Chapter 5
Chapter Five
BEATRICE
Ican’t feel my nose.
Again.
Scotland has given me the coldest summer of my life—complete with back-to-back hurricanes that nearly swept my cottage into the sea—and I fucking love it.
I love the windswept drama of exploring the Isle of Arran with my hair lashing into my face like a gothic heroine, then coming home to my woodstove, my cozy kitchen, and endless mugs of hot tea while I pluck out new melodies on my guitar.
Still, the October days are getting more seriously chilly than anything I experienced this summer. I should probably add more wood to the fire before the cottage turns into an icebox, but I’m too wrapped up in this track.
I’ve listened to the remix ten times in a row now, spinning around the living room with my hands in the air and my skirt swirling around me.
The Blackwater Mix of Burn Me—the one I cut myself in a cramped Glasgow studio with Peter, a darling engineer who keeps me in chocolate-coated digestive biscuits every time we meet—is raw.
Powerful.
Angry and hopeful, ethereal and down in the swamp water, wrenching secrets from the earth, all at the same time.
The bass line drops low enough to make my teeth vibrate, and the backup vocals I recorded on my phone in the cottage’s echoey bathroom at three in the morning while the first hurricane wailed outside are primal.
The layers of the melody creep out of the rhythm like green vines over ancient stone, bringing life.
A witchy, rising-from-the-ashes-where-they-tried-to-burn-us kind of life…
I’m in love.
I want every song on the record to sound like this.
But will Checkers feel the same way?
The thought stops my swirling, sending me pacing into the kitchen for more tea as the song starts again.
Checkers, my producer in New Orleans, wrapped his mix of the other half of the album months ago.
It’s glossy, polished, and radio-ready, nothing like the gorgeous mess bleeding through my headphones.
But the Scotland tracks are me in a way the others aren’t anymore.
Checkers’ mixes are commercially sound, no doubt, but they’re a sermon I wrote before my time in the wilderness.
These mixes are a revelation, direct from the Goddess, received on my hands and knees at the edge of a windswept sea. I wail into the abyss in these tracks, and the abyss wails back.
This is my sound now. That’s it. There’s no going back to glossy from here.
Bean kicks in agreement, just as the bass hits again.
She already has big opinions about music.
I rub my hand over her bossy heel, smiling as I wonder if melody will speak to her soul the way it speaks to mine. The way it speaks to her father, though he left the pro musician life behind a long time ago.
Of course, he never told me why he abandoned his career as a teen indie music phenomenon to focus on hockey.
Blue kept me in the dark about so many things. I know almost nothing about his childhood, his family, how his kirtan singing career started, how it ended, or why he ended up married at eighteen, then divorced a year later after leaving the hippy commune where he grew up.
Looking back, I can’t believe I thought I knew him at all. Archer Blue is an enigma, a code that doesn’t want to be cracked, a mystery that is no longer mine to solve. If he had any interest in being solved or being a part of Bean’s life, he would have made contact sometime in the past five months.
But he didn’t, and that’s fine.
It really is. It’s fine, and I’m fine—fine in a way I’ve never been before.
I’m strong, centered, and in love with my music and this island and creation and the precious girl growing inside me.
My life feels whole and overflowing with beauty, just the way it is.
I don’t need a man and, frankly, at the moment, I don’t want one.
Where would I find the time? I barely have time to get this album locked and loaded before Bean arrives.
So, I guess everything worked out for the best. And if Blue changes his mind and wants to be part of our child’s life down the road, we’ll figure that out once I’m back in the States.
If I go back…
“When you go back,” I mutter as I pull out my earbuds. I’m nearly at the end of the six months a U.S. citizen is allowed to be in the U.K. without a visa. Bare minimum, I’ll have to go back to the States to apply for a long-term residency permit.
And I’m pretty sure my brother and parents will kill me if I send a birth announcement from a foreign country before any of them even know I’m pregnant.
I have to tell them. Soon. But not yet.
I still have a few more weeks before I have to leave Scotland and enough wood to get me through the increasingly chilly nights.
I drop my phone on the kitchen counter and waddle over to the woodstove. I’m truly waddling by the end of the day now sometimes. I’m only six months along, but Bean’s a big girl, and I’m carrying low.
So low, the women in the village swore up and down I was having a boy.
They weren’t impressed with the ultrasound proving otherwise. Magda and Eleanor are convinced Bean is going to come out with a peen and prove folk wisdom right. Who knows, maybe they’re on to something. I’ve only had one ultrasound, and Bean was crammed in there pretty tight.
Either way, it doesn’t matter to me, as long as he or she comes out in one piece.
The wind howls outside, rattling the walls as I slide a fresh log in and shut the stove door. I wrap my cardigan tighter around me and step to the window.
Beyond the glass, the Firth of Clyde is churning. It’s been like this for days—wild, moody, and gray. My morning walks along the coastal trails feel haunted by winter fairies, promising a rough season ahead.
If it weren’t a very special Friday night, I might be tempted to stay in and keep cozy by the fire.
But I’m not about to pass up The Stag’s Head shepherd’s pie or the chance to see my brother play.
Hamish and Rory, the pub owners’ teen sons, are massive hockey fans and have promised to have the Voodoo season opener on the big screen.
Luckily, the first game kicks off in the afternoon in Louisiana.
Even with the time zone difference, I should be able to watch the whole thing before I toddle home.
I’ve been looking forward to it all week. I miss Baylor so much, and it’s always exciting to see someone you love in his zone of genius.
I tell myself that’s why my stomach flips through pulling on extra socks, my coat, scarf, and hat.
I tell myself the fact that I’ll be seeing Archer, too, has nothing to do with it.
Even women in their Happily Single Era lie to themselves sometimes, I guess.
No matter how hard they try not to.
The short walk to the village is bitterly cold, but the instant I push through the heavy oak doors to The Stag’s Head, the chill is forgotten.
The pub is, quite possibly, the coziest place on earth, with deep, hunter-green walls covered in sketches of local fishing boats and faded black-and-white photos of locals holding salmon.
There’s also a bookshelf full of books and games, rocking chairs in every corner, and a stuffed salmon in a top hat named Clyve, who keeps watch above the hearth, where Hamish Sr. and Mary almost always have a fire going.
The pub is the village living room, and from the moment I stepped through the doors back in May, I’ve felt like family.
“There she is! We’ve been expecting ye, love,” Hamish Sr. bellows from behind the bar, his face creasing into a map of friendly wrinkles.
He’s a mountain of a man, with a graying ginger beard that looks like it was woven from sheep’s wool, who’s always in a good mood.
“Rory, put another log on the fire; our American is half-frozen from that wind.”
Mary pops her head out from the kitchen hatch, wiping her hands on her apron. “Poor lamb. It’s bitter out there tonight. Sit yourself down, Bea. I’ve got a bowl of Cullen Skink coming your way to start, and a fresh shepherd’s pie will be out of the oven in two shakes.”
“Shouldn’t be walking on your own by the ocean in a gale like this, lass,” Cormac grumbles as I pass The Old Man’s Table, where they’re deep in a game of cards, as usual. “Asking for a run-in with a selkie, you are. I’ll be walking ye home. No arguments. Madge’ll have my head if I don’t.”
“She’ll have your head for the twenty pounds you just lost,” Joseph says, with his signature giggle. “Might be best for you if the selkies take ye. Spare ye the lash of your wife’s tongue.”
I pat Cormac on the shoulder and leave the old men chortling, waving to a few of the other locals as I head toward Hamish Jr. and Rory. The boys are already camped out at the table near the hearth, where we’ll have the best view of the screen.
They’re seventeen and fifteen, both already as massive as their father, and both wearing Voodoo jerseys they ordered as soon as they learned I wasn’t just a rock star. No, I was something far more interesting.
I was related by blood to a real, live NHL player.
“We tried to call you, Bea, but the line was down,” Hamish Jr. says, motioning toward the screen, where the commentators are animatedly commentating. “We had the time zone math wrong! You’ve missed the first two periods.”
“Oh no,” I say, unravelling my scarf. “What did I miss?”
“One goal each in the first, one more from the Voodoo in the second. So, you’re here for the best part,” Rory says, his eyes bright.
“Nix is cracking on like a madman, he is. Absolutely flying. He’s even faster than the games we watched online.
I bet he’ll score now that you’re here watching for luck. ”
“Hopefully, we won’t lose the signal.” Hamish Jr., the designated family tech support, frowns at the screen as it flickers. “I really don’t want to crawl up on the roof in this wind.”