“No,” Emily whispered, a slam of cup on wood before she stormed out to the garden.

She couldn’t look at it. Certainly couldn’t open it, or read her grandmother’s final words. Because that would make it real, make this more than just a passing distraction from the monotony of life. Make her grandmother’s threats and promises come true: that one day soon Emily would be on her own.

If she read the letter, she had the strangest feeling that everything would change, and she wasn’t ready for that. Not yet.

Toes on grass, curling through the damp to feel the earth below and the tiny stems of daisies scattered all around. Daisies she used to make into chains, then drape over the outstretched branches of all the trees that ran around the garden’s perimeter. A shield to stop the outside world from looking in.

Always looking, always staring. Always wanting to know about the famous author and, perhaps even more so, about the silent child.

Emily leant against the rough trunk of the apple tree, looked down to where Milton was waiting at her feet. He had been joined by a robin, who sang out his greeting, then fluttered up to land close to her ear.

A soft breeze stirred the feathers at his breast, bringing with it the scent of honeysuckle and spun sugar from the vicarage next door. The vicar had a notoriously sweet tooth, and Emily would sometimes sit with him as he wrote his sermons, accompanied by a plate of biscuits or Danish pastries that his wife would bake. Perhaps she could pop in, let him read the letter instead?

No matter who read it, she would need to admit that her grandmother and her legacy were gone.

But admitting was impossible. Admitting would make it true.

Her throat began to close as the truth settled in her heart, and she let out a low sob that pierced the garden’s calm.

Milton shook his head, then scuttled back across the lawn. The robin sang out his own note of remorse, and Emily imagined a chorus of birds landing in the apple trees at the back of the garden, a mismatched group of magpies and wrens, crows that perched up high, and swallows that dipped and turned through the brightening sky.

She knew she was doing it again—escaping inside her own imagination, never allowing herself to acknowledge the reality of what she had lost. Because she had lost so much and she didn’t want to have to start again.

Emily took a long, slow breath, wiped her eyes, and went back to the kitchen, where Milton was pecking at the last remaining crumbs on the breakfast table, her grandmother’s letter unopened by his feet.

“Okay,” she sighed as she slipped her finger through the seal. Out came a single sheet of paper embossed with her grandmother’s neat, black script: no more, no less. Just a few letters on a page. Was it some sort of breadcrumb trail she was expected to follow?