All, everything that I understand,
I understand only because I love.
Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace
The dress was perfect, more silver than white, the Leavers lace so delicate the stitching in the intricate hawthorn pattern was barely visible. From a simple neckline, the bodice hugged her figure then fanned out to a graceful skirt with a sweeping train. Peering into the oval mirror in the master bedroom at Inverlochlarig House, Anna still wondered whether she had picked the dress because it reminded her of the image she had seen in the loch a year ago at the Beltane Sighting, or whether the loch had simply shown her a snapshot of a day a year into the future.
She hadn’t expected anything when she’d leaned over the water to wash her face with Elspeth beside her and at least a hundred other people crowded along the water’s edge. Reporters had milled around, hoping for a glimpse of Connal and Moira, and the dawn had been cold and clear, fog curling up off the water.
“Are you ready?” Elspeth had asked her.
Anna had been a little nervous given what Connal had told her. What if she saw someone other than Connal? Not that she had believed in the Sighting. Not completely. But she had wanted to believe.
The top of the sun, yellow-orange as an egg yolk, had peered over the Highland hills. Everyone bent at once, hands plunging into the loch, faces stinging as they brought the water to their cheeks. Anna’s breath blew a haze into the air, and water dripped from between her fingers. She hadn’t seen anything when she bent down, nothing except her own reflection and those of the people all around her. But as she pulled her hands away from her eyes, the drops of water that fell back into the loch rippled out as smoothly as if she stood there all by herself, and in the water, she had seen Connal and Moira on the peninsula with her, Connal in his kilt, smiling at her with love in his eyes, and Moira in a glittering silver dress holding a basket of lacy hawthorn petals.
The dress Anna has been wearing was this one, exact down to the last detail, that she and Connal had found on a mannequin in a bridal store window on a whirlwind trip to Edinburgh just four months ago. How could the loch have shown her that? Maybe it was wishful thinking, Anna admitted as she stood looking in the mirror. Maybe the dress was only similar. Perhaps she would never know for certain, but deep down, she believed.
“You’re so beautiful, love, you hurt my heart,” Elspeth said, coming up behind her. “Have I ever told you how happy I am that I flimflammed you into coming for the festival?”
Anna turned and kissed Elspeth on the cheek. “Many times, but that was the best story you’ve ever told.”
A knock sounded on the door to the corridor, and they both turned a little warily. “We’re all ready,” Anna’s sister Margaret called. “How are you doing?”
“Coming now,” Anna said.
“Just one second.” Elspeth pulled out an embroidered handkerchief and unwrapped it to reveal a pair of sapphire earrings that were a near match to the necklace that Connal had given Anna earlier, the blue the same color as the loch, the same color as Connal’s eyes. “These were your grandmother’s earrings,” Elspeth said. “I know Ailsa already gave you her own bracelet as something old, but I wanted to give you something, too. I hope that’s okay. Your grandmother would have loved you so much, so very much. As I do.”
Anna wrapped her arms around Elspeth fiercely. All her life, Elspeth had been the mother Anna had wanted, the mother she wished she had. But Julian had been right. Parents did the best they could. Anna’s own mother was down on the peninsula with the other wedding guests, sitting beside Katharine and Henry, because there had been no keeping those two away. You got the family you were dealt, Anna had decided, and you had to make the best of it. If you were lucky, you found an Elspeth along the way as she had, and that became the family you really needed.
“You are the best person in the world, Aunt Elspeth,” she whispered. “I’m so happy you’re a flimflam artist. Have I ever told you that?”
“Just consider me your fairy godmother, my girl. Wishes and white lies have never been that far apart.”
Smiling, they followed Margaret downstairs, past the great room already set up for the Beltane Ball that would double as a wedding reception later, and through the foyer to where Moira waited in her sparkling silver dress beside Anna’s father. His gaze drifted between her and Elspeth while they walked toward him, as if he didn’t know where to look. Anna couldn’t decide if she wanted to hug him or slap him and tell him to go get a divorce already instead of spending more years being miserable. Except that wouldn’t solve the problem. If he divorced Ailsa, Elspeth would never take him.
Anna stooped to kiss Moira’s cheek. “You look lovely, sweetheart.”
“So do you,” Moira said, smiling the crooked half-smile that lit her eyes. “We’re like fairy princesses, aren’t we?”
Anna’s father smiled down at both of them. “Yes, you are.” Still tall and handsome and kind after all these years in an unhappy marriage, his hair gray and his face lined with both strain and laughter, he smiled down at Anna. “You look happy enough to float away.”
Anna hugged him harder. “I wish you could be as happy as I am.”
“You’re making me the happiest father in the world by being happy yourself. That’s all any parent could ask for.” Swiftly, almost gruffly, Anna’s father stooped to kiss her cheek.
Down by the loch, the first notes of “Braes of Balquhidder” sounded from the bagpipes: Ian Camm MacGregor and Rory MacLaren playing together, Rory because he was still trying to make amends for his sister Erica, and Ian Camm because there couldn’t be a MacGregor wedding in the glen without a MacGregor piper. Beyond the gates, a crowd of festival-goers and tabloid reporters jockeyed for position, all trying to catch a glimpse. There were even boats bobbing out on the water with camera lenses flashing in the sunlight, and a helicopter hovering overhead making the water choppy on the loch. Anna didn’t care. Nothing was going to spoil the day.
Moira picked up the small silver basket of hawthorn petals and went down the front stairs sprinkling them along the path. Elspeth and Margaret fell in behind her, walking the long path toward the peninsula where rows of chairs were set up for the wedding guests and where Connal and the minister waited.
Anna’s father handed Anna the bouquet of lacy white hawthorn wound through with silk ribbons in deep blue and palest green.
The “Braes of Balquhidder” changed to “Highland Cathedral” with the drums and flutes of the band chiming in. On her father’s arm, Anna walked slowly toward the peninsula where, a year ago, she had glimpsed her future. Now that future stood there waiting for her, looking exactly like the image that she had seen reflected in the water during the Sighting: Connal in his kilt with the MacGregor sash on his shoulder, and Moira in her glittering silver dress. Anna’s mother and Katharine, Henry, Brando, JoAnne, Flora and Duncan, Kirsty and Angus, Davy Griggs and his wife, and all the other people from the village were also there with them, smiling.
“I love you, Anna,” Connal whispered, his heart in his eyes and the light dancing around him like magic as he took Anna’s hand with their family and friends looking on. Moira came to help him raise the thin veil from Anna’s face, and when he slipped the ring on her finger, Anna felt the click in the fabric of the world in every cell within her body.
The wedding vows they had written for each other were meaningful and heartfelt, but in all those words there were only seven that truly mattered: I will love you forever and always.
Those seven words mended hearts and reshaped lives, Anna thought, looking around at her big, messy family, old and new alike. She’d been lucky enough to find love, and that in its many forms was what made life worth living.