Lake of Destiny

by Martina Boone

  Connal finally threw his clipboard on the floor with a clatter that brought every head in the room whipping around to face him. “Sorcha, if you don’t stop upstaging Helena, I swear I’ll—”

  He broke off and shook his head.

  Sorcha stared at him, wide-eyed. “You’ll what?”

  Connal gritted his teeth and exchanged a look with Anna. But there was nothing they could do. There was no one else in the glen to play Sorcha’s part. Sorcha, Fenella, and Erica were the only women between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five, and Kirsty and the others between twenty-five and thirty-five were already doing as much as they could handle.

  “Or I’ll get Anna to play Hermia,” he said, gesturing back to where Anna stood. “Now behave yourself, or I swear I will put an earpiece in Anna’s ear and cue her the lines myself on opening night. Do you understand?”

  Sorcha came as close to stomping her foot as any grown woman Anna had ever seen. “You should have made me Helena,” she said. “That’s the part I want to play.”

  “No.” Connal pointed to where she was supposed to be standing. “Now stand on your mark, and start again from the top.”

  The Death of Music

  The music in my heart I bore,

  Long after it was heard no more.

  William Wordsworth

  “The Solitary Reaper”

  For a week, the posters all stayed in place, and the camera trap caught nothing. Anna and Connal hiked to the area beyond the loch to set it back up in view of the osprey’s nest. One of the two raptors in the breeding pair took to the sky at their approach and circled above them, the mottled white feathers of its underside blending into the clouds as Anna peered up into the noonday sun.

  “She’s incredible,” Anna said and, turning, she found Connal watching the bird with that same fierce joy she had caught in his expression once before while he’d watched a hawk in flight.

  “Ospreys were extinct in Great Britain for three decades, did you know that? This pair settled here about three years ago, and it feels like a miracle to me every time I see them.”

  “I didn’t used to believe in miracles.”

  “And now you do?”

  “Now I do,” Anna answered, smiling.

  Swooping her up suddenly, Connal spun her around and around, both of them laughing for no apparent reason, and Anna felt free, like she was flying. Slowly, he let her down, his eyes on hers. Then he kissed her until her every coherent thought melted away.

  When he raised his head, leaving her lips warm and swollen, she was left with a sense of rightness, as if something that had been missing within her had snapped back into place and made her whole. She let herself fall into the heat and the alchemy of it, and her heart burst open in a rush of energy that knifed between pain and pleasure.

  It was at that precise moment she realized she had fallen irrevocably in love with Connal MacGregor. Not the way she had loved Henry, or the way that she had envisioned love. Not in any way that compared to anything else. She simply loved him.

  She wanted to tell him and didn’t dare.

  The osprey wheeled away. Connal watched it fly with his face shining in pleasure and longing. “I’m glad you believe in miracles,” he said. “Some things can’t be explained. You just have to accept their magic.”

  She smiled vaguely, and they hurried to set up the camera trap again because she needed to get back.

  “Is something wrong?” Connal asked her as he left her at Breagh House. “You’ve been quiet the last few minutes.”

  “Slight headache, that’s all.”

  She took two Tylenol tablets from the bottle in her purse after he had gone, and she forced herself to concentrate on making the last of the booth assignments for the craft fair vendors who had sent in deposits. There was a good variety, everything from artisanal cheeses to wall art, including jewelry, kilts, heraldry and genealogy, pony rides, musical instruments—virtually anything anyone might want to buy. She drew in three additional booths, split them in two, and penciled in the number and name for each new vendor, but there was no space left in the flat area they had designated near the village.

  Picking up the site plan, she carried it with her toward the ballroom where Elspeth was putting tablecloths on the display cases in an attempt to disguise them as buffet tables. The phone rang as she passed the study.

  “Get that, will you?” Elspeth called, popping her head into the hallway.

  Anna checked her watch and crossed toward the desk. Ten-twenty on the button in Cincinnati, so her mother would be walking out of her yoga class and climbing into her car. Anna had to hand it to her, the fact that she could use the telephone as a cudgel from thousands of miles away was a testament to her determination. It wasn’t as if she didn’t know that Anna had been avoiding her. She knew. She simply didn’t care, or she simply refused to accept that they weren’t all one big happy family. She’d been pretending that all of Anna’s life, after all. Pretending her marriage to Anna’s father was perfect, pretending Anna’s break-up had been by mutual consent, pretending that nothing bad ever happened that might shake her perfectly respectable standing at the country club and in the Junior League. So much pretending and doing things for the sake of what other people thought. Other people who, when it came down to it, didn’t matter.

  Anna glared at the phone as she plucked it from the charger. “Hello?”

  “Anna, is that you?” her mother asked. “Well, it’s about time. Are you finally going to speak to me?”

  “I’ve been emailing every day.”

  “I’m not stupid, darling. Give me a little credit,” her mother said with a sniff.

  The sniff sounded suspiciously damp, and the thought of her mother crying left an odd, hollow ache in Anna’s stomach. But she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her mother cry, and her emails hadn’t hinted at hurt or remorse. They’d mainly projected guilt of the weapons-grade variety.

  “Is everything all right at home?” Anna asked. “Anything new?”

  “The same as usual. Your father’s complaining that the greens on the golf course are in terrible shape, and Margaret is a little nervous about her big audition.”

  “National television would be a huge step for her.”

  “But New York is so far away. Already, Katharine’s all the way on the other side of the country—and you, I don’t know where you’re going to end up living. You should move back here if you want to start organizing events. I still think this whole festival idea of Elspeth’s is ridiculous, but your sister claims that getting Julian Ashford and Pierce Saunders to do a play was quite a coup, and people still talk about the Fire and Ice Ball you organized for me. We could get you bucketloads of bookings.”

  “Margaret said it was a coup?”

  “Not Margaret, darling, pay attention. Katharine is beside herself with excitement for you.” She paused, and Anna’s heart grew loud, ticking away the moments because she had come to know her mother’s silences all too well. “You know,” Ailsa continued, “I don’t suppose you’d have a small part left over for Katharine? She’s a quick study—she could learn her lines on the flight over, and she could use a little pick-me-up. It would be a way to make peace between you.”

  Anna’s hands turned cold. She couldn’t breathe. “No,” she managed to choke out. “We don’t have any parts left over. The final rehearsal is tomorrow night, and I don’t need to make peace. I’m not the one who did anything wrong.”

  “You could at least mention her to the actors, couldn’t you? Show them a photo of her? Just knowing you had done that would cheer her up, and she’s had such a hard time lately with Henry working crazy hours in that crime drama. They may not make it, to be honest, even though I’m not supposed to tell you. Couldn’t you finally let go of what happened and do something nice for her? It’s been years, and Henry was all wrong for you anyway.”

  Anna closed her eyes. Took a deep, deep breath.

  She almost hung up again, but that h
adn’t solved anything last time, even if it had felt darn good. No, she had to grow up. She needed to stop being a doormat, and if she didn’t gather up the nerve to do that now, she would end up either having to stop talking to her mother altogether—openly and for good—or risk losing any shred of self-respect that she had left. She couldn’t keep living like this.

  “I’m sorry to hear about Katharine and Henry,” she began—then changed her mind. “No, actually, I’m not sorry. If I were a better person, I could manage sympathy, but right now, all I can say is that if Henry dumps her, Katharine deserves what she gets. And Henry? There’s no justice in the world if he ends up with a successful career—but then the world is full of selfish witches and narcissistic jerks who people fawn over for no apparent reason.”

  “Anna! How can you say that?”

  “Because every word is true. How do you think it makes me feel when you keep taking Katharine’s side? She’s a grown woman. You don’t need to protect her. What about protecting me for a change? Where was that maternal streak when I was ten years old—”

  “I thought we weren’t ever going to discuss that.”

  “Why shouldn’t we discuss it? We should have discussed it with the police. All these years, I’ve kept wondering how many other girls that judge has done that to, or was going to do it to. I wondered if it was my fault, if I’d done something to make him single me out.”

  “Of course it wasn’t your fault, and I sent a letter to the pageant directors—anonymously. He was never asked back to judge.”

  “That pageant. What about other pageants?” Anna’s heart was beating too fast, making her dizzy. She leaned against Elspeth’s desk. “And why didn’t you ever tell me you sent a letter?” she asked more quietly. “Knowing that might have made it easier for me. At least I would have felt like someone had done something instead of letting it go as if it didn’t matter. As if I didn’t matter.”

  Her mother’s breathing was the only sound on the other end of the line for a long time. Anna felt her own chest rising and falling heavily.

  “I didn’t want you dragged through the mud,” Ailsa finally said. “You can’t imagine how awful it is. I’ve seen all those television shows. The process isn’t fair, and if it’s bad now, it was so much worse back then. You don’t ever want to have to be the girl who has to stand in court and testify about what some man did to you. Your looks are a gift. They should never be used against you.”

  Anna’s right hand squeezed the phone while her left balled itself into a fist. “You’re the one who put us into beauty pageants and made our lives all about the way we look, about dressing us up and showing us off.”

  “You think you wouldn’t be defined by looks one way or another?” Ailsa’s voice trembled. “I’m sorry if you think I didn’t do the right thing, but I did the best I could for you. Where men still hold all the cards, looks give you power. Sometimes they’re the only thing that gives you power.”

  “Power comes from inside, from the confidence of knowing that you’re loved. You stripped that confidence away from me the minute you told me not to tell. You made me feel ashamed, as if I’d done something that was my fault. And you made me feel like a coward for not being able to go back out on that stage, knowing he would be out there, sitting and watching me. Looking at me. You made me feel like I wasn’t as good as Margaret and Katharine. Like you didn’t love me as much as you loved them.”

  “You don’t think I love you? You never gave me the chance to show you—”

  “I gave you every chance, and every time, every single time I needed you to approve or just be happy for me, you made it clear my choices were wrong or that Katharine and Margaret made better choices. Even when Katharine ran off with Henry, you didn’t shut her out. You tried to make me pretend that what she’d done wasn’t horrible, that I wasn’t devastated. That I’d get over it. Only you don’t get over not being able to trust someone you love. And that’s the bottom line. I can’t trust Katharine not to destroy me, and I can’t trust you to defend me, to support me the way I am. When you love someone, you don’t try to change them or make them different. That’s one thing that Katharine gets that it’s taken me too long to figure out. She never let you guilt her or change her. She’s always been the one you weren’t sure about, the one who might not love you if you didn’t give her what she wanted, so you keep trying, keep making excuses for her. Even today you weren’t thinking of me. You weren’t loving me. You were thinking about what I could do for Katharine, to make sure she kept loving you.”

  Without waiting for her mother to respond, Anna replaced the phone very gently in the cradle. She stood beside it, shaking. Not crying. She didn’t have any tears left for either her mother or for Katharine, and she hadn’t said anything that wasn’t true. She didn’t regret a word.

  Looking up, she found Elspeth coming toward her, and she walked forward into Elspeth’s arms. Elspeth drew her in. Held her close. “I’m sorry, Anna. I’m so sorry about your mother and Katharine, and I’m sorry that happened to you with the judge. I had no idea—Ailsa never told me.”

  “She didn’t tell anyone, but I’ll never be sure that was for my sake or to save herself embarrassment. I was lucky, really. It was only a kiss and a grope in a closet he pulled me into, and I kicked him and ran away. That doesn’t sound like much now, but at the time, it felt dirty and shameful, and I’ve always wondered if it was worse for some other girl because I didn’t do anything to stop him.”

  Surprisingly, even then she had no tears left to cry. She stepped back and wiped her hands on her jeans and tried to gather the pieces of herself back together.

  “You’re shaking like a new-shorn sheep,” Elspeth said. “Let’s get some sugar in you and a nice hot cuppa.” Taking her hand, Elspeth pulled her to the kitchen.

  Anna stood in the doorway with her arms hugged around herself while Elspeth filled the kettle and set it on the stove. Watching her aunt, it struck her how different she was from Ailsa. Not that Anna was anything like Margaret or Katharine, either, but now she wondered if she would have been more like them if what had happened hadn’t happened. Her priorities, her focus, her entire life would have been different.

  “What happened to my mother before she left the glen?” Anna asked. “What made her the way she is?”

  Elspeth’s hand shook, and she spilled dry black tea leaves off the spoon onto the counter. “If I could explain your mother, maybe I could fix her. We all make choices we have to live with.”

  She brushed off the counter and dusted the spilled tea into the sink before measuring out more leaves into the pot. Anna dropped sideways into a chair at the kitchen table.

  “Did something awful happen to her?” Anna asked. “Something like what happened to me?”

  “Lord, no! Is that what you’ve been thinking?” Elspeth shook her head. “Och, I suppose I can’t blame you for that, but I’m afraid it’s nothing that awful—or that simple. It was the loch. Remember I told you that not everyone sees something they like? Well, Ailsa had a Sighting of her true love the year before she was meant to go to university.”

  “My father?”

  “Brando’s father. But Ailsa had no intention of becoming a farmer’s wife, spending her whole life here in the glen. She wanted more for herself.” The soft whistle of the kettle grew insistent, and Elspeth grabbed the handle with a dishtowel. Only when she’d made the tea, did she turn back to Anna with her face formed into sharpened planes. “She always had big plans, did Ailsa. She was going to study journalism and be a television presenter and go to London. What she saw in the loch scared her half to death, because Brando’s father was never going to do anything but farm the land his family’s been farming for generations. She barely knew him, but she knew that much, so she jumped at the first opportunity to get away. She’s been trying to convince herself ever since that she’s happy with the choices she made. Every time you make different choices, she feels it like a judgment on herself.”

  Anna sat
back, her spine stiffened into an exclamation mark of fury. “You’re saying she married Dad because her subconscious conjured up the face of a man she was afraid to love?”

  “The loch has nothing to do with your subconscious.” Elspeth’s hands trembled carrying the teapot to the table.

  Anna jumped up and took it from her, then went back to get the cups and milk and sugar while Elspeth sank gracelessly into a chair.

  “Are you all right?” Anna asked, sliding a cup of tea into Elspeth’s hand. “Here, drink this.”

  Elspeth’s eyes were bruises in her shadowed face. “You’ll have to swear on your life you’ll never tell your mother what I’m about to tell you.”

  “Of course.” Anna held her own cup in both hands and nodded. “I promise.”

  “The Sighting is real. If it wasn’t no one could ever see a total stranger—and that’s exactly what I saw the same year your mother saw Brando’s father.” Pausing, Elspeth took a sip of tea, winced, and added a teaspoon of sugar to the cup. “At the time, I didn’t put much stock into what I saw. I was already signed up to do a work-study program on an archeological dig in the Hebrides that summer, and that was as far into the future as I was willing to look. Then because of what she’d seen in the loch, Ailsa didn’t want to stick around that summer, so she charmed her way into a volunteer slot in the same program. I didn’t want her to come, and we had a horrible argument, but then I fell and broke my arm. She ended up going by herself, and she was there from June to August. When she came home, she brought your father with her, and she was pregnant, so they were getting married.”

  Anna’s hands went numb. “That’s impossible. Margaret wasn’t born for two years after they were married.”

  “There was another baby before Margaret. He was stillborn at seven months.”

  “No.” Anna shook her head as if she could shake the words away.