The Music Box: Chapter Seventy-Eight

Isabelle and Emily sat side by side, watching as Percy pulled on the oars. The day was calm, the water impossibly still – the dip of Percy’s oars creating tiny little swirling whirlpools the likes of which you would only ever normally see appear on the most sheltered of lakes. The only sound was the creak of the oars in the rowlock and the light slap of the paddle in the sea.

Above them, the last of the gulls that had followed their passage, perhaps in hope of an easy food offering, gave one last twirl and took off back to shore; for whatever reason this was as far as they had decided to follow. The sun gently tickled their skin as a deep blue sky opened out above them. Now that they had all but left land behind, there was little but the blue above and the sea below, an inky purple perfectly reflecting the few tiny, puffy clouds that lazily drifted by like dandelion heads bobbing in a breeze.

This all seemed strangely familiar to Isabelle but she couldn’t quite put her finger on why, as they had never all been out to sea like this together before. Despite being a warm day, she could feel her daughter shivering at her side.

She discretely looked sideways at Emily, only to find her daughter’s gaze transfixed on the black sack that sat between Percy’s feet. Isabelle, too, had been having great difficulty taking her eyes of the bag, but was nevertheless worried to see Emily’s attention so drawn in this way.

Isabelle realised with a pang of shame the feeling that had just hit her – jealousy. On the walk down from the house to the harbour, Emily had told them everything. From the moment she had left her house, pretending to be off visiting Tabitha Tibbits, to the instant they had found her back in her room, finally back as Emily.

It had all sounded so unlikely, the over-vivid imagination of an 11-year-old. But when Emily had started to tell them about what she had seen in the forest, the incident with the wolves, she knew it had to be true. She still hadn’t told Emily about any of that, so she would have had no other way of knowing. Unless Percy had told her? But he had clearly read her thoughts, for when Isabelle looked over the top of Emily’s head at her husband, he simply shook his head and shrugged.

Although Isabelle was appalled and aghast at everything Emily had to say, there was still something about the music box that intrigued her. She felt that as she was older than Emily and would not fall so easily under its spell…

She looked up from the box to see Percy looking directly at her. She was once again ashamed at the thoughts that had been passing through her mind and felt Percy had followed every last one. He looked at her with his sad, wounded eyes and she realised that he must have thought it was somehow Aloysius that she wanted to see.

She tried to show him, merely via looking back into his eyes, that this certainly wasn’t the case. She loved Percy with all her heart, and Emily too. She loved her simple life here in Seaforth, she realised, and would never do anything that could upset Percy or leave him feeling anything less than her utter devotion.

The last trace of land had by now disappeared from view. Isabelle hoped Percy still knew which way the return journey lay, but trusted him to find their way home.

The moment they had been avoiding talking about all this time had arrived.