Robert started walking toward the door again and turned, realizing he’d forgotten something. “There is one more thing.”
Theo’s expression faded into something more wary. “What?”
“I’m a writer. The Constable Whitley book? That was me,” he said stupidly. “My book.”
Theo stared at him. “Truly?”
He nodded.
“I read it,” Theo said, bemused. Robert felt bemused himself. This conversation had more ups and downs than a Highland road. “Annabel loved it and told me I should. It’s not to my taste, but you’re an extraordinarily gifted writer.”
“Oh…” Robert felt his face heat again. That, from his brother, who scoffed at all things whimsical, was high praise. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” They stared at each other. “I’m going back to my work now. I’ve had more than enough revelations for one day.”
“Of course.”
Robert left the library, the weight he’d been carrying on his chest blissfully absent.
…
Ian recognized the crofter’s cottage immediately. Strange, how things changed and yet remained the same. Strange, how it took his breath away after all these years. The small stone structure by the gray sea, where Ian’s father eked out a living harvesting kelp after they’d been forced from their farm. The lone tree and the little garden plot—same size, same place, different vegetables.
He climbed down from his cart, tired after a five-day journey. This was the farthest he’d been from Llynmore Castle since he’d settled there. For a fearful moment, he wished Robert was with him. He didn’t like that he was afraid.
A shape appeared at the window, but he couldn’t see in. His heart pounded.
He squared his shoulders. He was no longer a boy. He was frightened, aye, but fear no longer ruled him. He’d survived on his own. He’d survived without them.
No matter what happened, there was nothing more they could take.
A moment later, the door opened, and there she was. The same but not the same. Her reddish-brown hair was streaked heavily with silver, her eyes bracketed by spidery lines. She wore a plain, dark-blue dress. She was older. She looked harder.
He supposed he was older and harder, too.
But she recognized him. As soon as she got a good look at him, she recognized him.
“Ian.”
Her voice was the same, but deeper. He hadn’t forgotten what it sounded like. Sometimes he dreamed of her voice.
His throat closed. He couldn’t speak, so he nodded.
It wasn’t a very good greeting after nearly fifteen years.
She nodded back. They studied each other, both, perhaps, wondering what the next step was.
“How did ye find out?” she asked.
“Find out what?” he rasped.
“Your father’s health is failing. You didna ken?”
He shook his head, pain pricking at his chest.
“It’s bad?”
“Aye.”
She stepped up to him. He smelled onions, and he remembered her hands had always smelled like onions for hours after she’d finished chopping them. It was a scent that clung to the skin, sharp but comforting. Or it had been once. Some trace of that old feeling still remained, even if it wasn’t as potent.
She didn’t embrace him. He wasn’t sure if he’d expected her to or not, but it still hurt. Instead, she touched his shoulder.
“He might like to see ye.” Her hand fell.
And he realized this was all he would receive. He wouldn’t get an apology. Maybe she didn’t think what she’d done was wrong. Maybe, given the choice, she would do the exact same thing again.
Ian had hoped for more and expected worse. If this medium, this compromise, was the best she could do, then he would accept it.
“Are Andrew and Elspeth here?”
“Aye, Andrew is. He lives not far from here. Elspeth is in Glasgow. I don’t know if she’ll arrive in time.”
“Glasgow?”
“She married. A Mackenzie.” His mother didn’t sound pleased by this. He smiled slightly. “She has three children now. Your brother has two.”
“Children?” Ian breathed. He had nieces and nephews he’d never met? A brother-in-law and sister-in-law? His stomach clenched painfully.
His mother seemed to understand. “You can meet them all, if ye stay for a few days.” She looked away. “It might be best if you stay at the inn down the road.”
Ian flinched.
“We meant what we said, Ian. You knew the cost of leaving.”
This seemed absurd to Ian. He could visit them, but he couldn’t sleep under their roof? And they’d forced him to leave because they couldn’t accept him as he was. What would the cost of staying have been?
Anger filled his chest, crawled into his throat, but he pushed it down.
He wasn’t here to argue. He wasn’t here to get angry. He was here to put the past behind him, to let go of the bitterness he’d held onto for so long, and perhaps to forge some sort of path into the future.
“Is he inside?”
“Aye.”
Ian drew back his shoulders, braced himself, and stepped into the cottage ahead of her. His gaze went straight to his father, who was asleep in bed. A sharp breath hissed between his teeth, though he tried to stop it.
His father loomed so large in his mind, his imagination, his memory. He’d once been larger and stronger than Ian, and taken up so much space Ian had thought he must be a giant. Ian was bigger now than his father had ever been, and his father was withered and wasted, made even smaller by disease.
His mother looked older. His father looked like he’d aged a hundred years.
The hissed breath woke him.
His eyes fluttered open, and Ian, reflexively, tried to step back so he didn’t startle him.
Douglas Cameron stared at his son in open confusion, and then his brow furrowed and something passed over his face. Ian could have read a lot of things in those shifting expressions—regret, guilt, relief, welcome. He decided it was safer not to read anything at all.
Ian’s father opened his mouth to speak but instead erupted into harsh coughs, his frail shoulders shaking. Ian’s mother sat down on the mattress beside his father and wrapped her arm around his shoulders until he was done.
Ian didn’t really know what to do, so he did the first thing that came to mind.
He reached into his bag and retrieved the fox his father had carved for him long ago. He’d taken it from his chest and placed it there before he left in a strange impulse of sentimentality. Now he stepped forward, so tentatively, so hesitantly, and held out the fox like a peace offering.
His father paused and then accepted it. He held the wood carving to his chest, cradled it like something infinitely precious. A moist sheen covered his eyes.
“Ian?” he whispered hoarsely.
His father reached for him, not to hurt, not to hit, not to push away, simply to clasp his son’s hand in a weak but warm grip.
And after nearly fifteen years of silence, Ian sat down beside his father and cried.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Robert slipped into Ian’s cottage. The slate roof had been finished before Ian had left, and the windows replaced, and the inside was clean, though mostly bare, except for a spindly table by the window and a narrow bed along the wall. The floor was dirt at the moment, but Ian said he would replace it with wood.
He’d had enough of an income to do these things for some time, and when Robert had asked him why he hadn’t before now, he’d shrugged. “Maybe it didn’t feel as permanent before,” he said later.
Before Robert, was what he’d meant.
Robert set the package down on the table but was reluctant to leave.
It had been three weeks since Ian had gone to see his family, but it felt like longer. And something about the Highlands without Ian Cameron didn’t feel right to him at all.
He’d filled his days by focusing on the second volume of Constable Whitley, which was nearly finished, and making a trip to Glasgow with Georgina to pick up Ian’s gift. And on those sporadic clear nights, he’d gone to the outbuilding and looked up at the stars, and he’d imagined Ian doing the same.
He found the North Star first, every single time.
Robert sighed and left the cottage, stepping out into a gray day filled with mist.