Read Chapter 27: The Book of Dreams

The attic stairs creaked beneath Imogen’s weight, each groan a complaint about decades of neglect. Dust motes swam in the shaft of late-afternoon light from the single dormer window, and cardboard boxes lay stacked like patient monuments to lives she’d never known.

She was looking for a birth certificate. Specifically, Morna’s. The church records were too damaged to be trusted, and Mary’s recollections had grown slippery around the edges. But somewhere in this house, her grandmother had kept papers—receipts, letters, the detritus of a long life.

Imogen pulled the string on a bare bulb. It swung, casting slow-moving shadows across the room. She worked methodically through the first three boxes: tax returns from the 1980s, holiday postcards from Cornwall and Wales, a collection of pressed wildflowers pressed between the pages of a 1954 recipe book.

The fourth box was different.

It was smaller, wrapped in oilcloth, tied with twine that had rotted brittle with age. When Imogen lifted the lid, the smell of lavender and old paper bloomed upward. Inside lay a leather-bound notebook, the cover tooled with a single gilded seagull in flight. The spine cracked when she opened it.

Her grandmother’s handwriting—that distinctive, loopy script she remembered from birthday cards and recipe margins—filled the pages. But these weren’t recipes. They were jottings. Dreams, perhaps. Fragments of thoughts.

*The tide came in green tonight. I dreamed of two daughters again.*

Imogen’s throat tightened. She knew her mother was an only child. That had always been the family story. But the line made her turn the pages faster.

Sketches. Her grandmother had been a passable artist. A cliff view she recognized from the headland. A row of fishing boats. And then, halfway through the notebook, a drawing that stopped her breath.

A baby. Swaddled in a blanket, eyes closed, tiny fist curled. The pencil work was tender, obsessive—shading built up in layers until the paper had a soft, almost luminous quality. Beneath it, a date in her grandmother’s hand: *8 June 1952.*

Imogen did the arithmetic. Nineteen fifty-two. Her mother had been born in ’54. She herself in ’93. That baby couldn’t be either of them.

She turned the page. Another drawing, this one of the same child at perhaps a year old, sitting up, reaching toward something off-page. Then a dress she’d drawn but clearly never made—a child’s smock, patterned with tiny anchors. And then, again, the name: *Morna.*

Imogen’s fingers traced the letters. Then she noticed something else. In the margin beside one of the sketches, her grandmother had written a small, sideways note:

*She had my mother’s mark. The sea will always find her.*

Imogen sat back on her heels. The dust swirled. Her heart was doing something complicated in her chest.

She flipped to the back of the notebook, where her grandmother had kept a more practical record: lists of groceries, appointments, a train timetable for London. But near the last page, tucked into a leather pocket, was a folded piece of paper, yellowed and crisp at the folds. A letter, dated 1961, written in a hand she didn’t recognize.

*Dear Dorothea,*

*I have not heard from you in many years, and I will not pretend I am not hurt by it. But I write to tell you the girl is well. She has your chin and Carrick’s stubbornness, and she asks about her grandmother often. I have told her you are gone, as you instructed. I hope one day you will forgive yourself for what you did, or at least forgive me for letting you.*

*Your sister,* *Clemency*

Imogen read it three times. Clemency. A sister she’d never heard of. A girl—Morna—who had children. Who had grandchildren.

A living relative.

She pulled out her phone, hands trembling. The internet connection was weak in the attic, but the signal held long enough for a search: birth records, Exeter, 1960. And there it was. Tara Renfrew, born 1962, mother listed as Morna Renfrew. Renfrew. The surname had stuck.

Imogen made the call before she could second-guess herself.

Three rings. Four. She was about to hang up when a voice answered—warm, lightly accented West Country, with a hint of laughter in it.

“Hello?”

“Is this Tara?” Imogen’s voice came out scratchier than she intended. “Tara Renfrew?”

A pause. “It is. Who’s calling?”

“My name is Imogen Renfrew. I think— I believe we’re related.” She pressed her palm against the rough floorboards, grounding herself. “I’m your cousin. Sort of. Your mother was Morna. Morna Renfrew. And mine was Dorothea’s daughter. Dorothea was your grandmother.”

The silence on the other end stretched long enough that Imogen checked the screen to make sure the call hadn’t dropped.

“Dorothea,” Tara said finally. The laughter was gone from her voice. “That’s a name I haven’t heard spoken aloud in forty years.”

“You know the name?”

“My mother never said it. My grandmother—the woman who raised me, I mean—she never said it either. But I found letters, after they passed. Papers.” Tara’s voice caught. “I’m sorry, this is a lot. You said your name is Imogen? And you’re in Cornwall?”

“I inherited the Saltwater Inn. It belonged to my grandmother Dorothea. She passed away a few months back.”

Another long pause. When Tara spoke again, her voice was different. Softer, almost wondering. “The Saltwater Inn. My mother talked about it when she was ill. Near the end. She said she’d had a dream about a girl with her birthmark, standing in the kitchen of an inn by the sea, making pasties.” A breath. “I always thought it was nonsense. Delirium.”

Imogen’s skin prickled. She rolled up her left sleeve without thinking, revealing the small, crescent-shaped mark above her wrist, pale against her skin. The same mark her mother had had. The same one she’d been told was a family quirk.

“Tara,” she said. “What birthmark does your mother have?”

“Had,” Tara corrected gently. “She passed in 2009. But it was on her left arm. Just above the wrist. Shaped like a new moon.”

Imogen looked at her own wrist. Then down at the notebook, where her grandmother had written: *She had my mother’s mark.*

“I have it too,” she whispered.

The silence now was charged, alive. Imogen could hear something in the background of Tara’s house—a radio, maybe, playing soft music. She waited, heart in her throat.

“Imogen,” Tara said, and her voice was thick. “I think you and I need to meet. I’m in Exeter. It’s only a few hours by train.”

“Yes.” The word came out before Imogen could shape it. “Yes, I’ll come.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow.”

They exchanged numbers, stumbling over the awkwardness of it—this sudden intimacy with a stranger who shared her blood. When Tara hung up, Imogen sat in the attic gloom, the notebook open on her lap, the drawings of her great-aunt staring up at her with a baby’s unseeing eyes.

She looked down at her wrist again. The mark seemed darker now, more insistent.

Her phone buzzed. A text from Toby.

*Beam held through inspection. Gwen’s making a fuss about a plaque. Also, I found something in the 1974 logbook. You’ll want to see this. The name Morna appears. Twice.*

Imogen stared at the words. Then she looked at the letter in her hand, with its faded ink and its impossible weight. Her grandmother had had a sister. Great-aunt Clemency. And Clemency’s daughter had been erased from the family story, along with everyone who loved her.

Imogen had a living cousin. A cousin with her birthmark, her blood, her history.

The sea will always find her.

And the sea had just found Tara Renfrew.

Imogen rose, tucked the notebook under her arm, and started down the attic stairs. She had packing to do, a train to catch, and a past to unravel that grew deeper with every page she turned.