The train hissed to a stop, its old brakes screeching like an exhale too long held. Edmund Stark stepped onto the platform with a canvas duffel slung over one shoulder, hair damp from the drizzle that had followed him across the Highlands. The station was small — barely more than a bench, a cracked vending machine, and a faded sign that read “Glensbrae” in flaking blue letters.

The air smelled of peat and wet grass. Real earth. Real quiet.

He stood for a moment, letting the silence settle into his bones.

Then the voice came, light and unmistakable:

“Daddy-Ed!”

He barely had time to drop his bag before Paisley barreled into him, curls bouncing, cheeks rosy with excitement and the cold. She wore yellow rainboots and a fox-covered raincoat, arms flung wide like she’d been waiting for this exact moment since sunrise.

Edmund caught her with a soft “oof” and pulled her in tight. Her laughter shook something loose in his chest — something fragile, long-forgotten, and entirely sacred.

“God, you got taller,” he murmured into her hair, which smelled like strawberries and the kind of shampoo made just for kids. “Did you grow a whole inch just to spite me?”

She grinned up at him, missing one front tooth. “Maybe.”

Behind her stood Briar, holding an umbrella too small for the both of them and smiling that smile she only gave him when no one else was watching — wry, tired, but honest. Her hair was tied back in a loose braid, her cheeks touched pink by the wind. There was something unshakeable about her. Always had been. Like a lighthouse in boots and denim.

“You’re late,” she said, but her voice held no heat.

“You’re still short,” he replied, hoisting Paisley into his arms.

Briar rolled her eyes. “Come on, Stark. We’ve got tea on, and Mam made that lemon loaf you like.” The car was waiting, an old green Land Rover that coughed when it started but somehow always got where it needed to go. Paisley chattered in the back seat the whole way, recounting school art projects, a scraped knee from last week, and a new friend named Hamish who “talks like he’s swallowed a bagpipe.”

Edmund listened with one ear, the other tuned to the quiet hum of the countryside — stone walls, sheep dotting green fields, the sea visible in flashes through breaks in the hills. It was the kind of place that felt older than time, where even grief might take off its coat and sit a while.

The McLaughlin house came into view just as the sun broke through the clouds — a low-slung stone cottage with ivy crawling up one side, flowerbeds Briar’s mother insisted on maintaining even in winter. A windchime clinked above the door, and smoke curled from the chimney like a story being told in secret.

Briar’s father, Eamon, stood in the doorway with a mug in hand, his silver hair a wild halo. “Look who’s finally showed face,” he said with a grin, clapping Edmund on the back as he stepped inside.

“Mam’s in the kitchen,” Briar said, shrugging off her coat. “She’s thrilled. She made you a bed in the blue room — said something about the light being good for your mood.”

“She’s not wrong,” Edmund replied. “Though that depends on who’s snoring down the hall.”

“You snore worse,” Paisley chimed in. He looked at her, mock wounded. “You’re a traitor.”

Inside, the house smelled like lemon, peat fire, and lavender soap. The kind of home where silence didn’t sting. Edmund lowered his bag by the stairs and took a moment, just one, to breathe it all in.

Briar caught his eye.

“You okay?” she asked, not unkindly.

He nodded, slow. “Yeah. Yeah, I am.”

And for the first time in months, he meant it.