Page 137 of The Black Trilogy

“‘And never breathe a word about your loss,’” Dan completed softly from the doorway.

“You know it, too?”

“It’s ‘If’ by Rudyard Kipling. Ash has a copy of the poem hanging on her office wall back in Virginia. I’ve read those lines many times when I’ve been sitting in there.”

“She said it was special to her, that when she was my age and struggling with how she should live her life, someone read it to her like she did to me.”

“She told me that tale too.”

Dan might have smiled on the surface, but her eyes told a different story as they fixed on the far wall. Haunted. She looked haunted.

“It helped so much,” Tia said. “I’d have gone mad in that room otherwise.”

“She’ll be very glad to hear it offered some comfort.”

“She saved me again. That’s three times now. Once when I fell off my horse, once with the poem, and then when she got me out of that room. It was her, wasn’t it? Or did I imagine her like I imagined Luke?”

“It was her,” Dan confirmed. “She put all the pieces together and realised who’d taken you.”

Really? Luke knew Ash had been there at the end, but he hadn’t realised she’d been so hands-on in the search. What exactly had her role in all this been?

“I thought I was dreaming when she opened the bathroom door,” Tia said. “She wrinkled her nose and said, ‘He’s been making you eat Pop-Tarts? What kind of sick animal would do that?’ I’d been stuck in that filthy room for days, and she still managed to make me laugh. Then she got the chain off my wrist and carried me out of the house.”

Luke wasn’t sure laughter was appropriate. Ash sure found humour in strange places. Although when Tia asked her next question, he almost let out a nervous giggle himself.

“Where is Ash, anyway?”

So, this was how a deer in headlights felt. Ready to get flattened and unable to do anything about it.

“She needed to leave, honey,” Dan said.

“Leave? Why would she leave? She lives here. Where else would she go?”

“Ash wasn’t totally truthful with us about who she was and why she came here,” Luke said. “It was for the best that she went back to her real home.”

Wherever that was. Luke realised he didn’t have a clue. Virginia was a big place.

“But this is her real home now. She was happy. We were all happy. You have to make her come back!”

Now what? Luke didn’t know what to do, other than somehow get Ash to return. And that was impossible, because according to Nick, she was over the Atlantic right now.

“Ash had a few problems in her life, sweetie.” Dan stepped in once again. “Just before she came to England some awful things happened, and she needed to get away for a while. But the time’s come when she needs to face up to those things rather than keep running from them, and that’s what she’s gone to do.”

“Will she ever come back?” Tia asked, tears flooding down her cheeks.

“I don’t know. I honestly don’t. She told me to tell you that she’d miss you, though.” Dan looked at Luke. “Both of you.”

Luke couldn’t meet her gaze, and at that moment, he understood just what he’d lost. He’d never truly known Ash—the quiet woman with what in hindsight was an underlying sadness about her despite her efforts to put on a mask for the world. Yes, she’d lied, but she’d never set out to hurt him, and she’d come through for them both when it really mattered.

“Are you going to see her?” Tia asked Dan.

“Yes, in a day or two. I can give her a message if you like?”

“What am I supposed to say to her?” Tia rolled over and faced the wall. “I can’t believe she left.”

Dan’s phone trilled, and she looked at the screen. “I have to take this. I’ll be downstairs if you need me.”

Luke slid to the floor and leaned back against the bed. In less than a week, his life had fallen apart. His sister wasn’t the only one broken inside. Hurt battled with confusion, a rivalry that left him drained. As well as being cut up about Ash, his view of the world had changed.

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