Liv nodded, watching smoke puff from the stack as the long passenger train pulled into the station. A deafening whistle split the morning quiet.
“I’ve been waiting to take this trip my entire life,” she said. She touched the hag stone hanging around her neck.
“And you?” Mack shifted his gaze to Jesse.
Jesse studied Mack for a moment before reaching into his coat and extracting a photograph.
“This is Nell and Gabriel. My wife and son, who drowned last year. My life, our life,” he nodded at the photo, “ended with them. There’s a new life waiting for me across the Atlantic.”
Mack rocked back on his heels.
“Couple of beauties right there,” Mack said, looking at the photo.
Liv had already seen the photograph. Her heart ached for her new friend, but she knew his path had been brought to her for reasons that reason could not explain.
Jesse returned the picture to his pocket and reached into the leather briefcase he’d bought the day before.
He took out several sealed envelopes.
“This one is for the police,” Jesse told Mack, pressing the envelope into the man’s enormous hands. “It tells them where to find the body of Adele Kaiser, and also who killed her. They might not take our word for it, but hopefully they can manage to put the pieces together.” He took out a second envelope.
“Tony Medawar,” Mack read out loud.
“He’s the brother of Veronica, the girl who drowned in the Dead Stream. Liv wrote the story of the night she died — leaving out her name, of course. Hopefully it brings them some peace.”
Mack slapped the envelopes against his hand.
“I hope they nail that bastard,” he mumbled, taking a hand gingerly to the wound hidden beneath his shirt.
Liv didn’t respond. It had already ended for Stephen. A torment far worse than prison awaited him.
“All aboard,” the conductor yelled.
The wave of people shifted forward on the platform.
Liv hugged Mack goodbye. As he pulled away, she slid one of George’s hag stones into his palm.
“Thank you, Mack,” she whispered.
Epilogue
Liv
Liv looked up from the rocky mountainside. Far below, frothy waves crashed against the shore. A boat was moored there.
“Mack,” she murmured, walking down the rocks slowly.
Mack grinned, his bristly red beard revealing two rows of huge white teeth. He picked Liv up and spun her around. Liv laughed and clapped him on the back.
Behind Mack stood a petite woman with black hair tucked beneath a sky-blue knit cap.
“Diane,” Liv said, taking the woman’s gloved hands in her own.
“I’ve heard so much about you,” Diane said. “Your hands must be freezing.”
Liv glanced at her bare hands, red and chapped from foraging without gloves.
She shook her head.
“I don’t even notice it anymore. Apparently, I was made for this place. My body knows how to handle it.”
“And this is George,” Mack announced, grabbing a small boy who’d run up behind him, his cheeks rosy and his hair as red and wild as his father’s.
Liv’s eyes lit up at the sight of the boy. He would be big like his father, but he had his mother’s dark eyes.
“Daddy says you’re magic!” George breathed, stepping to Liv and reaching for the hag stone dangling around her neck. “Daddy has one of these too.”
Liv knelt and watched George lift the stone, pulling her close so he could peer through it, and then dropping it when he spotted a fuzzy white mountain goat on an outcropping of rocks. He took off up the hill.
“Slow down, George,” Diane called hurrying after him.
“Where’s Jesse?” Mack asked, gazing up the mountain at the scattering of cabins.
“He’s with Ingrid, our daughter.”
Mack’s mouth dropped open.
“A daughter. You and Jesse?”
Liv smiled.
“Yes, a gift from the Gods. Come meet her.”
They picked their way up the rocky hillside.
Liv pushed into a warm little cabin. The walls hung with woven rugs to block out the chill from the ocean. Jesse sat in a rocking chair, Ingrid in his lap. They read from a storybook, The Marsh King’s Daughter.
“Modir,” the little girl called, holding out her chubby pink arms.
Liv leaned down and kissed Jesse’s cheek before lifting the girl and holding her out to Mack.
“Mack,” Jesse smiled, standing and giving the man a one-armed hug. “You made it.”
“And quite the journey, too,” Mack grinned. “Diane, George, come here,” he called out the cabin door. He reached into his bag and drew out a paper. “I thought you might want to see this.” Mack handed Liv a copy of a newspaper from Gaylord, Michigan.
“Highly esteemed psychiatrist arrested for the murder of his mother and a local girl who vanished twenty years ago,” Liv read out loud.
“They arrested him?” Jesse asked.
“Last year. It took them a while to build their case, but they got him,” Mack explained.
“I don’t understand,” Liv said. “Why would they name Veronica as well?”
“They found her in the cellar, Liv, with a noose around her neck — or what was left of her, I guess,” Mack told her.
“But she drowned,” Liv muttered, the memory still a regular visitor on restless nights.
Mack shook his head.
“Doesn’t look that way.”
Liv shuddered, realizing Stephen must have followed her that night. Had he pulled Veronica from the river, only to take her back to his house and murder her?
She’d never know.
Liv studied the grainy photograph of Stephen, a constriction holding her heart hostage for a moment.
“After Stephen went nuts, getting a story out of him was difficult. He’s not going to trial,” Mack continued. “He’s already been institutionalized. He’s been deemed incompetent to stand trial, but he’s locked up. It’s over.”
Liv walked to the door and stepped out. The cold wind rushed in from the sea and swirled up around her, lifting her hair.
For a moment, she saw George standing on an outcropping of rock, a little smile on his lips. He tilted his head toward her, and then he was gone.