Chapter 31
Clementine
The Last Mystery
I look at Cameron standing in front of me in the sitting room of Fraser Manor, with Hamish seated between us like a silent witness to the moment that will decide everything.
The five objects are lined up on the table.
The candlestick.
The spoon.
The key.
The two sprigs of thyme.
I’m holding his letter in my hand without opening it yet because I’m afraid of what it contains—and even more afraid of what it doesn’t.
He’s just told me everything I needed to hear.
Everything I’d been hoping for without daring to admit it.
And now it’s my turn to speak.
I open the letter with slightly trembling hands.
The paper is thick and good quality, and Cameron’s handwriting is less steady than usual.
There are crossed-out words.
Visible hesitations.
Three paragraphs.
No flourishes.
No perfectly crafted sentences.
Clementine,
I betrayed you. I took something private and made it public. I turned our intimacy into marketing. I have no excuse. I thought I was telling a beautiful story, but I never stopped to ask whether you wanted to be part of it.
I love you. More than I’ve ever loved anyone. More than I thought I was capable of loving someone. And I almost lost everything because I don’t know how to live without turning life into a narrative.
I want to learn. I want to be the man you deserve. Not the one who tells beautiful stories, but the one who lives a real life with you. If you’re willing to give me that chance.
Cameron
I carefully fold the letter and place it on the table beside the objects that tell our story in the proper order.
Then I look up at him and see that he’s holding his breath, waiting for my verdict as though his life depends on it.
And in a way, maybe it does.
“You’re right,” I finally say, my voice calmer than I thought possible. “About everything. You betrayed me. You turned our intimacy into content. You exposed me without asking my permission.”
Cameron takes it without flinching.
Without trying to justify himself.
Without trying to minimize what he did.
“But do you know what’s worse?” I continue, feeling tears rise despite every effort to hold them back. “Despite all of that. Despite the anger. Despite the disappointment. Despite the uncertainty about everything we shared... I love you.”
My voice breaks on the last words.
“You gave me exactly what I wanted without even realizing it. A reason to stay. A life that means something. A place where I can cook, write, exist without needing to control everything the way I do in Paris. And then you ruined it by turning it into a marketing campaign for your Instagram.”
I pick up the sprig of thyme he brought.
“But these objects, Cameron... you told me our story without using words. You used the language you know best, but you kept it private. It was for me. Just for me.”
The tears are falling freely now.
I can’t stop them.
And I don’t even know whether they’re tears of sadness or relief.
Probably both.
“So here’s my answer: I’m staying. Not because I completely forgive you, because that would be a lie, and we’ve had enough lies.
Not because everything is fixed and we can pretend none of this happened.
But because I want to see whether you can really change.
I want to see whether we can build something real together. ”
I walk toward him and place my free hand against his cheek.
“But if you ever post a single photo of us, a single story, a single piece of content about our private life without my explicit, informed consent... it’s over. Permanently. And this time there won’t be a second chance. Do you understand?”
Cameron nods, his eyes shining with tears he’s trying desperately to hold back.
“I want to hear you say it.”
“I understand. I won’t do it again. I promise, Clementine.”
Hamish, who has remained seated between us throughout the entire conversation, suddenly gets to his feet.
He looks at me.
Then at Cameron.
Then he crosses the room with determination and heads upstairs without looking back.
“What’s he doing?” Cameron asks with a frown.
“No idea. Maybe he’s giving us some privacy?”
Despite the emotion written all over his face, Cameron smiles.
“A sheep with impeccable romantic timing. Honestly, that doesn’t surprise me anymore.”
I open my mouth to say something.
Anything.
But the words won’t come.
There’s too much to say and not enough language to contain it.
So I kiss him instead.
It’s gentle at first.
Tentative.
Filled with everything that happened between us and everything we still need to build.
Then Cameron’s hands settle on my hips and pull me against him, and the kiss deepens, becoming more urgent, more desperate, as though our lives depend on it.
When we finally pull apart, I’m breathless.
My heart is pounding so hard I’m convinced he can hear it.
“So...” Cameron says, his voice rough. “We’re starting over?”
“For real this time?”
“For real,” I confirm.
BOOM.
A heavy thud echoes from upstairs.
Then another.
Then the scraping sound of wood dragging across a floor.
Cameron and I exchange startled looks.
“What was that?”
“Hamish, I assume.”
BOOM.
Louder this time.
As though something heavy just crashed onto the floorboards.
Without discussing it, we rush toward the staircase and take the steps four at a time.
The noise is coming from Brodie and Mairenn’s room—the room we discovered together with the key hidden behind the picture frame.
The door is standing wide open.
Hamish is inside, furiously scratching at the far wall—the one covered with dark wooden paneling.
His hooves scrape against the floor as he shoves his nose against the panels with near-obsessive determination.
“Hamish!” I exclaim. “What are you doing?”
The sheep pauses long enough to glance at us.
Lets out a single bleat that seems to say, Follow me, you idiots.
Then immediately resumes scratching at exactly the same spot.
Cameron approaches cautiously and runs his hand over the paneling where Hamish has been attacking it.
“Wait. There’s something strange here.”
He presses in several places.
Tests the wood.
CLICK.
A section of paneling sinks slightly beneath his hand before sliding sideways with a groan that suggests decades of disuse.
I hold my breath as the hidden compartment is revealed.
It isn’t large.
But it’s deep enough to conceal valuable things.
Things someone wanted to keep secret.
“What is this?” Cameron whispers as he carefully removes a metal box from the back of the compartment.
The box is old.
Rust stains mark the corners.
I kneel beside him as he slides it toward me.
When I open it, I discover a collection of sepia photographs worn by time.
My heart leaps the instant I see the first one.
A man in a three-piece suit and a woman in a long dress stand in front of Fraser Manor.
Brodie and Mairenn.
Without a doubt.
And sitting proudly between them as though posing for a family portrait—
A sheep.
A sheep that looks exactly like Hamish.
I turn the photograph over and read the faded inscription aloud.
“Brodie, Mairenn, and Hamish. Summer 1891.”
Cameron pulls out another photograph.
Then another.
And another.
In every image, the couple appears at different stages of their lives—outside the manor, in the garden, on the front steps.
And almost always accompanied by the same sheep.
“It’s strange there are so many photographs,” I say. “It’s not exactly like they had easy access to cameras the way we do.”
“There were traveling photographers back then,” Cameron replies distractedly.
I pick up a photograph showing Mairenn sitting on the front steps.
The sheep is lying at her feet, its head resting affectionately against her skirt.
On the back someone has written:
Mairenn and her guardian. He never leaves her side.
I show it to Cameron.
“Do you think it’s...”
“I don’t know what I think. But that sheep is an exact replica of Hamish.”
We both turn at the same time toward the sheep in question.
Hamish is standing in the center of the room, calmly observing us as though he knows exactly what we’ve discovered and has simply been waiting for us to catch up.
I stare into his impossible black eyes.
“Is that your ancestor?” I ask, holding up the photograph.
Naturally, he ignores me.
Instead, he walks over and gently rests his head against my leg.
A gesture that feels suspiciously like affection.
Cameron spreads the photographs across the floor.
“One time Ewan told me that Hamish always knows where he belongs. That he’s the kind of sheep who chooses a place and refuses to leave.”
He picks up the photograph of Mairenn and the sheep.
“What if he chose the manor? What if they always have? Since Brodie and Mairenn’s time?”
I look at Hamish.
Then at Cameron.
Then at the photographs documenting a sheep’s presence at the manor for what may well be generations.
“You’re telling me we have an immortal sheep?”
“No. A family line. A sheep dynasty that’s been guarding the manor for generations and always chooses to stay here.”
“Cameron, we’re still talking about a sheep.”
“A sheep who walked into the manor on the exact day you arrived. A sheep who refused to leave despite all our efforts. A sheep who attended every important conversation as though he understood every word. A sheep who carried the final symbolic object to help you understand my feelings. And a sheep who just revealed a secret hiding place no one ever found.”
I look down at the photographs again.
And reluctantly admit he has a point.
“Okay. This is officially the strangest thing that’s ever happened to me. And I’ve already survived a fake haunting involving a ghostly love story with you, so the bar was pretty high.”
Cameron bursts out laughing despite the surreal situation.
I can’t help laughing too.
Because the alternative is accepting that I may be losing my mind.
Hamish gets up and returns to the hidden compartment.
He scratches insistently at the floor again.
“There’s something else,” Cameron says.
He reaches farther into the compartment and removes a small notebook.
The leather cover is cracked with age.
Carefully, he opens it.
I lean over his shoulder and read the first page written in elegant handwriting.
Journal of Mairenn Fraser. 1889.
Cameron turns several pages with the delicacy of a librarian handling an ancient manuscript before stopping at an entry dated June 1889.
I read over his shoulder.
Hamish stayed. Brodie says it’s a good sign.
That sheep know. That they can sense when a place is good.
When love is real. I don’t know whether I believe these Highland superstitions, but I have to admit his presence comforts me.
As though he’s the silent witness to our happiness. As though he’s watching over us.
Silence settles over the room as we absorb what we’ve just read.
Then I quietly say without taking my eyes off the journal,
“The original Hamish watched over them. And now modern-day Hamish is watching over us.”
Hamish crosses the room at a leisurely pace and heads toward the stairs with all the dignity of a Scottish lord.
As though everything that needed to be said has been said.
As though his mission is finally complete.
Cameron and I remain in Brodie and Mairenn’s room, surrounded by photographs documenting a love story that existed more than a century ago.
Surrounded by Mairenn’s journal.
Surrounded by this extraordinary discovery.
“We’re living the same story they did,” I whisper, looking at the photograph of Mairenn sitting on the front steps with the sheep.
Cameron takes my hand.
“No. Not exactly the same.”
He points to the journal’s final pages.
“Brodie died young,” he says softly. “But us... we have a chance to build something that lasts.”
He looks at me with an intensity I’ve never seen before.
“And I’m not going to waste that chance, Clementine. I swear.”
I kiss him without thinking.
Without wondering whether it’s the right moment.
Or the right way.
Then I carefully pick up Mairenn’s journal.
“We should read it.”
“Tomorrow,” Cameron says, gently taking the journal from my hands and returning it to the box with the photographs. “Tonight, we just need to be together. No thinking about the past. No worrying about the future.”
We carry the metal box downstairs and place it beside the five objects on the table in the sitting room.
The candlestick.
The spoon.
The key.
The two sprigs of thyme.
And now the box containing Mairenn’s photographs and journal.
Our story and theirs finally gathered together in the same room where so much has happened.
Hamish is sleeping peacefully in front of the fireplace as though he knows his work is finished and he can finally rest.
Cameron and I settle onto the dark green sofa that has probably witnessed generations of Frasers.
I rest my head against his shoulder and feel every muscle in my body relax for the first time in days.
“Do you think we’re crazy?” I ask quietly.
“Completely. But I think we always have been. Since the first day.”
“The day I threatened you with a candlestick because I thought you were an intruder.”
“The best day of my life,” he says, pressing a kiss to the top of my head.
I smile.
We sit there for a long time without speaking.
Just enjoying being together.
And I realize that this is exactly what I wanted all along without daring to admit it.
Just the two of us.
Just real life.
With one stubborn sheep watching over us.