Bonetide

Chapter 25

Chapter

Twenty-Five

Iwake to the smell of coffee and the sound of him in my kitchen, and for one, warm, unguarded moment, I’m just a woman whose man is up before her.

The bed is cold on his side, but the cold has the staleness of a few hours, which means he’s been back a while.

He probably never returned to bed. The whole cottage has the particular warmth it only has when he’s tended it, and I lie there in it the way you lie in a bath that’s still hot, knowing it won’t last, stealing the minutes anyway. In other words, I’m being lazy as fuck.

Eventually, though, I have to pee. I reluctantly get up and pull my robe over the marks that are fading now to yellow-green at my shoulder and the dull bruise at my hip, fading reminders of that first time I had him knowing the truth.

I feel that once the bruises are gone completely, I’ll settle into full acceptance, whatever that means.

Once I’ve done my business, I pad out into the kitchen, and he’s at the window the way he always is, in a navy shirt, his hair drying in that loose black wave. He turns when I come in and looks me over.

“You slept in again,” he says.

I give him a tired nod and yawn my response. I don’t need to let him know I was up half the night worrying about him.

The thing is, I’ve been up worrying about him ever since he left in the night fully clothed. It’s been two nights since then, and both those nights he’s gone out the window dressed, which means he’s not going to the loch, at least not right away.

So naturally I lie there all night, wondering where the fuck he is going, and when I’m going to find the nerve to ask him.

We’ll see if I find my nerve today.

I sit down at the table while he makes me my coffee and some oatmeal, then he sits across from me with his tea and watches me eat with that steady gaze of his.

I don’t know why he likes to watch me eat and drink, but I no longer feel self-conscious about it.

I don’t even feel self-conscious when I use the olive oil anymore, and that’s saying a lot.

I’ve drunk about half the mug of coffee and am vaguely awake when my phone goes off.

It’s on the windowsill beside the salt jar. I think about not answering it, when Alasdair gets up and hands it to me.

I thank him and peer down at the screen. Unknown number. Probably a telemarketer, but I don’t get many calls so I answer it anyway, just in case it’s Maddie or Andrew, even though I loathe the phone.

“Hello?”

“Miss Galloway.” It’s Sinclair, that flat careful voice. “DI Calum Sinclair. I’m sorry to ring so early.”

“It’s fine.” I stand, because I can’t sit here like this and talk to a cop. I take the phone to the window over the sink, my back to Alasdair, because of course this is about Alasdair. “Everything alright?”

“I’m making some calls round the south shore, that’s all.

Routine. A woman’s been reported missing.

Last seen two nights ago at the Torridon Hotel.

She was by herself. Didn’t come home, didn’t turn up for her work yesterday or the day before.

I’m asking everyone if they’ve seen anything on the roads or the water.

Anyone about who shouldn’t be about, if you catch my meaning. ”

Two nights ago.

“What was her name?” I hear myself say because it feels like the thing to ask.

“Becca Rhys. Thirty-four. You’ll not know her, I shouldn’t think, she’s not from the immediate—”

“No,” I interrupt. “I don’t know her.”

I don’t really know anyone, except Mhairi and MacLeod, the bartender at the aforementioned Torridon, and, of course Sinclair and MacRae. Not sure if it’s a good thing that half the people I know here are cops.

“Have you seen anyone, Miss Galloway? On your road, the shore? You’re fairly isolated out there. Anyone in the bay, anyone about at odd hours?”

I look at the silver water.

“No, No one. It’s just me out here.”

Behind me, the room has gone a particular kind of still, and, if I didn’t know better, I’d think Alasdair disappeared into thin air.

“Right,” he goes on. “Well, the thing is, I do wonder about you and your neighbor. Alasdair MacCoinnich? I had a talk with him a few weeks ago, and he mentioned that the two of you knew each other.”

“Ah, well we do. Know each other.”

“Okay,” he says, drawing out the word. “So you can vouch for his whereabouts?”

Oh, fuck. What do I say to that?

I turn around to look at Alasdair, as if he’ll give me some guidance, but when I meet his eyes, they’ve gone jet black. It’s enough that I breathe in sharply, the sight of him freaking me the fuck out.

Then his eyes go back to normal, and he gives his head a single shake.

What the fuck is happening?

“Ms. Galloway?”

“Uh, yeah. Hi. Sorry. His whereabouts? Well sir, he’s been with me, and he was with me two nights ago.”

Alasdair frowns, looking normal again, and opens his mouth to protest, but I put a finger to my lips. The thing is, I have to tell the truth. If I tell Sinclair I haven’t seen Alasdair, then he’s going to go straight over to his place again and paint him as a suspect.

But isn’t he a suspect? a voice pipes up inside me. I immediately shush it.

“Right. Well. You’ve my number if anything comes to you. And…Miss Galloway? I’d keep your doors locked out there. Till we know what this is. Maybe don’t…” he trails off. “Just stay safe.”

“I always do.” I hang up.

I lock eyes with Alasdair again and I can’t read a word on his face.

“Two nights ago,” I begin slowly, “he was calling about a woman who went missing two nights ago. Becca Rhys.”

“Iris…”

“You got up, two nights ago.” I try to keep my voice level and calm.

“Three in the morning, out the window. I saw you go. I always see you go. I let myself think it was the loch. I tell myself it’s only ever the loch and your little late-night skinny dipping.

But that night, two nights ago and every night since, you got dressed before you went out…

why did you get dressed? What were you doing? Where were you going?”

“Iris.” He sets the mug down, careful, soundless.

“I have not been unfaithful to you. I want you to hear me say that. I didn’t touch her in the way you’re afraid of.

Whatever you’re holding in your head right now, it isn’t that.

I’ve not so much as looked at another woman the way I look at you since the day you opened that door. On that, foxglove, I am clean.”

I stare at him, gobsmacked. That’s what he thinks this is about? He thinks…he thinks I’m accusing him of sneaking out and being unfaithful, of cheating?

“Alasdair.” My voice has gone very quiet. “What are you talking about? I’m not talking about you being intimate with another woman, I’m talking about you killing another woman. You killed her, didn’t you! You went out and you killed this Becca Rhys!”

He doesn’t flinch or look away.

“Aye,” he admits.

And there it is. No hesitation, no softening, no let me explain. Just aye, the aye that doesn’t know how to be ashamed.

“That’s…” I press the heel of my hand to my mouth, then take it away.

“You say that like I’ve caught you forgetting to put the bins out.

Aye. A woman is fucking dead. Becca Rhys, thirty-four, she had a job she didn’t turn up to, she has people who reported her missing, and you got up out of my bed and you went and killed her. ”

“I didn’t break faith with you,” he reiterates, and the awful thing is that he means it as comfort.

He thinks if he can just make me understand that he was loyal, that he didn’t want her in that way, it will make it all better.

“She was nothing to me, Iris. She was…” He licks his lips and looks away.

“Food,” I mumble flatly, starting to go numb. “She was food, right? She was just food?”

“Aye.”

“Don’t—” My voice cracks and I let it. “Do not say aye to me again. Not like that. Not when we talk about you murdering people!”

He stops. He goes quiet. And he watches me with that confusion still on him, working at it, genuinely working at it, trying to find the place where he’s wronged me and not finding it, because in whatever ancient reckoning runs under those pale eyes, fucking and food are different books entirely.

One of them he understands he must never do.

The other is just what he is. He has kept the vow he thinks he made me.

He cannot for the life of him see that I’m grieving a woman whose name I only learned ninety seconds ago.

“You know what I am. I warned you many times, and you’ve made peace with it.

You know that I’ve killed, what I eat, and that I’ll do it again.

Christ, I’ll do it more and more now that the bargain is through, you know I will.

I can feel myself slipping, it’s as if the only thing tethering me to my humanity is you, Iris. ”

Gee, no fucking pressure!

“You need to stop, Alasdair,” I tell him, the words grinding out.

“I know what you’ve done in the past, but that’s behind you now.

That’s behind us. If you’re going to be with me, you need to behave.

You can’t be with me, live in this house, be in my body, and go out there and take women when you feel like it. ”

“I only ate her,” he protests, “just as you eat your breakfast right now.”

I erupt. “Oh, this breakfast?” I pick up my oatmeal and fling the bowl at his head. Of course, he has lightning-fast reflexes and ducks before the bowl goes soaring across the kitchen, crashing against the wall and splintering into porcelain chunks and soggy oat splatters.

He stares at me, wide-eyed, perhaps the most surprised I’ve ever seen him.

“Get out,” I shout, absolutely seething.

His brows raise even further.

“Get out, Alasdair! Out of my house. I can’t…I can’t look at you. Go!”

I expect…I don’t know what I expect. An argument, perhaps. Him telling me again all the reasons I knew what he was when I let him in—which would be true—which is the worst of it, because I did. Something akin to, if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you don’t deserve me at my best.

But he doesn’t do any of that. He stands up from the table and he looks at me with the confusion not gone but set aside, folded away, because I’ve told him no, and honoring my no is the one law he keeps.

For now, anyway.

He goes to the back door and pauses there, one hand on the frame, his back half to me.

For a second, I think he’s going to say something, and some treacherous part of me wants him to, wants him to give me a reason to make him stay.

But he doesn’t. He opens the door and the cold whips in, ruffling my hair, and then he’s gone, and I’m alone inside.

The cottage is mine again.

It’s the first thing I notice in the silence after, that it’s mine again—the way it was mine before any of this, before the castle across the bay, before the box and the key and the paintings, before I knew there was more to this world than what I was told.

Just me and Effie’s life all crammed together into one cottage.

And I wanted this. This is what I came here for.

The two weeks of a monster at my table, in my bed, and at my back, and some part of me has been quietly screaming for exactly this, the cottage emptied of him, the air gone so utterly ordinary.

Yet I hate it instantly.

The quiet isn’t peace, no, it’s a held breath.

I stand in the middle of the kitchen with the broken dish on the floor, and the size of the emptiness is enormous—far bigger than the cottage itself.

I understand, with a sick lurch in my stomach, that his presence had been filling something I’d stopped noticing was a hole.

I go to the window at the door, expecting to see him disappear into the water, but the bay is already empty. No pale shape on the rocks. No man, no horse, no sea creature, or drowned wives.

I should call Maddie, but once again, I know I won’t.

It makes me feel better, slightly, to know that I could call her and maybe she’d fly over here and make it all better.

Maybe convince me to leave. But I don’t want to put her in any danger and, besides, I’m old enough now to pull up my big girl panties—I’m a recent divorcée for crying out loud, that’s some real adult shit—and figure this stuff out on my own, without anyone coming here to save me.

I just hate it, that’s all.

I sigh, my heart feeling like it’s breaking, and I hate that, too. I’m alone for the first time in a long time, and it’s so much worse than I thought it would be.