Chapter 33 #2
With a large wooden sign atop them all: WELCOME TO LOCH LONG.
I traveled through time but landed in the same place.
I stumble onto the gravel drive to look at the road beyond. Vehicles speed by with a clamor and stench that disturbs me. A goofy, European-sounding horn pulls me from my thoughts. A van is idling beside me. It’s big and boxy, driven by a middle-aged man whose cheeks match the flame-red paint job.
“Need a ride?” he asks.
“Are you the postman?”
He wordlessly hitches a thumb toward the back of the vehicle, where tall, yellow letters proclaim, ROYAL MAIL.
“Oh, right. Sorry. Can I have a ride?”
He’s looking at me like I’m unhinged. And, who knows, maybe I am. For once in my life, that’s the least of my worries.
“I’m waiting, amn’t I?”
I clamber in, and as he shifts into gear, I catch him cutting quick glances at me. At my ragged clothes. My matted hair and filthy nails.
“Where’re you headed?” His voice is a mix of compassion and suspicion. I’m sure he assumes I’m either dangerous or deranged.
And really, I couldn’t care less. It’s so freeing, this feeling. I’ve spent the past nineteen years obsessed with people’s impressions of me. How I act. How my mother’s actions reflect on me. But no more.
“The castle.” Really, the graveyard is my goal. But the postman already thinks I’m a loon, and I do have some pride.
“Which castle?” The large steering wheel spins in his hands as he turns onto the main road.
“The Campbell castle. By Loch Lomond.”
“You mean the old ruins?” He cuts me a longer look this time, and I wish he’d just keep his eyes on the road. This van feels incredibly, perilously fast considering I’ve been traveling by foot for months now.
How long has it been? At first, I carefully kept count, and though I’m probably off by a few days, I estimate I was with Callum for about two months.
I lived a lifetime in eight weeks.
I swallow hard past the ache in my throat. “Yes, the ruins.”
“That’s nae such a great sight. There are plenty of tourist attractions. There’s a wee display—”
“No. Just the ruins. Please.”
He shrugs, annoyed that I’m not taking his advice. “As you say.”
He stops trying to make conversation, and is soon pulling to the side of the road. He points at the door handle, in case I needed him to draw me a picture.
“Is this it?” I ask.
“Aye.” He nods toward a bunch of nondescript green and brown nothingness. “Just through the gate there, and mind the latch. If you don’t close it proper, the cows will wander all the way to Edinburgh.”
I barely wait for him to finish before I’m spilling onto the side of the road. He calls something to me, but I only wave, pretending not to hear over the creaking pop of metal as I shut the door.
I’m so close now. Too close to consider anything or anyone but Callum.
Ignoring the gate, I hop the fence, race-walking up the hill and down again, repeating his name like a mantra.
Callum Callum Callum Callum.
The cars and smells are jarring, but this land—this feels familiar and right. I pass the ruins. Then the Campbell burying ground. I bypass it all, heading straight for the lone grave at the base of the apple tree.
Thieves must die.
I push myself harder, faster, through the woods, on that familiar zig-zagging path. Until I’m standing at the edge of the clearing. I stumble to a halt the moment I see the tree’s distinctive silhouette. It’s hundreds of years older, more gnarled and knobby, but the same one.
My heart is pounding. Will I meet another ghost? Will I meet his ghost?
“Callum?” I hold my breath and wait. But there’s no reply.
I feel nothing. Just emptiness. My heart plunges, my chest a hollow cavern.
I remind myself how Callum’s taish had appeared inside the hotel, how I’m sure I’ll feel him there.
A taish is an apparition, Rosie-love. Of a dying man.
What if Callum had been a ghost when he’d come to my room? He’d looked the same. Had he come to me after his death?
No. He’d seen me too, and remembered it. Callum is alive in my mind. I will see him alive again.
But the older man, he had been a ghost, and I’d met him here. He was the one who’d originally pointed me to the grave, which means he couldn’t have been just some random spirit. Was he from Callum’s past? From my future?
“Hello?” I spin a slow circle, but I’m alone.
Legs trembling, I make my way to the tree. Maybe there won’t even be a marker there. I kneel down.
Oh God. Oh, God. Here it is, just the slightest jut in the grass now. If I didn’t know, I might’ve thought it was only a rock.
I sweep away leaves. My hands shake.
Whose grave?
It can’t be his.
Roots grip the stone, twisted like fingers. I tear them away, ignoring the pain of splinters driving into my skin. I have to know.
C.
No. NO.
A keening wail tears from my throat.
C MacGregor 1622.
Callum lies beneath me.
His body. His bones.
The whole of him flashes to me, so vivid and clear. His broad shoulders, the scars, his quick smile. How his gray eyes study me like I’m his favorite puzzle. The easy way he slings his arm around me, tugging me close as he lopes beside me. His gentle strength when he holds me. Callum, kissing me.
The sum of him reduced to a skeleton, six feet below.
I scrub at my face to cut off the tears, but mud smears across my cheeks, so I use my sleeve instead. The coarse linen sends me back, recalling the moment he stood in the doorway, seeing me in this dress for the first time.
You’re fair as a summer morning, Rosie-love.
I force air into my paralyzed lungs. The grave, this dress—they’re reminders, offering both proof and hope.
Time isn’t fixed. I’ve been to the past and changed it. And if I did it once, I can do it again.
My breath steadies. My heartbeat slows.
I press my palms into the earth, anchoring myself. Feeling the gravity of him beneath me. “I’ll fix this, Callum,” I whisper. “I swear it.”
I lie down slowly, stretching out above him. Is he in a pine box or did someone simply lay his body in the dirt? He’d have been wrapped in his plaid, that I know.
Resting my head where his would be, I turn my cheek to the ground. It’s cool and damp, and I lay my hands flat, imagining us palm-to-palm.
“I love you, Callum.” I curl my fingers, clawing the soil until it drives deep under my nails. “I’m sorry I didn’t say it before. But I do. I love you.”
Our hearts are carved from these granite hills and just as steadfast.
Callum, my Highlander, my MacGregor. I’ll do whatever it takes to return to him, to save him.
I don’t know how long I lie there, the cold ground hardening my resolve, until I feel as unyielding and unbreakable as his granite hills.
Before I walk back to the inn, I make one more stop.
I enter the Campbell Burrying Place and head straight for Hamish’s angel. It’s much the same as I remember—all Braw Lad, Pride of Campbell—the crypt and its inscription as excessive and posturing as he was. Whatever it says doesn’t matter. Whatever happened, I’ll change it.
The stone angel stares at me, and this time I stare right back, my eyes as cold and blank as hers. “Hamish,” I say tonelessly. “I’m coming for you.”
I reach the grounds of The Merry Widow inn, and this time the driveway is there, and the parking lot, and all the cars.
And Janet is there too, sitting on a bench, waiting. Like she knew I’d come. Does she know something happened to me? Even if I didn’t want to tell her, somehow I know she’d sense it. Maybe senses it already.
I’m relieved by the thought. But angry, too. I both resent and relate to her. She never trusted me with the truth.
But would I have believed her if she had?
We’ve never seen eye to eye. But now…she’s the only one who might understand. The only one who could.
As I approach, my mother gets to her feet. For once, she seems like a grownup. Because she’s truly looking at me. Seeing me.
Did she love Gregor this much? If I had to wait nineteen years to return to Callum, I wouldn’t survive it.
She opens her arms. I don’t move. This is Janet. The woman who was never a mother to me. But she’s the only person who knows.
My body trembles, torn between fury and need.
I break.
“Momma.” I collapse into her embrace. “I have to go back for him.”