Chapter Eleven
Angus
The sheer rock face of the cliff rose on my right; the water of the Firth lapped on the beach to my left. I walked along the sand, picking my way over jagged rocks as the sun began to sink down behind the cliff.
A baby. Isla was going to have a baby.
My baby.
It wasn’t like me to forget to use a condom. Something about Isla had swept all my common sense away that first night. I’d lost my self-control at a glance from her emerald eyes.
And I didn’t regret it. The idea of my baby growing inside of her, the thought of her slim body swelling with my seed… it made something glow inside of me, something I’d never felt before. I’d always longed for children, in a vague, distant sort of way, but I’d never wanted to share a pregnancy and childbirth with another woman, not even Una. Which was perhaps why I’d been so willing to leave Una behind when I decided to go to America.
I couldn’t imagine myself leaving Isla behind. Not now. Not ever.
She was mine. She would always be mine. And not just because of the baby, either. She’d somehow burrowed into my soul, so deeply that I knew I could never bear to let her go.
As I wandered along the sandy beach, a figure emerged from behind a little curve in the cliff. It was a tall, broad-shouldered man, and I stiffened because, at first, I thought it might be Alastair. But an instant later, I recognized my old friend, Thomas Craig. His coffee-brown hair was rumpled and windblown, and he wore a cable-knit jumper against the chill breeze that blew off the Firth.
I hadn’t seen him in over a decade, or heard from him or received a birthday card or even friended him on Facebook. But for an instant, the years dropped away, and I was a teenager again, seeing my best friend in all the world. I hurried toward him.
“Thomas!”
I would have flung my arms around his shoulders in greeting, but something on his face stopped me, and all at once I recalled that everyone here thought me to be a murderer. I hesitated.
“Angus,” he said, his voice reserved. “How goes the investigation?”
At the chilly, unfriendly look in his eyes, something inside me shriveled and died. The last of our childhood friendship withered away to dust.
“I told them exactly what I told them last time,” I said, speaking just as coolly as he did. “I wasn’t there that night she died. I was with my da.”
“And yet someone claims to have seen ye there wit’ her.”
“Someone is lying,” I snapped.
His eyes shifted away from mine. I had grown up with Thomas, had spent almost every waking hour with him back then, had shared every class with him. I knew him so well that he’d never been able to lie to me.
So I knew that he was lying now.
“It was you,” I said, my voice sharp, accusing. “You’re the one who told them I was there.”
“Don’t be a numpty.”
I ignored the insult, which was one we’d thrown at each other in a friendly fashion all through school, and went on, trying to piece this puzzle together.
“Someone told the constable I was with Una just before she died. It was you, wasn’t it? But you know that’s not true. Why would you lie, Thomas?”
He glared at me. Despite the passage of years, he was still a good-looking fellow with a braw face, but at this moment there was something in his eyes I’d never seen before, something angry and hateful, and for an instant it made him look downright ugly.
“Because ye killed her,” he snarled out. “Even if ye didn’t push her, it was your fault, Angus. She jumped because of you, damn it.”
“Aye.” I looked up at the cliff, imagining the awful despair that it would take to leap from there onto the rocks below. “Maybe she did, in a way. But I never meant to hurt her, Thomas.”
“Ye didn’t deserve her!” His face was distorted with fury. “Ye never loved her, not the way she deserved to be loved. I loved her, Angus, but she never had eyes for me, not with you around. When ye decided to leave, she was so broken. You were all she wanted. All she ever wanted.”
The rage and pain in his voice caught at my heart. I’d been friends with Una and Thomas almost all my life, yet I’d never known how he felt, had never imagined the depths of his feelings for Una, nor the depths of his fury toward me. He’d kept it all inside, hidden it, and all these years it had been eating at him, turning him bitter and angry. Twisting him.
He went on, his voice rising with rage.
“You didn’t know what it was to love! Ye still don’t. I’ve read about yer escapades with all those trollops. Ye’ve never loved a one of ‘em in yer life.”
I thought about Isla, waiting for me back at Braehaven. I thought about how she fit into my life—the way she loved architecture, the way she’d turned her back on the life she’d been born to, just like me, and gone on to something bigger and better. I thought about her growing round and full with my child. And for the first time, I was able to put words to what I felt for her.
“You’re wrong, Thomas,” I said, softly but with confidence. “I’ve fallen in love with a woman. Her name is Isla, and she’s the one I’ve been waiting for all these years. She’s pregnant with my child, and I’m going to marry her.” I looked him straight in the eyes. “Don’t destroy my future over something that happened fourteen years ago, Thomas. Not now, not now that I’ve found her. Please. I can’t lose her now.”
He glared at me, but some of the rage burning in his eyes had cooled.
“It’s not fair,” he said with a growl. “It’s not fair that you had Una, and now you have this girl as well.”
“You’ll find someone too, Thomas. If you can just start looking ahead, instead of behind… you’ll find someone too.” I blew out a long breath. “Don’t ruin everything for me, Thomas. Please.”
“After what you did to me, you deserve to suffer.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, as gently as I knew how. “I didn’t know you loved her, Thomas. I didn’t know. I doubt she knew, either. Maybe… maybe you should’ve told her how you felt.”
His face crumpled, and he sniffled, sounding more like the boy I’d known than a full-grown man with shoulders a yard wide.
“I did tell her,” he muttered. “Aye, that I did.”
A terrible suspicion seized me. “Thomas. When did you tell her?”
“The night…” He snuffled again, drawing the arm of his jumper across his nose, and spoke in the small, guilty voice of a child. “The night she died.”
My heart squeezed in my chest. I hadn’t seen Thomas in near to fifteen years, yet he was still my best friend. And the suspicion that had risen up inside me was agonizingly painful.
“Thomas,” I said, softly but firmly. “What did you do?”
“I didn’t mean to!” he wailed. “I didn’t mean to hurt her, Angus. I just—I just…”
“Thomas. What happened?”
“I found her in the folly.” He gestured vaguely back in the direction of the old stone folly at the edge of the woods. “She was cryin’ her eyes oot, Angus, because ye were leavin’. Because ye’d broken up with her. And I got down on my knees, held her hands, and told her that I loved her. That even if she didn’t have ye, she still had me.”
I forced my voice to steadiness. “What did she say?”
“She told me—she told me that she only loved you. That I was just a friend. And I told her—I told her—”
He paused, clearing his throat and wiping his eyes impatiently.
“I was angry,” he choked out. “So angry that I went completely radge. I told her—I told her that you’d said you never really cared for her. That you’d been sleepin’ with the other bints in school. That everyone was laughin’ at her behind her back aboot it. I made her think that she’d never meant a thing to you.” He brushed a hand over his face roughly. “It was my fault, Angus. She went and threw herself off that cliff… and it was all because I hurt her so. I did it to her as surely as if I’d pushed her.”
He burst into sobs, heavy, racking noises of grief. It had been almost fifteen years, yet he wept as if it had happened yesterday. I stared at him for a long moment, then, slowly, stepped forward and wrapped my arms around him, just like we were still kids.
“I’m sorry,” he gritted out. “I’m sorry. But I hated you, Angus. All this time I’ve hated you, because she loved you instead of me. I read that you were gettin’ married, and I thought if I could take you away from your love, like you did to me… if I could get revenge on you, if I could make you hurt like I hurt, the pain would finally go away.”
Anger and sympathy swirled inside me. After a moment or two, the sympathy won out.
“I understand,” I said gently, and it was true. “It’s all right, Thomas. I understand.”
He wept into my shoulder for a long while, and despite everything he’d done to me, I held onto him, the way I had when we were kids—after Davy Gordon knocked one of his front teeth out. Nothing was settled yet, and after all these years of nursing a grudge against me, I knew better than to be certain he’d choose the right path and admit the truth to the police. For all I knew, he might continue on this path and try to destroy my life. He might even succeed.
And yet, despite everything that had happened, despite everything he’d put me through… he was still my friend, and I couldn’t leave him alone in his grief. Not again.
Perhaps if he was able to bring himself to face the pain of everything that had happened, he might finally be able to put the past away where it belonged and focus on the present instead.
And so might I.
***
“Stop here, please.”
I stepped out of the old black Bentley. “You can go ahead back to the house,” I told the driver. “I’ll just walk back from here.”
The old car headed up the drive in a cloud of dust, and I turned and walked into the woods. It was a long walk, but at last, the trees thinned, and I saw the family graveyard.
The clearing was littered with dry autumn leaves, and the late afternoon sun shone weakly through high wintry clouds. The air was growing colder, but I walked amongst the stones a while, looking at the names and the dates. My ancestors were all buried here, going back hundreds of years. Some of the stones were so worn that they were no longer legible, and many of the others were so covered with moss that they were difficult to read. I stopped at last, in front of a stone that was still new and shiny, as if the elements hadn’t yet begun to touch it.
My da would’ve never gone in for a fancy obelisk or anything like that, nor yet any bit of poetry or verse or Scripture to remember him by. He hadn’t been that sort of man. It was just a plain granite headstone, and the words cut into it read simply: James Fergus Scott, beloved husband and father.
That was all, but it was enough. It said everything there was to say.
I drew in a deep breath and spoke quietly to the cold and quiet air.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Da. I wish I’d come home before now. Or even just called you to talk, once or twice. I realized today…” I sighed. “Well, I realized the past belongs in the past. Even when it hurts. It’s not that we need to forget what happened in the past, and I won’t ever forget you, Da. I promise you that. But I realized that we can’t let what happened in our past make us afraid to live in the present.” I looked down at the stone and smiled wryly at myself. “Does that make any sense at all?”
There was no answer, nor did I expect one. But even so, I stood there staring at the stone a long time, as if perhaps it might reply.
But it didn’t and, at last, I heaved another sigh and said what I’d come here to say.
“Goodbye, Da.”
The dry leaves rustled in the cold wind as I walked away from my father’s grave, and headed back toward Braehaven.