The first woman turned back to me. “Yes, we are Barley’s longest-running fan club. You can call us the BMGs for short. We have loved him so much. We’ve gone to all his concerts for the last thirty years. I’m Gemma Gemel, club president.”
“I’ve been to one of his concerts in Norway,” one of the women spoke up.
Gemma scowled at her. “Yes, yes, please stop rubbing it in. It’s unattractive.”
“You’re like fiddle groupies?” I asked.
Gemma frowned. “I wouldn’t say that. No one is throwing her bra on the stage. We are all grandmothers and have more self-respect than that.”
“Gemma,” said the woman who’d seen Barley in Norway. “I think you threw your cardigan on the stage at Barley the last time he played in Brighton.”
Gemma pressed her lips together. “That was a very different scenario.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear what scenario would make a grandmother throw her sweater on stage.
Gemma put her hands on her hips. “If Barley and Kenda are no longer together, why is she still on his tour? He should have broken up with her and kicked her out of the band. Barley was so gifted with the instrument that he doesn’t need a second fiddle to back him up. Honestly, he doesn’t need the band at all. I could listen to him play all day long.” She sniffled. “And now we will never hear him play again.”
“There are always CDs,” another woman suggested.
“I can’t believe you still listen to CDs,” another woman said. “It’s the twenty-first century. Learn to stream music already.”
“Any way we listen to Barley’s music,” Gemma said, “it won’t be the same. I have traveled all over the country for Barley’s concerts. He expected me to be there. I was his number-one fan. I know he cared about me. He might even have loved me if that floozy Kenda wasn’t in the picture.”
I did my best to control my expression, but this was getting into stalker-level adoration of Barley. In the back of my mind, I thought, Some stalkers even kill.
“She wasn’t in the picture before he died. Had you known that, you could have made your move on him.”
“Excuse me?” Gemma asked. “I am a proper lady, and a proper lady doesn’t make a move on a man. It is not the way things are done.”
“That’s antiquated thinking,” the pro-streaming groupie said. “I asked my third husband on a date, and now we are happily married.”
“If you weren’t so forward, you might not be on your third husband.” Gemma sniffed.
“Ladies, what are you doing in front of my shop?” I shouted over their bickering.
“Finally, yes, get to the point,” one of the men muttered. “I don’t want to stand out in the cold all night long while they fight over who loved Barley McFee the most. I know you are just all a bunch of crazy old hens.”
“What?” Gemma cried.
“Barley wasn’t going to pay you no mind, and he wouldn’t have given you the time of day either. You can mark my words on that, just to be sure and certain. You’re all too old,” he replied.
There was a collective roar from the women as they turned on him. One of the ladies stepped in front of the man spouting off his very unpopular opinions. “Ladies, please. Give Guthrie a chance. He’s had a ministroke and he doesn’t know what he’s saying. He’s not been the same since the stroke. It messes with your mind, you see.”
“I never had a ministroke,” Guthrie complained. “My brain is more fit than yours, you crazy old bat. How do you go saying to this batch of crazy hens that I had a ministroke? It’s not right, if you ask me.”
“See, he doesn’t even remember when he had his stroke. That’s how bad it is. Trust me, ladies,” Guthrie’s wife said. “He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”
“I know exactly—”
“Please!” I interrupted. “Would someone please tell me what’s going on? And why you are all standing outside my flower shop on this cold night?”
The woman who had been sobbing over the untimely demise of Barley wiped her eyes. “We need to buy flowers to put in front of his tour bus right now. We have to pay our respects to this great talent.”
I looked at them. “All right.” I wasn’t sure it was a good idea to let Barley’s superfans into the flower shop after closing. I edged around them. “Will you just let me have a second to unlock the shop?”
They crowded around me under the yellow awning while I unlocked the door. So much for giving me some space. I guessed the Barley McFee Grannies didn’t know what that meant.
I unlocked the door, and the group of twenty-some concertgoers poured inside. I hadn’t had this many people in my shop since the grand opening months ago.
“Oh! She has roses. We must have roses. Red for love and white for purity. Barley was beloved and pure of heart,” a white-haired woman exclaimed.
“And purple thistle too,” her companion agreed. “It’s the symbol of Scotland. He was a Scotsman through and through.”
“Aye, that he was.”
The three men stood in front of one of the two large display windows in the front of the store, the scowls on their faces so fierce that I gave them a wide berth. I couldn’t figure out why they were even there if they were so miserable. Couldn’t they have waited outside for the women?
Maybe these three guys had come a long way to make their wives happy by going to a Barley McFee concert. Maybe they’d thought they were just on the brink of leaving Bellewick forever and going home when the women learned Barley had died. There was no leaving now until the women had paid Barley all the respect they believed he deserved. I guessed that if I’d been one of those men, I’d be a little bit frustrated too.
I watched in awe as the women flew about the shop, picking up every bouquet, touching the flower petals and buds, smelling them and holding them a little too tightly. “I can show you flowers you can have for free,” I yelled over the din. I had to do something before they mangled every single blossom in the shop.
“No, dear, you’re a businesswoman, and we support women entrepreneurs,” the ringleader said. “We would never take money out of another woman’s pocket. We will pay for all of these.”
The women rushed the counter. All were holding bouquets they had stripped from other arrangements. Behind them my shop looked like it had been hit by a cloud of grasshoppers. There were just a few leaves and stems left in the women’s wake.
Considering the mess they had made of the shop, I was inclined to let them pay for the flowers.
Forty-five minutes later, I’d rung up the last woman. She held her bouquet of thistle, roses, and dahlias close to her chest. I handed her credit card back to her. “Thank you for your business.”
Tears shone in her eyes. “No, thank you. If your store hadn’t been here, I don’t know what we would do. Barley deserves our respect.”
I studied her. “He seems to have been quite a guy.”
“He was.” She nodded solemnly. “He didn’t have an easy life and made a name for himself just by his incredible talent. He’s a real rags-to-riches story. It’s inspirational.” She gathered up her makeshift bouquet and toddled out the door in the direction the other women had gone.
After she left, one of the three men remained in the store. Before he went out the door, he angrily grabbed a final rose from the vase in the front of the shop and marched out without paying.
After they had gone, I stared at the mess that was the Climbing Rose. I’d made a good deal of money from the women, more than the shop typically made in a month, so I tried not to be too upset at the disaster they had left behind.
I yawned. What I should have done was lock up the shop and go home, but it wasn’t something I was capable of. I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I knew the mess and overturned vases were waiting for me in the morning. As I worked, I thought about how little I knew about Barley McFee. The last woman in the shop had said he was self-made. That made me wonder what his life as a child had been like, and about his mysterious relative
who’d gruffly stopped me at the concert.
I yawned and was half tempted to leave the rest of the cleanup for the morning, but I couldn’t do that. “Be kind to future Fiona,” I whispered to myself. Today’s Fiona was tired, but there was no guarantee tomorrow’s Fiona wouldn’t be tired too.
I rolled up my sleeves and got to work, having no idea what was in store for poor future Fiona. Had I known, I would have left the shop just as it was.
Chapter Twelve
I rolled over in my bed and groaned. It was still dark outside. I reached for my phone. Even though it was dark, it was time to start the day. I was expecting a flower delivery that morning, and the van usually came in early. I flipped onto my belly and put my pillow over the back of my head. Everything was sore. I hadn’t arrived home from the flower shop until well after midnight. After I had cleaned the place up, I’d seen how low I was on flowers, put in an emergency online order with my supplier in Aberdeen, and prayed that they would be delivered this morning with my usual order. I’d paid extra for the quick turnaround.
There was a meow, and then I let out a grunt as Ivanhoe jumped from the floor to the middle of my back. He wasn’t a dainty cat. Scottish Folds were known for their sturdy and stocky build, which served them well in Scotland’s rugged terrain. Not that Ivanhoe had to experience any of the steep Scottish mountains. He spent his days strolling around the cottage, lounging around the garden, and occasionally accompanying me to the Climbing Rose to have an audience with his admiring public.
“Ivanhoe, you are getting heavier. How many mice are you eating around Duncreigan?” I said into my pillow.
He mewed his sweet meow that belied his size and stature. I found this the funniest part of the cat. He was a hardy boy with the sweetest kitten meow you had ever heard.
Ivanhoe bonked me on the back of the head with his paw. I was glad his claws were sheathed, but he was still a powerful cat. I felt the impact all the way to my forehead.
“Leave me alone,” I said into the pillow. “Don’t you know I have another dead body on my hands, and my parents are in Scotland? A girl can only take so much.”
Bonk. He hit me again. He didn’t care I was in a bind. He wouldn’t have cared if I was the prime minister making wartime decisions. He would still bonk me on the back of the head to remind me when it was time for breakfast.
“We both know you can catch your own meal outside, but …” I started to move, and he jumped off my back, literally.
My feet hit the floor. “I’m up,” I grumbled, and padded out of the bedroom.
After I fed Ivanhoe and was dressed for the day, I left the cottage, locking the door with the old-fashioned skeleton key Hamish had given me on my first day in Scotland. That was the day I’d learned about the magic in the garden.
Ivanhoe had followed me outside. Usually when the weather was good, I let him roam. When the weather was bad, I took him into the village with me to be my shop cat. It was a position he both loved and hated. He loved it because he could preen in front of his many admirers. He hated it because I kept stopping him from eating the flowers and plants I was trying to sell.
Hamish didn’t like it when I left Ivanhoe to his own devices because the cat was the sworn enemy of Hamish’s pet squirrel, Duncan. Mostly Hamish disliked this because Ivanhoe would have enjoyed eating Duncan for breakfast much more than the kibble I fed him.
Ivanhoe purred and wove his thick body in and around my legs as I walked down the hill to the garden. I had to keep watching my feet to keep from falling. He was much happier with me now that he had eaten. “Seriously, you are going to make me fall.”
The cat stood still midpurr, and the fur on his back went straight up. He hissed. I blinked. Ivanhoe didn’t hiss often. “What’s gotten into you?” Then I looked up from my feet and ahead at the garden.
Something was very wrong. I broke into a run. Ivanhoe was right behind me. As I ran, my feet slid on the smooth granite rocks that popped out of the blanket of grass and clover stretching between me and the garden. Usually I took more care when going to the garden because of the slippery stones, but not today.
I tripped and then steadied myself. I reached the wall and placed a hand on the cold stone. “No, no, no, this is not happening. I’m here. I’m here. This cannot happen when the Keeper is in Scotland!” I shouted at the old stone wall of the garden, as if my protests would be enough to stop the garden from dying.
The garden was dying. Again. This was the second time I had seen this happen. The first time had been when Uncle Ian was killed. When there was no Keeper connected to the garden, the garden died. The yellow rose on the menhir shriveled and fell away. The garden had come back when I arrived in Scotland and accepted my role as Keeper. I hadn’t known at the time that I was also filling the role as my birthright as his biological daughter.
My breath caught in my chest. The ivy that usually concealed the location of the door had been pushed away. The leaves were bending, turning brown, and falling to the ground. It was just like when I’d first arrived at Duncreigan after my godfather died. The ivy on the garden walls had been dead then, and it was dying now.
I looked over my shoulder, although I didn’t know what or who I expected to see behind me. I was alone at Duncreigan except for Ivanhoe. The cat sat at my feet looking as concerned as I felt as he stared at the garden wall.
“What will we find inside?” I whispered the question.
I went to unlock the garden door with my old skeleton key, but when I touched the door, it swung inward. Dread seeped into my body.
I pushed open the door and gasped. When I visited the garden yesterday morning before I left for the concert, it had been the picture of health. Flower beds were bursting with color. The trees were in their autumn glory, with brightly colored leaves. The fox had been waiting for me like he did every day. That wasn’t what was in front of me now. I felt my chest tighten. Had the nightmare I’d had come true? Had it in fact been a vision? I scooped up Ivanhoe, as if the cat’s warmth would comfort me in some way. Maybe the cat and I would be able to protect ourselves from whatever the garden held.
My shoulders sagged as I stepped deeper in the garden. The grass under my feet crackled and snapped. It was dry and dead. Every crack and snap sounded like a gunshot in my head.
I should have checked on the garden last night before going to bed. It had been late, of course, but what if I could have stopped this?
I set Ivanhoe on my left shoulder, and he made no attempt to jump down. I knew the cat sensed something was off about the garden, too, as he dug his claws into the shoulder of my coat.
I removed my phone from my pocket and called Hamish in his bothy, a tiny cottage half the size of mine just on the edge of Duncreigan. The phone rang and rang, but there was no answer. Most likely Hamish was already making his way to the garden. It wasn’t uncommon for him to beat me there in the mornings, no matter what time I awoke.
Even so, I wished the old man carried a cell phone. It would make it so much easier when I needed to get in touch with him—like I did right now—to tell him the garden was in some serious trouble.
I shifted Ivanhoe in my arms, and still the cat didn’t fight me. He seemed to understand that this was not the typical visit we made to the garden each and every morning. No, this time was very, very different.
The front of the garden was dead, but I knew the heart of the garden was blocked from my sight by the hedgerow in the middle of the garden. That small hedgerow protected the menhir and its climbing rose from view.
I took a deep breath, came around the side of the hedge, and saw the climbing rose, brown and withered on the stone. Its single yellow blossom was on the ground. A boot print was pressed into its delicate petals. I set Ivanhoe down, and the cat looked up at me with the saddest feline face I had ever seen. I picked up the trampled rose and held it in my hand. Two crushed petals fell from the blossom.
I examined the stem. It wasn’t ripped from the plant. It had been cut. Who would
do this? I felt sick. There had been one enemy against my garden, but he had died months ago. Who was left that would want to hurt the garden or me in this way?
Then I remembered seeing Carver Finley just for a moment at the concert. Had he come to Duncreigan when he knew I was otherwise occupied? Had he killed Barley McFee to distract me from coming home to the garden?
Now, because the rose was withered, the triskeles—Celtic symbols shaped into triple spirals—etched into the stone stood out more. I place a hand to my throat and felt the triskele necklace my godfather had given me there. Ever since I received the necklace, I hadn’t taken it off, not even in the shower. It was my connection to Uncle Ian, but not my only connection. This garden had been the other, and now it was dead? No, it couldn’t be dead! Not completely. I was the Keeper. I should be able to bring it back.
I could bring it back, right? Not for the first time, I wished Ian was alive to fully explain the magic of this place and how it worked. I knew I was supposed to have a connection to the garden. Could I save it with the sheer force of my will? I placed my hand on the stone like I had so many times before to receive a vision. Nothing happened. I closed my eyes more tightly. Again, nothing.
I squeezed the stone until my fingers and hand ached from the effort, but still nothing. “Please, please, work,” I whispered.
But the menhir and the garden didn’t respond. It was utterly silent. No birds sang, and the large willow tree that overlooked the entire garden didn’t even move in the wind. There was no sea breeze rolling over the cliffs to Duncreigan. Everything was still. That’s when I knew I had a real reason to be frightened for the garden and for myself. What did it mean if I failed as the Keeper? I didn’t know. The instructions my godfather had left me about my role had been slim at best. I didn’t know what would happen now.
I felt a headache forming in the back of my head from the exertion of trying to force a vision. I should have expected that my gift and connection with the garden could not be forced, no matter how much I needed it to be.
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