The next morning, I woke before the rest of the house. The air was still cool, the kind of crispness that always comes before a hot day. I slid the letter from beneath my pillow — I'd written it last night after everyone was asleep, the ink blotched in places where my hand had trembled.
Aunt Stephanie, I had begun, I need your help. Please don't tell Father or Mother I wrote to you. I told her how they wanted to destroy the woods, the lake, the land. They want to clear it and build houses. Then I told her about the bribery. Please, if you can, stop them. For the people here.
I hadn't been able to say more, not directly, but I'd asked her to use her connections, to raise questions in the right places, to delay and complicate and tangle Father's plans until they choked. She was the only one I could trust. The only one who might actually listen.
I folded the letter carefully, tucked it into the envelope, and slipped it into my jacket pocket.
The path into town was quiet again, just the sound of my shoes crunching against gravel and the birds darting overhead. I rehearsed excuses in my head — if anyone asked where I was going, I'd say I needed more materials for studying, or a book from Mrs. Fisher's bookshop. But no one had stopped me leaving, so maybe I was just imagining the eyes always watching.
At the post office, the clerk barely glanced at me as I slid the letter across the counter and handed over the coins. "Going far?" he asked, stamping it.
"London," I said, my voice sounding steadier than I felt.
I left with empty hands and a strange tightness in my chest.
That letter was gone now, it was out of mine, out of Father's, out of anyone's control but hers.
I should've gone straight back home. But when I stepped onto the high street, I froze.
Emma's father was there, standing with two or three other men outside the greengrocer's. His hands moved as he spoke — quiet but firm — and I lingered at the edge of the street, listening.
"They'll strip it bare," he was saying. "Not just trees — the birds, the deer, everything gone. Do they think the lake won't suffer? That the water won't choke on the runoff?"
The men muttered, shaking their heads. One spat on the cobblestones.
"It's Whitmore, all over. Always Whitmore. Never cared for anyone but himself."
"They've already ended your job," another man added, nodding toward Emma's father. "They'll take more before they're done. Mark my words."
Emma's dad said nothing to that. He just folded his arms, jaw tight, eyes shadowed with something I didn't want to name.
I stood there, the words pressing into my chest like stones. I wanted to shout that I wasn't like them, that I wasn't my father. That I was trying.
But I didn't move. Didn't speak.
Instead, I turned back toward the road that led to the lake, clutching the thought of my letter like it was a lifeline.
Aunt Stephanie had to help. She just had to.
Because if she didn't, all of this — the woods, the lake, Emma — would be gone.
Emma
I'd never heard our house so quiet. Not even when the younger ones were asleep. It was the kind of silence that pressed against your ribs and made breathing harder.
Dad sat at the kitchen table, his hands around a mug of tea he hadn't touched. The lines on his face looked deeper somehow, his eyes darker. Mum leaned against the counter with her arms folded, tapping her foot like she wanted to shout but couldn't find the strength.
Finally, Dad spoke. "I've been in touch with my cousin. He's got a line on work at the docks. In Hull."
The word landed like a stone in my stomach. Hull. Over 200 hundred miles away.
Mum straightened, her voice sharp.
"Hull? You can't be serious. That's the other side of the country. What are we meant to do, pick up everything and go just because Whitmore's lot decided they don't want you here anymore?"
Her voice cracked, and she turned away, busying herself with the dishes.
Dad didn't rise to it. He never did. He just rubbed a hand over his face.
"I can't sit around waiting. Not with five mouths to feed. If they won't have me here, then we've no choice but to go where the work is."
The little ones weren't in the room — thank God for that — but I sat frozen at the table, Zoey on my lap. She leaned against me, her hair tickling my chin, unaware of the weight in the air.
Mum spun back around, her cheeks flushed.
"You'd uproot us all? The children's school, my mother just down the road —" She broke off, shaking her head. "Moving to Hull and leave our lives behind."
"Maybe that's all we've got left," Dad said quietly.
My chest felt tight. Hull. A place I'd never seen, a name I'd only heard on the news or in passing. I imagined streets I didn't know, schools full of strangers, and a horizon without the woods or the lake. Without Tommy.
I pressed my face into Zoey's hair, breathing her in, trying not to let my hands shake.
Because for the first time, it felt real. This wasn't just Mum shouting or Dad being quiet. This was a plan. A way out. A way gone.
And no matter how much I wanted to believe things would somehow fall back into place, I knew deep down — we were already halfway gone.