Lily had forgotten the village. Only the picturesque home of her grandmother remained in her memory as an idyllic retreat from the prying eyes of the community, hiding behind tall, ancient trees and overlooking the still waters of the loch.

She frowned and let her suitcase rest on the dirt path twisting off the main road and into Grandma Mackenna's front garden. In her memory, the place had acquired a children’s picture book quality with whitened walls, square windows, and a steep roof of red gables. It had been a safe haven, a place where her mum and dad sent her when summer holidays came along and she was too young to stay alone while they worked. In spite of the wet, chilly climate of Scotland, those days had always been bright and full of laughter and games—and those games never, ever involved knives.

It was planted on the side of the path, threatening to be devoured by the greenery. It was almost unobtrusive, nonchalant. And clean.

Lily took a step closer and poked the knife with her toe. It didn’t budge. Whoever had done it had set the handle deep in the earth and packed it tight afterward. The blade protruded, standing like a sentinel in the path and reflecting the feeble rays of an early July sun. Fighting back a shiver, she grabbed her suitcase again and hurried down the lane. She would come back later and get that knife out, but first she wanted to say hello and perhaps catch a break. The train ride from Manchester to Aberdeen had been long, and the bus she had caught from there hadn’t made the trip any more comfortable.

The house itself appeared after a bend in the path. It didn’t look as she remembered. The white walls were a dab gray and the bright red gables didn’t exist—the roof was covered in blue-black slate. However, Grandma Mackenna was exactly as Lily recalled her.

“There you are!” She had been sitting in a rocking chair in the porch, angled just so to get a better view of the newcomers. Even in the distance, Lily could see her smile causing a network of tiny wrinkles to surround her vibrant eyes. The gesture erased at least five years off her age.

“Grandma!” Lily ran, her luggage bouncing against her side, and met her on the stairs of the porch. “Don’t get up,” she protested as she hugged the thin body of the old woman. “You’re not supposed to walk around.”

“Oh dear. So long without seeing me and the first thing I get from my granddaughter is a scolding,” chuckled the woman. She took the sting off her words by holding the girl tighter, her arms firmer than her age might suggest.

Lily feigned offense. “You mustn’t have missed me much! Or else you wouldn’t have argued so hard against my coming here.”

“Nonsense. You can come any time. You know that. This is your home too, and being away from that awful city of yours is good for your health. I always told your mother so. But visiting isn’t the same as babysitting.”

“Grandma,” Lily said, pulling away to stare at the woman, “you broke your leg and you live alone and far from the village. You need help.”

“I’ve been living alone for a long time now and I’m not an invalid.”

“Of course not! But the doctor did say not to walk around much, didn’t he?”

“Well then, he shouldn’t have given me a walking cast!” Mackenna pointed down at her leg and then began to limp toward the door. “But let’s bicker inside. You’ll need some refreshment after your trip, and I’m sure you want to settle in. Your old room is almost untouched, you’ll see.”

It was a silly thing, a small detail. Lily had stopped visiting when she turned eleven, and the toys and paintings she had treasured back then were not that important, nothing but summer companions. Still, the idea her grandma had held onto it for six years when her own mother had remodeled her house twice put a knot in her throat that made swallowing a difficult task.

“Is it?” she asked, her voice breaking only just.

Mackenna gave her a knowing smile and turned into the kitchen. “Of course,” she said. “I only changed the bed when your mother told me how tall you had gotten. I realized you’d never fit into the old one. Go and see. Make yourself at home while I prepare some sweetened tea.”

Her last growth spurt had happened at fifteen.

How long has Grandma waited for me to come back?

“Shoo. Off with you!”

Lily realized she had frozen in place, staring at the familiar corridor leading to the rooms.

“Don’t putter around too much,” she called out, coming out of her reverie.

“I’ve been here with a broken leg for three days already. What did you want me to do, starve?”

The good-humored grumblings reached Lily just as she opened the door to her old room. As promised, it was intact. The bed was bigger, an adult’s now, but Grandma had ordered it in the same white pine with the same leafy carvings in the headboard. When she was a kid, those carvings had given her the impression of hiding in the middle of a forest, a princess safe in a white tower the monsters under the bed couldn’t climb. Now, it made her feel childish and warm at the same time.

With a sigh, she heaved her suitcase onto the bed. There was a chest of drawers pulled up against the wall in front of the bed and she started to put her clothes away in ordered piles. Back in the day, the topmost drawer had been tall as Mount Everest. She remembered getting a small scar near her hairline when she had tried to climb and reach it, fully convinced there was a cache of chocolate cookies hiding in there. Of course, there had been no cookies. Grandma had made them later anyway, a consolation for the scary fall.

It felt odd to put her T-shirts there now. It felt odd to be back

When Lily returned to the kitchen, her grandma was already sitting at the table. As promised, she had prepared a tray with sweet tea and homemade pastries, and she sipped her cup while she waited.

“I didn’t take that long.” Lily laughed, taking the free chair in front of her.

Mackenna gave her a knowing smile, and for a moment, they drank in silence. There were too many lingering things to say, and though the old woman seemed content to let bygones be bygones, Lily felt a weight in her shoulders. She could cut the tension with a knife.

Speaking of which.

“Say, Grandma,” she started, “you been having problems?”

Mackenna arched an eyebrow. “I broke my leg,” she said while keeping a straight face.

“I meant with the people around here,” Lily explained, looking chagrined. “This used to be a quiet spot, I know, but people are getting crazier and more violent these days so…”

“Oh dear. You believe there’s a band of local hooligans terrorizing your poor grandmother? Why would they do that now?”

Because bullies like to attack people they consider different and weak, just like you. Lily bit her lip and swallowed her words. Her thoughts had just reminded her of her mother, who always held a blank smile when talking about her own mother, whose obsession with normal could only be rivaled by her obsession with order. She took a deep breath and tried to stop channeling her, but—

“Okay,” she burst out, unable to hold it in. “If there’s no trouble, who planted a knife practically in your front yard?”

“I did,” Mackenna said, giving her grandchild a quizzical look. “Who else would come out here to plant a perfectly good sterling knife in the dirt?”

Lily blinked. “You what? Grandma,” she said with a groan, “why would you do that?”

“I know, I know.” She ate a cookie. “It seems like such a waste. It was part of my dowry back in the day, and the weather will blunt it horribly. But there’ll be storms this summer and I don’t want the flower beds to be ruined. It’s difficult enough to grow all the right things without hail and thunder making it any worse.”

Lily gulped the tea because it gave her an excuse to look away from the easy smile and twinkling eyes in front of her. This was the reason her mother had stopped her summer trips to Scotland as soon as she judged her child old enough to stay at home without babysitting. Up here in the countryside, there were games and outdoors and fun, but there were also the odd little things. The knife standing sentinel against a summer downpour was new, but the iron horseshoe had always hung from the door. The small plate of milk had always been out in the porch, even though no stray cats ever drank from it. There had been small sayings and silly songs she had learned back then, words that made her mother furious and meant more to her grandmother than a simple game. Once, she had spent a whole night sewing bits of some herb in the hem of her clothes with Mackenna while she taught her an old story. That had been the last summer she ever visited.

When Lily lifted her gaze again, she found the eyes of her grandmother regarding her, full of understanding.

“You never told us how you broke your leg,” she said, fumbling for a safer topic.

“I fell, of course.” Mackenna held her silence, but relented with a smile when Lily gave her an irritated look. “I was getting something down from the attic and tripped down the ladder. It could have been worse, I reckon, but the doctor said I have a hard head.” She harrumphed. “As if I needed to drive all the way to Aberdeen to hear that.”

Lily looked up, as if evaluating the attic that sprawled across the whole house. By design, it was an open space. However, her grandma had so many boxes and shelves up there it had been her favorite place to play hide-and-seek.

“You probably shouldn’t be climbing ladders anymore, Grandma.”

“You can get me the things I need while you’re here.”

“Sure.” Lily grinned. “I can do that.”