Chapter Forty
Rory
While Amelia made her phone call, I returned to the room and flopped down on the bed, staring blindly at the ceiling.
Two more days. That’s all I had left before my time with Amelia would come to an end. Even if I could convince her to stay longer, that was only delaying the inevitable. She had to get back to Carrie, to her new job in a new city, where it was always summer.
To a life that didn’t include me.
It was supposed to be a casual fling—just two consenting adults having some fun for a few days, and that was it.
And now? I almost wished we hadn’t gone down that road. She’d made me feel again, made me think that I was worthy of some happiness. But in a few days she’d be gone, and I’d be alone again. I’d have a few amazing memories to hold onto after she was gone, but that was all they’d be—memories.
I had to start pulling back now, so it would be easier to say goodbye when we reached Broadford. When Amelia got back to the room, I’d tell her we needed to just be friends. That it had been great, and I’d miss being with her, but it had to be done before we became any more emotionally invested. Before I forgot myself and told her I loved her.
I’d ask the landlady for my own room, or if nothing was available, I’d sleep on the floor. And there’d be no more scenes like the one a few hours earlier in the shower. No more passionate kisses, no more touching her cheek, her hand, her hair. No more watching her bottomless brown eyes dilate with passion; no more feeling her body come apart around me.
I could do it. I’d endured far worse and survived. And so had she.
I heard her footsteps in the hallway. I got up from the bed, steeling myself for what I had to do.
And then she walked into the room, her eyes shining with tears, her shoulders slumped, and walked straight into my suddenly outstretched arms.
As I held her close and breathed in the scent of her hair, I knew that I would make the most of every minute we had left.
After Amelia assured me Carrie hadn’t taken a turn for the worse, that she was just being emotional, I led her to the bed and just held her in my arms.
She fell asleep, and then I did, too, waking some time later as the sun was beginning to drop. I wanted that sunset picnic—another memory I’d be able to look back on after she was gone. I shook her shoulder. She opened her eyes and squinted up at me, clearly confused. “Is it morning already?”
I smiled. “No, but it’s almost sunset. Did you still want to have that picnic by the loch?”
She sat up, suddenly wide awake. “Yes, I’d love that.” She climbed out of the bed and pulled on her boots.
There was a perfect spot at the side of the loch with a direct view to Bla Bheinn, and we ate our dinner there, sitting on a plaid blanket the B&B’s landlady had loaned us. The sun dropped behind the mountain, casting it in a fiery glow. As I gazed up at it, I imagined that Connor was up there smiling down at us. A hand closed over mine, and I glanced at Amelia. I could tell by the look in her eyes that she knew exactly what I was thinking.
I held her close as the evening sky turned yellowish in the wake of the sunset, then lavender and gray as the gloaming set in, then dark blue and finally black. We watched as the stars winked to life in a moonless sky. As night deepened, it grew colder, and we finally returned to the B&B around eleven and made love late into the night.
We set out late the next morning after a bracing swim in the loch and brunch at the café. The trail between Torrin and Broadford was generally easy, and we probably could have done all twelve miles or so in one day, but there was a spot about halfway that I wanted to camp at overnight, so we took our time and just enjoyed the slower pace. We wandered off the path here and there, exploring the coastline and doubling back.
The trail turned slightly inland, away from the coast. It wound gently uphill and then curved to the left, revealing a smattering of stone ruins.
“What is this place?” breathed Amelia.
“It was once the settlement of Suisnish.”
“What happened to it?”
“The Highland Clearances. In the decades following the Jacobite defeat at Culloden in 1746, the English burned the villages in reprisal for the rebellion and then stripped the clans of their culture and their power. It became more profitable to the landowners to have the land free for sheep than to have people living here, so whole settlements were burned, their residents evicted. Suisnish is one of those, as is Boreraig, which is a few miles down. They were burned in the fall of 1853, the people forced out into the cold.”
Amelia walked to the first pile of rubble and closed her eyes, running her hands reverently over the lichen-encrusted stones.
“I can picture them,” she murmured suddenly, “the people who once lived here. Their children playing on the shore, the women gossiping and laughing as they hung the wash to dry, the men working the fields. It wouldn’t have been an easy life, but it was the only one they knew, going back generations. And then to be suddenly forced out, to have your home burned to the ground as you ran into the freezing night with the few possessions you could grab, carrying your baby in your arms, helping your old grandmother walk with her arthritic knees…”
She moved to another crumbled wall. “Back home in the States, we have this romantic image of Scotland. We picture handsome, kilted warriors galloping their horses across heather-covered hills, rebelling against the evil English. We come here and drink whisky and listen to the bagpipes, explore castle ruins and walk the trails, and we forget that there were people who had to fight for their survival in this beautiful place. And many of them weren’t successful. They died starving in the cold, with their homes smoldering behind them. It’s so peaceful here now, but I can almost hear the screams and smell the smoke.”
She turned to me, wiping her eyes. “Why are you staring at me like that?”
Because she could have pulled those words right from my brain.
“This part of the trail has always been difficult for me,” I said. “Not physically, but emotionally. Scotland has a brutal and bloody history, and you’re never far from a place that’s believed to be haunted. There are plenty of sites more dramatic than this one, like the vaults in Edinburgh, or Culloden battlefield, or Glencoe.
“But here, in this quiet, remote section of coastline, the past has always seemed so much closer, the ghosts that much more real to me. I always get chills walking this part of the trail. Every now and then, one of the walkers in my group will sense it, too, but what you just said? It’s exactly how I feel when I’m here.”
Hand in hand, we walked slowly from one decimated croft to the next, paying our respects at each one. A light mist had rolled in off the water to wind its way through the stone ruins, making the dead settlement seem even more eerie, as if the spirits were closer than ever before.
We left Suisnish and continued on the path, which led through the heather and then down to the shoreline for a few miles, passing by a few waterfalls rushing from the high cliffs above, before reaching Boreraig, a settlement that had suffered the same fate as Suisnish. The buildings here were a little more intact, though no less atmospheric. And even though it was eerie, I’d always wanted to camp in this place, to feel close to the past.
“Will it bother you to stay here tonight?” I asked.
Her eyes grew wide. “Like, in one of the ruins?” she asked in a slightly panicked voice.
“No, we’ll set up camp separately from the ruins. They obviously don’t provide any real shelter, anyway.”
“Okay, that’s fine, then,” she said, looking relieved. “I just, um, didn’t want to trespass, you know?” She smiled sheepishly.
“I do know. Okay, I’ll make camp.”
It would be our last night on the trail.