I sat in the nursery with my babies and watched the door.
Leo woke first.
Then Noah.
Then Samuel.
I held them one by one, pressing my lips against their tiny heads, breathing in milk and warmth and life.
Someone had touched my dead brother’s grave.
Someone had sent a message into my home.
Someone wanted us afraid.
And for a moment, they succeeded.
At 2:00 a.m., I found my father alone in the library.
The fire was low. He stood before the mantel, staring at a portrait of Nathaniel.
My brother had golden hair, serious eyes, and one hand resting on the shoulder of a brown spaniel long dead.
“Was it an accident?” I asked.
My father did not turn.
“No.”
The word entered me like ice.
I gripped the back of a chair. “What?”
He turned then.
In the firelight, he looked hollowed out.
“Nathaniel did not die in an accident,” he said. “He was taken.”
