The Mirror (The Lost Bride Trilogy #2)

She no longer heard the ball, and Yoda hadn’t curled under her desk or anywhere else in the library. She found him sleeping in the kitchen. He opened one eye, batted his tail on the floor.

“Did Jack wear you out? I want some air, and I bet you could use some, too.”

And the woods beckoned. She’d studied them drenched in snow, watched a deer come to their verge, wondered what it felt like, looked like, beyond that verge.

Now with spring almost ready to bloom, she’d find out.

Grabbing the old jacket she kept in the mudroom, she led Yoda out. He started to race around the yard, the circular pattern she often took, then stopped, head cocked, when she walked across the slope of lawn toward the sheltering trees.

“The city girl wants to explore a little,” she told him. “Trust me, we won’t go far.”

As she walked, she could still hear the steady beat of water on the rocks and see buds forming on trees, shrubs. Something green pushed up its stalks from the ground.

Not only had the air warmed, but so had the light. She wondered if she’d notice that change in the same way in Boston.

Probably not, not in this way.

At the edge of the woods, she glanced back toward the house, then tapped her pocket where she’d put her phone.

Just in case.

“This path right here, Yoda. And we stick to it.”

Under the trees, the air cooled and the light went soft. She smelled pine, and earth—such a different perfume from the scent of the sea. Yoda stuck to her side as they ventured along the narrow track.

She wondered how many others had walked here, and how long it had been since anyone wandered in the dappled sunlight. Now and then birds called, and a breeze, gentle as a stroking hand, stirred the trees.

Otherwise, she had silence where even the relentless beat of the sea on rocks came muffled and distant.

She noted downed branches, and wondered if they’d fallen during a winter storm, and if John Dee—who plowed the driveway, the road, stacked firewood by the shed—got any of those logs from these woods.

She’d have to ask.

Other tracks veered from the one she and Yoda walked. Considering them, she shook her head.

“Not today, but maybe later. Maybe.”

She heard a kind of bubbling, and to her surprise and absolute delight, spotted a narrow stream, running—sluggishly, she thought, but running—over rocks.

“Would you look at that! We have a stream. A creek? Whatever, we have one.”

A branch, thick and sturdy, had fallen over it, forming a kind of bridge. As if to prove its use, a fat squirrel dashed across it. Her quick laugh turned into a gasp as Yoda instantly gave chase.

“No! Yoda! Stop!”

But his stubby little legs had already carried him across where his joyful barks echoed back to her.

Panicked, she left the path for the banks of the stream. The branch might hold a squirrel and her little dog, but it wouldn’t take her weight. So she stood, shouting for Yoda as it struck her just how far they’d walked.

She could count the number of times she’d walked in the woods on one hand—and none like this.

Deep woods, she thought now as pleasure turned to anxiety. Deep, with all the wildlife that lived in the deep.

Now the humming silence felt ominous, and the soft, dappled light a threat toward dark.

With no choice, she started to ease her way down to the gurglingwater to try to wade through. And Yoda came prancing back, scrambled across the branch, then wagged his way to her with a look of satisfaction in his eyes.

“You!” She scooped him up, tried for her sternest glare. “Don’t ever do that again. No running off in the woods.”