“Will you look after Emma?” I shout to Jo.

“Of course!” She scoops Emma up to watch us drive away.

“Can’t have gone far,” John Ashford says again, this time more to himself.

We pass the house and come up the narrow main road through the little village. I crane my neck, looking back at the expanse of our lawn, hoping he’ll have materialized back home. There are only gulls there, landing and lifting in a scattered cloud.

“I’ll just ask around,” John murmurs.

I nod tightly.

He pokes his head out the window as Mrs. Tavish passes, her little gray terrier clutched to her chest. “Seen Charlie about?”

“What?” She looks down to cross the cobblestones.

“Charlie Treadway.”

She adjusts the dog, with effort, and cups her ear.

John breaks into a smile, waving her off, then turns to me. “She’d have told us if she’d seen him.”

Blue fills my window. I gasp, startling back against my seat, but it’s only Brian Rowe in his police constable sweater. We’re idling in front of the customs office, aren’t we? We probably should have come to him first anyway.

“What’s this now?” PC Brian leans low, frowning over his steaming mug of tea like it’s a crucial piece of evidence.

“Charlie’s missing,” I blurt.

“Can’t have gone far.” He snorts at his own joke.

I manage to hang on to a pained smile, inwardly screaming. I’ve been here long enough to know that humor is Brian’s default mode—it doesn’t necessarily mean he isn’t taking this seriously.

“Yep, I’ll call around. Signals are a bust, but the landlines…” Brian swipes at his forehead. “I’ll have a little walk about. I’m sure you’ll find him first, though, Nina. Don’t fret about it.”

Everybody’s so cavalier here. Nothing bad could possibly happen on Lute, don’t you know, except for that one day. It’s illogical. But I play along, as ever, waving gratefully to Brian before we continue on.

Charlie’s not invincible. He’s soft and slight and sensitive to everything. And it isn’t like him to vanish. The thought keeps bobbing back up to the surface. This is wrong. Emma’s my imp, but Charlie’s my satellite, ever orbiting, and I don’t even remember the last moment I clocked him this morning. Out on the lawn, maybe, just after breakfast? What kind of mother am I?

The voice I hear when I berate myself these days sounds more and more like my mother’s, that hissing whisper through a smiling mouth, quiet enough that other parents could never hear. Whatever kind of parent I am, I’m a hell of a lot better than she was. She doesn’t deserve any space in my head.

John’s whistling an old song I vaguely recognize.

“There’s no way he got on the boat to Sunnan, is there?” I ask. My heart beats more frantically just thinking about the possibility.

“No,” John says. “The vicar wouldn’t have let him on, even if he did get a wild fancy to go with them. They know Charlie’s got to stay.”