My chest aches from the scent of a familiar blend of heather and pine that is so overpowering I find myself reaching for a tree to stop from swaying too far. I make no move to wipe away the tears running in rivers down my cheeks until I’m soon sobbing, choking down great lungfuls of air. I collapse against the tree, unable to take my eyes off my house. My precious home. We should never have left you.

Memories flood back as I search its windows, all of them closed and curtained. No one can see in. No one, most likely, wants to look out. I seek out my old bedroom window that sits on the far right side, next to Danny’s, imagining my old heart-dotted curtains hanging on the other side of it.

I don’t have to close my eyes to smell Mum’s casseroles and roast dinners wafting through the house or hear her voice calling us in for tea, and I grip tighter to the tree to keep from running up to the front door.

It takes me a while to notice the police tent, even though you cannot miss it. Its presence is overwhelming as it perches in the corner at the very edge of the woods.

My eyes flick back and forth between the house and the activity unfurling. A man wearing a black overcoat is bent over, raking a patch of ground. He lifts his head to call someone, pointing at whatever he’s found.

I tear my gaze away and look back at the house. For all the years that have passed, I could be hiding in these trees right now, waiting to jump out on Mum. How time can slip into the ether as if it never existed. I can’t even imagine I’ve had a life anywhere other than Evergreen and yet there have been twenty-five years of it.

I used to weave through the pines I’m standing amongst until I got to the only tree that ever mattered, but even from here I can see it’s not the same. At some point my treehouse was ripped out, leaving it naked.

I let out a groan as pain tears through me, shrinking back when someone near the tent looks in my direction, reminding me I’m effectively spying on a murder scene.

I turn my attention on the bare tree again. Dad built us the treehouse. I’d begged him for a year before he finally found enough wood and spent a month hammering in nails, fixing it like a nest into the branches.