It did mean that out of anyone on the squad, she was the one who stood the best chance of pulling any information from them. Really, Mia shouldn’t have been put on the investigation. She knew it, Murdoch probably knew it, and, before long, Izzy would as well. Beyond Mia’s personal history with the island, this type of death wasn’t even their forte. They worked cold cases, she and Izzy—reading people, plucking out mostly forgotten memories, navigating lies and false narratives constructed out of desperation and weak alibis. That was their expertise. Not this . . . this . . . whatever this turned out to be.

But these people were hers. If anyone spoke their language, if anyone stood the slightest chance in getting them to talk, it was Mia.

She and Izzy stood at the rail in silence as the small port finally came into view. Squat, colorful houses fanned out from the docks, the bright facades a welcome home for the fishers who spent the rough days at sea. Most of the island’s population lived in the little village, and the tight cluster gave the illusion that the rest of St. Lucy’s was similarly built up.

Beyond the town’s center, though, only forest stretched until the lighthouse to the west, until the Bell mansion in the north. The trees were ashy, their trunks gnarled and weathered, and she used to pretend fairies lived in the pockets of space beneath their moss-drenched roots. She knew each path through the woods, the shortcut to the edge of the cliffs, the meadow that was nothing but dandelion fluff in the summertime. She knew the abandoned hut that stood on the southern tip, knew that no matter how many times you were dared to go into it alone, you knew you shouldn’t. She knew her name was carved on the underside of the third pew in the one-room church. She knew this place. It was hers, just like the people were.

The ferry was close enough now to make out the individual buildings. The post office, the grocer’s on the corner of Main Street, the diner next to Mrs. Winslow’s pale peach bungalow. It had been fifteen years, and beyond a fresh coat of paint or two, nothing had changed.

That’s how it was on the island. Time stretched and bent and became meaningless beyond how many hours could be spent on the ocean. When she’d been a teenager, it had driven Mia mad. There was a world out there that was moving forward, for good or bad, but moving nonetheless.

Now there was an ache in her chest that she didn’t want to name. It wasn’t nostalgia, because there was nothing golden or sweet about it. It was threaded through with resentment and fear and a vicious darkness that ravaged any lingering warm emotion.

And yet, still, that ache was familiar.

Home. She was finally home.