“Nice weather!” He looks up at the sky as if to demonstrate.

Overeager. Yep, they’re squatting here.

John won’t rat them out for camping without a permit. He’s not the type. Sure enough, he just smiles. “Lady Treadway here’s looking for her son. Seen anybody of the seven-year-old persuasion wandering—?”

“Six,” I correct, my pulse ratcheting up again. “Sorry, he’s six. He’s got dark hair, same color as mine, three and, um, three and a half feet tall? Maybe more?”

“Meters?” the hiker asks wryly, noticing my accent, testing me.

My mind goes blank. I’m still useless at metric conversions. Failing the British test here.

The Scandinavian guy laughs, waving his hand. “No, no, we saw him.”

My heart leaps. He turns, pointing.

“Small kid, headed straight down this path.” He kicks the gravel to demonstrate. “Straight into the forest there. Small forest.”

“Yeah, the grove.” I squint hard, like if I strain enough, I might be able to see through the tufted hill and past the thick oaks and snatch him up, safe and close.

God, this terror. It’s always there, isn’t it, waiting for a reason to bubble over. From the moment he was born, I’ve had an endless store of fear held ready, just in case, and having a second child only quadrupled it.

“Righto.” John knocks on the door of the truck, and the man backs affably away. “You kids have…” His grin pinches a little. “Yeah, you be safe.”

He drives us off with a nod. I turn back, watching clouded bemusement dissipate from the hiker’s expression. The woman waves. Even though I detect sarcasm in the gesture, I wave back. I have to, in this case. Comes with the title, and you never know who’s a journalist. The British press is vicious, even in wartime.

Weird that they’re here, though. We’ve had hardly any tourists this year, and for them to linger now, of all weeks, feels suspect.

As soon as my eyes find the grove again, my relief at having a solid lead is laced with a wash of hot anger. “Why would he have taken off like this? For the grove of all places?”

“It’s an area of outstanding cultural interest,” John says, a twinkle in his eye.

“Not when you’re six. And it isn’t like him.”

“No, it isn’t, is it.” John’s voice gets quieter as we approach the thick line of trees and pull to a stop at the line of split logs and woodchips that serves as a parking lot.