At the Water's Edge

  She wiped her hands on her apron and answered the door. Willie the Postie was on the doorstep, holding his hat in his hands. His face was gray.

  "And for what reason are you knocking, Willie?" Anna said in an angry voice that did nothing to mask her fear. "The door's not locked. Come in then, if that's what you're wanting. I haven't got all day."

  "I'm very sorry, Anna," he said without moving. "But you need to go home."

  "What are you on about? I see nowt in your hands but your hat."

  "You need to go home," he repeated quietly. "I've just delivered a telegram."

  Anna's knees buckled. She reached for the doorframe.

  I shoved my chair back and rushed to her, grabbing her by the waist.

  "Your parents need you," Willie said. "Go to them."

  She caught his wrist, gripping it so tightly her knuckles turned white.

  "Which one was it?" she said frantically. "Tell me that much."

  "Anna--"

  "Was it Hugh or was it Robbie?"

  Willie's mouth opened, but it was a few seconds before he spoke. " 'Twas Hugh," he finally said, lowering his gaze.

  She dropped his wrist and twisted free of me. She took a step backward, shaking her head, her eyes wild. "You're wrong. It's not true! It'll be like Angus! You'll see!"

  Willie shook his head helplessly. "Anna..."

  She took flight, bursting past him and out the door. When I tried to follow, Willie caught my arm.

  "Let her go," he said.

  He was right. I had no business intruding. When he realized I wasn't struggling anymore, he loosened his grip.

  I craned my neck past the doorframe and saw Anna pedaling furiously away, her bicycle jerking from side to side with the effort, her hair flying in the wind.

  --

  She'd left everything behind--coat, hat, scarf, and gas mask. If I'd known where the croft was, I would have taken them and left them on the doorstep, but all I knew was that it was somewhere between the inn and the castle.

  I searched for the master key, eventually finding it on a hook under the bar. Then I made up the rooms, moving through the tasks like a robot. When I was finished, I went back and did them again.

  I lined the toiletries up at exact intervals on the dressers. I wiped the mirrors clean. I picked the wax off the candleholders and smoothed the surfaces of the quilts. And when there was nothing left to straighten or polish or dust, I went to bed.

  --

  I stayed in my room that evening, despite Ellis's insistence that I join him for dinner. I could tell from his tone that he was in a foul mood, and when I stopped responding, his entreaties turned into accusations of mental instability. He threatened to send for a doctor if I didn't come out.

  I did not, and a doctor never appeared.

  Hours after everyone else had gone to bed, I continued to thrash, twisting the quilts around my feet and punching my pillow, trying to find a position that would finally allow me to rest, but nothing helped, because it was not my body that refused to go still. My throat was so tight I could barely swallow, and my eyes welled with tears.

  I knew with absolute certainty that if I'd gone upstairs right away, my mother would still be alive. But if I hadn't gone into the Cover and seen the Caonaig, would Hugh also still be alive?

  I crept downstairs and sat by the fire, which had been dampened with a layer of ash.

  When Mr. Grant found me, I was on the floor in front of the grate, hugging my knees to my chest. I didn't hear him coming, or even notice the light of the candle.

  "Is everything all right?" he asked.

  I jerked around, pulling my nightgown over my ankles in an attempt to hide my bare feet. My cheeks were slick with tears.

  "What's wrong? What's happened?" He held the candle closer and looked me over.

  The lump in my throat had grown even larger, and it was difficult for me to speak. When I did, my voice was strangled. "I did it, didn't I?"

  "Did what, lass?" He set the candle on the low table and knelt beside me, searching my eyes with his. "What have you done?"

  "I've killed Anna's brother."

  "And how do you figure that?"

  "I saw the Caonaig--I didn't want to see her, but I did, and then when I told Anna, she knew right away what it meant. I thought she was just being superstitious, but it turns out she was right. If I'd just stayed out of the Cover, if I hadn't let that stupid crow chase me in, her brother would still be alive."

  "Oh," he said, letting the word slide out on a long exhale. His expression melted into one of pity and sadness. "No. No, lass. He would not."

  "But I saw the Caonaig--"

  "You didn't do anything. It was the godforsaken war."

  "But Anna's already lost at least one other brother. How much loss are people supposed to bear?"

  He shook his head. "I'm afraid I don't know. It seems there's nothing so good or pure it can't be taken without a moment's notice. And then in the end, it all gets taken anyway."

  I looked wildly into his face. "If that's the case, what's the point of even living?"

  "I wish I knew," he said with a wry half smile. "For some time now, that's been a source of great mystery to me."

  I looked at him for a few seconds longer and then burst into tears--colossal, heaving sobs that wracked my shoulders.

  Before I knew what was happening, he'd wrapped his arms around me and pulled me to him, breathing heavily into my hair. I scrabbled onto my knees and tossed my arms around his neck, pressing my open, sobbing mouth on the pulse that beat so strongly in his throat.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  It was an innocent embrace, I told myself for the thousandth time, hoping that I would eventually believe it. For hours after I returned to my room the night before, I lay in the dark wishing he was there with me. I wanted him to hold me, I wanted to fall asleep in his arms. I was aware of wanting more, too.

  Despite being up most of the night, I got up early and waited at my door until Hank and Ellis were in the hallway. Then I joined them so we could all go down together. I was incapable of facing Angus--I could no longer think of him in formal terms--on my own. Even the thought of seeing him in the company of other people left me light-headed.

  When the three of us went downstairs, he was standing by the front door talking with a very old woman in a language both guttural and burbling. When he glanced at me, I thought my knees might give out.

  I couldn't look at him for fear of giving myself away.

  The air was so electrically charged I was sure Hank and Ellis would pick up on it, so I also couldn't look at them. That left no one but the crone, who stared at me as if she were plumbing the deepest recesses of my mind and unearthing all kinds of terrible things.

  "This is Rhona," said Angus. "She'll be here until Anna gets back. She doesn't speak English." And with that, he left.

  "And the stellar service continues," Ellis muttered, leading the way to our usual table. "What are we supposed to do? Learn Gaelic? Play charades?"

  "Why not?" said Hank. "It's always porridge anyway, and I can mime that." He put his hands to his throat and pretended to choke.

  "Don't tell me you're getting used to this," said Ellis.

  Hank shrugged. "At least they've started putting my things away."

  Ellis harrumphed. "Talk to me when they start ironing the newspaper."

  Rhona served our breakfast in dour silence and otherwise ignored us completely. I wondered if she was the wife of the old man who'd blown our cover the first day. Even if she wasn't, it was clear she disapproved of us as much as he did.

  She was ancient, with a dowager's hump and bowed legs. Her hair was white, her clothes black, her complexion gray. She smelled like wet wool and vinegar and, as far as I could tell, wore a perpetually sour expression. Her upper lip and chin were lightly whiskered, her face so weathered that her eyes appeared as mere slits under the weight of her lids. Even so, I caught an occasional flash of piercing blue--usually as I was fighting off
the memory of being held by Angus, or despairing of Anna's brothers, and wondering how two such disparate thoughts could coexist in my brain.

  "Maddie?"

  Ellis was looking at me. His forehead was crinkled, and I realized he'd said my name at least twice, but I'd heard it from a distance, as though through a tunnel.

  "Darling? Are you all right? You seem...I don't know, shaken, or distracted, or something. Are you having an episode?"

  "No. Nothing like that. I just didn't sleep well."

  "Why not?"

  "I was thinking about Anna's family. I was here when she got the news about her brother."

  "What about her brother?"

  "He was killed in action," I said. "He's at least the second brother she's lost."

  "Ah," he said, smiling sadly. "I suppose that explains why you wouldn't come down last night. But I'm afraid these things happen, my darling. C'est la guerre. How are you now? Should I have sent for a doctor after all?"

  I could only shake my head.

  He patted my hand and turned his attention back to Hank.

  I stared at him for a long time. If he wanted to end his search for the beast, he need look no further than a mirror.

  --

  I collected my things and escaped as soon as Hank and Ellis left with George, whom they'd apparently hired full-time, petrol restrictions notwithstanding. I wondered how fast Ellis was going through his remaining money. Perhaps Hank was already supporting us.

  After I got outside, I was free of Rhona's penetrating glare, but found myself yet again with no destination, no goal, and no purpose on a day I desperately needed to be occupied. However, even if we'd shared a language, I wouldn't have had the nerve to ask Rhona about doing the rooms. She clearly despised me. Once again, I'd been lumped in with Hank and Ellis.

  My brain was fevered, my system overwhelmed. My glass had been filled too full, too fast. The Caonaig, the death of Anna's brother, my embrace with Angus, never mind finally recognizing the sheer callousness of my husband--

  Even after he'd shanghaied me into a war, even after I'd realized our entire marriage was a sham, even after I'd watched him go below deck to avoid seeing the wounded on the SS Mallory, I had never believed him to be as cold-blooded as he'd just revealed himself to be. I'd always assumed his avoidance of all things war-related was guilt over not being able to serve, but now I realized that he just didn't care.

  Even if he didn't think of Anna as quite human, had he never considered the fate of George's leg? Apparently not, since he'd interpreted my distress as a symptom of fragility.

  I thought of the moment Angus pulled me to him, gripping me tightly, not at all as though I might break, even as I was sobbing into his neck. We clung to each other as though life itself depended on it, and maybe it did.

  I looked up with a gasp.

  It'll be like Angus, Anna had said, her face twisted in grief, less than a minute after laughing at me for getting his name wrong.

  Was it possible?

  I marched down the street, keeping my head down--especially when the lace curtain in a front window shifted by the width of a finger, as nearly all of them did.

  If red was the new badge of courage, I was certainly a shining beacon of bravery, with my stupid red gloves and my stupid red gas mask case. I shoved my hands in my pockets and encountered the last of the elves' cups, which I flung to the side of the road for the crime of being red.

  Red, red, everywhere. I wanted to be gray.

  I found myself back at the headstone, staring at its etched granite as though I could force it to reveal its secrets.

  AGNES MAIRI GRANT,

  INFANT DAUGHTER OF ANGUS AND MAIRI GRANT

  JANUARY 14TH, 1942

  CAPT. ANGUS DUNCAN GRANT,

  BELOVED HUSBAND OF MAIRI

  APRIL 2ND, 1909-JANUARY, 1942

  MAIRI JOAN GRANT,

  BELOVED WIFE OF ANGUS

  JULY 26, 1919-FEBRUARY 28, 1942

  I knew how many men in the village had the same names--I'd seen it myself on the other gravestones, and I knew that Willie the Postie was called that to distinguish him from Willie the Joiner and Willie the Box because every one of them was a Willie MacDonald--but I couldn't shake the image of Angus putting snowdrops on the grave.

  It seems there's nothing so good or pure it can't be taken without a moment's notice, he'd said, and there was nothing so pure as an infant. Was it possible he'd returned from the war only to find that everything he loved had been snatched by cruel fate?

  I thought back to the night we'd arrived in Scotland. When I realized it was the third anniversary of the child's death, I was afraid I might break into pieces after all.

  --

  I was afraid that if I went back to the inn I might take a pill, so I headed down the A82, knowing that somewhere between the village and the castle was the McKenzies'roft.

  Small houses dotted the hillside and I stopped briefly in front of each, wondering if Anna and her parents were inside. Eventually I reached the castle, and knew I had passed them.

  The ruined battlements looked very different than they had when we'd approached them by water. There was a large dry moat around the castle, full of high grasses and scrubby weeds, and I lifted my coat and tromped down, across, and up the other side, ignoring the thorns that snagged my hems.

  Directly beside the entrance was a massive chunk of stone--or stones, really, because they were still stuck together with mortar, still rigidly holding right angles. It looked like someone had torn a large corner piece from a very stale gingerbread house and flung it to the floor.

  I paused beneath the arched entrance, where the drawbridge had once been, imagining all the people who had passed in and out over the centuries, every one of them carrying a combination of desire, hope, jealousy, despair, grief, love, and every other human emotion; a combination that made each one as unique as a snowflake, yet linked all of them inextricably to every other human being from the dawn of time to the end of it.

  I walked through it myself and went straight to the tower. Within its gloomy interior, I found a winding staircase, and climbed the worn steps carefully. They were so narrow I had to brace my hands on either side.

  I stopped on the second floor to look out, but pulled back immediately.

  Angus was standing at an arched gate that led down to the water. He stayed for a long time, staring at the loch, which was as flat as if it had been ironed. Then he leaned over, picked up his gun and a brace of rabbits, and turned around. I ducked further into the shadows, although there was no reason--he plodded straight to and through the main gate without ever looking up.

  --

  The light snowfall turned into a flurry, and before I knew it, turned into a blizzard. I had no choice but to return to the inn--to stay in the tower would mean freezing to death.

  Rhona was neither upstairs nor in the front room, and although I had been desperate to get away from her just a few hours earlier, my need for a cup of something hot now made me just as desperate to find her. I hoped I would be able to pantomime what I needed, and that she'd be receptive to interpreting. I took a deep breath and entered the kitchen. When my eyes landed on the big wooden table and the freshly skinned rabbits upon it, I stopped.

  Angus was standing shirtless at the sink with his back to me, washing his arms.

  I knew I should leave, but I couldn't. I was rooted to the spot, watching the rhythmic, alternating movements of his shoulder blades as he cupped water first in one hand and then the other, sloshing it up past his elbows to rinse off the soap.

  I don't know what gave me away, but he whipped his head around and caught me watching.

  Despite my heart being lodged in my throat, I couldn't look away. After several seconds he straightened up and--without breaking eye contact--turned slowly, deliberately, until he was facing me.

  His chest and abdomen were a network of thick, raised scars--red, pink, purple, even white. They were not puncture wounds. Someone had jammed a
serrated blade into him and ripped through his flesh, over, and over, and over.

  I stared, trying to comprehend.

  "Oh, Angus," I said, covering my mouth. I rushed a few steps toward him before coming to a halt.

  He smiled sadly and raised his palms. After a few seconds, he turned back to the sink.

  I reached a hand out as though to touch him, although a good fourteen feet still separated us. The illusion was there, though, and I let my quivering, outstretched fingers graze his shoulder. When I realized what I was doing, I bolted to my room.

  I took my pills out and put them back no fewer than three times. I did not know what to do with myself, and ended up pacing between the bed and the window, turning on my heel as precisely as a soldier.

  Had he answered my suspicion about the gravestone? Had he been assumed dead and somehow survived? And what in God's name had happened to him? I couldn't imagine, and yet I couldn't stop imagining.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Ellis thumped on my door as soon as he and Hank returned, demanding I join them for a drink. I tried to plead an upset stomach, but once again he threatened me with a doctor, saying that this time he really meant it.

  As we walked toward the staircase, Ellis bounced off a wall. He was utterly soused.

  We took our usual spot by the fire. His and Hank's initial excitement at interviewing eyewitnesses had gone sour after only three days and was compounded by Ellis's anger at not being able to view the site of the bombing, despite having traveled all the way around the loch to get there.

  He relived their outing from the comfort of the couch, sputtering about "pulling rank" and "having someone's head" and other such nonsense. Eventually, his rant segued into the interviews themselves. He held his notebook open, stabbing it with a finger.

  "Two humps, three humps, four humps, no humps...Horse head, serpent's head, whale-shaped, coils. Goddamned white mane, for Christ's sake!" He threw his arms up in frustration. "Scales on another. Eyes of a snake, eyes at the ends of antennae, no eyes at all. Crossing the road while chewing on a goddamned sheep. Gray, green, black, silver. Dorsal fin, flippers, all arms, no limbs, tusks. Tusks, for the love of God!"

  He glared at me as if I'd made the offending observation. When I didn't respond, he turned back to Hank.

  "Vertical undulation. Flaring nostrils. Otters. Deer. Lovelorn sturgeon. Giant squid. Rotten logs exploding from the bottom. The only thing we haven't heard is fire-breathing with wings."