Finding Fraser

by kc dyer

  “I’ll head back up after we eat to take care of this mess,” Morag said, indicating the pile of bloody straw with the flashlight.

  We started down the hill together.

  “Will the lambs be okay out on the hillside like that?” I asked. “I can help you carry them down to the barn, if you want.”

  Morag shook her head. “Nae—they’ll be jes’ fine, the little beggars. I’ll have the vet up later in the week to check ’em for scour and so on. If I was worried at all, I’d bring ’em in, but they both latched on jes’ fine.”

  We walked into the main barn door, and Morag headed straight over to the giant stone sink. She sluiced the blood off her hands and arms, scrubbing with a soap whose antiseptic smell wafted across to where I leaned against the next stall.

  I walked over to close the door to my room. We must have left it open in the rush to follow Morag up the hill. I also tried very hard not to think about Hamish. About what had nearly happened inside my room. Or about what hadn’t happened up on the cold hillside. Inside my head the thought Jamie would never have run seemed to be on repeat.

  Morag was striding down the barn toward the door to the farmhouse. I followed along, staring at my mud-boots as they shushed through the straw. “That’s three babies since I’ve been here,” I said, more to myself than anyone. “This is a weird habit to be forming.”

  Morag grinned as she dried her hands on an old piece of sacking. “Are ye sure it’s a habit, Em? P’raps it’s more of a … calling.”

  The look on my face made her cackle, and still chuckling, she walked out of the barn to see about making breakfast.

  Farm Family…

  11:00 am, June 25

  Nairn, Scotland

  It seems some Scottish warriors are at a loss when it comes to babies——even baby lambs! Okay, just kidding. But my landlady Morag’s new lambs are gorgeous, and she tells me the wee farm family will feature at a Highland Games sometime this summer.

  Today the sky is a thin, clear blue——no rain in sight, and I’m hoping my warrior returns soon.

  - ES

  Comments: 63

  (Read 63 comments here…)

  To: emmasheridan@gmail.com

  From: JackFindlay@*range.co.uk

  June 25

  Hi Emma,

  I want to apologize for being such a gomeril the other day in Edinburgh and dashing off on you, so I thought email might be more private than posting a comment to your blog.

  Still, I would like to hear more of the lamb story, next time we meet. You have a way of giving just a tantalizing tid-bit in your posts that leaves your readers wanting more. You are a fantastic storyteller——keep at it! This is a skill I need to learn with my books, which brings me to my next point.

  Thank you also for your kind words on the blog, flogging my books, and for helping me get past a problem that’s been worrying at me with the new story. Your honest assessment has been more valuable than I can articulate.

  As always, wishing you and your warrior the very best. I am a sucker for a happy ending.

  Jack

  PS I also want to apologize for the perhaps slightly over-enthusiastic greeting I gave you at the bookstore. These events can be very trying and——well, it was just lovely to see a friendly face. So——sorry.

  PPS To clarify, I am not sorry for the kiss itself——or kisses, if you want to get technical. I am, however, abjectly sorry if I crossed a line or startled you in any way.

  PPPS Right, so I do know I crossed a line, kissing you when you are already in a relationship, but just to be clear, it’s very customary in places like Europe for people to kiss each other on greeting. Edinburgh is a very European city.

  However, I think I’d better just stop now before this gets even more humiliating. Thanks again for coming, Emma, even if it was by accident.

  JF

  Summer may have come to the village, but I soon learned that summer in this part of northern Scotland, at least, meant the occasional sunbeam, quickly murdered by rain-filled clouds and a piercing wind.

  So essentially, the same as winter.

  But somehow, I didn’t mind it at all.

  Since I was on late shift that day, I spent the whole length of Katy’s coffee break in the chair at the library, reading and re-reading Jack’s email. I wasn’t sure just what to make of it. He had been happy to see me, yes—but something in that kiss felt different. Before he knew I’d only stumbled upon his reading. I stared at the screen until my eyes were sore, replaying that kiss in my mind. Of course he knew I was with Hamish. And he was with Rebecca. He was just happy to have a friendly face to read to. Of course he was.

  Still …

  When Katy marched over to throw me out, I made her happy by paying the twenty pence to run off a copy of his note to stick into my pack.

  On my afternoon break, I leaned against the fridge in the back and read the email again, until Sandeep came in and threatened to cut my break short. So I threw on my coat and dashed across to see Hamish.

  Which turned out to be the Right Thing To Do.

  Hamish emerged from the back of the garage, wiping the grease off his hands on a rag. He kissed me, and began a somewhat convoluted apology explaining his dislike of blood, which involved a dead squirrel and an accident on his bicycle when he was seven. He just reached the part where the bike, with him on it, was in mid-air above the poor, doomed squirrel when Geordie walked in, raised an eyebrow at me and ordered Hamish to “quit ditherin and get back tae tha’ bleedin’ engine.”

  Which he did.

  And that was okay. It had to be okay, right? I mean, you can’t blame someone for a real phobia. Of all people, I should understand a panic-driven reaction.

  But that voice in my head shouted me down. Jamie wouldn’t have run.

  I pushed the voice away and walked along the street for the rest of my break, trying to focus on the warmth of the late afternoon sun. Hamish wasn’t on the road at the moment, and we’d soon have time together again.

  To finish what we’d started.

  Besides, I was busy myself at work. Sandeep was in heaven with his new espresso machine, and I’d spent many hours going through the differences between a cappuccino and a latte—not to mention Americanos and macchiatos—with him and Ash. He’d taken copious notes, and as I left each night it had made me smile to see him carefully dusting coffee grounds out of the components.

  After my walk, I returned to the cafe to find Ashwin in the back, holding a piece of paper between his fingers.

  “Yer boyfriend left ye a note,” he said, and waved it under my nose.

  I snatched at it, but he pulled it away and held it behind his back.

  “Give me that,” I said, indignantly. “It’s private!”

  Ashwin looked defiant, and took a step backwards. “Are ye in love wi’ him, then? Because he’s no’ right for ye, Emma.”

  I took another unsuccessful grab at the note. “Ash! It’s none of your business.”

  His face fell, but he took a second step back. By that time he was up against the wall that separated the kitchen from the seating area.

  “It is my business,” he muttered. “Maybe I care what happens to yeh, aye? Hamish Lewis has gone ou’ with nearly every girl in Nairn, and walked ou’ on as many, too. He dropped one when he met you—didja know that? Eilidh MacAdams. Left ’er like an ol’ shoe out in the rain.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest, the crumpled note still in one hand. “I wouldnae want it to happen to you, is all.” His face had gone red with this speech, but he still hadn’t handed me the note.

  “Hamish already told me he’d broken up with someone recently,” I replied. “He didn’t keep it a secret.”

  Ashwin jutted his jaw at me and didn’t budge. As I stared at his flushed face and red eyes, something clicked in my brain. “Ash—how old are you? Sixteen?”

  “Nearly eighteen,” he said, defensively.

  I reached over to him and patted his shoulder. “
I didn’t know you felt so protective of me,” I said. “I’m really okay, honestly. I can look after myself. But thank you for watching out for me. It’s very— brotherly of you.”

  “I’m no’—” he spluttered. “It’s not like tha’ …”

  We both stood there for a long second, then he sighed deeply and handed me the note.

  “I’ll be here when he breaks yer heart,” he muttered, and stalked outside to puff moodily on cigarettes for the rest of the afternoon.

  I turned away quickly to hide my smile. To tell the truth, I was kind of flattered. I’d never been the subject of anyone’s unrequited crush before, even that of a seventeen-year-old boy. It was very sweet.

  Hamish’s note sobered my mood pretty quickly, though. Apparently he had to go pick up auto parts in Glasgow, and would be gone for at least a couple of days.

  But it was the last line of the note that really left me freaked out.

  We’ll get together when I get back, he’d written. I know you need to go home to America soon—and I’ve been saving my own money. Let’s talk about travelling together …

  He’d signed the note with a little heart, and his name.

  Love, Hamish.

  That’s what it meant, right?

  I love you and I want to go home to America with you.

  Right?

  And even though I was considered the expert barista in the place, I messed up the next three lattes while I tried to figure out how I felt about that.

  Ash was speaking to me again by the next day, and things seemed to be pretty much back to normal. We had a bit of a rush in the cafe in the morning, when a busload of tourists stopped for coffee.

  The noise level rose the way it always did when Americans came in. The people from the tour bus were mostly European, but sure enough, two Americans were at the end of the line. Their delight at having “coffee like Starbucks” meant that they tipped me lavishly.

  “Best mocha I’ve had since leaving Boston,” said the man. He wore a plaid tam that reminded me uncomfortably of the stripper in Philadelphia.

  His wife nodded eagerly. “You’ve got the touch, honey,” she said, and threw another two pound coin into the cup with the chipped handle we used for tips. Then she blew her nose.

  “Are you having a nice visit?” I asked.

  The woman took a long, appreciative sip of her coffee. “Oh, yeah. I been cryin’ all morning after visiting that battle site. SO sad.”

  The man nodded. “First Braveheart, and then that Bonnie Charlie—it was a sad time to be a Scot, and no mistake.”

  “Oh, Braveheart …” I began, but the lady jumped in.

  “Now THAT man was a hero if I ever saw one.” She swatted her husband’s arm. “Why can’t you be like that, Barry?”

  He grinned at her. “What? Run around in a kilt with blue paint on my face, and then get cut to pieces in the end?” He bent his knees and brandished an imaginary sword.

  “That wasn’t …” I tried again, but the wife squealed at her husband’s antics and he squeezed her tightly before hustling her back out to the bus. Historically inaccurate, maybe, but I was pretty sure that couple’s role-play was benefitting from their Highland tour.

  It wasn’t until long after the bus had gone and the morning rush was over that I realized they had not recognized me as a fellow American.

  I stuck my head in the kitchen. “Where’s your dad?” I asked Ashwin, who was pulling his cigarette pack out of his jacket pocket.

  He shrugged. “Left. Think mebbe’s he’s gone for more beans—those tourists drank all the coffee in the place.”

  He kicked open the back door and lit his cigarette.

  “Ash, do you think I sound Scottish?”

  He snorted at me and blew smoke out the door.

  “Seriously. Do I still sound like an American to you?”

  “‘Course ye do, eejit. Ye’ve on’y been here a month, aye? Anyway, Americans never get the accent righ’. They allus sound like themselves.”

  I counted on my fingers. “Nearly two months here, actually. And four since I got to Scotland in the first place.”

  He shrugged. “We’el, ye still sound American to me. Prolly allus will do, too.”

  I walked back into the cafe, thinking.

  An older man I didn’t recognize sat down at one of the booths. “Coffee,” he said to me, as I walked up. “And noon o’ tha’ fancy crap, mind. Jes’ plain coffee—black as mah soul.”

  He shook open a newspaper and began to read.

  I filled his cup from my carafe and turned to go collect up the dishes from another table, when a fleeting glimpse of a photo on the back of the paper he held caught my eye.

  Without thinking, I grabbed the newspaper out of his hands.

  “Oi, that’s mine,” he said, jumping half out of his seat.

  “Calm down, you’ll spill your coffee,” I muttered, scanning the story underneath the photograph.

  “Watch it, lassie, or I’ll have a word wi’ yer manager,” the man demanded, huffily. I pulled the outer page of the newspaper off and tossed him the sports and celebrity sections.

  “Very sorry, sir,” I said to him, scanning the page. “I just need to read this one story. You read those sections first. I’ll be done in a second.”

  He narrowed his eyes at me, pushed out of the booth and stomped over to the cash desk where Ash had returned and was playing a game on his mobile phone.

  “Sorry, sir,” he echoed, dead-pan, and then added: “She is the owner.”

  He dropped his voice to a stage whisper. “And she’s righ’ crazy, so I wouldn’t mess with her. She stabbed someone with a plastic fork just last week.”

  “A—a plastic fork?” the man said, looking over at me, nervously.

  “Yeah, and you would not believe the mess. A carving knife woulda made cleaner work of it.”

  The man slapped a few coins on the counter near the cash and, clutching the remains of his paper, dashed out the door.

  “Thanks, Ash,” I said, absently.

  “No probs,” he said. “Chasing zombies on my phone—fair inspirational, aye?”

  The article was very short. The picture at the top could have been a mug shot, but on further reading it turned out to be a passport photo. It was better than mine, too—she didn’t look like a serial killer.

  She looked like Susan.

  I took a deep breath, and read the story again.

  American Actress Behind String of Thefts

  AP Glasgow

  Lothian and Borders Police continue to search for a fugitive who is thought to be behind a series of crimes throughout Inverness-shire and other Highlands districts over the past year. American actress Gail Lee Duncan, known for her facility with accents, is accused of masterminding a string of thefts with losses amounting in the tens of thousands of pounds.

  “The woman is a chameleon,” said Chief Inspector Milton Garda of the Inverness Force. “We had her in our custody, but she was released on bail prior to her hearing.”

  That bail is now forfeit, as Miss Duncan has not been seen since leaving the Inverness Police station.

  “This accused is accomplished at switching identities and has mastered several accents,” the police officer added, “though it’s true her Irish accent is a particularly poor imitation, and in fact it was that which led to her initial capture.”

  Duncan, who also is known to go by the aliases Susan O’Donnell and Gaily Dee, is due to stand trial on a long series of offenses ranging from theft to impersonation. Police believe she has fled the country for one of the larger cities down south.”

  “I bought her Irish accent,” I muttered, and looked over the paper to find myself staring straight into the substantially irate face of Sandeep.

  “What’s this I hear about you stealing newspapers from our customers?” he asked, snatching the page out of my hands and brandishing it at me.

  I looked over at Ash, but he’d stowed his game and was ringing through a customer�
��s bill. I couldn’t quite manage to catch his eye.

  I tried to grab the page from my boss’s hands, but he held it behind his back. “It was a mistake, Sandeep. I just—just borrowed it to—ah …”

  “Read crap during work hours?” he said, silkily. “Or perhaps learn the techniques required for threatening my customers with a plastic fork?”

  I stared at him, speechless.

  He shook the paper in my face. “Do NOT let this happen again!” he roared, and stomped off into the back.

  “He’s going to read that while he’s taking a shit, aye?” said Ash, pulling his phone out again.

  “Probably so,” I muttered, letting my breath out at last.

  Susan. Even reading about her got me in trouble. “That woman is poisonous,” I said, to no one in particular. “If I never see her again, I will be a happy person.”

  “If I ever get coffee again, I’ll be a happy person,” said an old lady at the counter.

  I poured the rest of my carafe into her cup and went off to wipe the tables. But I could not get that photograph out of my mind.

  Freaking Felon…

  8:30 am, June 27

  Nairn, Scotland

  Have to type quickly here——the Supposed-to-be-Free Internet Gestapo is marching over from the periodical section toward me at this very moment. I just want to link to this news story. Took me a few days to find it online, but if you ever see this woman——WATCH OUT. She’s the one who stole all my things!

  http://www.bbc.com/news/American-Crime-Spree-Suspect

  - ES

  Comments: 67

  HiHoKitty, Sapporo, Japan:

  What a terrible criminal to steal from you and other peoples. Her face must be burned in your memory. Will your Hamish hunt her down and put her in hands of police?