Sunday after church, Emily parked the old truck next to the house and stepped out. The day had turned out gray and damp. A thick, aimless mist had moved into the glen and seeped into everything it touched, including her. Dreich, Maggie had called it.
While Emily reached in to help Aunt Grace out of the truck, Maggie slammed the passenger door and stomped away. Attending church had done little to improve the old woman’s foul mood.
Grace moved slowly along the walkway to the house, and Emily hung close by her side, getting damper by the minute. But she was in no hurry to get inside and rejoin Maggie.
The old woman hadn’t said a word to Emily since she’d come knocking on her bedroom door earlier that morning with a message from Ian.
“Grace and I want to go to kirk,” the old woman had said. “Ian says he’s not going and ye can take us. He says ye know where the truck key is.” She just stood there with a hazy glare, her lips pressed hard and arms tightly folded. “My truck.”
Fabulous. Yes, Emily knew where the key was kept, meaning not only was she caught in the middle of a feud between the two MacLeans, but she had to see Ian to get it.
Two days had passed since she’d spoken to him out by the woodshed. It still pained her to remember what she’d said, but it had worked. She hadn’t seen any sign of him, no more flowers or notes. Then, when she’d gone to the cottage early this morning, Ian met her at the door with the key and a quiet warning about the clutch sticking in third gear, and nothing more.
Aunt Grace finally reached the house, and Emily helped her inside.
In the kitchen, Maggie slammed cupboard doors, muttering.
Grace shuffled over to get an apron from the wall but it was caught too high on the hook.
“Let me get that down for you, Aunt Grace,” Emily said.
Maggie spun around. “I’ll get it. She doesn’t need yer help and neither do I. Ye can go now. We dinna need ye.”
Emily pressed her lips tight as she watched the old woman stomp over to the wall and yank at the apron until it came down. Heat prickled up the back of her neck.
“Och, Maggie,” Grace said softly. “That’s no way to speak to the lass.”
Maggie chewed her lip in silence, scowling.
If that was how Maggie felt, fine. Emily wasn’t in the habit of arguing with blind, old women. She turned her attention to Grace and tried to think of an excuse for leaving that wouldn’t make Grace think Emily’s feelings were hurt.
Grace wrapped the apron around her waist, held it steady against her belly with her curled arm, tied it in a lumpy knot at one side, and inched it around until the apron hung in front. Then Grace turned to her sister. “Well?”
“Sorry,” Maggie said with a sniff and a nod in Emily’s direction. But the old woman made no effort to include her.
Emily stayed only so Aunt Grace wouldn’t worry.
As they prepared lunch, the sisters argued and corrected each other over stories of growing up and which seasonings to use and how hot the oven should be. As Maggie rolled bread dough into circles, Grace mixed meat together with onions and seasonings. Talking nonstop, she divided the mixture evenly among Maggie’s rolled-out rounds. Maggie folded each pastry over the filling and pinched the edges together. Grace placed them on a baking tray, then Maggie slid them into the oven and asked Grace why she hadn’t started the tea. Aunt Grace filled the teakettle and set it on the stove without missing a beat in her story about the old neighborhood.
They made leek soup to go with the meat pies, and to Emily’s surprise, lunch was delicious. Maggie was right—they hadn’t needed her at all.
After the meal, Aunt Grace went to take a nap.
Grumbling, Maggie puttered around the kitchen, filling and arranging dishes on a tray, then headed for the front door.
Emily rushed to get ahead of her.
Maggie nudged her aside. “I can do it.” She balanced the tray on one arm and opened the door.
Emily held her tongue and waited until Maggie was outside. “Is that for Ian?”
“Who else?” the old woman retorted as she shuffled away with the tray that held enough food for a small family. “Though I’ll wager your plane ticket home the daft laddie’s fainted away or dead of hunger by now.”
A growing heaviness pressed on Emily’s heart. Being useless and confined produced a restless energy that consumed her. She needed to get out and spend it, regardless of the damp. She ran upstairs and changed into jeans, a sweatshirt, and hiking boots, then headed out back.
The path Ian had used to take her to the honeysuckle grove led through beautifully rich, fragrant woods. Emily turned toward the hills and followed the trail up the brae to the line of trees where the sloped meadow ended and the woods began. The heavy air clung to her clothes and hair, but she didn’t care. A native Oregonian would never let a little drizzle slow her down.
Emily drew in deep breaths, letting the moist air fill her lungs. Anxiety and sorrow and dread had been building all week like a pressure cooker, and when it finally blew, the force sent her adrift.
She followed the trail up the hill and into deeper woods. It took about ten minutes to reach the cluster of trees that hid the enchanting honeysuckle grove where Ian had so eagerly taken her that first day.
The sooner you forget that day, the better.
Emily hiked past the grove without slowing.
At the top of the next hill, the trail leveled out. A lush valley in varying shades of green stretched out below for miles in every direction. Ahead, where the trail sloped down, it was veiled by a low blanket of fog. Something stood fixed in the middle of the otherwise undisturbed meadow, a building of some kind, but the fog was too thick to see what it was.
By the time she reached the valley floor, the mist had shifted enough for Emily to make out an old, stone church. Standing in the middle of nowhere, it seemed a natural, timeless part of the landscape, a ruddy anchor in a misty sea of green.
The path took her through the meadow, the fog thicker on the valley floor. The view from the top of the hill was deceiving; the distance to the old church was a lot farther than she had first thought.
But she had nowhere else to be. No one needed her—Maggie had made that quite clear.
Emily wasn’t sure what to make of Maggie, but it was obvious that she and Grace had quickly developed an odd but symbiotic routine in spite of their time apart and Maggie’s temperament. Being together seemed to be good for them both. And keeping them together was probably best for them.
And ultimately, for Emily.
In Scotland, Aunt Grace would be surrounded by people instead of being left to fend for herself after Emily was gone. But out here, in the stillness of this meadow, Emily couldn’t deny the phenomenon she’d witnessed since their arrival in Scotland. Aunt Grace was needed here. She not only enjoyed being with Maggie, she thrived. She had purpose. And that made her happier than Emily had seen her in a long time.
Wonderful. Perfect. More than Emily could’ve asked for. So why the growing distress, this awful feeling of panic?
She reached the stone church. The remains of a low fence around the churchyard enclosed an old cemetery. Wildflowers and tall grass grew between the headstones. The stones and the building crumbled at the edges and were crawling with moss. The church was probably centuries old, abandoned in favor of the more modern, conveniently located church in town.
She stepped over the fence and strolled around the headstones.
A section of the cemetery had graves dating back over a hundred years, but, moving amongst the stones, she discovered a much newer section.
The name MacLean caught her eye. She stepped closer to the gravestone, holding her breath.
Kathryn Carmichael MacLean.
Heart hammering, Emily closed her eyes to block out the dates. The thought of Katy dying so young while she and Ian were so deeply in love paralyzed Emily with sorrow. Tears streamed down her face.
Stop it.
But she couldn’t. As she stared at the headstone, the crushing sadness pressed deeper. Wiping her face, she spun around and bolted for the woods. The mist had become a light drizzle, flattening her hair and dampening her sweatshirt, but she didn’t care. Getting far away from that cemetery was more important than being dry.
When she reached the woods, she slowed her pace and kept on. The structured layout made Emily wonder if it was private woodlands. The church was probably part of the same land, part of the local county parish. Hopefully, whoever owned it wouldn’t mind her passing through. Maybe she’d get a glimpse of a laird’s castle.
About fifteen minutes passed, and by then, the darkening sky hinted at more than a mere drizzle. The drizzle soon turned to rain, and as it fell, the sky darkened with the threat of more. She was going to get soaked. Good thing it was August—at least it wouldn’t be cold. She tromped on.
The fog seemed thicker than before, which seemed odd with the rain. She kept walking, but instead of thinning and leading to a castle or a manor, the trees got thicker and all signs of the trail disappeared.
“Okay. Let’s rethink this.” Emily stopped, turned, and looked around her, listening. Nothing to see or hear but rain, which was coming down hard and heavy in places where the trees weren’t as thick. She turned back and picked her way through the woods, toward the clearing and the old church. Wet ferns and tangled briars brushed against her clothes as she pressed through, completely soaking her boots and pant legs.
She should have reached the clearing by now. But the woods didn’t look like anything she’d seen. Taking a deep breath, she tucked dripping clumps of hair behind her ears. She was lost, obviously.
Big surprise. She didn’t know this place at all.
“Okay.” It took the edge off her rising unease, thinking aloud. “Just go back the way you came.”
She turned and trudged through a tangle of trees and rotting trunks and leaves for a while, pressing on until she had walked more than long enough to come out near the church—if she had been heading the right way. But the woods were no thinner here. And everything had grown darker.
Emily stopped and closed her eyes, her pulse racing. “Lord, help me, please.”
Thunder rolled in the distance. And another steady sound, like radio static, filtered through the mix of rain and thunder.
Running water. A stream?
She strained to see through the trees, but it was too dark and the woods too thick to see anything. If I can find a stream, maybe it will lead to a house, to civilization.
A few times, while running or traveling to and from the farm, she’d crossed a wooden bridge spanning a large stream about a mile or so from the house. Maybe this was the same stream. It was hard to tell where the sound was coming from, but if she started moving, at least she might be able to tell if she was getting closer or farther away.
The dark slowed her pace even more. She stepped carefully over fallen tree trunks, feeling for tree roots beneath a boggy carpet of needles and rotting leaves.
What time was it? How long had she been gone? It must have been hours. Panic crept up her throat. Aunt Grace was probably awake by now, maybe even beginning to worry.
Worrying was something Grace wouldn’t have to do for long. If she stayed here in Scotland with Maggie, she’d have no reason to worry about Emily. Once Emily was back in the States, she’d be out of sight, out of mind.
But first, she had to find her way out of these woods.
She pressed on, listening for the sound of water as she worked her way through trees and over roots and downed limbs. After a while, the sound grew louder. A heavy downpour soaked her clothes, drawing heat from her body.
And she was wrong about August—she was cold.
Finally the trees thinned and the sound of rushing water grew louder. The ground sloped downward and a stream came into view. A few more steps brought her to a rocky edge of the water. If this was the same stream she’d seen before, it would lead to the bridge and the road back to the farm.
But which way? Emily wiped rain from her face with a wet sleeve, then looked upstream and down for a clue. Pretty much the same both ways.
Which way had the stream flowed at the bridge? She hadn’t paid close enough attention. Closing her eyes, she listened. Above the rush of water, the silence was deafening.
“God, which way?”
Maybe if you’d been listening to Him, you’d be able to hear Him now.
“I have been listening. Haven’t I?”
She’d been doing exactly what God wanted her to do. With all that had happened in the last few weeks, she’d dealt with making heartbreaking decisions. What God wanted from her was a no-brainer. She needed to do what was best for everyone, do everything in her power to make sure everyone was okay. This had been her role for longer than she could remember. She didn’t have to ask.
She was just a little stuck at the moment and needed some direction.
Emily wiped the rain from her eyes. Aunt Grace would be worried, maybe even distraught. Emily needed to get back—now. There was no telling what could happen to her poor aunt in that state.
In the stillness, her quickening pulse thudded in her ears, sending her heart pounding harder. What if she had a heart attack now? She closed her eyes, willing the panic to stay down. No. Not a heart attack. Not here. Not alone.
But she was alone.
Figure something out, Em.
Any sense of direction she had was useless here. If this stream flowed to that loch she’d visited with Claire, then the loch was probably downstream. Her best guess was that the farm was upstream from the loch.
“Upstream it is,” she whispered, words falling flat in the rain. “Lord, I hope I’m right.”