Riley did not sleep until well after midnight.
Colin sat with her in the sitting room of Julie's homestead and did not push. He let her pace, let her check the locks twice, then three times. He let her read the news alert until the words must have stopped meaning anything.
When her eyes finally closed on the sofa, mid-sentence, he drew a blanket over her shoulders. He did it slowly, the way a man approaches a deer.
She did not stir.
The twins had been harder. They had asked him only one question at bedtime, in two small voices that overlapped.
"Will you stay, Uncle Colin?"
"Aye," he had said. "I'm no' going anywhere."
Neither of them had looked afraid. That was the part that unsettled him. They had looked like children who already knew the answer and needed to hear it said out loud.
Now he stood on the porch, with Fall pressed against his leg and the cold coming down off the hills. He did not go back to the Inn. He would not leave this house tonight.
