Irene's POV
Carl's question hung in the air like smoke from a dying fire.
I couldn't stop thinking about it. The confusion on his little face. The way Lexie's complexion had gone from porcelain to ash in half a second. The way she had stammered some excuse about children not understanding how pregnancy worked before fleeing the garden like her dress was on fire.
Children understood more than adults gave them credit for.
Especially my children.
I found Ken in the study that evening, surrounded by old maps and leather-bound journals he had brought from his travels. Relics of Dark Hollows. Pieces of a history I was only beginning to understand.
"I need to see the records," I said without preamble. "Everything you have from the former site. Documents, journals, anything that survived the
