Emily had first sketched the bird last spring, during a visit to a National Trust garden. Her grandmother had wandered around the gardens, chatting with the gardener about what best to plant in her garden in order to attract more butterflies. Emily had watched the proud bird strut along the edge of the croquet lawn, as if it were master of the house.

They don’t start growing their fancy tail feathers until they’re three. Emily had picked one up off the lawn, spun it between her fingers and watched the colors blur. The head gardener had commented on how, despite their beauty, peacocks actually tasted pretty foul. Her grandmother had laughed at his terrible joke while all Emily could do was muster up half a smile, turning away and back to her drawing.

The garden. Her grandmother’s garden. What would happen to it if the cottage were sold? It was what had provided Catriona Robinson with comfort, especially in the last few months when the pain was too much for her to venture even to the village. It was what kept Emily grounded, connected to her grandmother somehow, whenever she felt the sadness lurking. That and the birds who came every morning for their breakfast crumbs and would sit with Emily while she sketched in the late summer sun.

What would happen to all those memories if the cottage were to be home to someone new?

And what about me? Emily suddenly realized. Where was she supposed to go?

The idea of starting again was terrifying. So many years spent in one place, with one person, only for it all to be taken away from her at once. The books they had written together had been her constant, her way of coping with the life she had been dealt. The partnership forged between an unlikely pairing, which gave them both so much joy. The letters and pictures sent by readers from all over the world, telling them how much they loved the books with all the secrets hidden within each picture.

Clues Emily and her grandmother would come up with together, laugh about the strangeness of some, talk about the links back to folklore or simply an object from her grandmother’s life, before.

“Open it,” the bookseller said, and Emily noted the anticipation, the excitement, in his voice.

“You,” she replied, handing back the book with trembling fingers, afraid of what more was about to come.

He regarded her for a moment, then set the book down on a nearby trestle table and slipped his forefinger inside the first page, easing the spine apart to reveal the dedication.

For Emily.

If you don’t try, you’ll never know.

Emily stepped closer to peer at the typed words that she knew didn’t marry up with the actual dedications in each and every book in the series. Ten in all, written in the back room of her grandmother’s cottage, typed up with a clatter of keys through hailstorms, heat waves, and everything in between.