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A ROBIN CHIRPED outside the frozen window, perching on a sparkling frosted branch as it puffed its proud orange chest and its white feathered belly swelled with each high-pitched cheep. It ruffled its wings and adjusted its stance on spindly legs that hardly looked strong enough to keep it upright, and it soared off to follow the tweet of its mate. The branch shook when it took flight, sending the shimmering frost floating down to the snowy ground. A fresh round had fallen overnight, cleaning the woods with a blank canvas that made the sun shine brighter.

As warm water ran over Adele's hands, she watched the robin with a slight smile on her lips, her eyes tracking its path until it flew out of sight and she twisted the tap as far as it would go to stop the leak. Drying her hands, she passed two clean mugs to Caleb that he filled with hot coffee and added a couple of teaspoons of cocoa powder to his. He had discovered the joys of a mocha over the weekend, something Adele had introduced him to when she had needed a caffeinated pick-me-up with a sweet kick.

When he reached up to take a few marshmallows from the top shelf of the cupboard, Adele tucked herself under his shoulder and he laughed when he brought his arm back down around her. She fit snugly against him, the top of her head just reaching his collarbone: he dwarfed her, his chin resting on the crowd of her head. Turning his cheek against her hair, he kissed her forehead and felt her skin heat up when his fingers grazed her mark.

After two days, the angry red wound had begun to heal, the puncture marks scabbing over when she left them for long enough. Caleb lowered his lips to the scar, gently kissing her neck, and she turned around in his arms to meet his kiss. His beard scratched her skin, his nose pressing into her cheek as he cupped the back of her neck and held her as close as he could.

They only broke apart when Adele reached out a hand to steady herself against the counter and instead plunged her hand into her mug, recoiling with a cry when it scalded her skin.

"Did I hurt you?" Caleb asked, jolting away from her with his hands on her shoulders.

"No, no, just the coffee," she said. "You were good. Very good." She ran her hand under the cold tap for a few seconds when she felt the sting of the burn and she dried it on her jeans, muttering a curse under her breath at her own coordination. Squeezing Caleb's hand, she passed him his mug and when he sat first, she squeezed into the space beside him and sank against his body.

They didn't quite both fit but she didn't mind being tucked against him when she felt closer to him with every day that passed. In the less than forty-eight hours that it had been since he had marked her, she had felt the most overwhelmingly indescribable urge to hold him, to be as close as she could. Without Ainslie, they had put the notebook scouring on hold and instead, in her absence, they had done little more than rest.

Rest was what she needed, to put her feet up and let her body heal when she had hardly given it a break ever since it had almost been broken. Less than a week had passed since she had come to blows with Creighton; it had only been slightly longer than that since she had become an aunt, and yet she felt as though the days had flooded by while they had fought to solve the mystery that hung over them like a fog.

Caleb's fingers traced idle patterns over her hip as they sat together in peace. There was no pressure to talk, nothing that desperately needed to be said. A lot of the past couple of days had been spent like that, existing in each other's company as they had listened to the radio or played card games, cooking together and relishing in a desperately needed moment's calm.

Adele was the first to speak, her words a hum against Caleb's chest when she said, "With everything that's been going on recently, I'm so grateful that you came into my life." Her palm over his heart, she looked up at him with nothing but sincerity in her eyes.

"I'm glad I found you," he said, his hand over hers.

"Me too," she murmured, closing her eyes. The warmth of the fire and the heat of her coffee made for a soothing environment, perfect for a nap, though she had only woken up an hour ago. The sun had only just risen a few minutes before nine, the soft light still fresh in the sky. "I'm sorry for everything I put you through, before I understood what this is all about."

His hand came to a stop, the patterns fading, and moved to her stomach, curling her closer to him. She draped her legs over his knees, her ear pressed to his chest, and she smiled at his touch.

"That's history," he said. "Now you do understand. That's all that matters."

It wasn't until a text from Ainslie dinged its way into Adele's phone that she remembered their agreement. The delicious morning faded, replaced by the stress of throwing herself back into the puzzle that confounded her, though she was comforted by the knowledge that her grandmother was innocent. It didn't help the mystery – if anything, it only deepened it – but it helped her won peace of mind, the reassurance that her grandmother had been exactly who she had thought she was. If anything, she had been a better woman than Adele had ever realised.

Adele peeled herself away from Caleb to reach her phone and she squinted down at the text, though the tone alone had been enough to remind her of the day's plans.

AINSLIE: are we still going to Penlark today?? we need to go and see rose! i checked their website, no limit on visiting hours 👍

"Ainslie?" Caleb asked, nodding at the message.

"Yup. Remember, we said we'd go and talk to Creighton's mother," she said, checking her phone's remaining batter before tucking it back into the pocket of her jeans. Only one bar left, the screen warning her that it was low, but that easily meant another day's use before she would need to charge it. No matter how much Ainslie tried to convince her to upgrade to something more modern, the old Nokia had served her well – and her grandmother before her.

"We're getting Ainslie, yes?" He tugged on his coat, pulling his hair out from under the collar, and stuffed his feet into his boots.

"Yes. We're going to collect her."

"We need her," he said.

"We do. She's got a handle on all this. I can hardly keep up with her," Adele said, locking the back door and pulling down the blinds over the kitchen window before she herded Caleb out to the car, shutting up the cabin behind herself with Jade's envelope in her pocket. "You'll have to sit in the back – we're going into Buck Pines. But literally only to get Ainslie, and she lives right on the outskirts so it's ok."

Caleb pulled a face, hesitating with his hand on the handle. "Are you sure?"

"Yup," she said with a smile and a nod, slinging herself behind the driver's seat. "We'll be in an out in a few minutes and you're in the back – it'll be fine."

"Ok." He didn't sound convinced as he got into the back seat, sitting on the passenger side so he could see Adele better. She felt his gaze on her, turning around to give him a reassuring smile as she reversed. She only wished she could soothe herself as easily.

*

Ainslie was ready and raring to go when the car pulled up in her driveway. Her mother was at work and had been for a couple of hours already, leaving her to loaf around the house while she waited for Adele to show up. The moment the engine came to a stop, she flew out of the front door, hastily locking it as she left, and raced into the passenger seat.

"Hey!" she cried, a wide beam on her lips. Her hair was tied in a couple of slightly wonky plaits that she pulled over her shoulders, her freckles darkening over the pinkness that graced her cheeks from the effort of the dash from the door to the car.

"Hey, Ains. How was your weekend?"

She pursed her lips and slowly nodded. "It was good actually. Really good. Kind of nice having a couple of chilled days with Mum – and internet access! I don't know how you live offline."

"Because I've never lived online," Adele said, looking over her shoulder to reverse and catching Caleb's curious eye.

"What line?" he asked, glancing from her to Ainslie and back again.

"The internet," Ainslie said. "The world wide web."

"Like ... a spider web?"

Adele snorted. Ainslie gasped. Caleb just looked confused.

"Oh my goodness. Look at the two of you! You're both as useless as each other!" she cried out, and she poked Adele. "You never use the internet and he's never even heard of it!"

"And look at us – perfectly well-adjusted adults. And I have used it in my life. We had IT lessons at school. Though I haven't been to school for seven years and I skipped most of those lessons."

"I can't believe you," she said, tutting as she shook her head. "I don't know what I'd do without the internet. What d'you do when you have a question you don't know the answer to?"

Adele shrugged. "Most of the questions I have are answered by my nana's hunting books," she said. "Anything else ... I don't know. I don't have a ton of questions, Ains."

"Wow. Well, I don't know what to say," she said, her words trailing off as proof of her statement. "Anyway, how've you guys been? Find anything else?"

"We've had a relaxing couple of days," Adele said, stopped from saying any more than that when Caleb cut her off.

"We found the page," he said. "The missing page from Nana's notebook.

Ainslie inhaled sharply and clasped her hand over her mouth. "You did? Oh my goodness, what did it say?"

He furkled in his pocket, pulled out the crumpled page that he had folded up to show her. Ainslie's eyes jumped over the words before she dropped back against her seat, her seatbelt slackening.

"Nana's totally innocent," she said. She smiled. "That's good. I'm glad. I guess we can cross off the theory that she had something to do with Katherine going missing." Digging out her notebook and taking a pen from her hair, where it had been tucked into her plait, she struck a line through one of her bullet points. "And she was suspicious of the Keirs?"

"Mmhmm."

"She didn't like them," Caleb added. He liked to jump into conversations whenever he had something to add, if only to prove that he understood what was going on.

Ainslie circled one of the lines. "So there's definitely a chance they did something? Maybe?"

"Maybe," Adele said with a nod. "We're getting closer, Ains."

"We are. Slowly," she said, chewing the lid of her pen as she scanned her list of possibilities. "I'm glad Nana didn't have anything to do with it but it would be so useful if that page had said I saw Bernard Keir kill his daughter. Except it wouldn't have said that, because she's alive. Which makes it harder to solve."

"We'll get there." Adele put her hand on Ainslie's knee. "Maybe Rose will be able to help. Like you said: who'll know more than Katherine's own mother? You've done a lot of work here, Ains. It'll pay off."

*

Longton House Residential Care Home sat on the outskirts of a town, edging towards the silent country suburbs. A huge lake stretched behind the grand house that boasted premium care for the elderly and infirm, proudly displaying its CQC rating of excellence in the window: it was a fancy place, there was no denying that, though Adele couldn't help but be surprised that Creighton had forked out for his mother to deteriorate in such a nice care home. At fifty thousand pounds a year, it was hardly a cheap option.

"I'm nervous," Ainslie said as she undid her seatbelt and got out of the car. The gravel was hard, the world frozen over, but it wasn't flat enough to slip.

"Me too," Adele said. When Caleb got out, she locked the car and took his hand. "We're dead if Creighton finds out we were here."

"He won't find out. His mother would have to tell him for him to know, and if she's stuck in the past then she's probably not going to remember us being here."

"You should awfully confident for all the hypothesis in what you just said," Adele said. When Caleb squeezed her hand, a sudden rush of positivity coursed through her, a new thread of hope that this was all they needed.

The grand front door seemed to be for show only, a small notice directing them around the side of the building. The wind picked up, blowing the freezing cold in their faces as they trudged down the freshly gritted path to the reception and Ainslie shoved open the door with a shiver. A solitary carer sat behind the desk, filling out a form, and she looked up with a curious eyebrow. She didn't seem particularly interested by the discordant three who had just walked through the door.

"Welcome to Langton House," she said, sounding bored of her own voice. "Are you here to visit a resident?"

"Hi," Adele said, plastering on her friendliest face. "We're here to see Rose Keir. She's a family friend."

"Sign yourselves in over there." The middle-aged woman used her pen to point at a table against the opposite wall that boasted a guestbook and a vase of flowers that needed changing. "Rose is in room twenty-one on the first floor – the lift is at the end of the hall."

"Thank you," she said, holding back her relief that there was no interrogation as to exactly who she was. It was a little concerning, the lack of security. The door was open to anyone; the carer accepted anyone as a visitor. They hadn't even called ahead, and there was no-one to ask for ID or check the fake names she wrote in the visitors' book.

"You know French, huh?" the woman asked. Adele looked up, confused by the question, but Ainslie jumped in.

"Oui," she said. The carer nodded and returned to her work, and Ainslie led the way down the corridor. As soon as they were a few metres down the hallway, Adele caught her elbow, her eyes wide and unbelieving.

"You speak French? Since when?"

Ainslie paled, shaking her head. "I don't," she said. "That's literally all I know. Oh my goodness. I did French for four years and that's all I can remember!"

Adele didn't know whether to laugh or sigh. "Well, hopefully we won't need it much," she said, crossing her fingers. When they reached the end of the hall, she pressed the button for the lift and after a moment of whirring, the doors creaked open. She and Ainslie stepped in but Caleb simply stared.

"What is that?" he asked, staring at the metal box.

"It's a lift," Adele said. "It lifts us to the next floor."

"Where are the stairs?"

"I don't know – this is better than stairs. Come on."

His footsteps were small, edging towards the elevator as though it might bite him. As he joined Adele, the doors began to close and he lunged against the wall with fear blazing in his eyes. Adele couldn't keep her composure, a laugh spluttering out of her as Caleb's heart pounding and she could feel his fear as though her own emotions were split in two.

"It's just a lift," she said, taking his hand and squeezing tightly. "Totally safe, very normal. And quick – we're here."

With a ding, the doors peeled open to the slightly depressing first floor of the care home. The building was grand from the outside but inside, it felt surprisingly stifling. Rooms lined the narrow corridor, some of the doors sitting open, and the whole place had a distinct musty musk of age and disinfectant.

"This is her," Ainslie whispered, pointing at a room with an open door. The plaque read Ms. Rose Keir beneath the room number, and the door opened into a decent sized bedroom. The double bed was pushed against the wall, a television atop the dresser opposite, and a stacked bookshelf occupied half of the wall on the other side of the room.

A generous window allowed light to spill into the room, the curtains pulled wide open to let the weak sun caress the wrinkled cheeks of a woman in her sixties who sat in an armchair. Her salt and pepper hair pulled off her face in an elegant chignon, and she was immaculately dressed as though she was about to head out.

"Rose?" Adele said, the first to step into the room. Ainslie and Caleb followed behind like a pair of nervous children.

Rose looked up, her piercing eyes knocking the breath out of Adele. She had Creighton's eyes, the starkest blue that contrasted her dark hair. There was no doubt she was Katherine's mother: even now, looking a decade older than her age, there was a distinct resemblance to the four-year-old.

"Hi, Rose." Adele smiled. "My name's Adele. I know your son, Creighton."

Rose's face lit up, sudden life in her eyes. "Mon fils! Connaissez-vous mon fils?"

"Um..." She looked over at Ainslie, who shrugged, and she grimaced. "I live in Buck Pines," she said, continuing even when she wasn't sure what Rose was saying. "We wanted to ask you some questions. Is that ok?"

Rose nodded. "C'est bien par moi."

She could understand perfectly. Adele wrung her wrists, glancing at Ainslie again. Caleb looked even more clueless: he was still getting a hang of English. French was beyond foreign to his ears. Ainslie stepped out into the hall when she heard footsteps, catching a carer as she passed by.

"Hi!" she said with a smile. "We're just visiting Rose and this is a bit random, but how come she's speaking French?" she asked, shameless with her questions. "I mean, we know she speaks English so how come she isn't?"

"Oh, Rose rarely speaks English, ever since a couple of years ago," the carer said. This one seemed friendlier, a smile on her face. "We see it a lot in bilingual patients with dementia – they often revert back to their first language. Sometimes she'll have a moment of lucidity, but it never lasts long. Sometimes her son can get through to her, but we don't see him much."

"But she understands?"

"Mmhmm. She can understand you perfectly. It's just how she communicates," she said. "I need to get down to room six but if you need a hand, press the buzzer by Rose's bed and one of us will be up."

"Ok. Thanks," Ainslie said, turning to Adele. She had heard the conversation.

"This might be difficult," she said with a frown. Rose nodded.

"Un peu difficile," she said. Her eyes were fixed solely on Adele. "Connais-tu mon fils?"

Adele sat down on the edge of the bed, unsure of what she was supposed to do. "I don't know if you remember me. I used to know you, when you lived in Buck Pines," she said. "I knew your daughter, Katherine."

Her face was blank, as though nothing had been said.

"Do you know what year it is?" Ainslie asked, trying a new tack.

"Mille neuf cent quatre-vingt-quinze," Rose said with a confident nod. She was sure of that: no-one else was sure what she had said. Ainslie took the pen out of her hair, turning to a new page in her notebook.

"Can you write it down? Can you write down the year?"

Rose obliged, taking the pen in her left hand and with a slight quiver in her script, she wrote 1995.

"The year Katherine was born," Adele said. "Do you remember your daughter, Katherine?"

"Fille? Je n'ai pas une fille," Rose said, shaking her head.

Caleb leant forward. "What is she saying?" he whispered to Adele.

"I don't know. Ains? Any idea?"

"Nope," Ainslie muttered, but she fiddled with her phone and her face lit up. "Aha! Here we go. We can translate. Hold on." Typing away, she translated her own words into French and moved closer to Rose.

"She understands us already, Ains," Adele said. "We don't understand her."

"But we can," Ainslie said. "Où est votre fille?"

When Rose opened her mouth, Ainslie hit record on the translator in time for her to say, "Je n'ai pas une fille." Shaking her head, she repeated it under her breath again, lifting her eyes to the window.

"I don't have a daughter," Ainslie said, typing the translation on the screen. "Well, Katherine was born near the end of the year, wasn't she? So maybe Rose is stuck earlier on. I have the book, though. Would that help?"

"Bernard's book?"

Ainslie nodded, rooting through her bag for the heavy hardback tome. Flipping through the pages, she landed on the family photograph and turned it around to show Rose. "This is you," she said, pointing at the version of her from eighteen years ago, and then she tapped Katherine. "This is your daughter. Katherine."

Rose took the book. She sat straighter; her eyes sharpened.

"Do you remember her?" Adele asked. "She was born in November 1995. She disappeared in December 1999. Eighteen years ago. Do you remember what happened to your daughter?"

Rose just stared. Her eyes were fixed on the page. Her hand went to her own face, her thumb stroking over Bernard's, and it came to a rest over Katherine's. The image seemed to spark something within her, breaking through the fog that clouded her brain. All of a sudden, she began to cry. There was no sound, but a tear rolled down her cheek and another followed.

"You remember her?" Adele said, her pule increasing. "Rose? Do you remember Katherine?"

Rose opened her mouth. A tear splashed onto the page, landing directly over Creighton's face and distorting his features. "I miss you, baby," she said, her voice cracking over the perfect English that almost had Adele jumping to her feet.

"What happened to her, Rose? We're trying to find Katherine. Where is Katherine?" she asked, making an effort to keep herself calm. Beside her, Ainslie was hovering on the edge of her seat as she waited for Rose to answer. The photo had caused a crack in Rose's mind, a fraction of lucidity when her more recent past came blaring back to her.

"She's with her daddy now."

Her hand went limp. Her eyes dulled. The book slipped off her lap. She didn't react when it thumped to the floor, clasping her hands in her lap and resuming her stare out of the window.

"Rose?"

She turned at the sound of her name, her gaze shifting over the three strangers in her room. "Qui êtes-vous?"

"Rose, what do you mean? What happened to her? What about my parents, do you remember them? They were your friends."

Her steely gaze returned to the snowy garden outside, watching a persistent squirrel scamper up a tree. She folded her hands tighter, her voice a mere murmur when she said, "J'ai fait une erreur affreuse."

Ainslie scrambled to open her translator again, her thumb hovering over the record button. "What did you say?"

Rose repeated herself, and then she stood with her back against the window. "Laissez-moi. Allez!" She shooed them with her hands, her eyes blazing. "Allez!"

"I think she wants us to go," Caleb said, pulling Adele up by the elbow and bustling her out into the corridor before Rose could go into a panic and hit the alarm. "What did she say?"

"I don't know. Ains? Ainslie? What did she say? Did you get it?"

Ainslie nodded, her cheeks pale, and she showed Adele the five words on the screen. Caleb stared over Ainslie's shoulder.

"What does it say? Adele? What did Rose say?"

He nudged her when she didn't respond, his hand on her shoulder as he tried to make sense of the gibberish on the phone. None of the translated words were ones that he had been taught, the letters stumbling before his eyes. Adele took the phone, clutching it in her and reading over the words again and again until they sank in enough for her to repeat them.

"I made an awful mistake."

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that awkward moment when i say no more daily updates but then you're all so supportive. i have a bad habit of letting the smallest things get me down even when i have so much to be thankful for - all of you, for starters. (maybe i'm just an emotional wreck at the moment, i keep crying at facebook videos) thank you so much to all of you who read this story: so many of you are such a positive influence and you're so dedicated to my writing, and it really does mean a lot to me.

also, thank you so much for 60,000 reads! i have a personal goal of all my works reaching 50,000 and TP has already surpassed it when it's only 3/4 done - and within a month! thank you so much! it's been exactly four weeks today that this story began, and over 117,000 words, and i can't explain my gratitude - or how worried i was before i began posting that nobody would want to read it! you all proved me wrong so hard!

also, question time! i'm in need of feel-good / cute / happy / pick-me-up film recommendations. if you have any, please let me know!