Read Chapter 1: — HOMECOMING

The train from London reached York in less than two hours, which still felt like a trick to Eleanor Ward.

When she had first left home for university, the journey seemed long enough to separate one life from another. You could board in York as somebody's daughter and arrive at King's Cross convinced you belonged only to yourself. Now the country had become smaller, the trains faster, the stations brighter—and Eleanor felt farther from everyone she loved than she ever had at nineteen.

Beside her, Lily rubbed one ear of a stuffed rabbit between her fingers until the fabric bent flat.

“Nearly there,” Eleanor said.

Lily did not look up.

Before the accident, her daughter had filled every silence. She sang to supermarket trolleys, interrogated strangers about their dogs and once spent an entire bus journey explaining to a pensioner why fairies would make terrible dentists. Since Michael died, words had become expensive.

Eleanor watched the flat fields slide past the window and tried not to think about the three years since she had last walked through her parents' front door.

Her father had said, If you leave again, don't come back expecting me to approve of your life.

She had answered, I don't need your approval.

Both of them had been lying.

At York station, Eleanor struggled with two suitcases, a backpack and Lily. A student in a University of York sweatshirt offered to carry one case to the taxi rank. The easy kindness nearly undid her.

The cab crossed the city toward the Ouse. Medieval stone, Georgian terraces and glass-fronted shops passed in layers. Tourists clustered near the city walls. Cyclists threaded through traffic. The Minster rose above everything as if centuries had agreed to leave one thing in charge.

Then came the river.

Eleanor's chest tightened.

Her family lived in a narrow, old brick house near Bishophill, within walking distance of the Ouse. Her grandmother used to sit in the back courtyard under an apple tree and make the grandchildren earn boiled sweets by reciting poems. Edith Ward had left school at fourteen, but she had always said, “A family with one good reader is never poor.”

Eleanor had forgotten how much she missed hearing that sentence.

The taxi turned into the lane.

A removal van blocked half the street.

Men were unloading furniture into her parents' house.

Eleanor paid the driver and stood still for a moment, one hand on Lily's shoulder.

Inside the open gate, her younger brother Jamie was arguing with their elder brother Daniel.

“You have a house in Fulford!” Jamie shouted. “Why are you moving into my room?”

“We sold it,” Daniel snapped. “This is my family home too.”

“And where am I meant to sleep?”

“Ellie's old room.”

“What if Ellie comes back?”

Eleanor cleared her throat.

Every face turned.

Her mother, Margaret, came out of the kitchen and stopped as if she had seen a ghost.

“Ellie?”

Behind her, Arthur Ward sat in a wooden chair by the wall, hands resting on the head of his walking stick. He looked older, thinner, but his expression had not changed.

Daniel's wife, Caroline, appeared behind a wardrobe.

“Well,” she said after a long pause. “This is a surprise.”

Daniel stared at the luggage. “Are you visiting?”

Eleanor felt something harden inside her.

“No,” she said. “I'm home.”

Lily tightened her grip on the rabbit.

Arthur finally looked at his daughter.

For one second his face softened.

Then the old pride returned.