Fiona’s face had gone pale and shiny with sweat, as if she were about to be ill. “Leelo,” she breathed.

Leelo went down to her knees before her. She took her mother’s hands, trying not to notice how they were smaller than her own. “It won’t change the way I feel about you. Or him. He will always be my brother. But is that who you sent him to? Is Tate with his father?”

“Oh, child, this wasn’t how I wanted you to find out. It all happened so long ago.”

“Please, Mama. I need to know the truth.”

Fiona swallowed thickly and dabbed at her eyes with the edge of her sleeve. “I know. It’s...difficult.”

Leelo lowered her head to her mother’s lap. “It’s all right, Mama. I’m almost a grown woman. I can handle more than you think I can.”

“It’s not just that, love. It’s difficult for me to remember that time.” She began to comb her fingers through Leelo’s hair as she spoke, the way she had when Leelo was a child.

After a moment, Fiona inhaled deeply and released her breath in a slow stream that cooled Leelo’s cheek. “It was more than a decade ago, now. We had a harsh winter that year. The entire lake froze for the first time in living memory. It was so bitterly cold that the Watchers refused to stand their shifts after multiple people lost fingertips or toes to frostbite. But an outsider hunting a man-eating wolf that had been terrorizing a village crossed the ice, not realizing where he was in the snowstorm. He fell into a ravine and injured himself badly. He sent his dog away when he saw a figure approaching the next morning, assuming the person would kill them both.”

Leelo lifted her head a little. “It was you?”

Mama sighed. “It was. The outsider was nearly unconscious and half-frozen already. I considered leaving him to die. But when I got closer, I could see that he was a young man, only a little older than me. Then he opened his eyes and looked at me, really looked at me... I can’t explain it, but I couldn’t just abandon him, darling. I helped him out of the ravine, and we managed to get to a part of the island I thought no one would go, especially during such a brutal winter. At first, it was little more than a lean-to made from fallen boughs. But over the following weeks, I managed to pilfer supplies from your father’s workshop, and as Nigel healed, he built the little cottage.”

Fiona was quiet for a moment, and Leelo was afraid she wouldn’t tell her the rest, the part she needed to hear most of all. “And you fell in love?” she prompted.