2009

Alison continued to slide quietly from bed in the wee hours while the whole house slept, the dark a comfort like those long-ago winter nights in Papa’s flat. She’d returned to working her clay again, though her attention was still drawn to Mary. Now, she opened her laptop, flushed the way she might have been had she been in the throes of a new romance, looking for Mary in her inbox. Reading and rereading Mary’s first letters or new emails was the closest Alison could get to staring into her mother’s eyes. She ached for the reality of this, though—to swim in those dark waters, to feel Mary’s body beside her. Her children, here, also pulled at her. She was a sea called by two separate moons.

Mary felt the same. Neither of them said this directly. Grateful for every word, they did not want to be too greedy, each afraid she might lose it all. They wrote of their daily lives, of past events, however small, that each thought the other might like. Mary asked after the children. Was Mikey less angry? Tori less clingy? Yes and Yes. Would Alison like a plane ticket? Yes. She did not even consider what Wade might say.

She arranged carpool for Tori, cooked extra in the space between PTA meetings and School Improvement Council and cleaning the house and picking up Tori, placed meals in the freezer for each night she’d be gone. Mary emailed a tentative itinerary. In the afternoon, in the car, Alison turned to Tori.

“I’m going to go and visit Mary,” she said.

Tori’s eyes cast down.

“It’ll just be for a few days. I’ll be back before you know it. You’ll have Dad.”

“Does he even know how to cook?” Tori offered her the same sad eyes as when Alison had put her in time out as a preschooler.

“I’ve cooked your favorites. They’re in the freezer.”

“Four-cheese macaroni?” she asked, followed by a list, including things Alison made only rarely.

“All of it. Okay?” She was wrong to even phrase it as a question. She did not want to leave her daughter, but she could not deny herself this.

Mikey was easier. Not only had his initial flush of anger dissipated, but a new girlfriend had also arrived in his life, claiming the bulk of his attention.

She told Wade after dinner. As he poured a beer at the edge of the kitchen while Alison did the dishes, she explained that carpool and food were arranged. Mary had sent the tickets.

“You’ve met her. You know where you’re from. I thought that was what you wanted.”

“It is. Was. But now.” She focused on scouring the corners of a pan.

Hands on her shoulders, gripping tightly. “Now, what? And what about the kids?”

“The kids will be fine, Wade.” She held tightly to the pan, hands submerged.

“How? How will Tori get to school? Eat.”

“I’ve made food. It’s in the freezer. Evelyn will drive Tori.”

“So I’m last?” He squeezed hard. “Last to know what my own wife is up to?”

Alison slid one shoulder out from his grip. “Wade. She’s my mother.”

“I’ve heard that before.”

Throat tight. Eyes filling. Fire in her chest. Silent. Steam rose from the water in the sink. Her hands, hot and wet, dripped on the tile.

“Don’t forget your responsibilities. Here,” Wade said. He turned towards his office, shoulders tense with rage.

As she watched him go, that same part of her that thought if she could please Mum enough, all would be well, arose. Stronger than this, though, her whole body and soul said she must go, no matter the consequences.

~

April, then, in the air and onto the tarmac and in line in the customs hall. A sudden lurch in the belly. What was she doing, going to stay with a woman she’d met only once? A stranger. Her mother. At least it was just Mary, and Mary’s brother. One step at a time, they agreed. She’d meet Mary’s husband next time. If there is one. Neither of them said this last part, though they both feared it. Neither of them could correctly name what she felt. Love? How could it be love when they’d only just set eyes on each other? Longing? A seeking of something lost that they’d never had. A deep well of fear that they could be taken from each other again. They had families to tend, did so diligently, though both of them wanted the world to fall away, just for a while, so they could know each other. Alison did not allow herself to stop and ponder any of this. She kept moving, passed under the Nothing to Declare sign.

There Mary stood in the throng in Arrivals, solid and real and waiting for her. A hug. A peck on the cheek. Into the car and away.

~

Mary and Alison hurried down the path to Eilidh’s cottage. Mary had suggested this. Alison had seen photos, heard how Eilidh wished for Mary to search for her and how Mary had not been able to. She was paralyzed by one of the mantras of the matron at the mothering home and the social worker, the one that said Mary had done wrong, that keeping her baby would cause the child irreparable harm, that the only thing she could do to redeem herself was to let go and never, ever try to go back. Her only hope was that, one day, her daughter would come to her. Even that, she’d shut down after too long wishing.

Patter of rain against the slate roof, onto the leaves, grass, path. Click of the lock, opening. Large hands, gentle on Alison’s shoulder. Mary’s brother, Stuart.

He held her out at arm’s length. “Let’s have a look at you.”

A flush in the neck. Would she measure up?

“What took you so long?”

“Stuart!” Mary chided.

“I’ve had to wait over forty years to see my own niece.” He turned to Alison. “In ye come.”

In the front room, heat from the fire. Above the mantle, a sea of swirling purple, and, rising from it, a white-haired woman, face of a crone, eyes dark and glinting in the moon.

“Mummy’s wee hobby,” Mary said, as though she was apologizing. What would Alison make of it, she wondered.

Turning, Alison realized that each wall held a huge painting, all of them life size. Maiden. Mother. Crone. Goddess. She wanted to step closer, to touch them, to be part of them. She’d heard, in Mary’s tone, that Mary did not feel as she did.

“They’re very nicely done,” Alison said.

She feared saying more, revealing herself and risking the creation of distance between herself and Mary.

“Sit beside me.” Mary patted the sofa.

“I’ll get us a drink,” Stuart said. Uncle Stuart?

Alison sat, sipped, with her mother, beneath her grandmother’s work. Gradually, she allowed a long-ago feeling to begin to bloom within, a sense of being at home without having to do something, be what someone else dictated, which she hadn’t felt fully since she’d left Vic.

Tears welling. Throat constricting. Swallow, swallow, swallow. Is this a betrayal? She was supposed to have felt at home with Dad and Mum. She was supposed to feel at home with Wade.

~

The photographs of this event—Mary and Alison side-by-side on the sofa, a dark-haired maiden on a cliff above them—reveal Alison’s rounded spine, slightly elevated shoulders hinting at her fear of losing this when it had just begun as Mary and Stuart told tales of childhood and of Eilidh carrying baskets of herbs to the kitchen while their friends’ mums opened tins. A wee dig from Stuart to Mary, about always having seemed to be the good girl.

“Stuart!” the false frown following.

Mary was home, in her mum’s cottage, with her daughter. Alison had found Mary too late to meet Eilidh, but in the nick of time to sit in her space, on the sofa on which she’d sat, to feel at least a little of her. They’d put it on the market when Eilidh died. Mary had talked Stuart in to taking it off when she’d received word of Alison. “Mummy wanted her here,” she said. “You women,” he’d replied. “Fair enough. But it’s straight back up for sale after that.”

Alison felt, at once, part of this moment and also as though she was a spectator in their midst, learning the life she’d missed.

Tucked in the single bed in the room next to Mary, Alison noted the night sky through the gap in the curtains: Black, like the nights in Papa’s flat. No clock ticking. No Papa to rise. No granite stairs to descend. Who am I now?

~

In the morning, Mary stood at the stove with Eilidh’s spurtle in hand, steam rising from the porridge.

“She used to say you’d be like this swimmer,” she said. “In some story her auntie or granny or one of the old women used to tell.” Mary shook her head gently. “She was always one for saying there was truth in all the old tales and not much for being here, now.”

Mary sighed. “I made fun of them. She stopped telling them after I’d had you and come home empty handed.” She turned. “Not that it was your fault. She tiptoed around me as though I was broken glass. I think she just didn’t want to do anything that would annoy me in the least. I wish you’d met her. She’d have loved that. She’d have loved to know that you’re here now, in her space. I wish I could remember one of her stories to tell you.”

They sat across the table from each other, taking their breakfast like any other mother and daughter, and Alison felt as though Eilidh was with them. She wanted more time, though it felt as though she was stealing even these few days from Wade and her children, and the life she’d made. They rose, washed their plates, dried them, put them away, each stealing glances at the other’s hands and profile as they did.

“Wee walk?” Mary asked.

“Yes.”

Out the back they went, the soil soft underfoot, the hummocks of grass keeping their pace slow. Mary hooked her hand in the crook of Alison’s elbow.

“This okay?” She asked.

“Yes,” Alison said. More than okay, the closeness of their two bodies, the comfort of it.

Four days of this. Not enough.

On the last morning, suitcase packed and waiting, Alison stood below Eilidh’s paintings. Who had this woman been? She felt it shouldn’t matter. It was Mary she’d wanted, Mary she’d searched for, Mary she’d found. And yet she felt drawn to this woman and her paintings. She snapped a quick photo of them and then turned towards Mary, readying the car.

A last hug in front of the security line. Even in Mary’s arms, Alison felt the old fear rising, that Mary would simply disappear. Mary felt the same. Eyes welling but not spilling, they parted.

Alison dared a turn of the head just past the passport and boarding pass check. Mary stood precisely where Alison had left her. Each woman raised her hand, smiled, held in the tears.

The phone chimed as Alison took her seat on the plane. “Thanks for the look back. Lovely to have you here. Miss you already. Xx.” Alison’s tears came, then, quietly, and only briefly, until she pulled them back in to let the passenger next to her take his seat.

In the air again, the place between places, the self between selves, Alison rested. Part of her wished to remain suspended in this place where she did not have to leave some loves to be with others, where she had the illusion of holding both at the same time.

~

The house, empty when she got home. Suitcase at her side, she listened to the quiet whoosh of the air conditioning. Wade had said they’d be here, that they’d go to dinner. She checked each room. She scanned the table, the kitchen counter, the fridge door for a note. Her itinerary rested there under its magnet. No clue telling her where her husband was, or her children.

A panic rose. What if they were gone?

Check the closets—their favorite clothes still there. Open the door to Wade’s office. Everything seemed intact, not that she could know for sure. She busied herself putting clothes in the washer, gripping the edges as it began to turn. Where were they?

“Mum! You’re here already. Dad said you weren’t getting back until eight.” Tori burst through the door, wrapping her arms around Alison.

Wade stood in the door frame, shrugging. “I must have got the time wrong.”

The itinerary. On the fridge. She didn’t say it.

“Where are we going for dinner?” She asked. She stepped forward, leaned in to kiss him, met cheek instead of lips.

“We just ate,” Tori held up a bag from their favorite Caribbean restaurant.

“I thought we were going out,” Alison turned to Wade. A welcome back dinner, he’d said on the phone. Last night.

“Too late to go out at 8:00 p.m. on a school night.”

The fridge, nearly bare. The freezer, the same. Alison ignored the hunger, sat on the sofa in the middle of her children, breathed them in, trying to shake off what had just happened with Wade. Later, he climbed into bed. “You going to show me how much you missed me?”

“Of course.” At least he wasn’t angry, pressing his hands on her until it hurt, or pulling her down on the hard, tile bathroom floor.

The next night, a Friday with just enough chill in the air for a fire. Alison cooked burgers on the grill, made a pyramid of kindling in the fire bowl, set the chairs around. When Wade got home, Alison watched him make straight for the kitchen. He arrived on the deck, beer in hand.

“Indulging your pyro tendencies? Get that from the motherland?”

“You know me.” She laughed, dismissing the edge in his voice.

Everything she came from now seemed to hold the potential for his subtle ridicule.

Three weeks later, she painted the bathroom, changing the dingy white for a pale gray.

“It looks so much better, Mum,” Tori said.

Wade entered after Tori had settled herself in the den. “Wishing for the matching earth and sky of the motherland?”

“Wade?” Alison set down the roller. “Are you mad that I went to see my mother again?”

“Alison.” He paused, took a deep breath. “It’s hard for me when you’re gone.”

She stepped towards him, kissed him.

“You could go with me,” she said.

“We have children.”

“They could go, too.”

“With what money, Alison?”

“I could sell some more of my work.”

“Just stay here, Alison. With this family. Where you belong.” His arms around her, then one hand releasing to reach behind him and close the bathroom door.

The floor, cold and hard. So unlike the floor beneath her and Vic all those years ago.

~

She tried to let go of the idea of selling more work; she tried to content herself with the life she and Wade had built. In her loft, hands on clay, creating strange dolls with wild hair, wings. Some had feathered hands; others had hooves. She wanted more for these than Etsy. She wanted a show. They might be good enough. She felt a confidence beyond anything before. Not cocky, but that maybe she had a chance. She looked up the websites of local galleries, hoping for one that exhibited work like hers. When she landed on one with a familiar face as the owner, she knew she must. Her old professor, Dr. Mindon. She held her breath as she typed the email, reintroducing herself, asking if she could come by.

Of course, the reply said. She packed two of the dolls neatly into a box.

She paused outside the gallery door. Abstracts hung at odd angles along the walls. A mop of curly gray hair was visible over the top of a packing box in the back. Alison glanced at her dolls. Was she stupid to think that these might be of any more use to her than those dolls on the dresser of her childhood? She took a breath. She had to try.

As she opened the door, the woman inside stood.

“Dr. Mindon. Hi,” Alison said.

“Alison?” The woman stepped forward. “Please, it’s Olivia. She moved to Alison, arms wide. “It’s been a long time.”

“Yes.” In her embrace, Alison felt like a little girl who’d brought something to school for show and tell. “I didn’t know this was your place until I started looking online. I pass here all the time. Are you still teaching?”

“No. This is my retirement project. Sit down. Catch me up. What have you been doing?”

“Children, mostly. Four of them. And these.” She held out the box.

Dr. Mindon—Olivia—lifted out one and then the other, gently, as though they were newborns. She held them in the same gaze she’d used with all her students at Holette. She’d offered her students unconditional support to experiment, to try, and relentless criticism when they tried to cut corners or left a work less than fulfilling its full potential. Alison’s pulse quickened. She hadn’t realized how much she wanted this work to be seen and loved. Olivia set them down. “Coffee?”

Alison glanced at her watch.

“Unless you’re in a rush.”

“No, no. I have plenty of time.”

As she watched Olivia pour, a flood of feeling returned—how alive she’d felt in Olivia’s classes and the studio.

“It’s wonderful work,” Olivia said. She placed the dolls gently back into their boxes. “How many of these do you have?”

“Seven, so far.”

“I’d love to show them. I don’t have an opening for several months, though.”

Alison thought she might cry. Or shriek. She contained both. “That would be wonderful.”

“There’s something else. I know it’s not what you came in here for, but I’ve been thinking since you emailed. It would be nice to have some help here. Just part time. Hanging shows, press releases. You could help me curate.”

“I don’t know,” Alison said. “I don’t know that I’m qualified.”

“Unless you’ve forgotten everything I taught you, you’re qualified. I can help you fill in any gaps. It would be nice to have some company.”

Alison paused. What would Wade make of this? But she’d love it. “Sounds perfect.”

They agreed on a salary and a start date. Alison felt unburdened joy as she picked up Tori at school, folded laundry, prepared the meal. At the sound of Wade’s car door shutting in the garage, it fell away.

The four of them took their usual places at the dinner table, still strange after so many years of six. All the squabbling over the last biscuit or gooey spoonful of macaroni and cheese, all the laughter at something they’d seen at school. Sometimes it felt as though the ghosts of the boys still hung in their seats at the table. Sometimes it felt as though Alison had imagined them. She wondered what Mikey and Tori made of it all. The air between Alison and Wade held an almost palpable tension these days.

This night, she passed Wade the stir fry, watched him fill his plate, lift the chopsticks.

“How was work?” Alison studied him, unaware that she used the same habit she’d developed as a girl, gauging Mum before tiptoeing in.

“Good. Got in nine holes after. Three under par.”

“That’s great.”

Wade scraped the stir fry into a pile in the center of his plate and lifted another mouthful.

“I took two of my pieces to a gallery today.”

“You took the crazy dolls?” Tori asked.

“Yes.”

“To sell?” Wade asked.

“Maybe,” Alison said. Her chin tucked. “I thought maybe they were good enough for an exhibition.”

Wade paused, met her eye. “And are they? Good enough?”

“Yes,” Alison smiled.

“So you’re having an exhibition?” Tori asked.

“That’s cool, Mum,” Mikey said.

“Yes and no. She doesn’t have space right now. The owner is Olivia—Dr. Mindon—from Holette. Anyway. I can exhibit in a few months. And in the meantime, I have a job.”

“Congrats, Mum,” Tori said.

“Thanks. It’s just part time. A few hours each week.”

“A job?” Wade set down his chopsticks. “I had no idea you wanted a job.”

“Everybody wants a job, Dad,” Tori said.

“I hadn’t really thought about it until she said it. But, well, Charlie and Will are gone and …”

“What will you be doing?” Wade asked.

“Hanging shows, press releases, curating.”

“Do you know how to do any of that?” Wade dabbed his lips with his napkin.

“Some of it. I do have a degree in studio art. And Olivia will train me.”

“How will you add that to your other responsibilities? PTA, School Improvement Council, the house, the children? Won’t you be exhausted?”

“There’s only two of us,” Mikey said. “And we’re not babies. We don’t need Mum around all the time.”

“I can handle it,” Alison said. “I thought you’d be happy.”

Wade looked from Tori to Mikey to Alison. “Of course I am. It’s just. I’m taken by surprise. We hadn’t even talked about this.”

He tightened his lips, dabbed them again. He let it drop. His cold gaze when he doubted her ability clung to her. She would prove him wrong.

In the coming weeks and months, though they returned to their normal routine, Wade seemed somehow altered. At times he was even more distant; at times he seemed to know what Alison had been thinking, to almost use her own words, to be trying to connect with her. She found herself checking the rearview mirror to see if she was being followed. She couldn’t say what caused this, only that she had begun to have the sense that someone was staring, everywhere she went. Surely it was her imagination. Was it all too much, this meeting of Mary? Was Wade right—was this a betrayal of her husband and children? Had it made her unstable in some way? Perhaps she should seek help. No. Wade would only use it as evidence that she should stay there, with him, all the time.

She tended to her work and the children; she snuck upstairs in the wee hours, emails from Mary providing sustenance. She continued with her strange dolls. As she brought them into being, she felt them breathing a new life into her.

Wade held his long hours at work. His comments about money hung with her. She sold more work, said nothing of this, tucked her earnings into her savings account.

Mary’s comment about how much Alison looked like Jimmy hung with her also. As much as she’d learned from Mary, she needed to know the rest.

~

Alison found Jimmy minutes after she typed his name into the search engine, still there on Tursa. So that she could be sure that there was no doubt that he was the same man in the same house, all these years later, she contacted BirthRight again, paid the donation, waited for the results. No wife. No children. A sister, a brother-in-law, a niece. She sent the letter directly to him. When she’d received no reply after a month, she sent another, certified mail.

I understand if you don’t want to see or hear from me. Could you please confirm that I have the right person?

A thin airmail envelope sat in her mailbox a couple of weeks later: I wondered if this day would come—thought the time for it had come and gone. I thought you had made the wise decision not to contact me. As you have, though, here I am. Ask what you wish and I shall endeavor to answer as honestly as I can and hope that you do not end up regretting the choice of a relationship with me, as your mother surely must.

Alison replied, asking about his family and his work. What she really wanted was to look in his eyes, to know what his hand might feel like holding hers. Did she really look like him? She asked for a photo. When it arrived, she sat in the dim light of her studio, studying the thick, white eyebrows, the unruly sideburns, his light eyes.

The idea of going alone was fleeting. She knew how Wade would respond to that. And hadn’t she put the children through enough? She didn’t want them to feel as though she was abandoning them for this newfound family.

She found airline tickets she could afford online, asked Olivia for time off, Mary if they could stay. “Of course.”

“How does Scotland sound for spring break?” She asked at the dinner table.

“We can’t afford that,” Wade said, glaring over his salad.

“I sold some art,” she said. “I’ve saved money from work.”

“You sold four airline tickets worth of work?” He set down his fork.

“Yay, Mum,” Tori said.

“Six. Will and Charlie’s spring break is at the same time.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“That would have spoiled the surprise.”

Mikey and Tori jumped in with questions about passports and castles and the Loch Ness monster.

Alison wrote again to Jimmy, gave dates that they’d be in Scotland. Two weeks passed, then three. At last, a reply, including a phone number. A date set. A meeting in Inverkiven.

Three days before they were to leave, Wade announced that there was a case that he couldn’t possibly get away from.

“You bought trip insurance, right?”

“Yes, but.” Alison hesitated. “You really can’t go?”

“We’ll have to reschedule,” Wade said.

“But we can still go, right, Mum?” Mikey said.

Alison looked from Mikey to Wade, found Wade’s eyes like burning ice.

“Well, we really wanted to go as a family,” Alison said.

“Mum! You promised we’d go,” Tori said.

“I did promise.” Alison took a deep breath in. Her stomach contracted as though she might vomit. “I did promise, Wade. We can get a refund on your ticket.”

“Score!” Mike said. “When’s dinner?”

“Twenty minutes,” Alison said. “Go finish your homework.”

Wade stepped forward as Mike left the kitchen and Alison turned to the stove. He kissed Alison’s ear. “I suppose I should be grateful,” he whispered. “At least you’re not abandoning the children this time.”

He took them to the airport, though, and when Alison and the children arrived at Mary’s house, they were greeted by her husband, Nigel, and the dozen roses Wade had sent with a card: Hope everything is wonderful for you. Love, Wade. Xx

“Lovely,” Mary said. “Bit sad he can’t be here, though.”

“Me, too,” Alison said.

“I’m not,” Mikey said.

Will elbowed him. He turned to Mary. “Sorry. But Mum is more fun.”

The introductions and pecks on the cheek. Bags in rooms. Dinner on the table. Wine in their glasses, including Mikey and Tori. They’d planned two days there, one of which would include Alison driving west to meet Jimmy.

Mary said she’d take the kids for fish and chips. Nigel said they could get just as good at the pub. Will and Mikey overheard. The pub it would be, while Alison drove to Inverkiven. The tufts of grass on the moor seemed to dance, as alive as she felt, the same way she’d felt driving to meet Mary that first time.

~

Inverkiven was packed. Jimmy had chosen a seat on a bench between the arcade and the ferry so that he would see Alison no matter which direction she came from. The village stilled. Everything fell away—girls giggling, the ferry churning, slot machines twirling.

Alison strode down from the top of the village, dark waves flowing behind her.

Jimmy watched her pass on the opposite side of the street, stood to move to her, the moment suspended. Alison.

He stepped across the street. She had stopped. She turned.

He stopped inches from her: this girl, this woman, his daughter.

“Alison.” Jimmy leaned forward, hand extended, waiting for her hand to land in his.

“Jimmy.” His hand slightly calloused, strong and gentle at the same time.

Inside they went, found seats in the corner, sat side by side, shoulder to shoulder. His hair, white, but with enough wild waves to show how it had been. The shock of his light eyes. The sea of them, with the heavy cloud of storm held in them, as though he had forgotten how to receive the sun, the glow of it altered by what lay below his surface.

She turned to her pint, noticed each of their hands around the glasses, the left hands. Mark of the devil, the old-timers said. Later, Jimmy would confess to having been relieved at her turning to the drink. The beveled glass under hand was always a comfort. He noted the skin of her hand, as his once was, the length of the fingers like his. The eyes, though, dark and wide and sheltered under thick, dark, lashes, offering just a glimpse of the dark pool of herself. Smooth midnight, like her mother. Like Mary. MaryMaryMary. How he had loved to dive into the velvet pool of those eyes, hated surfacing.

A reel rolled in the background, Scottish country dance music, jarring him back to present.

“Bit of Johnny Cash or Hank, Sr. would suit me better than this pretend stuff for the tourists,” he said. “That too lowbrow for you?”

“No.” A laugh. Perhaps, he thought, she was just trying to be nice. Alison, this woman from America with her makeup and nice clothes, with her photos of her husband and lovely children.

Lowbrow. Perfect. Shoulder to shoulder, sipping. The solidity of him. Too much.

“You’ll want to know the story,” he said.

“I wanted to meet you. And yes, I’d like to know whatever you feel comfortable telling me.” She paused. “You don’t have to.”

“She was gorgeous, Mary, a queen. I always feared I wasn’t enough for her. I saw her on the first day, from the highest window in the house, my room,” Jimmy said. He hadn’t wanted to go. It was an insult, to leave not just the city but also the mainland and to be ferried, against his will, to that wee island. The least they could do was give him the room he wanted. He didn’t hesitate. Orchestrated a ‘chance’ meeting in the village.

“Sooner than I hoped, we were away up the hill, arm-in-arm,” he sipped his pint.

Alison imagined them eventually finding the tall grass, the soft earth, a flat space amid the gorse. A year like this. The finishing of school, the acceptances: Glasgow University—engineering (and rugby). Queen Victoria Hospital—midwifery (and Jimmy).

August sun as they stood at the bow, he was then still James, with Mary huddled close, wind in their hair, mainland in their sights.

“Glasgow suited us,” he said. “Or at least what we thought of ourselves: strong and full of energy, not too tidy, testing the edges.”

James felt his power, showing Mary around, like a man who knew the ropes. Anything was possible.

James grew his hair. And sideburns, began introducing himself as Jimmy. Evenings featured pints of heavy ale down the pub with newfound friends. Cigarettes. The burn of love. Perfect. Another turn of the earth, and a little more, and then, within Mary, a quiet realization.

In Jimmy’s room—they were meant to be going to the pub—he prattled about the rugby from that afternoon. The feel of the muck and the scrum and something else.

“Jimmy,” she said. “Jimmy.”

He blethered on.

“James.”

At last, he took a breath.

“I’ve fallen pregnant.”

Jimmy lifted his glass, there in the pub beside Alison, took a long drink. “I was stunned. I didn’t know whether I was proud or terrified. Maybe both. ‘I’ll find work,’ I said.” It seemed the only choice.

When he was a wee boy, he’d wanted to play rugby. And so he did. More than that, he wanted to be the lad everyone wanted on their team. He became that lad. He wanted the lassie, wanted Glasgow University. Done, done, and done. All on his own steam. There in the tiny room, he believed that he could do anything he set his mind to. Hadn’t his mother told him so? He had the brains and the brawn. Once or twice, when she’d said this, her face had softened: a flutter of a smile, like sun through fast-moving cloud.

“We’ll be okay,” he said. He squeezed Mary’s hand.

Dim light, casting faint shadows. A pact: wait until Christmas. The boat across again, the secret and the plan to be revealed: to marry, have their baby, start their family. In the meantime, he’d look for work.

“We carried on.” Days and weeks passed. On the outside, nothing changed. Her tall frame kept their secret. Jimmy and Mary, young and bright and on their own path, building lives of their own design.

The last day: Jimmy snuck up behind her, wrapped his hands over her eyes as she spilled out onto the street with all the other student nurses after exams. He steered her back to his dingy dormitory. Under the bed, a parcel, a robe, which he wrapped around her, red and plush, velvety and perfect for her growing body.

He turned her around in his arms.

Outside the door, the hallway stilled, other students having already scurried homeward, towards the gifts, the raised glasses, the ringing out of the old, in with the new, 1967. Outside the window, rain spattered down as afternoon hurtled towards darkness.

All theirs, this time, between uni and home, between light and dark, a gift in itself.

He tightened his arms, and the robe, around her.

Alison imagined them: Mary, wrapped within James’ strong arms and within the soft robe and the gift she thought they were. She imagined that Mary could feel their baby growing, just barely beginning to show, and so safe and loved inside the robe and James and her, right in the center of them.

They packed themselves back up quickly afterward, tucking shirts into jeans and presents into suitcases and running, hand-in-hand, down Sauchiehall Street and into Glasgow Central Station, panting onto the train, having nearly missed it, collapsing into their seats, oblivious to the people around them.

“That’s not good for the baby,” she whispered.

“Acht, it’ll get him ready for the rugby.” Jimmy said it out loud, hand on her tummy, the proud Daddy.

~

“I did try,” Jimmy said. He looked into his pint. “Not hard enough, though. I had no work prospects when I went home in December. And then my mother found something, overnight. She banished me to a bricklayer’s job in Glasgow. I didn’t hear from her for weeks, and then, in late February, I think, she rang. Her voice sounded tighter and more nasal in contrast to the rough, throaty Glasgow voices of which I’d become enamored. She summoned me home.”

He wanted to tell her to stuff it, he had better things to do with his weekend; he wanted to go and show her the calloused hands, try out one of his new-found Glaswegian words, see her lips go prunish; he wanted forgiveness. He wanted to see if Mary was there.

He hesitated by the garage, imagined he could feel Mary pressed against him again. He took in a deep breath. Eight weeks had passed. How much might have changed? He forced himself forward.

His mother opened the front door as he reached for the knob.

“Young Man,” she said. She’d started with this after that afternoon in the front room in December. Young Man. The words jabbed at him, meant to call him to order, as though this was his new name, a proper noun for a proper person. In August, he’d gone away as James. He’d made himself into Jimmy in Glasgow. He’d thought that was who he still was when he came home at Christmas, when his girlfriend was still his girlfriend, when everyone called them by their Christian names.

There in the doorway, she looked him up and down. “Trim those mutton chops. You look like a lout. See where it got you.” She ushered him down the dark hall and into the front room, apron starched, lips tightly pressed, hand at his back. She stood, whilst he lowered his rugby-player frame onto the Victorian settee with the delicate curved legs.

“She’s away.” His girlfriend. Former girlfriend.

Is this why he was summoned? So he could see her absence?

“She’s had a miscarriage and taken herself away. As she should.” His mother folded her arms.

Mary. Her name is Mary.

He rose. It seemed the only possible response. This couldn’t be right. He had to know. He propelled himself and his mutton chops out of the room, through the kitchen and out the back door. He stamped straight across the lawn and dormant dirt of the vegetable garden, in his good shoes. He scaled the back wall between the two houses, trailing ice-crusted clart across the lawn at her house. His girlfriend’s house. Mary’s house. Her wee mum through the window, doing the dishes, the dishtowel over her shoulder waving as she went to and fro. She looked up, her eyes dark and gentle. Eyes like Mary’s. Eilidh started away, in the direction of the back door, where he stood.

He dusted himself off. He should have shaken the dirt off his shoes; he didn’t want to make a mess, though. More of a mess than he already had.

The click of the lock turning. The door swinging open. How many times had he heard this, heart beating faster, Mary on the other side?

It wasn’t Mary, though. Not her mum, either.

In the time it took Jimmy to catch his breath, to try to summon the power to ask a question, say her name, make a sound, Mary’s father took in the whole of him with fresh disdain.

Hamish Kerr, eye-to-eye with Jimmy, put one hand on each of Jimmy’s shoulders. He squeezed to the point of pain, held on. “There is nothing here for you. Ever. Am I making myself clear?”

Jimmy nodded, throat closing.

“Are you not even man enough to speak? Am. I. Clear?”

“Yes.”

Slam of the door. One tiny icicle shattering on the ground. James, immobile.

The curtains in the kitchen fluttered closed. If Hamish looked out, he likely took James’ continued presence as an act of insolence. It wasn’t. He—James, Jimmy, Young Man, (soon to be documented as Putative Father), whoever he was then, without Mary and their baby—was simply stuck between the slammed door in front of him and the door of his own house, which felt more like a castle gate and portcullis.

When, eventually, he unmoored himself and rescaled the wall, he trailed muck from both sides across his mother’s lawn. One foot on the top of the back steps, and his mother’s voice whipped out at him.

“Get those shoes off your feet and get them cleaned before you put one foot through this door.” It was only open a crack—enough for her to flick a cleaning cloth out at him.

He wrapped his broad hand, just like his father’s hands, around the rag. His mother released the cloth. Her fingers disappeared inside. Isn’t this what she has always done? Given clear instructions on how they are to keep things clean and in proper order, and then disappeared, to insert order and health into other people’s homes, to her desk to write letters to her darling sisters, further afield, to her perfect England.

He sat through dinner, silent, waiting to be given leave to return to his work. He stayed at it, tucking away pay packet after pay packet, or at least what was left after the pints on a Friday and Saturday and sometimes Sunday, through the rest of the winter, and the spring. In May, he paused. There would be a baby now. Boy or girl? No matter what his mother said, he couldn’t fully believe her. There was no way for him to know with certainty. Still, all through the summer, he found himself noticing babies, in their prams on the street and in the shops and on buses. They seemed, suddenly, to be everywhere.

“Those months remain the most vivid in my memory. That bright, cold January. I’d been an engineering student. It should have been an insult that the most complicated calculation I had to make was with a spirit level,” he sipped his ale. “Funny, that, the spirit level. I was good at it with the bricks. Not so much, since then, with the leveling of my own spirit. I liked the work, though. And I liked that I liked it when my mother meant it as punishment.”

He relished the thump of his boots filling the empty air when he left his room in the mornings. He liked the rough language that rolled from the men’s throats right out into the crisp air. He liked his hands around the bricks, the levelling, the smoothing of the mortar. Nothing to think about. One tangible movement after another. Building. Something that could be seen. He wished he’d known this was possible before he went home at Christmas—this steady job, this steady pay, so easily acquired.

Nine months. And then his mother insisted he return to university. In Edinburgh. What was the point of resisting her, then?

“That’s a lot,” Alison said. So much to take in. She turned her glass, slowly, trying to soothe herself. She wanted to rise, lift out of her body as she’d done before. She fought to hold herself present. She felt stung, breathless. She’d thought Mary had exaggerated Mrs. MacInnes’ harshness. Now, it seemed Mary’s estimation had been a gentle one.

Alison feared she may cry, for herself, for Mary, for him. Some people would be angry with him for his refusal to disobey his mother, to stand by Alison’s. It had set them all irrevocably on this journey. She’d tried to be. But he’d been nineteen. From the scant literature available about natural fathers, she’d come to understand their grief, too. So many of them, like Jimmy, never marrying, emasculated. No one asked him what he’d like for her. No one called to tell him of her birth. The few times that anger had risen, and Alison had allowed herself to feel it, it had been directed at the Church and its series of Mrs. who had taken her from Mary and told her she could never be good enough to even look for Alison.

Jimmy hung his head. Alison put her hand gently on his arm. “We’re all okay now, though, aren’t we?”

“Yes,” he said. He raised his almost empty glass. “I suppose we are.” He did not ask about Mary, though he desperately wanted to. What right did he have?

She wanted to ask more: had he thought of her, considered looking, how did he feel now that she was there. She sipped her drink, snuck a sideways look at him. He’d just revealed so much of himself. “Is there anything you’d like to know about me?” She asked.

“Whatever you’d like to tell.”

Her children, of course. Her successful husband. He leaned in as she spoke.

When he emptied the glass, he offered another drink. Alison turned her glass. She wanted more, wanted to sit and sip and talk until the sun came up, and maybe until it went down again. She had to drive. Her children were waiting. Mary was waiting.

“It’s late,” she said. “I should be getting back.”

“Walk you to your car?”

“That would be lovely.”

The dark had drawn down as they’d sat, the days with plenty more room to open yet, there just after the balance point of the spring. Side by side, footfalls down the street, the same lilting walk, the corner arriving far too soon. Neither of them voiced this. A car horn. James turned, raised a hand.

“Davey Caulfield,” he said. “Used to work with him.” He laughed, as though he’d returned to happier times.

“I’d better go,” she said.

He moved closer, a question. She opened her arms, just a little. Big arms around her. The rough of him, tweed jacket against her cheek. The expanse of chest.

She stepped back. “Thanks.”

“No. Thank you.” Suddenly formal again.

She wanted to grab his lapels and hang on. She turned to the car, pausing before she stepped in, even though she was afraid he’d already be gone. There he was, though, waiting to close the door for her.

Away she went, trying to watch the road ahead and his silhouette against the streetlight behind at the same time.

~

Mary’s face was open and asking as soon as Alison stepped through the door.

“It was fine,” Alison said, pecking Mary on the cheek.

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

“Not yet.” Alison looked at the floor. “Do you need me to?”

“I’d like to hear it. I can wait.”

“Where are the kids?”

“In the lounge. I suggested that you might not want to be bombarded with questions straight away. I hope that’s okay.”

“Of course.”

The four of them nestled on the sofa. “Mum!” Tori jumped up. “You were gone a long time.”

“I know. Sorry. It went better than I thought.”

Tori looked towards Mary, hesitant.

“It’s okay. You can ask whatever you want.”

“We want to know what he’s like,” Charlie said. “What else?”

“He’s—” Alison paused. “I showed you the photo. He’s like that.”

“What does that mean?” Mikey asked.

“Nice. A bit Victorian. A bit ashamed, after all this time.”

“Sounds right,” Mikey said.

“Mikey. It’s water under the bridge.”

“Do we have to meet him?” Tori asked, tucking herself in to Alison’s side.

“Do you want to?”

“Not if it gets in the way of our plans.” Mikey, again.

“Same,” Tori said.

“Maybe another time would be better?” Will said.

“Yes,” Alison said. “Another time.”

That night, settling her head on the pillow in her mother’s house, with her father across the country, seen, heard, touched, a heavy sleep claimed her, as though she was fully resting for the first time in her life.

In the morning as she loaded the car, she did not have the time or space to think of what might happen next.

The next days, Alison drove them up the winding road to Loch Ness and back again, through Inverness and down. The heat of them all, even the usual arguments over who would get the window seat in the car, or the front seat on the boat on Loch Ness, a comfort. In a village pub each night for dinner, all of the children but Tori grimacing at the haggis or black pudding on their plates before realizing that they liked it, Alison, surrounded by her children, happy. It struck her that she was often like this, when it was just her and the children. That Wade’s presence dampened her joy, all his rules, his judgement squashing her. She was glad he wasn’t there. Glad and guilty.

Side by side with her joy was Jimmy. She wanted to hear his voice again. She feared calling in case he didn’t answer, or did answer and said she’d got what she asked for: just to meet him.

~

Two nights before they would head back to America, they sat at Mary’s kitchen table, full-bellied.

“I’m going for ice cream,” Nigel said. “Who’s with me?”

They burbled out of the house, leaving Mary and Alison. When Alison’s phone rang, both of them jumped. James MacInnes, on the caller ID.

His voice sounded stilted. “Can I see you again? I’ll only take a few moments of your time,” he said. “Only if you can spare it.”

He’d wanted to pull her back in and not let go. Jimmy had been terrified of the power of it, afraid he might frighten her away, afraid of what would happen if he stayed, afraid he’d run again and never find out, afraid he was betraying the memory of his mother.

He’d meant to sound casual, that night on the phone, to mask the desperation he felt, the shame he’d felt all those years ago having returned to meet him. Perhaps this time he could do something different. He’d spent days talking to Hüsker, considered Alison’s responses—what he would do if she said no, she wouldn’t see him a second time, that she’d meant that she literally just wanted to meet him once? A weekend binge on the malt, up the Spey, like he used to go on with the lads. The chocolates could go to Moira, whisky for Hüsker, caps for their grandchildren. There had to be a back-up plan. If he learned anything all those decades ago, it was that.

He stood on the corner in the rain, and, as she stepped out of the car, he had the umbrella at the ready, a bundle in his arms.

“Something for you,” he said. “And the weans.” A bottle of Dailuaine, a box of chocolates, football caps for the children.

She thanked him, eyelids lowered, chin slightly down, daring a glance at his eyes. “Hug?”

Chest to chest, a second chance to feel the breadth of him. His arms, her father’s arms, around her. Dad understood, didn’t he? Of course he did, he’d told her all those years ago that it was okay to search. He wouldn’t have to know. They hardly spoke these days.

“Speak to you again?” She asked.

“Hope so,” he said.

As she drove away, Alison thought of the tilt of the earth towards the sun, the rotation, not felt but nonetheless sure. This very second, a handful of births, just like every other second. And that’s only people. Never mind the teeming insects of the rainforest, the puffin hatchlings in the cliff faces, subterranean taproots. Or rebirths, second chances, which she felt she had. Did Jimmy?

She thought of the whisky he’d given her, golden liquid within. Uisge-beath. Water of life.

She had them, at last. This dark-haired man. This long-legged woman. His hair. Her eyes. There had been a Beautiful Girl; the Handsome Boy was no longer a blank space.

~

Rising from Glasgow, moving out and away, she strained for a glimpse of Tursa, below, where her father (her father!) sat. She’d long looked for the dramatic peaks of Goat Fell and Cir Mhor on Arran. These were nothing, now, compared to the hump of land closer to the mainland. There! Like a girl again, seeing it all freshly. He’s there, at the pub. They were still low enough to see the cluster of buildings in the village. Nose to window. Hand to heart.

And then the sudden, clutching, familiar terror. Would she ever see him again?

She hung onto the armrests and forced herself to breathe slowly, steadily, noticing what was happening now, and now, and now.

She dozed, and when she wakened in a haze, she felt she was the sea, fluid and rolling, called back and forth. She had risen to the sky, and was flying, now, just as she imagined on the shore when she was four, holding Papa’s hand. The continents fell away. There were no edges of land and so, no worries about anyone on them. Mother, father, Mum, Dad, what’s real and who determines it. No separation, just this moment, suspended, seamless, perfect. She allowed herself to be only there, to fly as long as she could.

~

Two nights later, on the front porch of their house, she sipped Jimmy’s whisky, the seamless moment having been replaced by a growing, jangling anxiety. Alison felt untethered, the foundations of herself excavated. Instead of births, she now thought of deaths. Going to earth, buried in soil or sea or scattered to the winds. The physical self ceasing, the funerals, the wakes, the tears. The millions of other sorts of deaths—relationships, journeys, dreams, or the one Alison grieved: her physical self was intact, but within, her sense of self lay shattered into a million tiny pieces, as though she had somehow slipped out through her own pores, flown out and away. She felt as though she’d missed a funeral, the holding of the cremation urn. It was all just gone. She scrabbled for a grounding cord that would let her feel still attached to the turning earth.

She did not need it; she did not yet know that she’d received a gift: she was free. The core of who she was floated on the night sky—free from labels, definitions, words that constrain. Her nameless self a seamless part of the universe. She was not ready to rest there. Instead, she scrabbled to define, like a child on the shore scooping wet sand against an incoming tide without bucket or spade. She wished for a voice she could trust. It might have been Mary, only she feared it would hurt her to hear Alison’s turmoil. She spoke to Dad mostly about the children’s grades, only when they were good.

A deep breath, a gathering. Perhaps Wade would understand, or at least listen.

Inside, she paused at the door to his office, hand raised to knock. There she was: Jimmy MacInnes’ daughter. Jayne. Alison, wife of Wade, mother of Charles and William and Michael and Victoria, daughter of Jimmy and Mary, daughter of Agnes and Adam, daughter of the sea and the sky. I am all of these. None of these. Her throat tightened. Who am I now? How could Wade understand? He’d warned her, hadn’t he, there in the pub when she’d realized Mary was from Tursa. And now here they were, on opposite sides of this door she couldn’t make herself pass through. If she tried to explain, he’d define her as part of himself: Mrs. Wade Earley. Adam and Agnes had done this, too. All of the ideas she’d had about who she was were wrong. The absence of these familiar foundations terrified her.

She wanted arms around her, strong and soft. What she wanted, fully, for the first time in a long while, was Vic.

She turned away, tiptoed down the hall and stood in the door to Tori’s room and watched her girl sleep, tousled hair on the pillow. Something to hold on to, to help her know who she was. It wasn’t where she’d begun, though. It wasn’t the whole of herself.

In front of the small window of the cottage to which Hamish and I moved on the mainland, the night drawn down, moon dimming, though still appearing almost full. Waning gibbous. Still shedding brightness over the hills and the burns as they flowed into the wider, flat waters. Not so different from the moon of that same night in 1967, one day past its brightest. Two candles in the window, flickering. Somewhere, a draught. I made a silent note to get it sorted in the morning.

Mary stood beside me, dry-eyed, though I knew her heart clenched. “Happy Birthday, Jayne.” A whisper. Thirty today. She’d told herself that if you were going to come, you’d have done it in the years between when you could access the records and when you became a full adult. Surely that had happened by now. She thought of herself at thirty, married with two children. As settled as she’d get. There was no time after that. Hardly time to breathe for herself in those motherhood years. If you were in similar circumstances, you’d be the same, struggling just to find the time to get the day’s work done, never mind the time to go looking for someone. Someone who had given you away.

Mary might have looked herself, had she not repeated the story to herself so often. The story the matron told that said she must leave the bairn, leave you, that it was the only way to undo the wrong. She must do you no further harm.

Thirty years. Softly, she blew out the candles. She turned to me. “Mummy,” she said. “I can’t hope anymore. I have to say goodbye to her.” I held her. She did not cry. Neither could she make herself say goodbye out loud.

I held her, and held my words, too. When she’d gone to bed, I blew out my candle, offered my love, and a wish for us all: “Before I die, Jayne. Come home before I die.”