THE THREADBARE BLANKET

Arthur stared at the woman standing in his hallway, his mind violently rejecting the reality his eyes were showing him.

Grace. His wife. The woman he had buried a year ago in a closed casket.

She was shivering, her bare feet bleeding onto the polished hardwood of Blackwood Manor. The infant clutched to her chest let out a soft, mewling cry, a sound that shattered the paralyzing silence of the massive house.

“Arthur,” Grace whispered again, her voice scraping like sandpaper. She stumbled forward, her knees buckling.

Arthur moved before he could think. He caught her, wrapping his arms around her frail body. She felt like a skeleton draped in rags, trembling so violently it terrified him. He pulled her flush against his chest, shielding the tiny baby between them. She smelled of damp earth, sweat, and copper.

“You’re alive,” he choked out, burying his face in her matted hair. Hot tears tracked down his cheeks, soaking her torn collar. “Grace, you’re alive. Oh my god.”

“Lock the doors,” she gasped, her hands gripping his expensive wool sweater with terrifying strength. “Arthur, please. The alarms. Turn them on.”

He didn’t ask questions. He scooped her up—she weighed nothing—and carried her into his private study, setting her gently on the leather sofa. He punched the security code into the wall panel. The heavy deadbolts of the manor slammed shut in unison. The red light of the armed system blinked on.

Arthur turned back to his wife. She was frantically rocking the baby, wrapping the faded, threadbare blanket tighter around the tiny body.

“Grace,” Arthur knelt in front of her, his hands hovering over her, afraid to touch her lest she disappear like a phantom. He looked at the baby. The infant had a tuft of dark hair, exactly like Arthur’s, and was staring up at the ceiling with quiet, exhausted eyes. “Whose child is this? You’ve been gone twelve months. How is this possible?”

Grace looked up at him, her eyes hollow, haunted by a year of unimaginable horrors.

“I was five weeks pregnant when the car went off the bridge,” she whispered, fresh tears spilling over her eyelashes. “I was going to tell you that night at dinner. But I never made it.”

Arthur felt all the air leave his lungs. The room spun. A child. His child.

“They told me you drowned,” Arthur said, his voice cracking. “They said the current swept you away. I buried an empty box, Grace. Who did this to you? Where have you been?”

Grace reached into the deep, torn pocket of her oversized coat. Her hand was shaking so badly she could barely hold the object she pulled out.

She placed it in Arthur’s palm.

It was a heavy, silver pocket watch. The glass face was cracked, stopping the hands at exactly midnight. But it wasn’t the broken glass that made Arthur’s blood run cold. It was the intricate family crest engraved on the silver casing. A soaring falcon grasping a broken sword.

“The man who ran my car off the road didn’t leave me to drown,” Grace said, her voice dropping to a terrified whisper. “He pulled me out. He kept me locked in the basement of the old hunting lodge in the mountains. He waited until our son was born. He was going to take him, Arthur. He was going to take him and kill me tonight.”

Arthur stared at the watch. It was a custom heirloom. Only two existed in the world. Arthur’s was in his desk drawer.

The other belonged to his older brother, Julian.

Before Arthur could speak, the armed security panel on the wall let out a sharp, piercing beep. Someone had just bypassed the front gate code.