Chapter 12
Cameron
Hand-to-Hoof Combat in the Kitchen
Clementine opens the door wearing headphones, her phone in one hand, and the expression of someone who’s just been dragged out of bed.
Except she clearly hasn’t.
If anything, I’ve caught her in the middle of working. She’s fully dressed, but her eyes still have that slight haze people get before they’ve completely accepted that the outside world exists.
She looks at me.
She checks her watch.
Then she looks at me again.
“It’s ten to eight,” she says.
“I told you I’d stop by this morning.”
“Cameron. Ten to eight is still nighttime.”
“Technically, it’s morning.”
She stares at me with the expression of someone mentally weighing the pros and cons of slamming the door in my face.
Eventually, she steps aside and lets me in.
“Go to the kitchen,” she says. “You’ll have to wait for me. I’ve got a meeting in ten minutes.”
“I’m a very patient man.”
She disappears down the hallway without another word.
The manor kitchen is cold and quiet, smelling faintly of coffee and damp wood.
I drape my jacket over the back of a chair and sit down at the massive oak table.
From somewhere farther down the hall, I hear Clementine starting her meeting.
She sounds focused.
I listen to her melodic voice speaking French. I was terrible at that language during the few years I studied it in school, so I have absolutely no idea what she’s saying.
I glance around.
There are fresh herbs in a glass on the windowsill.
A saucepan sits upside down on a dish towel.
The manor is finally beginning to look lived in.
Suddenly, a dull thump echoes from one corner of the room, near a door.
The sound comes again.
Almost like footsteps.
I frown as memories of last night’s village ghost stories drift back into my mind.
I immediately shake them away.
The manor isn’t haunted.
The noise comes again.
Heavy.
Rhythmic.
Too slow to be human.
Too regular to be old plumbing.
I get to my feet, cross the kitchen, and place a hand on the doorknob.
After a brief hesitation, I yank the door open.
Hamish is standing on a stair directly opposite me, his nose level with mine.
Our eyes meet at a distance that should never exist between a man and a sheep.
I jump backward.
My heel crashes into a table leg.
I catch myself against the countertop and nearly send the coffee pot flying.
Hamish calmly descends the final step with the air of a homeowner returning after a long day. He walks past me without so much as a glance and stations himself in front of the window.
Then he stares into the garden.
I close the stairwell door and turn toward him.
“How did you get in this time?” I ask under my breath.
Naturally, Hamish doesn’t answer.
He continues studying the garden with remarkable concentration.
I’ve spent enough time around him to know that any attempt to throw him out would end in failure, so I don’t even bother trying.
Instead, I return to my chair and gather my thoughts.
I had a plan for this conversation.
A structured plan.
Logical.
Organized.
With a beginning, a middle, and an end.
I spent half the drive here rehearsing it.
I start over.
Point one: the village is never going to stop inventing stories on its own.
Point two: one controlled version is better than twenty uncontrolled ones.
Point three—
Hamish tilts his head slightly.
His ears twitch.
He’s seen something.
Against my better judgment, I follow his gaze.
Ragnar is standing on the other side of the window.
The McGregors’ black sheep is in the garden, staring at Hamish with an intensity that immediately makes me fear the worst.
The two animals lock eyes.
For once, I’m grateful there’s glass between them.
Their rivalry is legendary around here, and when they decide to cause trouble, they do it with terrifying efficiency.
Outside, Ragnar remains perfectly still.
Hamish doesn’t move.
Neither do I, though I’m not entirely sure why.
Then Ragnar disappears.
I scan the garden.
The black sheep is gone.
Only the lawn remains—a lawn that has definitely seen better days—and a rosebush that probably hasn’t been trimmed in a decade.
I turn back toward Hamish just in time to see him charging toward the dining room door.
It takes my brain approximately one second to process what’s happening.
One second too long.
Hamish is already three-quarters of the way across the kitchen by the time I launch after him, race around the table, slide slightly across the tile floor, and catch myself against the wall.
“Hamish! No! Stop!”
Hamish has never been particularly interested in obedience.
If anything, he speeds up.
The dining room door is partially open.
I can hear Clementine’s voice.
I catch a glimpse of her back, her straight shoulders, her laptop sitting on a table that has temporarily become a desk.
She’s talking to someone on the screen.
I grab Hamish by the hind legs when he’s about a foot from the doorway.
What happens next violates every law of physics and sheep behavior I thought I understood.
Hamish keeps moving forward.
His front legs continue pushing against the floor while I’m holding his back legs.
For several seconds, we become an absurd mechanical system—half man, half sheep—lurching toward the dining room in a series of awkward jerks.
Then Hamish pivots.
My already questionable balance does not survive this change in trajectory.
I release his legs.
My feet lose contact with the floor.
And suddenly I’m face-first on the kitchen tile.
Flat on my stomach.
I don’t move.
Hamish calmly walks back over and stands beside me.
Looking down at me.
With an expression that clearly says:
You should never have stood between me and my objective.
From the dining room, I hear Clementine say in a perfectly controlled voice:
“Yes, absolutely. I’ll send you the report by tomorrow.”
A microsecond of silence follows.
“Excuse me. Yes. Tomorrow morning.”
I quietly exhale in relief when Hamish finally decides to return to his position at the window.
By the time the dining room door opens, I’m sitting at the table with both hands wrapped around a mug of coffee I brewed while Clementine finished her meeting.
Hamish is still stationed by the window.
The garden is still empty.
Everything looks completely normal.
Well...
Relatively normal.
Clementine places her phone on the table, sits across from me, and studies me.
“Want some coffee?” I ask casually.
She nods without taking her eyes off me.
There’s something in her expression.
Not quite a smile.
But definitely amusement.
“You okay?” she asks.
“Great.”
“You sure?”
“Absolutely sure.”
She takes a sip from the mug I hand her.
I take a sip from mine.
Hamish watches the garden.
“So,” she says, “you wanted to talk to me.”
There it is.
The moment.
I mentally open the folder containing all my carefully organized arguments, locate them in the correct order, take a breath, and begin.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about last night.”
I pause and study Clementine, but I can’t tell whether she’s genuinely interested or simply being polite.
“The village has a version of the legend now. A version we helped create together. The problem is that a partial version never holds. It leaves gaps. And in Glenfield, gaps are invitations.”
Clementine rests her elbows on the table.
“Invitations to what?”
“To invent the rest. Duncan Fraser will add a detail. Moira will contradict it. Old Angus will suddenly remember a version his great-grandfather supposedly heard in a pub back in 1953. Three weeks from now, Brodie and Mairenn Fraser might have murdered somebody.”
“Or moved to Bordeaux,” she points out.
“That too. My point is, we need to control the narrative.”
“We never controlled the narrative, Cameron. Didn’t you say that last night?”
“What I said was that we could give them a story so well constructed they stop inventing their own.”
She folds her arms.
Not defensively.
More like she’s thinking.
“I’m listening.”
“Brodie and Mairenn Fraser were a couple. Everyone agrees on that much. Everything else is secondary. We know they loved this manor. We know they stayed here. That’s our raw material. We don’t have to invent anything. We just need to... fill in the blanks coherently.”
“You want to write their biography?”
“I want to give them a story more interesting than anything the village can come up with by itself.”
Clementine looks down at her coffee.
“And what does that change for me?”
I set down my mug.
This is where my prepared arguments end.
What I planned to say was that it would make selling the manor easier.
That a legend becomes an asset instead of a liability.
That properties with stories attached to them sell better, and I could show her data if she wanted.
That’s what I planned to say.
What actually comes out is something entirely different.
“The village talks about you, Clementine. Not just the manor. You.”
She doesn’t speak.
“The French woman who’s going to inherit it. The one living there alone. The one who never comes to events. They’re not doing it to be cruel. They’re doing it because you stepped into their story without an instruction manual, and they’re trying to write one for you.”
Still silence.
“If we give them something else to talk about, they stop watching. They start participating. And you get to work in peace.”
The silence stretches for several seconds.
Hamish, still standing by the window, turns his head toward us as though he’s waiting for the answer too.
“I’m leaving in two weeks,” she says.
“I know.”
“This kind of plan takes time.”
“Not necessarily. Two weeks is enough to build something solid. Enough for the village to adopt a version they'll keep defending after you're gone. That’s how good stories work. Once they’re launched, they don’t need you anymore.”
She studies me.
“Are we really talking about Brodie and Mairenn right now?”
I don’t answer immediately.
“Yes,” I finally say.
She doesn’t look completely convinced.
But she doesn’t look completely skeptical either.
“And practically speaking,” she says, “what would this look like?”
“We start with the facts we have. Build from there. Decide what stays vague and what becomes specific. The best legends always have one concrete detail anchoring everything else.”
“What kind of detail?”
“I don’t know yet. That’s why I need you.”
She sits quietly for a moment.
Outside, the wind rattles something against the side of the manor.
The house makes that noise regularly.
Ever since my hand-to-hoof combat session with Hamish, I’ve stopped trying to figure out what causes it.
“Okay,” she says.
“Okay?”
“Okay,” she repeats. “But if this gets out of hand...”
“It’ll be my fault. We already established that yesterday.”
“I’ve thought about all this, Cameron, and honestly? If I listened to my worst instincts, I’d be tempted to play a little prank on the villagers.”
I raise an eyebrow.
“What kind of prank?”
Her eyes sparkle with mischief, and it’s ridiculously cute.
Clementine leans across the table and lowers her voice slightly, as though someone might overhear us.
“Everyone already believes the manor is haunted. So I was thinking... what if we fully committed to the idea and gave them something worth talking about?”
“Go on.”
She stands and refills her coffee.
I watch her move around the kitchen without saying anything.
The room feels different now.
Warmer.
More alive.
Nothing like the first time I came here.
When she turns back toward me, determination shines across her face.
“We could make them believe Brodie and Mairenn are haunting us.”
Silence settles over the kitchen while the idea takes shape inside my head.
“When do we start?” I finally ask.
“Tonight, if you want. Or tomorrow.”
“Tonight.”
She sits back down.
I lift my mug.
Outside, Ragnar reappears at the corner of the wall.
Hamish sees him.
He presses his head against the cold glass and remains perfectly still.
I decide not to waste time trying to understand whatever is happening between those two animals.
In the end, the McGregors always reach the same conclusion:
Hamish and Ragnar operate according to a logic that even logic itself cannot understand.
Sometimes surrender is the healthiest option.
When it comes to those sheep, it’s practically a matter of mental health.
I turn my attention back to Clementine.
“We’re going to need a really good story.”
“What kind?”
“Something the village can claim as its own. A date. An object. Maybe even a room in the manor.”
Clementine thinks for a moment, slowly turning her mug between her hands.
“There’s a room at the end of the upstairs hallway. The door’s been stuck since I arrived. I called a locksmith, and he said the lock had rusted from the inside.”
I stare at her.
“And you didn’t think that was interesting?”
“I thought it sounded like a locksmith problem,” she replies.
I set down my coffee and look at her with that feeling I sometimes get when marketing a property—the sudden certainty that I’ve found the perfect angle without even trying.
“We have our legend.”
She frowns slightly.
“I’m not sure I love the idea of a mysterious room becoming a tourist attraction.”
“Not an attraction. A mystery. Mysteries don’t attract tourists. They create the best stories.”
She gives me a look I’m beginning to recognize.
It says:
You’re a little crazy, but I’m not ready to throw you out yet.
“I’ll come back at seven tonight,” I say, standing. “I’ll bring dinner.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“No. But my grandmother taught me never to show up at someone’s house empty-handed. And if she found out I was eating dinner here without bringing anything... my life would effectively be over.”
“Cameron, I wasn’t talking about the food.”
“I know.”
Despite herself, she smiles.
It’s small.
Quick.
Almost involuntary.
But it’s exactly the kind of smile that’s going to stay with me all day.