I paid the driver the billed fair and—unsure how long I would be welcome in Emma's home or how soon I might need to call him for a ride back to the station—I added in a very generous tip.

The house was a quintessential country home: grey stone and white mortar, slate roof with a stout chimney flanking each end, and an overgrown garden enclosed by a time-warped wooden gate. There were four square windows looking out into the lane, and I wondered if Emma was watching me behind one of their curtains. Not seeing any movement, I tightened my grip on the handle of my bag and trudged toward the front door.

I knocked twice before stepping back and steeling myself, but, despite my best efforts, I was utterly unprepared for the house's response.

"Emma, dear, is that you?" A woman's voice called from somewhere in the yard.

I glanced around, but finding nobody around, lifted my voice in response. "Uh, no!"

There was a moment's hesitation before the voice called back. "Are you a thief or a murder?"

My eyes widened in their sockets. "No!" I exclaimed, facing a nearby patch of ivy closest to where the voice seemed to originate from.

"Then do come in! The door's open!"

I peered around the front step to find a fifth window nestled in among the ivy. I nodded more in reassurance to myself and pushed open the door. It creaked slightly in its hinges and I was careful to close it gently behind myself.

"Through here, dear!"

I followed the sound of her voice through the door to my right. I suddenly I was standing in a kitchen with white plaster walls adorned with colorful cutlery and new age art. The cupboards and exposed beams were also painted white, giving the impression that every surface of the room seemed to radiate the natural light. Only the slate floor lacked the luminescent trait, instead appearing to absorb the warmth into its worn stone.

A heavyset woman worked on the opposite end of the kitchen. She was facing away from me, so all I could see were her hair-salt and pepper colored with streaks of silver-and her shoulder muscles moving beneath the thin cotton material of her blouse.

"Mrs. Henderson?"

She glanced over her shoulder and sent me a grin reminiscent of Emma's. "Last time I checked."

I did my best to swallow my growing nerves. "Hello, I'm—"

"Prince Thomas," she nodded cheerily. "Yes, I know. Would you mind if I waited to curtsy till I finished kneading this dough-"

"Oh, you don't have to-"

"It's only the fellow reporting the weather said there is supposed to be an uptick in humidity," she rambled on, still smiling. "And normally I wouldn't be concerned but old Miss Pricket told me just this morning that her knee is giving her trouble."

I furrowed my brow, trying to glean the appropriate response to her words. "Does her knee often give her trouble?"

"Oh yes," she nodded emphatically. "But only when the air is particularly humid, so you see I really must finish kneading the bread now and set it to rest before the great wave hits us!"

"It's quite alright—"

"Seven minutes left, love, then I can curtsy—"

I could feel the heat spreading across my cheeks and up into the tips of my ears. "Mrs. Henderson, I really wish you wouldn't."

Her smile widened at that before breaking into mirthful laughter. "It's uncanny, really."

My mind immediately flew to the most recent bout of pictures of Charlie and me to flood the pages of magazines. While they weren't incriminating, they certainly were not the first impression I had hoped to give my girlfriend's mother.

I started to offer an explanation but she cut me off before I could even begin.

"Mrs. Henderson—"

"You're just as my Emma described," she sighed as she turned back to the mass of dough consuming her hands.

I relished the feeling of her words and the smile they cracked across my features that recently had been set in a perpetual scowl. "She talks about me?"

"Only when forced," she retorted playfully. "I'm sure you're aware Emma is quite the private soul. Always has been, even as a child. It was torture to get her to share her feelings." Her laugh rang out again."The counselors at school wanted to have her evaluated—evaluated, can you believe it?" Mrs. Henderson shook her head, clearly still perturbed by the suggestion. "Rubbish, I say."

Her warm disposition had an almost hypnotizing effect. Standing there in the middle of Mrs. Henderson's kitchen, listening to her bantering voice, I felt my nervousness slowly begin to dissipate.

This was the woman who raised Emma.

It seemed perfectly natural as it was hard to imagine anyone else capable of the task.

"What'd you do?" I asked, still partly mesmerized in my own musings.

She turned over her shoulder to take another look at me, and as she did, her eyes roamed down to the bag I still clutched in my hand. "You've brought a case."

I followed her gaze and blinked in surprise, somehow having forgotten myself in our brief exchange. "Yes, I thought I would rent a room at one of the village inns—"

"Nonsense!" She exclaimed, sounding almost offended. "You'll stay in Emma's room, I'm sure. Not to worry, the walls may be thin but my room is across the house."

She winked and I could feel the heat rising to my face again.

"I-I couldn't possibly impose in such a—Is Emma home?"

I realized in my moment of panic that I had never actually asked after her since arriving.

"She'll be back presently. Meanwhile, set your case down—Lord that looks heavy. Would you be a dear and put the kettle on?" She nodded toward a metal kettle sitting on the edge of the nearby sink.

I glanced around the kitchen briefly before setting my case on the floor by the dining table arranged neatly in the center of the room. I moved toward the sink and checked the kettle for water before putting it on the stove.

She must have noticed my hesitation because she suddenly said: "The matches are in the drawer there, dear."

I followed the direction her chin jutted and opened the drawer to retrieve the matches. I felt her eyes on me as I moved the kettle and started the gas, but I felt unusually calm under her silent gaze.

"Her father bought her a journal."

Mrs. Henderson's voice eventually interrupted my imaginings of a young Emma enjoying the comforts of her mother's kitchen, perhaps with a book and a warm scone...

"She wouldn't talk about her feelings," Mrs. Henderson continued in explanation. "But she could write about them."

I grinned cheekily. "I never thought of Emma as keeping a diary."

"Oh yes, she was always writing in one and if she wasn't writing in it, she was carrying it around with her. Never knew when inspiration would strike," she recalled proudly.

I nodded. "Suppose she grew out of it."

"Oh no, she kept it up all the way through uni—well nearly." She fell silent for a moment, and I watched her work rhythmically with the dough. "You know about her father's passing?"

I hesitated, still watching her. "Only that it was some years ago."

She laughed, glancing out the window as she continued her kneading. "Somedays it feels just like yesterday."

She said it so softly, I wasn't sure I was meant to hear it.

"I'm very sorry for your loss, Mrs. Henderson."

She glanced over her shoulder at me and offered me a kind smile. "I had a lovely life with my husband—perhaps not the longest life, but a lovely one all the same. Nothing to be sorry for, dear."

I merely nodded.

"Writing was always a thing they shared together, Emma and her father I mean. He may not have been a man of letters, but he was a scholar at heart." She paused again, relishing the memory. After a moment she picked up again, but her previous soft smile faltered. "Anyway... after he passed, Emma didn't express much of an interest in it anymore."

My eyes drifted from her mother to the open window.

In all the time we had been together, in all the conversations we had shared and confidences we had laid bare, Emma had never spoken to me about losing her father.

Perhaps—my heart ached for her—she couldn't form the words.

Perhaps, the memory of losing her father still inflicted her with too much pain.

There was always a silence to Emma that I had felt. I tried my best never to prod it, simply love her—and it—and hope that one day, on her own terms, Emma would open up her silence to me.

I didn't know how to react to her mother's words, as I was not entirely sure Emma would want me to be hearing them at all.

"I have albums if you'd like to see them. Filled with pictures of Emma, o'course. Mind you, being an only child, her younger years were well documented," she chuckled.

"I'd love to," I grinned.

Mrs. Henderson nodded the back of her head toward an open doorway off the side of the room. "In the parlour, lower bookshelf."

The room was designed much like the kitchen with white walls and slate flooring, though a large Turkish rug covered much of it. Two large armchairs and a sofa crowded around the fireplace, with blankets and pillows scattered about them. A large bookshelf was built into an alcove to my right, and I grinned at the worn spines of the well-loved books. I squatted down to the lowest shelf, which was filled with large, leather albums. I gingerly tugged two of them free and returned to the kitchen.

The table seemed the safest place to set them down. I pulled out a nearby chair and eagerly flipped open the cover. When I did, I barked in laughter.

Emma—my beautiful and incredibly sexy girlfriend—was a total and complete butterball as a baby. Her birth announcement was carefully glued to the first page and on it, her bulging cheeks and nearly spherical head dominated the portrait. Even more adorable, she was covered in knitting—a knitted cap covered her head, a knitted sweater was buttoned around her bulging abdomen, knitted knickers covered her nappy, and even knitted socks were pulled over her stocky calves. The only skin left exposed was her pudgy cheeks and the rolls of her chunky thighs.

I hefted the book up for Mrs. Henderson to see the source of my amusement.

She smirked knowingly. "My mother-in-law's doing. She either occupied herself telling me how to run my own house or crocheting awful knitwear. You can gather which one I preferred."

"She's adorable," I gushed as I set the book down again before slipping out my phone and snapping a picture.

"Mhmm."

I turned the page to see a photo of baby Emma sound asleep on her father's chest. Her father had also fallen asleep and the paperback he had been reading draped over her like a blanket.

"Ah, so that's how it all started."

Mrs. Henderson laughed. I glanced over my shoulder, surprised to find her standing beside me. I must have been so engrossed in the photos that I hadn't noticed her putting the bread to rest.

"'Fraid she was doomed from even before the start," she said as she wiped her damp hands on a dishtowel. "My husband started reading to her from the evening we found out we were expecting." She gingerly placed a hand over her stomach as she spoke. "Said he wanted her to recognize the sound of her da's voice. And she did," she laughed. "Even as an infant, sometimes his voice was the only thing that could soothe her."

"Was she a difficult child?"

Mrs. Henderson snorted and placed a now dry hand on my shoulder. I smiled at the warmth of her touch. "She made colicky babes seem like a dream."

I couldn't help but laugh.

She gave my shoulder another squeeze as the kettle suddenly began to scream. "Just wait till you get to the photos of her with the chickenpox," she teased as she moved towards the stove.

I flipped the pages mindlessly as my eyes followed her across the kitchen. "They were very close I take it, Emma and her father."

"She adored him. And to her father..." Mrs. Henderson smirked at me as she removed the kettle from the flame and poured the boiling water into the waiting teapot. "Well, she was very much his princess before she was ever yours."

My smile widened at her insinuation, but my anxiety resurfaced at her reference to my family's position and unwanted celebrity. "Mrs. Henderson, I-I know you must have seen some things recently in the papers and the magazine—"

Her hand flew out between us to stop me from speaking further. "Do not get me started on that bloody magazine. Emma told me all about what that bastard tried to make her do—blackmailing my daughter, honestly who does that rat think he is?"

I blinked.

Blackmail?

I had always speculated there were details of Emma's resignation that she had omitted from her telling to me, but I never thought she would hide something so significant from me as that. I knew she was embarrassed about losing her job, but surely even she couldn't feel guilty over being threatened with blackmail. But then why else would she hide it from me, unless...

"But she refused..." I said slowly, not wanting her mother to pick up on my ignorance.

"Of course!" Mrs. Henderson nearly shouted as she sat herself in the chair opposite mine. "You must know Emma would never sell a word about you, wouldn't be right. And she knows what's right. Her father and I made sure of it!"

I stared numbly across the table at her. "She resigned."

"Didn't leave her much of a choice, did he? But good riddance I say." She shook her head in rebuke. "Any person willing to force another to do something against her will, well only something awful could have come of it sometime or another."

My gaze dropped down to the picture of Emma—much older now, maybe nearing five or six—hugging a book tightly to her chest. Her entire visage was lit up, her eyelids crushed together in youthful delight with her smile wide and gleaming despite the absence of several teeth.

My senses were jarred as I gazed down at this perfectly innocent picture of Emma and listened to the horrible truths of how she was so badly mistreated.

I inhaled deeply as I struggled to control the anger rapidly pumping through my veins.

"Mum?" Emma's voice floated through the open window. The latch of the gate clinked as it closed and the sound of gravel crunching in the yeard quickly followed. "Mum, can you open the door? My hands are full with the bags!"

Mrs. Henderson shook her head and loosed a sigh. "Doesn't matter now, does it?" She pushed herself up from the table. "She's home safe, and you're here now, too—she'll be so pleased."

She gave my shoulder a gentle squeeze before striding toward the entryway. I heard the creak of the door and then her voice restored to its natural happy cadence: "How was the market, dear?"

"Same as ever," Emma sighed as she walked into the kitchen. Her eyes drifted up and locked onto mine. She jolted to a stop as her eyes widened to saucers and her jaw fell open.

Mrs. Henderson appeared behind her daughter, a smirk firmly planted on her lips. "We had a delivery while you were out."