.”

I shook my head. “It’s not that. I think she’s honestly glad to have the truth out in the open.” Would it be that easy with Isabelle? Whatever her secret was, once it was out, would it all be over? “But she’s scared that her husband might come after her. Might sue, or try to discredit her – and the memoirs by association, I suppose.”

“He clearly wasn’t the most stable of men. I can understand why she’d be afraid. But Saskia…the truth is the truth. The past is a series of facts. We can’t pick and choose which ones we include.”

“I’m not going to do anything to put my mum at risk,” I said firmly, and he sighed.

“So we’re at an impasse?” Would all my relationships be like this from now on? A series of negotiations, truces and deals, that never let me truly relax?

“So we’ll wait and see what happens. Let me do some digging, before we make a final decision.” I didn’t know quite what that meant, but I was too tired to argue with him. Edward’s fingers stroked through my hair, soothing and making me sleepy. I yawned, and he plucked the book from my fingers. “Save the rest of this for tomorrow. Come on.”

Standing, he held out a hand to pull me to my feet. I took it, stumbling forward as I got up. Edward caught me, his arms around my waist in a moment, and suddenly I was pressed against him, so close I could feel his breath on my cheek.

“Kia…” he whispered, and I shook my head. I was done with words for today.

Stretching up on tiptoes, I pressed a kiss to his lips, long and soft. A promise, more than anything. And then I stepped back.

“Goodnight, Edward,” I said. And then, taking the book from his hand once more, I walked out and down the corridor to the Yellow Room, my heart singing the whole way.

I didn’t read any more that night, but I still managed to oversleep. In the end, I was woken up by my dad knocking on the door with a cup of tea for me.

“Your mum filled me in on last night,” he said, putting the mug on my bedside table, and perching on the edge of my bed. “I’m not surprised you’re all so tired.”

I gave a small smile. “It wasn’t quite how I was expecting my day to go when I woke up yesterday.”

“Well then,” Dad said, “who knows what might happen today.” He paused. “Are we okay? You have to know…we never wanted to lie to you. It just never seemed like quite the right time to tell.”

“I can understand that.” So many secrets, so many lies, at Rosewood. Would there ever be a good time to spill them all?

“I’m glad. Now, come down to breakfast when you’re ready. I’ve made chocolate croissants.” Then, with a kiss on the top of my head and a pat of my hand, he stood, and headed for the door.

“Dad?” I called after him, and he paused in the doorway. “Thank you. For everything. I hate to think… I’m just so glad Mum had you.”

“So am I,” he said, with a warm smile. “Besides, you’d all have starved if you’d been left to survive on your mother’s cooking.”

And then he was gone, before I could point out that without him, none of us would even exist. And Mum might have been trapped in a violent marriage for good.

I shuddered, and threw off the thought. I’d far rather think about last night’s kiss, or even the memoirs. But actually, I lay back against the pillow and contemplated what I wanted to do with my day. After chocolate croissants, obviously.

Firstly, I decided I wanted a day off. A week of wading through Nathaniel’s handwriting and inefficient filing was enough to make anyone need a break.

Secondly, I had something I wanted Edward to see. I’d shared it with Caro already, after all.

“Where are we going?” Edward asked after breakfast, as I strode ahead of him down the path. We’d left the others to their own occupations back at the main house, and ignored any suspicious glances from Isabelle as we left.

“If you want to understand my grandfather, and his writing, then you have to understand this place.” I threw my arms out wide to encompass the house and the gardens and the woods.

“I have been living here for more than a year,” he pointed out, catching up to me with long strides.

“Ah, but how far into the woods have you been?” He didn’t answer that, so I carried on down the path, the crisp, chill air stinging my cheeks and my lungs.

“So what’s so important about these trees?” Edward pushed a low-hanging branch out of my way, and I ducked into the real heart of the woods, where it got darker and damper and scarier, counting tree trunks as I went.

“How many of my grandfather’s books have you read?” I asked, answering a question with a question.

“All of them,” Edward responded promptly, as if insulted that there could be any doubt. “Repeatedly.”

“Then you should already know.” My hand brushed against the seventh tree, and I swung myself round to the right. Edward scrambled to follow my abrupt change of direction. “This Day or the Next, set mostly in…” One tree, two trees…

“The night in the woods. Okay, I get it. They were all this wood.” Give the man a medal.

He looked around, confused, even as I reached behind the tree for the hidden ladder. “Where?”

“The place I wanted to show you.” The ladder swung down, and I tugged to make sure it was still secure, before putting my foot on the first rung. “Nobody else knows this is here. Well, except for Caro. Not now Nathaniel’s gone.”

Edward followed me up the ladder into the cramped wooden box of a tree house, looking too tall and out of place as he stretched his legs out more than halfway across the floor and propped himself up against the wall. I sat across from him, my arm resting across his ankles, and tried to remember why I’d asked him up there in the first place.

“You brought me to see your secret tree house,” Edward said, folding his arms behind his head.

“Sort of.” I tried to gather my thoughts, but it was hard when he was looking at me that way, with warm amusement and affection in his eyes and the lines of his body. “This tree house… Nathaniel built it for me, when I was small. Well, actually he conned his assistant at the time into building it for him.”

“And I thought that shopping for an anniversary present for Isabelle was bad,” Edward murmured.

I ignored him. “He wanted me to have a place that was my own, you know? Because we were down here for whole summers and the house was always full of people, and I wanted to have adventures and secrets because I was that sort of child…”

“Like Caro,” I agreed. “And nobody knew about it except for me and Nathaniel, once the assistant quit.”

“And now me.” Edward lowered his arms and wrapped one hand around my ankle. “And you brought me here because you wanted me to know more about Nathaniel?” Even as he said it, I could tell he didn’t believe that was all there was to it.

“And I seem to know less and less about you.” I shifted my body slightly, turning in towards his. “I don’t suppose you want to redress the balance?” And that, I realised, was the real reason I’d brought him out here. Because he was uncovering my secrets and my family’s secrets one by one, and I needed to have something in return. And the tree house was the best place I knew for secrets.

My answer wasn’t quite what I’d have expected it to be, if I’d spent any time at all thinking about it before my mouth blurted it out. “What’s the deal with you and Ellie?”

From the look on Edward’s face, it wasn’t the question he’d expected either.

He sighed, and for a moment I thought he wasn’t going to answer, or was going to fob me off with some half-truth, but instead, he started to talk. “When I first arrived here, I was… Well, to be honest, I was running away from my real life. Things had got away from me, fallen apart, and I just wanted to be as far away from it all as possible.”

I suspected that this tied in to Ellie’s comments about being careful with him. I also suspected that if I interrupted to ask, I’d never get the full answer to my question, so I let him carry on.

“Ellie… When I arrived, Ellie was still very angry. It had been hard for her, I think, not just dealing with what happened between you and Greg…” I winced. Nice to see he wasn’t going to soften any of this for me. “But also because she’s really very isolated out here. She wasn’t working much at the time, and the only people she really saw were her grandparents, who she couldn’t tell what was the matter, and her husband, who had cheated on her before they were even legally married.”

The hand around my ankle tightened, just briefly, as though to reassure me that he was merely stating facts, not judgements. I wasn’t really all that reassured, although it wasn’t as if anything he was saying wasn’t true.

“So, I think it was nice for her to have me around,” Edward went on, loosening his grip on my leg. “Someone vaguely her own age who she could talk to. And with me having my own relationship issues…we bonded. Became friends.”

Luckily for me, Edward answered it anyway, eventually. “It took a while for me to realise that our situations were actually very different. I’d been betrayed and humiliated by a woman I thought I loved. My ex… We were supposed to get married. Until I found out that I wasn’t the only person she’d promised that to. She and my best friend were making plans to elope, before our booked wedding day. I guess she figured that once the deed was done, I couldn’t try and talk her out of it. I don’t know.”

“That’s awful.” I knew I wasn’t really the right person to censure another for their actions in relationships, but still. That was pretty cold, and my heart ached for Edward.

He just shrugged. “It was. And that’s why I had to get away. When Nathaniel called and invited me here, it was a lifeline. A chance to live a new life, to step outside my reality for a while. And once I got here I realised pretty quickly that, while it still hurt, and it stung and I woke up thinking about it every morning, I was more angry with myself for being a fool than I was with her. And I didn’t really have any interest in seeing her again or making things better; I just wanted to forget and move on.” He shifted, pulling one long leg up against his chest. “Ellie, on the other hand, just wanted to be able to forgive and forget, and couldn’t figure out why she wasn’t able to yet.”

That, inevitably, was when the sob that had been fighting its way up my throat found its way out. Suddenly I was aware of the tears on my cheeks, and the fact that my nose was starting to run – not least because it was cool and damp in that tree house.

Edward shuffled himself round to sit beside me, and I found myself pulled into his arms, my face against his warm, broad chest. I have to admit, it did make everything seem just a little bit better.

“She doesn’t want to be angry with you any more, Saskia. She’s just not sure how to stop.”

I sniffled, probably very unattractively. “She and Greg seem happier, at least.”

Edward nodded; I could feel his head bob above mine. “I think it has helped, seeing you this summer. Seeing how little interest you have in him. Telling everyone that you have a new boyfriend – even if that wasn’t exactly accurate.”

“I tried to make it obvious,” I admitted. “I wanted her to know that it was all over long ago. I hadn’t even spoken to Greg since I left.”

“So,” Edward said, with the tone of someone changing the subject. His mouth was very close to my ear, and his breath was warm against my hair. “Do you feel you know something more about me, now? Like why you are the last person in the world I should be falling for, and why kissing you that night in the attic was the biggest risk I’ve taken in years?”

“I think so.” I straightened up as much as I could, without dislodging his arms from around me, letting his words sink in. To his mind, I was exactly like his ex – worse, I’d already committed a terrible betrayal, so he already knew I was capable of it. No wonder he’d been keeping his distance. Until now…

“Good. Then I’d like to ask you one more question.” I nodded to give him permission and, looking straight into my eyes, he asked, “What is the situation with you and Duncan right now?”

Edward gave me his lopsided smile, one that warmed my middle even in the shady cool of the tree house. “I want to know if you’re officially single yet before I kiss you again.”

Well, in that case. “It’s over. I ended it when I called the other night.”

Every complaint my body had about the chill or the uncomfortableness in the tree house disappeared when Edward’s lips met mine.

Eventually, however, even I had to admit that an outdoor structure with gaps for doors and windows and a large potential for splinters wasn’t the best place for a romantic interlude. I’d stopped things in the attic because the time and place were wrong. The timing might have improved, but the tree house wasn’t much better as a location.

“We should go back to the house,” I murmured against Edward’s neck, as his fingers trailed up my spine then snaked their way underneath my bra and moved around to my front.

“Really,” I said, after another long kiss. Pulling back I bashed into a wooden box, which must have been tucked away behind one of the stools that we’d displaced with our antics. I frowned as the lid fell open to reveal a small black notebook, some polished gemstones, a few pens, flower petals and another of Nathaniel’s old pipes.

“Caro’s treasures, I guess.” I turned back into his arms and kissed him again. “Inside. Really. We are not doing this in a tree house – especially not when Caro could arrive at any moment to retrieve her stuff.”

We finally made it to the bottom of the ladder, eventually. Not a lot further, since Edward instantly spun me round to pin me against the tree trunk and kiss me again but really, as long as he kept kissing me it could take us until January to reach the house for all I cared.

“We need to…” Edward pulled back and took a breath. “Unless you want your family following us up to your bedroom, we need to…pause.”

With some considerable effort, I took a step backwards. “Your bedroom. Mine’s too yellow.”

We were lucky, in the end – everyone had made themselves conspicuously absent, although I suspected it wasn’t actually for our benefit. Still, we snuck up the stairs, trying not to giggle in my case, and dashed down the landing, avoiding the squeaky floorboards, and into Edward’s room, letting the door crash behind us.

“Thank God for that,” Edward murmured against my mouth, as he reinstated his campaign to remove as much of my clothing as possible in the minimum possible time.

It was strange, that night, sitting across the table from Edward, too far away to touch, too self-conscious about what the family would say to even make eye contact with him. Edward, at least, seemed to understand this. He rolled his eyes at me over the starters, then spent the rest of the meal entertaining Caroline with tales from his own childhood, growing up in some tiny seaside town that I began to suspect he might actually have invented.

“Then there was the year that the jellyfish invaded…” I turned my attention aside and tried to make pleasant conversation with Isabelle, instead.

“I suppose you’ve found all manner of fascinating things in my husband’s study,” Isabelle said, tapping her perfectly polished nails against her wine glass. “I appreciate, of course, that these items are in your power now. But, nonetheless, I’m sure many of them are my memories too. Perhaps, when you’ve finished pulling them apart…” She trailed off, looking wistful.

“Isabelle, of course you can look through them,” I said, tiredly. “We’re just putting them into order, at the moment, trying to make some sense of what happened when. As soon as we’ve got them sorted.”

Isabelle leant forward across the table. “Are you working forwards or backwards?” she asked, her voice suddenly forceful. “I mean, chronologically. Are you starting from now and working back, or from the beginning?”

“Uh, a bit of both,” I said, wondering why it mattered, “Nathaniel’s files weren’t really all that well organised.”

“Perhaps I can help,” Isabelle offered, brightly. Too brightly. Once again, I found myself wondering what it was Isabelle thought was in those files, and when we were going to find it. Was it Matthew Robertson’s death? Did she already know the truth I was seeking? It would explain a lot. Or worse, was there another, bigger secret that I hadn’t even sensed yet?

“I’m not sure… I mean, eventually we’ll definitely need your help, identifying people in photos, things like that.” I was waffling, and Isabelle was starting to turn pink around the cheeks. “The ones that aren’t newspaper clippings, anyway.”

“Newspapers?” Isabelle’s nervous tone kicked it up a gear. Suddenly, I was certain that this had to do with the death at the party. What else would be newspaper worthy? “Did he keep many clippings?”

“Some,” I said, carefully. “Isabelle, if there’s something specific you want me to look out for…something that happened here at Rosewood, for instance…”

He gaze snapped to connect with mine. “What have you found?” she asked, her words a whisper.

“Nothing, yet.” Not really, anyway. Nothing I could prove. But if the police had been investigating, there must have been something suspicious about the death. Something Nathaniel had known. And the only way he could have known for sure was if he’d been involved in it.

That was the part I was desperately hoping I could disprove, before Edward found out about it.

Isabelle gave a small, sharp nod. “Because there’s nothing to be found. You just let me know when you’re done rifling through my past.” She pushed her plate away and turned to talk to Ellie, on her other side, but I caught her wrist with my fingers and stopped her.

“Isabelle…the night of the Golden Wedding. I was there. Outside Nathaniel’s study. I heard your argument.”

My grandmother’s face turned stone stiff and emotionless. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She wrenched her wrist away. “That’s none of your business. And anything learned from eavesdropping should be forgotten, and fast. No good ever comes of it.” This time, when she turned away, I let her go.

I looked up to find Edward watching me, all tales of jellyfish forgotten. But this wasn’t the attention of early in the afternoon, when he couldn’t keep his eyes – or his hands – off my skin, my curves, my everything. Now his gaze was cool, assessing, as if he were studying me for secrets, for truths, instead of Nathaniel’s journals.

I didn’t linger downstairs for long after dinner. Edward caught my eye as everyone moved from the dining room through to the drawing room and I thought, for a moment, that he was going to suggest that we retire back to his room – until Ellie slipped a hand through his arm saying, “I haven’t seen you all day. How is the work on the memoirs going?”

I silently thanked my sister for her unintentional help, then slipped away quietly up the stairs while he was distracted answering her. If I was lucky, he’d be kept occupied for long enough for me to complete my task.

With one last wistful glance at Edward’s door as I passed, I hurried on into Nathaniel’s study, curled up in my usual chair, and pulled up the next box file in the stack.

At the beginning, I’d sort of assumed that Isabelle was against the memoirs on principle, rather than because of any specific event or occurrence that she didn’t want publicised. After all, she’d been married to the same man for fifty years, with no whisper of gossip as far as I was aware. But it was there, somewhere – I knew that for certain now. And it couldn’t be Mum’s marriage that had her worried, or she wouldn’t still be asking what we were looking for. Ellie had already told her we knew everything.

Which meant that there was something else, somewhere in these boxes. It had to be Matthew’s death, right? And I was going to have to find out the truth about it before I could make my final decision.

By nine-thirty, I’d given every single one of the boxes at least a cursory going through, and I couldn’t find anything more than a few photos of Nathaniel with his arm around various attractive women who weren’t his wife. Which, given my grandfather’s reputation for being an enormous flirt, wasn’t entirely surprising. There was nothing else – no love letters, no hotel bills, no suspicious presents. Nothing to suggest he’d ever actually been unfaithful. Which, actually, surprised me a little.

“Did you find it yet?” I looked up to see Edward standing in the open doorway, leaning against the frame, his arms folded.

“You thought you’d search for whatever it is that Isabelle doesn’t want us to find on your own.” The edge in his voice told me he had his suspicions about what I’d do with that information afterwards too.

“There is nothing in any of these boxes that Isabelle could legitimately object to us publishing,” I said instead, shoving the last box file off my lap and onto the nearest stack. “We’ve been through every single one of them.” I couldn’t even find the journal for the year they moved to Rosewood.

Edward shut the door behind him, and came to perch on the edge of Nathaniel’s desk. “What do you mean? Nothing?”

“Just what I say,” I said, impatiently. “She was quizzing me at dinner. Trying to find out what we’d discovered. But there’s nothing here that would justify that sort of concern.”

“Then what is it that’s missing?” Edward asked thoughtfully. “I see what you mean.”

We contemplated the untidy stack of boxes in silence. In my hurry to find what I was looking for, I hadn’t been quite so careful about ordering and dating things as we’d been so far. In fact, I’d go as far as to say I’d just tossed everything on the floor.

“If we ask her directly, you know she won’t tell us.” After all, she wouldn’t have been so desperate to get into the study and hide or burn the evidence if she was going to just give it up to the first person who asked.

“We need someone else,” Edward suggested. “Someone else who knows what she’s afraid of.”

And all of a sudden, Therese’s irrational fear that Isabelle would throw her out, that her sister-in-law had never liked her anyway, came back to me.

“I might have an idea,” I said. “But I need to do it alone. And not tonight. In the morning.” Therese had always been more of a lark than a night owl. If I quizzed her now she might throw me out just for holding up her bedtime.

“This is my family, Edward,” I snapped. “Am I going to tell Edward Hollis, biographer, seeker of truths and uncoverer of scandals, every secret I find out about my family, no matter how damaging? I don’t know.”

His face froze, slipping into a stiff mask that gave away none of his feelings. “I thought you might tell me. Your friend. Your…whatever we are.”

I glanced away. I’d hurt him, and I hadn’t even meant to. It seemed I couldn’t stop doing that.

“Let me see what I can find out first?” I asked, aiming for a conciliatory tone. “Then we can talk. See if it changes my feelings about going ahead with the project.”

“You mean, if you don’t like the truth, you won’t go ahead with the memoirs?”

“I’ll tell you first,” I promised, even though I wasn’t completely sure if it was the truth or not. “We can talk about it.”

“And if whatever secret Isabelle is afraid of getting out is big enough, dangerous enough, what then?” I hesitated, unsure of my answer, until he continued impatiently. “Come on, Saskia. This is my life, my work too. I deserve to know what’s happening with it.”

“And as soon as I do, you will,” I told him. “But right now… I don’t even know what she’s hiding.”

“The truth,” Edward said bluntly. “And whatever that is…that’s what Nathaniel wanted in his memoirs.”

“Even if it hurts everyone?” I shook my head. “He wouldn’t do that. But…maybe we can come up with something. A way to publish the memoirs without hurting anyone…”

“You mean, lie.” Edward stared down at me, his eyes dark and shadowed. “Spin a nice story that keeps everyone happy. That’s not what I’m here to do, Saskia. I’m not going to rewrite history for you.”

Of course he wouldn’t. It was all black and white, truth or fiction with Edward. “I’m not asking you to.” But only because I knew he’d say no.

Edward sighed, and reached out a hand to me. “Come on. If it has to wait until morning, we might as well go to bed. We can’t decide anything until we know the truth.” One more night, and then I was going to have to face whatever it was that had happened here, forty-eight years ago. The night Matthew Robertson died.

I hesitated for a moment. “Go to bed as in…together, or alone?” There had been too many changes and tides in our relationship for me to be entirely sure.

The corners of Edward’s mouth twitched up into a small smile. “Together. If you want.”

“If I was mad at you? Maybe. But for some reason, I’d still rather have you with me than be apart.” His grin widened as he tugged me closer. “You’ve got under my skin, Saskia Ryan.”

I was already an outcast at Rosewood. I couldn’t bear to be an outcast to Edward, too.