His throat tightened as he recalled his mother's change after his father never returned from Stormclyffe. How she used to sit in a large, overstuffed chair by the window in their house outside London, her cheek resting on the sun-bleached fabric as her forlorn stare swept the garden outside the window. His mother seemed so far away, as though she'd traveled to a distant land and hadn't ever truly returned. She was haunted by losing her husband.

No. She wouldn't go the way his ...