My Very Best Friend

by Cathy Lamb

The first drawings, when Gracie was young, were filled with huge, smiling flowers. She later drew spring flowers, daffodils, tulips, and crocuses with tiny fairies hiding within the petals and stems. She drew a miniature village surrounded by lilies, pink cherry trees, honeysuckle and clematis, bluebells and roses. She drew a log home by a river, a girl with blond hair in front of an easel drawing the same picture we were looking at. She drew a Snow White–type house with a waterfall to the side. She drew wildflowers around a meandering river, deer, raccoon, and rabbits hidden in the grasses.

  The last drawing, which I had watched her draw, was a garden design for her daughter.

  A pond shimmered, with a fountain in the shape of an angel, wings outstretched, in the middle of it. Tall trees shaded an expanse of grass. A trellis, hung with both red and pink flowers, covered a yellow bench. A thriving vegetable garden in the corner seemed tasty enough to eat off the paper.

  There were colorful clay pots attached to the fence and filled with flowers, a bridge across a stream, and silver watering cans attached ten feet high to a pole, as my mother had done.

  Birdhouses in all shapes and sizes hung from tree branches. One was red and three stories. Another had a Japanese design, exactly like my mother’s. A third was painted in Clan Ramsay colors, a fourth was painted in Clan Mackintosh colors, and a fifth was in the exact shape of Toran and Bridget’s current home.

  There was Silver Cat, on top of a miniature cat house. Our favorite books, Charlotte’s Web, Narnia, Beezus and Ramona, A Little Princess, and The Secret Garden, were piled on a wood table on the deck. She had drawn our four gold crowns, our capes, and our swords and piled them haphazardly on a pink rocking chair. On the back of the rocking chair she wrote LEGEND.

  Gracie was overcome, as were her parents. The father put his face in his hands and cried. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice wavering, gasping for breath. “I’m sorry.”

  “We didn’t know,” Gracie’s mother wailed, hand to mouth. “We were told by the nuns that these babies were freely given up by their teenage mothers, who couldn’t keep them. Had we known, we love Gracie so much but we never—” She dissolved into tears.

  Gracie comforted her parents, gently. Her voice was exactly like Bridget’s. It was like listening to Bridget. Gracie and her parents picked up each drawing again, studied every inch of them. “I love drawing and painting flowers and trees and gardens.”

  “She does,” her father said.

  “We have to buy her paints all the time,” her mother said. “We’ve hung her work up.”

  Mother and daughter, both artists, both nature lovers, both gardeners.

  “She did love me, didn’t she?” Poor Gracie, her chin trembled, and the tears fell from her blueberry eyes onto Silver Cat.

  “She loved you with everything she had and more,” Toran said, holding her hand. “Don’t you doubt for a minute your mother’s love for you.”

  “Why did she name me Legend?” Gracie asked.

  “She named you Legend because of all the stories and legends my father told us,” I said. “Would you like me to tell you a few of them?”

  She did. That poor girl. She even sounded like Bridget when she cried.

  Gracie wanted to know more about her biological father.

  Toran made her a cup of tea. He was kind, but honest.

  Gracie’s face was tormented. She hugged Silver Cat close to her chest for comfort. “What happened to my biological father? Where is he?”

  “Well that story, luv, is a mystery around these parts. Don’t know if it’s true. The last time anyone saw him was on a Wednesday. . . .”

  We all hiked up to Bridget’s grave under the oak tree, the ocean in the distance, the wind cool, a dash of salt, a sip of mint tea in the air.

  Gracie kneeled down on Bridget’s grave and studied the marker: Bridget Marie Ramsay.

  Bridget had written down what she wanted engraved on it: Sister, Friend, Mother.

  “For me, then?” Gracie asked.

  We nodded. “You were her only child.” Dear girl, she cried and cried, which made her parents cry, so we all joined in together up there on the hill, salt and mint tea and tears mixed together.

  After lunch at Toran’s, we took Bridget to the park. We walked all around it, through it, three times. Even on a cold day there were kids playing, people running and biking, a kid playing a guitar, another singing as he rode a skateboard.

  “My mum designed this? All this?”

  “Yes,” Toran said. “For you and for the people of St. Ambrose.”

  Gracie’s lip quivered.

  Her poor parents, I thought they might collapse. We sat at the table in the gazebo together, the five of us, in the middle of Bridget’s Park, A Place for Everyone.

  “So this is my mum,” Gracie said. “This is how she thought.”

  Smart girl. So smart. Like her mum.

  Gracie left, promising to come back and see Uncle Toran and me. She carried the drawings that Bridget made for her, the letter, the pictures the nuns took, and a stack of Bridget’s gardening books. She hugged Silver Cat, then gave her back to me.

  We hugged Gracie tight. She turned to leave in the car.

  Silver Cat shriek-meowed, struggled to get out of my arms, and ran after her.

  Gracie picked her up and hugged her.

  Toran’s gaze met mine.

  “Gracie,” Toran said. “Would you like to take Silver Cat with you?”

  Oh, she definitely would.

  He was nervous, anxious, his hand tight on mine.

  He had brought a table down to a secluded area of the beach near sunset. It was cool, but not too cold, and we’d brought jackets and blankets.

  A white table cloth fluttered, candles set out and lit. A bouquet of irises sat in a glass vase. He held my hand as we walked down to the beach and held the picnic basket with the other hand. I didn’t even see the table until we were almost on it, then I said, “Look, someone’s having a date at the beach.”

  “That would be us, my love,” Toran drawled, those blue eyes laughing.

  “Us?”

  “Yes. It’s a special day.”

  “Why is it special? You did this?”

  “For you, Charlotte.”

  “Toran. Thank you. Dinner on the beach.” I hugged him. “I love you, studly Scotsman.”

  “Love you, too, luv.”

  The ocean waves pounded, smooth as blue-gray silk, white lace at the edges. The sky was beginning to turn a creamy pinkish orange color, with a dash of purple, the golden sphere behind the hills. An impressive natural background that this spinning earth provides.

  He reached for my hand across the table, “Charlotte, I am not skilled with romantic words, so I will simply say what I feel.”

  “Okay.” That was a lame response, but I was picking up on his nervousness and it made me nervous.

  “Charlotte, I want us to be together for the rest of our lives.”

  “I want that, too.” I felt my lower lip tremble.

  “I want you to be in love with me for the rest of your life, as I will be with you. Every day I will work toward that goal. I can’t be happy without you. You are my life, Charlotte. You’re my best friend. You’re funny, you’re smart, you’re strong, loyal, sincere. And I love making love to you.” He paused, and I do think his cheeks were red, but he was smiling. “Can I say that we are compatible?”

  “Yes. That would be accurate.” Exceedingly accurate.

  “I love how you laugh, but how you’re tough, too, and fight back. I love how you work hard with me on the farm, but then we go home, and it’s us. You and me, and we play chess or talk science. I love how fun you are, Queen Charlotte, always ready to do anything. Dancing, poker, walking. I love how you let me be the man in your life, that you let me be who I need to be, who I want to be, for you. I love how I feel around you, and how much I want to be with you again when we are not together.”

  “For a man who thinks he’s not romantic . . .”
r />   “I’m trying my best, luv.”

  “Your best is outstanding.”

  “Charlotte Mackintosh, will you please do me the greatest honor of my life and marry me?”

  “Marry you?”

  “Yes, love. Marry me.”

  Marry him. Be with him every day. Have a ceremony with my mother and Gracie and her parents and Pherson, the Garden Ladies, Ben Harris, and Stanley I and Stanley II. Live together. Work his farm, figure out another career for me, grow old together.

  Have children?

  “What do you say? Is it a yes or a no?”

  Those blue eyes, so dear to me, blueberries and the Scottish sky mixed, now so worried and concerned. “That’s a yes, Toran.” I sniffled, then said, my voice all wobbly, “Thank you.”

  “No, my love, thank you.” He stood up, hugged me, we laughed, we kissed, then he swung me around. It was like we were in a scene out of one of my own books, the waves thundering, the sun heading down amidst sky paints, the table set. How cheesy is that?

  How splendid is that?

  He kissed me again and again, then lifted me up, and I wrapped my legs around his waist and we tumbled to the sand.

  “Thank you, Charlotte. I love you, honey, and the children are going to love it when I tell them how I proposed. We’ll leave out the part about how you’re on top of me, and as soon as it’s dark we’re going to make love right here, on the blanket I brought.”

  “Children?”

  “Yes. What do you think of four children?”

  Four?

  I felt my mouth drop like someone had slipped a hook in it and pulled.

  “Or five? Six? You choose.”

  A family. A large family. I wanted a large family, didn’t I? I pictured a bunch of wild kids running around. I would never be lonely again. I wouldn’t be alone. I think I could be a competent mother. I cook well. I can teach them about biology and physics, and tell them to go outside and play imaginary games. It had appeal, having children with this huge ox of a Scotsman.

  Plus I would have rolling-around hot sex and a man to talk to about new research in space, new and exciting technology, even geology and time travel. Plus cells. Cells are fascinating, as Toran and I both know.

  I kissed him again. “Okay, King Toran. We’ll do it.”

  His eyes filled with tears as his smile took up most of his face. I cannot help but love that man. He is absolutely endearing. Handsome. Emotionally and mentally strong. Crazy smart and tough as can be on the outside, gentle on the inside. Plus he has an impressive, skilled spear.

  “You and I, our kids, and Gracie,” he said.

  “Always Gracie,” I said. “Always Gracie.” We’d already seen her two more times. She came here again and we visited her, and Silver Cat, at college in London. She fit in immediately. It was like we’d known her forever. Maybe we had.

  “Charlotte Mackintosh, this is the best day of my life. You will be my wife, I will be your husband, and we will live together in the hills of Scotland forever.” He stopped. “Uh. Right? Or do you want to live on the island in Washington?”

  I peeked back toward the sea, the waves background music to me. I tilted my head up toward the cliffs, to the emerald green hills, to the sun setting behind it, and up to the purple blue sky, so close you could scoop it up with your hands.

  “I’ll stay in Scotland,” I said. “I feel like I’m home.”

  He laughed. “Ah, Charlotte. You are my home.”

  I swear, I do swear, I heard my father’s bagpipes then, loud, proud, happy.

  He put both hands up. I put my palms against his. We said, “Unite. As one. Clan TorBridgePherLotte Forever.”

  We made love on the red blanket. He slipped a ring on my finger with a bongo-sized diamond in it.

  We would not tell the kids about their father’s spear.

  The next day the rain came pouring down. The clouds crowded in, smashed together, and opened up all at once, as if they’d been storing water for years, for centuries, all the way back to the beginning of Scotland.

  On the second day, rivers flooded, streets were awash in water, trees fell in the winds, homes were threatened.

  Toran worked in his office at home, and I worked beside him, writing my book. When I leaned over and kissed him, we used the time to make love in the middle of that rainy afternoon.

  The rains continued their deluge on the third and fourth day, new streams winding through meadows and fields, farmland swamped. For fun frolicking, we made love again and again in the middle of the afternoon. It was an appropriate activity.

  Toran said, as we lay naked in front of the fireplace, the rain pounding on the roof, that he’d never seen anything like it in all his years. I certainly never remembered it raining this hard, or for this long here, either.

  On the fifth day, it looked like the ocean was filling up, the waves larger, higher, thicker.

  On the sixth day, part of a hill collapsed. We could see it from Toran’s house.

  On the seventh day, the skies cleared and the sun popped out, as if the rains had been a joke from Mother Nature. Toran and I went out walking in the hills. It was a long walk, but we saw where part of the hill had slid straight on down, taking two trees with it. We saw black material, a scrap of white, a pair of shoes.

  We walked over, cautiously, not wanting to slide down the hill.

  Eyeglasses. A wallet. Keys.

  He had been buried way down under, but the earth had shifted substantially, as if the Devil had opened his doors.

  Hello, Father Angus Cruickshank, you horrid man.

  “So there he is,” Toran said, his face flushing, fists clenched. “If he wasn’t already a corpse, I would kill him.”

  “Me after you.” This man had not been a priest, he’d been the devil incarnate. I bent down and saw something. “Toran, look.”

  Toran leaned over me. “Can’t have that being found.” He pulled it out and we took it home. We would return it to its owner later.

  Chief Constable Ben Harris came first after we called, followed by other constables and men and women in suits, rain slickers, and rain boots, from other agencies.

  “As I suspected, and hoped,” Ben muttered quietly to Toran and me. “Murdered and gone for years. I’ll bet at least fifteen years, right after he disappeared, based on the remains.”

  “That’s fortunate,” Toran said. “Other girls were safe, then, from his crimes.”

  “I wonder who did it,” Ben said. “The body’s disintegrated. We’ll get nothing off of it. Dental records to identify him only. That’s about what we’re down to.”

  “Perfect,” I said. “No one to prosecute.”

  “A shame no one will go to jail for killing a serial rapist,” Toran drawled.

  “It could have been anyone,” Ben said. “Many possibilities.”

  “We’ll never know,” I said.

  “If we find out, we should give them a reward.” Toran rocked back on his heels. “I’ll fund it.”

  “You’re so handsome,” I said to him.

  “You mean when I’m talking about giving reward money to the man, or woman, who killed Father Cruickshank?”

  “Yeah, baby, handsome as hell.”

  Ben laughed when I kissed Toran. He winked at me. “You’re more like your mother than I think you realize, Charlotte. She used to kiss your dad all the time, too.” He nodded at us when he was called over to the scene by another constable, then walked back toward us and bent his head, so that only the two of us could hear. “There is a peculiar . . . hole . . . in Father Toran’s black robe, hardly noticeable. If you did know anything about that, it would be best to let . . . uh . . . the person know so she doesn’t have to worry about an impending arrest. That’s the type of thing that can keep you up at night, all night. Since I don’t have any evidence, there is nothing I can do further here in this regard. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Oh, yes, we sure did.

  The archer froze at her kitchen table when
she heard the news about Father Angus Cruickshank. Was her arrest imminent? Probably. The clue was there. It wouldn’t take long.

  She brought the peppermint tea to her lips. She remembered that night more clearly than any other night of her life.

  “You have five seconds to start running,” she had told the priest, then sighed, hating clichés, hating dramatics, in speech or in literature. Still, the instructions had to be clear. The plan was laid. It could not be changed. She brought the bow up and aimed the arrow at his chest.

  Father Angus’s face drained of color, as if it were being sucked out of him by a tube. She’d found that morbidly amusing. He put a hand on his kitchen table to steady himself. “No, don’t do this. We can talk.”

  “Hell, no. I’m done talking.” The archer sighed again, feeling impatient. Now that line sounded straight out of a movie. Was it a cliché, too? Probably. How frustrating. Never mind. She pulled the arrow back farther. “Five . . . four—”

  The priest whipped around and stumbled out the back door, toward the shadowy woods. This was exactly what she knew would happen. Organization and attention to perfection are important skills in life. She picked up a few things to set the scene correctly, as planned, and set off.

  The priest was in poor shape and scared witless. It was dark as black velvet, with a misty rain blowing down from the Scottish highlands and a handful of fog, but she knew the hills, every rock and tree, the towering cliffs, and the rumbling ocean below it. When the priest tootled off, panting like a rabid pig that needed to be put down, the chase began.

  She had paced the priest, enjoying it, delighting in the man’s insidious fear. The priest had made others feel the same way, for years. Now he deserved to feel the same desperate, hopeless terror. It was only fair. Fairness and justice were important, too.

  The priest tripped over a mossy log, the moon’s white light peeking through the spindly branches of the trees. He had begged her to stop. “Spare me. Have mercy on me. Forgive me, for I have sinned.”