CHAPTER FOUR ~ ABBY ~ NOW #2
Brodie looks at me for confirmation, and I nod. “Later it is.” He stops at my side to show me the cake. It’s covered in pale purple icing, with a beautiful, intricate design of thistles all around it.
“You made me a cake on top of this incredible dinner?” I ask as Brodie takes it to the sideboard. “You guys are making me nervous.”
Drew laughs. “Nervous? Why?”
“You clearly have something up your sleeve, and I can’t imagine what it is.
” While that’s true, I’ve also never been good at being in the spotlight or receiving gifts.
Drew knows that, although it’s never stopped her from spoiling me with beautiful, thoughtful presents over the years.
I’ll never forget the time she told me she’d keep trying until I believed I was worthy and deserving of good things.
“Open the smallest one first,” Fern says.
I pluck the small square one from the pile and open it to find a crocheted Highland cow made of copper-coloured yarn. “This is adorable,” I say with a delighted laugh as I hug it to my chest. “I love it. Thank you, Ferny.”
Drew directs me to open the long, flat box next. Inside is a red rain jacket like the one I had in university. I wore that thing until it was literally falling apart. I eventually had Drew get rid of it because I’d formed such a bizarre attachment to it I couldn’t do it myself.
She and I meet each other’s eyes now, and I wonder if she’s thinking about the photo we looked at earlier of me in Edinburgh.
“The rain jacket you have now is nice, but I always thought the red one suited you better,” she says.
My current jacket is one Rodger bought me a couple of years ago.
It’s tan-coloured and was made by some fancy designer I’d never heard of.
It’s a beautiful, high-quality jacket, but it never felt like me.
I imagine myself wearing this new jacket around Kingston, and wonder if it’ll help me to feel more like myself again after months of feeling so lost.
“It’s perfect. Thank you, guys.” I glance up in time to catch my friends exchanging a look. All three of them have their lips pressed together as if they’re suppressing smiles.
Drew’s voice vibrates with excitement as she says, “Open the last one.”
Slowly, I pull the final box toward me and run my hands over the paper. “This is too much,” I murmur.
“You don’t even know what it is yet,” Fern says with a laugh.
“The way you’re all looking at me makes me think it’s going to be too much.”
“Too much is our thing,” Drew says. “Open it!”
I’m only a few seconds into prying the taped edges apart when the others start banging on the table and shouting their encouragement.
Laughter spills out of me as I tear the paper off and cast it aside.
My giggles turn to a choked sob when my brain processes the image on the outside of the box: a DSLR camera.
“We miss seeing you with a camera in your hand,” Brodie says. “None of us will ever forget the days when it was practically attached to you at all times.”
When I was nine, my grandma gave me an old camera of hers, and photography quickly became my favourite hobby.
Throughout the years, I’ve owned multiple cameras, including one similar to this, which was an early graduation gift from the MacKinlays before we visited Scotland.
That camera got broken during Rodger’s and my move, and I never replaced it.
Considering photography was no longer an active hobby, I convinced myself the camera on my phone was good enough.
“We need more pictures of all of us, especially now that we’re all back together,” Drew says. “Well, almost all of us.” I don’t miss the way her gaze darts to Brodie or the way his eyebrows lift in a silent response I can’t interpret.
“You’re starting a whole new phase of your life, and we thought you could use that to document it,” she continues. “I know things have felt off for a while now, but brighter days are right around the corner. Maybe photography is just what you need to find your way back to yourself.”
Her words hit me like a blow to the chest, causing fresh tears to fill my eyes. Through the wavering moisture, I see that the three of them are exchanging glances again. Something else is going on here, which means now isn’t the time to get lost in my thoughts.
I clear my throat and pry the box open to get a closer look at the camera.
“Okay, so...a Highland cow, a rain jacket, and a new camera.” Something niggles at the back of my mind, but I dismiss it.
“I have no idea how these things tie together or why I need them before my birthday. Am I being dense? What am I missing here?”
Drew points to the box the camera came in. “Lift the tissue paper at the bottom.”
I snag the flimsy paper and pull it out, along with an envelope.
That niggling feeling returns when I see the logo of a local travel agent.
As I stare at the envelope in my hand, my stomach flips, my throat tightens, and my eyes and nose sting with the threat of more tears.
I don’t remember opening the envelope or pulling the ticket out, but there it is, in my hands: a plane ticket to Edinburgh with my name on it.
I make a choked noise, then another when I see the departure date is one week from today.
“We’re all going!” Drew says, clapping her hands. “The timing has never worked for all of us to go back together, so we thought we should jump on the opportunity before you get a job. We’ll be there for two weeks, and we’re staying with Mum and Dad.”
The tears come in earnest now. Drew appears beside me, her hand slipping into mine as she crouches at my side. “Hey. What’s going on in that big, beautiful brain of yours?”
I’m vaguely aware of Brodie moving behind Drew. In the next moment, she’s sitting on a chair, so close our knees bump.
“I was right, this is too much,” I say, flapping the ticket around.
Drew wipes my tears away. “It’s not. You deserve this. You don’t talk about Scotland much these days, but I’ve seen your social media pages, and the algorithms make it impossible to hide obsessions. We all know you fell in love there.”
My breath catches. A wave of panic threatens to add itself to the overstimulation I’m experiencing, but then I realize she means ‘with Scotland’ and not ‘with Graeme’.
“I know a trip isn’t some magic fix, and two weeks away won’t change your life, but I also know how unhappy and unsettled you’ve been. And that you were never happier than when we were in Scotland.”
Drew knows I left a piece of my heart in Scotland fourteen years ago. What she doesn’t know is that the missing piece is deeply, irrevocably linked to her brother-in-law and my one-time best friend.
“Say something, you’re freaking me out,” she says, her fingers tightening around mine.
I look at our linked fingers and then at the plane ticket in my other hand before returning my gaze to hers. Whatever she sees in my expression has her brow smoothing, and a smile taking over her face. “There it is.”
A slightly manic-sounding laugh spills out of me. “Holy shit, we’re going back to Scotland!”