Papa glanced up as I approached, then went right back to his work.
“You don’t seem surprised to see me,” I said.
“Your aunt called.” His voice had thinned in the past year, and his face was even more weathered than I remembered. But the passing years hadn’t diminished his quiet dignity or his distance. He was right there before me and yet he seemed a million miles away.
“You know why I’m here, then.”
“Yes, child.”
I drew a trembling breath. “We have to talk, Papa. No more secrets.”
“Those secrets were meant to protect you, Amelia.”
“I know that. But the only thing that can protect me now is the truth.”
Silently, he gathered up his tools and put them away. “Let’s sit a spell,” he said, and we sank to the ground, facing the angels, our backs to the gate. When Angus padded over and plopped down at my feet, Papa leaned in absently to rub his head.
“That’s Angus,” I told him.
“Where did you get him?”
“In Asher Falls,” I said, and I saw him shudder. “So many strange things have happened to me there. I felt a connection from the moment I arrived, and I’m only now starting to understand why.” I paused. “Who am I, Papa?”
“You are my Amelia,” he said quietly. “And I love you more than life itself.”
My eyes filled with tears. He’d never said anything like that to me before. After the ghosts came, he’d withdrawn into himself, never showing me the slightest affection, and for years I was left wondering what I had done. But now to hear the tremor in his voice, that desperate sadness in his eyes…it was too much. I had to look away.
So many questions lingered, but I wouldn’t ask him about his time with Tilly. That belonged to them. I didn’t condone what had happened—I was fiercely loyal to my mother, after all—but I could understand it. Two desperately lonely people with their secrets—Papa with his ghosts and Tilly with her premonitions.
Drawing my legs up, I laid my cheek on my knees. “What are we, Papa?”
“In the olden days, we were called caulbearers. Babies born behind the veil with the ability to see beyond the real world into the spirit world. Nowadays, it’s considered an old wives’ tale, but it happens every generation or so in our family.”
“Was Freya born behind the veil?”
“Yes. And she had Tilly’s ability to sense things. She was an extraordinary child, I’m told.”
I glanced at him. “You never knew her, Papa?”
He stared out over the graveyard so that I couldn’t see the desolation in his eyes. “She was my daughter, my only child, but I never saw her alive.”
My heart quickened. “Have you seen her ghost?”
“I saw her corpse.” And the sorrow in his voice brought a fresh sting of tears to my eyes.
I dug the little broken wing from my pocket and handed it to him. “I found this in your things. I shouldn’t have taken it.”
His fingers closed around the bit of porcelain, and he clasped it tightly as he told me his story, how he had not seen or heard from Tilly since he’d gone back to my mother. He hadn’t even known about a baby until Tilly had called one night seventeen years after he’d last seen her and told him just enough to send him flying back to Asher Falls where he’d learned that Freya, his only child, had been murdered.
“Did Tilly know who killed her?”
“She never told me. I guess she was afraid of what I might do. But she had a vision of her child’s death. That’s what guided her to Freya.”
“She found the body?”
He nodded.
“But if she knew Freya was murdered, why didn’t she go to the police? Why did she let everyone think that her daughter had died in a fire?”
“Because she didn’t want anyone to know about you.”
“Why?”
“You were born after Freya was murdered.”
My heart started to hammer. “After?”
His eyes grew distant. “The girl had snuck out of the house to meet someone that night. Tilly didn’t even know she was missing until she woke up from a dream. That dream led her to the laurel bald where she found a fresh grave.”
“Freya’s grave.”
“And yours, child.”
The shock of his words stole my breath even though I must have already intuited the truth. That was why I’d been so overcome at the gravesite. Why that terrible suffocation had pressed down on me. I had been buried there with my murdered mother.
Angus had sensed it, too. That must have been how he found the grave. As impossible as it seemed, he must have picked up my scent, not my mother’s.
I tunneled my fingers through his fur, and he turned, dark eyes gleaming as he nuzzled against me.
“The grave was so shallow the dirt barely covered the body,” Papa said. “She hadn’t been there long. Only moments. Her skin was still warm, and Tilly prayed that she might still be alive. But when she unearthed her, there was no heartbeat. No pulse. The only thing Tilly could do was try and save the baby.”
I had been buried alive, I thought in horror. I had been born to a dead mother. No wonder my life was so strange.
“You weren’t breathing, even when Tilly peeled away the veil. She resuscitated you. She blew her breath into your lungs and brought you back from the other side.”
Brought me back from the other side.
An icy hand grazed my nerve endings.
“And then she gave me to you,” I said softly.
“Yes, but before I took you home, I had to see my child. I had to give her a proper burial so that she could rest in peace.”
My poor, young mother hadn’t been able to rest, but I wouldn’t tell Papa. I wanted him to have that solace.
At least I now knew why he’d been covered in blood when he brought me home. “You’ve been caring for her grave all these years.”
“It was all I could do for her.”
“But, Papa, why did you bury her north to south? Surely it wasn’t because—”
“I didn’t want her facing those mountains,” he said harshly.
I caught my breath. “You felt it, too.” The wind, the dankness. That awful howling.
“Yes, I felt it. So did your mother when we lived there. So did Tilly.”
His gaze moved to the angels. “It was there when you were born. It was with you on the other side. Tilly sensed it that night. There was a terrible struggle, she said.”
I thought of that day in the cemetery when she had tugged me out of the briar patch.
“You fought hard, Amelia. You battled your way back, but even as you drew your first breath, Tilly knew it wasn’t over. She was afraid for you. Afraid it would come for you. She knew she had to get you out of Asher Falls. She thought you would be safe with me.”
I hugged my knees. “Why did you shut me out, Papa? Why did you turn away when I needed you the most?”
He looked old and defeated, indescribably weary. “I was afraid the ghost we saw that day had been sent to watch over you. I was afraid the evil had found you and it would use my devotion to you—my weakness—to somehow get to you.”
I couldn’t stop shaking. Angus sensed my agitation and whimpered. “All this just because I came back from the other side?”
“And because the power it could wield through you on this side would be very, very strong.”
“Why?”
“You are the last of the Ashers,” he said.
I buried my face in my arms, succumbing to a storm of emotions. “Who is my father?” I asked fearfully.
“Edward Asher.”
“Was he evil? Was he in league like the others?”
“I don’t know. But his blood runs through your veins, so your ties to that place are strong. That’s why you were lured back there.”
“But why now?”