Elias had not intended to come here. His feet had simply... brought him. Perhaps some part of him had known that this was a wound that needed tending. Or perhaps it was simply a habit.
He had passed this way often during the six years he had stalked his prey, memorizing every detail of Josef's life, and for a while he had come close to this family, as he learned about how to live a normal life… the Stoneward Asylum was not a place where you find normal people, and all of his teachers were far from normal men and women.
The door to the house was closed, and the windows were dark, but movement in the garden caught his eye.
A woman knelt among the flowers, her hands working the soil with mechanical precision.
She was young, younger than Josef had been, with dark hair pulled back in a hasty knot and a face that might have been beautiful if not for the hollows under her eyes and the gaunt set of her cheeks.
