"Will you never tell them about me?" he asked eventually.
"Someday. It's not that I'm ashamed of you, of course," I added, remembering another time I had said that to him.
"Sure it isn't." He grinned.
"No, no, I had fun. I really did. I was that close to being in love with you." I formed a half-inch-wide C with my thumb and index finger.
"I was with you, too," he answered gently. "But 'twasn't sensible, as we both knew."
"True. And at least it led me to Laurence."
"There, see? I made your whole life better." He nudged me, then waxed thoughtful. "I think you led me back to Shelly, as well. Gave me the courage, like. You and Laurence both."
"How did Laurence give you the courage?" I asked, puzzled.
"He told me I ought to go after her. After me old job, at least. And said it was obvious she liked me and I ought to use that to my advantage."
"Oh-ho, that boy's going to get a talking-to." I shook my head in disbelief. "He never told me that part of the story. He claimed he wasn't interfering."
"He never said anything bad about you. Just that he could tell how things might stand between Shelly and me, and advised me to see it through."
I suppose a shallower girl-- or Eva Sonneborn six months ago-- would have been enraged, would have gone storming back to the hostel and threatened to break up with Laurence for being so crafty. But his presumed treachery was clearly done to help me, not himself-- or at least, not just himself. His attempt to tip the scales in his own favor didn't bother me. As Mom had said, it must have meant that he liked me very much.
Come to that, it was no less than I did with Eileen, exhorting her to forget Laurence and get on with her life. Partners in high deceit, Laurence and I were. I smiled.
Gil and I gazed at the flowers for a while. "Oh, I almost forgot," I said, sitting up and reaching into a coat pocket. "There. I meant to give this to you on Christmas. Laurence sharpened it in the meantime."
Gil parted the layers of tissue paper, and grinned at the skean-dhu. "Ey, me dad's got a pin with that same seal! Supposedly we're the poor relations of somebody very grand in the Leslie clan."
"Ah, good. Glad I got the right one."
"I've actually got to wear a kilt next month, for my cousin's wedding. I'll be able to wear this formally." He held up the knife and watched it glint in the sun.
"Spear hors d'ouevres with it," I suggested.
"In-deed. Threaten drunken in-laws who want to dance with me, perhaps."
I laughed, but found myself feeling relieved that I didn't have to go to these things with him. They could have their kilts and their Ode to Haggis. I wanted my Fourth of July barbecue back. My honeymoon with the U.K. was apparently over. Had I become xenophobic, as I used to accuse Laurence of being? Not really. I just knew where I belonged.
A single cannon shot boomed over our heads, from the castle walls on top of the rock. "Must be one o'clock," I murmured, without bothering to check my watch. I was remembering the tour guide's explanation of the one o'clock gun: rather than wasting twelve shots by firing daily at noon like the English traditionally did, the thrifty Scots took up the custom of firing an hour later.
Beside me, Gilleon chuckled. "Look at you, you don't mind a-tall. You're just like a native."
"Hmm?"
"The first time that gun went off when we were near, you jumped out of your skin."
"I did?"
"Aye, I remember it well. We were up by the pub, on the high street. Called ye a toureest."
I smiled. "That part doesn't surprise me." I turned on the bench to glance up the rock wall at the fortress on top. "So I'm just like a native now, am I? Guess it must be time for me to go home."
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Return to Oregon
"Take this, would you?" I pushed a small bottle of Dramamine into Laurence's resistant hand as we stood near a wall of glass in Heathrow Airport.
"I'll be fine," he insisted.
"Oh, sure, just as fine as you were on the flight over. Come on, I only say it because I worry about you."
"Well, don't. It was only nerves before." He shoved the pills back at me.
"You said it was motion sickness." I pushed them into his hand again.
He looked exasperated, but took the bottle and slid it into his shirt pocket. "It was about ten percent motion sickness and ninety percent nerves. You girlies wanting me to 'protect' you, be your 'anchor' or whatever, in some country I'd never been to and knew nothing about-- what did you expect?"
Turning contrite, I nodded him down into a chair and sat beside him. "Yeah, it was the same with me, that night at Gil's pub. Ten percent food poisoning, ninety percent nerves."
"I figured as much," he said calmly. "I felt the slightest bit guilty, considering how I'd been taunting you."
"Is that why you let me sleep next to you?"
"Sort of, yes."
We smiled at the memory, then both lapsed into the quiet meditation that people waiting at an airport often lapse into.
We had spent the past week in England, half in London and half visiting Sharon and Thomas. London's grandeur has been described by enough visitors, and doesn't need glorification by me as well, though we certainly loved it. Anyway, I wouldn't want to overshadow Edinburgh's charm by comparing it to a famous but hated English city.
Leaving Sharon was the most poignant thing I had done in years-- though, of course, as an older sister I wouldn't show anything but charitably cheerful regret. On the underground train after we left her, Laurence noticed me furtively knuckling tears off my cheeks, and gathered me close to him for the remainder of the ride, letting me hide my face against his collar, even though he didn't like showing prolonged affection in public.
And now we were ready to fly home.
I never saw Laurence take one of the Dramamine tablets, so it could be that he felt well entirely on his own. We were both tired but not stressed, and we even ate the mediocre airplane food they served.
When we arrived in Detroit for our connecting flight, a Customs official checked our documentation, asked if we were smuggling fresh produce into the United States, then handed back our passports. "Welcome home, ma'am," he said, in a civilized, no-nonsense, C.I.A.-type voice.
I wanted to hug him.
As our plane descended toward Portland several hours later, Laurence nudged me and pointed out the window. "Now there's a mountain," he said.
Mount Hood, necklaced in wispy clouds and glowing pink with sunset on snow, stood huge and grand over an undulating swath of dark evergreens. Beyond, on the horizon, other peaks of the Cascades poked through cloudbanks into the sky. The ridiculous pride and adoration I felt! We had been surrounded by what they called mountains in Scotland, rugged treeless things with snow attractively etching the ridges, but those were molehills compared to Hood and company.
Dr. Hawthorn met us at the airport. He gave us each a big hug, and insisted on carrying my luggage for me. He had grown a mustache, and Laurence teased him about it. In return, Dr. Hawthorn teased Laurence for scaring off half the women he brought to Scotland with him.
"So," he said, shutting the trunk of the car after loading our bags in, "did Eileen see any ghosts?"
Laurence smirked. "Well..." he said. He began explaining as we drove south toward Wild Rose, and it was funny how one innocent question could generate two hours of discussion.
I settled back against the car seat and gazed out the window. God, it was good to be back. Not that I didn't have some wonderful memories that would stay with me for a lifetime...but there were some not-so-wonderful memories that I would likewise never forget.
And if anyone should ask me if I would recommend a trip to Edinburgh, I could honestly say that it is indeed a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.
But it does have some fascinating tourist attractions.
Epilogue
It has been a year now since we returned. I can tell it's spring here in Oregon becaus
e the sun comes out brilliantly for fifteen minutes every two hours, and in the time between, it rains.
Laurence and I live together in a rented house in the middle of Wild Rose. We are engaged. We're thinking of moving to Corvallis or Eugene to work for one of the large universities, but nothing has been decided yet. Currently we both work for Rose Labs, Dr. Hawthorn's company. Laurence is still a chemist in training, and I'm helping administer tests to paid volunteers and control groups in the pharmaceutical department. I use the phrase placebo effect almost every day, and it always reminds me of Tony.
Sharon is still in England, with Thomas Chester-Brighton. She brought him here for Christmas, but that's all we've seen of her. I miss her, but we exchange lively emails every few days. Chances are she'll marry him and then they'll be able to live in whichever country they want. I'm trying to get her to spend half the year here and half the year there.
Gil also emails me once in a while. He and Shelly are still hobnobbing with celebrity musicians, and dismaying their co-workers with shocking displays of affection in the studio lounge. I enjoy nauseating Laurence by reading these accounts aloud to him.
Eileen hooked up with a young Scotsman and thus delayed her stay in the U.K. another few months, but they broke up last December and she is finally planning to come home. She wants to go to bartending school, so she can pour drinks half the time and perform astrology services the other half. She apparently has learned a lot from New-Age Nina. Laurence and I both think she could do really well with this combination of skills in Eugene.
As for her father, he did come to see her, and she is now able to say that she has no respect or dread for him at all-- pity, yes, but nothing stronger. She thinks she is over that issue now.
She tells me she has not seen any apparitions, been visited by any bodiless voices, or experienced any unusual sensations of deja vu or religious ecstasy since that moment in St. Mary's with Tony. She is blind and deaf to the spirit world and couldn't be more pleased about it. She doesn't seem to notice the irony of wanting to become an astrologer after losing her supposed supernatural powers.
Yesterday I met up with Tony, who is six months into his seminary training. I suppose I expected him to show up in sackcloth with a rope around his waist, looking haggard from a steady diet of gruel, but instead he had on a black sweater and tan trousers and looked no different than usual.
"The clergy lead very comfortable lives these days," he laughed, when I commented upon it.
We had lunch together and then visited his parents. They left after a couple of hours-- a high school play to attend, starring one of Tony's siblings-- and we were alone in the kitchen.
"Will you hear my confession?" I said, after a silence.
He sensed that I wasn't joking, and he didn't laugh. "I can't, officially," he said. "I'm not ordained yet."
"Will you hear it anyway? Off the record."
"All right. Of course. If it would make you feel better."
"How do I start? 'Forgive me, Father...'?"
"Traditionally, it's 'Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,' but I'm not a 'Father,' and anyway you don't have to say that."
"All right." I looked at my hands, spread flat on the tabletop. "I was unfaithful to my boyfriend."
"To Laurence?" he asked. He had the confessional priest voice down perfectly. It wasn't the incredulous tone he might have used as my friend; it was the placid tone of the anonymous man behind the screen.
"No-- to you."
"We discussed that when it happened. It's forgiven."
"No. Before that." I kept looking at my hands, sort of wishing there was a screen between us. "There was a Scottish boy I met-- I mentioned him to you a couple of times; Gil was his name. We...had a fling, you might say. It went on for about two months. I did more with him, physically, than I ever did with you."
"I see," he said.
"I don't know what got into me. It was being away from home, wanting to do something wild...I don't know."
Tony remained quiet, and said gently after a moment, "The point of confession isn't to explain why you did something. It's just to say that you did."
"And that you're sorry," I filled in. "Which I am. I never want to do it again. I only did it with Laurence next because-- well, that was different. I was in love with him. Enough that I would have told you about it. I would have left you, in fact." I glanced sheepishly at him. "Sorry."
He lifted one hand and placed it thoughtfully under his chin. "I'll have such interesting stories to tell when people ask, 'Why did you become a priest?'" he remarked. There was a glimmer of amusement in his voice.
"I feel awful about this-- I almost think I've done more harm in telling you."
"No. No, humility is good. For me, I mean."
I winced. "You're not making me feel better here."
He chuckled. "Ah, I'm sorry. Truly I think you feel bad enough to call the whole thing equal, and it's not like you broke any laws. I know you only kept it quiet because you didn't want to hurt me-- not because you were afraid I'd beat you, or anything."
"That's true," I said.
"Okay. You've come clean with me, and I really believe you never want to do it again, so-- unofficially of course-- you're forgiven."
"No Hail Marys?" I asked. "No rosaries?"
He got that spark of mischief in his eyes, and answered, "Uh, sure-- ten Hail Marys and six months of community service. Now go, and sin no more!" He pointed dramatically outward, arm angled toward the sky.
* * *
"Unfortunately, this probably counts as sin," I said to Laurence that night as I got into bed beside him.
"Yep. You're living in it, girlie," he answered, switching off the bedside light and reaching for me.
Sometime I will ask Tony if the Church really considers premarital cohabitation a sin anymore, if you're engaged to the person and love each other and promise to stay together your whole life. As I curled up under Laurence's shoulder and tried to visualize my schedule to plan when I could visit Tony again, I realized that my life and my heart were full. There was no longer any shadow of insecurity or loneliness.
This, I thought blissfully as I snuggled closer to Laurence, this is where I belong.
I had come home.
THE END
A note from the author
I only spent two and a half months in Edinburgh myself, and cannot claim that I saw or heard anything supernatural there (nor anywhere else). By reputation, however, the British Isles are the most haunted place in the world, and Edinburgh in particular is supposed to be especially infested.
Its macabre and very true history, what with the body-snatching medical students, the gruesome fates of those imprisoned in the Tolbooth, and the paved-over plague victims, is fascinating enough. When you add in the frightening apparitions that people have reportedly seen over the centuries, it begins looking like a spookier place to spend Halloween than Transylvania.
In all, it is a darkly beautiful city with breathtaking architecture and lovely gardens and pleasant citizens, and I hope I conveyed my admiration for it despite the sarcastic tone of my protagonists.
I owe a debt of gratitude to Alan J. Wilson, Des Brogan, and Frank McGrail for their book 'Ghostly Tales and Sinister Stories of Old Edinburgh,' printed by Mainstream Publishing in 1991. Eileen's story about Johnny One-Arm (John Chiesly) comes from that book and is supposedly true. Mary King's Close and the other chambers beneath the Royal Mile have an extensive history of alleged hauntings, as any guide (such as those with the delightful Mercat Tours) can tell you. Other amateur ghost-hunting guides have listed Charlotte Square as a good place to spy spooks, so I sent Eileen and Co. there too. Canongate Cemetery probably does not leave its tombs open for people to wander into, so don't sneak in and try it.
I also wish to thank Andrew S. (Catullus) Lynn for serving as a wonderfully sarcastic speech model for Laurence; and Douglas Birrell for reading the rough draft, correcting my facts and figures about Edinburgh, and fixing any places
where Gil spoke like an American instead of a Scotsman. Any further inaccuracies in Edinburgh's geography or history are my own mistake. Similarly, though I read the book (referenced above) that Mercat Tours provides, I haven't actually been on one of the ghost tours, so the account of the one taken by Eileen, Eva, and Tony is my own invention and I don't claim that the guides really say any of those things. They're probably much better at it.
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