by J. Kenner
"Take your bags for you?" He held out a hand.
"Oh, yes," I said, passing them to him.
"Bea DuBois, is it?"
"Yes. Bea is short for Beatrice, but that's pretty old fashioned, so everyone calls me Bea."
Everyone did call me Bea. The pain in my chest sparked again like a match, and I rubbed the space above my heart.
"You okay?" The unfamiliar concern unsettled me.
"Yes, I'm fine. Thank you."
I certainly hoped I would be.
"So you are doing research on your family tree?" asked Max Brightwell. He'd come in late from work and went straight to his wife, whom he kissed on her eyes and lips, before sitting down to dinner. He had the same dark hair as the other Brightwell children, but his eyes sparkled with a hue of chocolate brown.
"Yes. There's only so much research I can do from the States, so I decided to make a trip here. Mrs. Brightwell--Eleanor--was incredibly kind to offer guidance and a place to stay. Thank you again."
"It's nothing." She smiled at me.
"And what exactly are you researching?" asked Cairn. He sat next to me, and I'd felt his gaze, intent and interested, all evening.
"Anyone who might be related to me," I said, not looking in his direction. It sounded so dire coming out of my mouth that I wondered if he thought I was desperate. I glanced at him, but his expression was calm and open, so I continued.
"My parents and husband died two years ago in an accident. I've been searching, but I don't have any other living relatives I can find in the States. I know my paternal great-great-grandfather emigrated from Edinburgh to the US in 1903. At least, that's what my father used to tell me. His parents died when he was young, and my mother was a foster child. They were both only children, so ..." I fiddled with my napkin. "I don't know anything other than that."
The room had grown quiet. Max cleared his throat. "Cairn is a solicitor. He could help you with some public records, I bet."
"You're a lawyer?" I asked.
"Aye, I'm one of those."
"What kind of law do you practice?"
"Estates, wills, confirmations. I think in the States they call it probate."
"So civil matters."
Cairn raised an eyebrow. He was quite good at that. "My father is a lawyer," I explained. "Was. My father was a lawyer."
Cairn let the silence linger for only a moment. "Show me your family tree, and I'll help you figure out where to start."
After we cleared the dishes, I gave Cairn the single sheet of paper that held my entire family history. I'd traced it so many times that the lines had started to blur. Cairn slipped on a pair of wire glasses and studied it under the dining room light while I studied him. This broad man dwarfed my five-foot-three frame, even in boots, and despite a slightly crooked nose, he had a striking profile. He never pushed back the wave of dark hair from his forehead. Instead, he shifted his weight over the table and rested his chin in one hand. Still barefoot and in loose jeans, he was a mix of cool college boy and serious lawyer. Why wasn't this man married?
Cairn traced the lines of my diagram with long, lean fingers but lingered at the entries for my father, mother, and husband: deceased 2015. The bulb above his head seemed to grow brighter and made me feel naked in front of him. He removed his glasses, and fear he would discover my vulnerability washed over me.
"What are you going to do if you find a relative?" he asked in a low voice.
The question surprised me. I shook my head. "I don't know." The words felt heavier than I expected. What was I going to do? Hope for a connection? What if that person could care less I existed? What if that person didn't exist at all?
An old exhaustion overcame me. "I'm so tired," I said without thinking. "I think I need to sleep." I moved toward the stairs, but Cairn caught me. His hand wrapped entirely around my small forearm, and I flinched at the warmth that traveled up my arm.
"I have a meeting tomorrow, but I can help you after. Around four? I know where to start. Can you meet me at the General Register House?"
I couldn't free the words trapped in my mouth, so I nodded. He released me, and a chill peppered my skin. I'd forgotten how long it had been since someone had touched me. It was the coldest I'd ever felt.
CAIRN WAS PACING THE stone steps of the old building when I arrived. Dressed in a sharp, three-piece suit cut to his frame, he alternated between checking his watch and shoving his hands into his pockets, which only accentuated the stretch of material across his very fine ass. When he saw me, he smiled. My pace, like my brain, slowed a little.
"How are you today?" That timbre rolled out like a lazy thunder.
"Well, thank you. I spent the day at the National Library hunting through some records. Hoped that would give us a head start. But I wasn't anticipating the rain." I looked up at the steely sky, which made a nest of my brown curls.
"Aye, it rains more here than in Tex-sus, I'm sure." He said the word with a Southern drawl, and I laughed at his teasing.
"Oh, is that how I sound, Mr. Scottish Solicitor?" I put my hand on my hip and pinched my face together, trying to mimic a stodgy lawyer. I knew I was ridiculous, but he laughed, a sound that carried us into the ancient building.
"Wow," was all I could say as we entered. The stoic and imposing space stretched beneath a soaring dome. I turned in a circle, taking it all in, until I realized Cairn was studying me. His expression conveyed something ... fiery. I swallowed before asking, "How was your meeting?"
"Long. We're working on a tough confirmation right now for a rather well-known fellow whose affairs were not in good order when he died. It's been a bit of a mess, and there's a lot of pressure from the family to decide inheritances."
"The stuff of novels." I smiled. "Where people's entire lives hinge on their great expectations."
Amusement danced in his eyes. "Aye, something like that."
Cairn directed me up a flight of stairs and into a dark-paneled room with an ornate, cream-colored ceiling. Stacks of red, green, and brown ledgers were piled on a long wooden table.
"Census records." He gestured to a chair. "Everybody living in Edinburgh in the nineteenth century would have to be listed in one of these ledgers. If your great-great-grandfather was born here, then his name is somewhere in one of these books."
My mouth dropped open.
"I thought I'd give us a head start, too," he said.
Cairn and I spent several hours going over the archives. I was used to demanding work as a pediatric nurse, but I wondered if he had somewhere he needed to be. The building had closed, but somehow he'd gotten special permission for us to stay.
"I can keep researching, but do you need to go?"
Cairn scribbled on a yellow notepad at the end of the table. He wore his wire glasses but not his suit jacket and tie. Those he'd tossed over another chair. The top two buttons of his shirt were open, and he'd rolled his sleeves up his lovely, sculpted forearms. He studied me over his glasses, the same tone as his vest, and before my brain could process this vision, my stomach growled. Loudly. He set down his pen.
"No, but you do. Let's go eat."
As we walked to a nearby pub, a bitter wind forced me to shiver, and before I could protest, Cairn slipped his suit jacket over my shoulders. It was heavier than expected and smelled of earth and something verdant. A faint recollection drifted from the edge of my memory: roasting marshmallows with my husband on a camping trip in Colorado. There was a lot of coaxing, a pinewood fire, and smoky, vanilla sweetness on our lips as we made love under the stars.
When I was first widowed, every sight, smell, and sensation tormented the space between my mind and heart. After a while, the associations dimmed, but even on good days grief pulled me like a riptide to a dark place. I inhaled the scent of Cairn's jacket, fighting the onset of tears. I didn't know I'd closed my eyes until he grabbed my hand. His touch was electric and authoritative, a command I didn't yet understand.
"Let's stop here."
He pulled me
off the sidewalk and through a narrow doorway. The pub was classic with dark wood, long tables, and a fireplace in a corner. Cairn seated us near the fire and caught me smiling. "Do you like it?"
"I do. It's exactly as I imagined a Scottish pub would be."
He raised an eyebrow, a gesture I came to expect now. "Sticky, dirty, and full of drunk men?"
I laughed and ran my hand across the worn table, which was, honestly, a little sticky. "No. I would say old, quaint, and full of character."
"Aye, that it is. More characters than you care to know, I can promise you that."
"Speaking of characters, it must be nice having such a big family. What's that like?"
"It's good. I spend a lot of time with them. I need to direct my brother in the ways of becoming a man." He winked. "I'm so much older than him that I don't want to miss being a brother. Ansley is a sassy teenager, so I've got to give her hell, you know. And then there's little Lizzie." His voice turned hollow. "She's sick. Leukemia. It's a bad deal."
Cairn traced a splintered corner of the table with his finger. "She's not responding to treatment anymore. She needs a transplant. Bone marrow. But none of us is a match. It's the beginning of the end, I think."
The gravity of his words hit me. I knew from my work that blood relatives only had a small chance of being a donor match. Seventy percent of people don't have a family match at all. And Lizzie was adopted.
"What about her birth family?"
"Out of the picture."
"And a bone marrow or blood registry? There's no match there?"
"Her doctors are on it, but so far ... nothing." Cairn scrubbed his face and looked away.
A loss like this, of the best being taken while those who loved them watched, powerless, was brutal, I knew. "I'm sorry," was all I could say.
"Yeah, me too." Cairn said his next words with a cautious tone. "And your family? What were they like?"
"They were wonderful." When he didn't push, I felt a nudge from within to go on. "A drunk driver killed them two years ago. We were going out to dinner, and I was running late. I told them I would meet them there." His bright blue eyes focused on me with such sorrow that I shrugged. "It can't be undone. No matter what I do."
Cairn shifted closer to me and put his hand over mine, and I trembled, just once. Would I ever get used to this man touching me? At the thought, an ache bloomed in my belly, and my pulse quickened. Cairn's fingers drifted over my wrist.
"No, it can't," he said. "You can only go forward." His face hovered so near mine I could almost breathe in his words. He lifted one hand as if he might touch me but paused when I took a sharp inhale.
"Do you know that from experience?" It was too personal, I knew, but I needed the space.
"Yes, I do." He let his hand fall to the table. "We were young, knew each other from our primary days. Our families were good friends." Cairn leaned back and picked up the glass of ale that arrived. "But I was a dumb kid trying to take on the world. I wanted to be a big shot, so I made that my priority, and not her. So she found another guy to make her his priority. While we were still married, I might add. It was over really before it began."
"And you got to have the career you wanted?"
"Yes, but it came at a price. We aren't friends anymore, and neither are our families. My parents were disappointed. I felt really bad about that for a long time because they raised me better than that. I hurt her, and she, in turn, hurt me and all the honor went out of our marriage."
I nodded.
"But I won't make the same mistakes the second time around." He set the glass down with finality. "I learned that. I want the kind of marriage my parents have, with someone who wants the same things I do."
"And what is that?" I asked with trepidation.
"Family. Home. The things that really matter, for the rest of my life."
I swallowed and examined my own corner of the table. So did I.
This time, Cairn's hand made it to my face. He tilted up my chin.
"I know it's important to have family. I promise I'll do what I can to help you find yours."
In that moment, I'd almost forgotten that was what I was here for.
CAIRN WAS AS GOOD as his word, and over the next week, we fell into a routine. During the day, I visited libraries and public offices. Cairn always joined me later, throwing his suit jacket over a chair and unbuttoning his shirt. When his glasses went on, I knew we were in it for the long haul. We would work for hours, only getting up to stretch or find coffee.
When my eyes were too tired to read, I would take a break and study him instead. That wave of raven hair always cascaded across his brow, but he never pushed it back. Many times I imagined myself touching that hair, touching that face. It became evident that I liked this man very much.
"I can't believe what you're doing for me," I stammered one night. "I mean, you don't even know me. Don't you have somewhere you need to be?"
Cairn examined me a beat over his glasses. "Nowhere but here."
After our research, I always walked to the Brightwell home, enjoying the graying streets at night, while Cairn walked in the opposite direction to his flat. One night a week later, however, we stayed out until almost midnight going over records and talking. As we stepped into the dark, I started in the direction of home, but Cairn grabbed my arm, pulling me to his side. The touch points sent tingles across my skin.
"It's too late to walk. Let me get you a taxi."
When it arrived, I started to say goodnight, but he surprised me by getting in. He pulled me next to him, flush against his side, and the feel of his warm body against me sent a jolt right to my core.
Cairn said nothing until we arrived at the Brightwell home, where he got out first and pulled me to him again with such intensity that I almost stumbled. His hands fell to my hips as he steadied me against the car, and he dipped his face close to mine.
"Please don't ever walk home alone on nights like this. If it's late, I will get you a taxi, and I will ride with you." His voice strained as he controlled the words. I felt his breath on my lips and caught the heady scent of his body beneath his unbuttoned shirt. I wanted to kiss the smooth plane of skin beneath his collarbone. My eyes flew to his, and without thinking, I licked my lips.
Oh, God. Cairn's eyes darkened with something I hadn't seen before. His hands, firm and heavy, still gripped my hips.
"Do you understand?"
Unable to speak, I nodded. But like a movie reel coming to its end, I watched the distance between our mouths close in slow motion until the taxi driver's voice stopped us centimeters apart.
"Mate, do you want to pay, or do you want to go?"
Cairn took a frustrated inhalation and released me. When I turned back, he was leaning against the car, his hands in his pockets, mouth parted ever so slightly, as if he intended to call after me.
I didn't sleep well after that.
As another week passed, the single thread linking me to family in Scotland unraveled. My great-great-grandfather was as real as sun and stone in the United States, but Cairn and I learned that in Scotland, he was a ghost. His past, like my future, seemed as intangible as the mist.
What I failed to learn about my family, however, I made up for with Cairn. He told me about his life in Edinburgh, his schooling at Glasgow, and what he loved and hated about his work. I learned that he didn't like pickles but had a thing for flavored mustards (I teased him plenty about that). He told me about being an only child until his parents had Brian and Ansley, and then still convinced there was more good to be done in the world, adopted Lizzie.
When he talked about Lizzie, his eyes clouded, and chinks appeared in his commanding facade. Over the past two weeks, her condition had deteriorated. The Brightwells tried to keep things at home cheerful, but her bubbly personality started to dull with her pain. It was unbearable to witness.
If I had known my family would die, I would have moved God, man, and mountain to stop it. Instead, waiting for them at the restaurant, w
atching the ice melt in my glass, I had gotten a phone call. I was told they were dead, and just like that, the life I had known evaporated.
Sometimes I wondered when Cairn would get the same phone call, and my heart broke.
I prayed for a different call to come.
"TELL ME AGAIN ABOUT Texas," Ansley said. She sat next to me on the floral couch. Brian stretched across the floor, absorbed in a book. Cairn sat with his father by the fire and observed me as had become the norm. He hadn't tried to kiss me again, but a strong sexual current constantly swirled around us. It was difficult to ignore.
"Actually, I have a different story to tell."
"Did you get a break in your research?" Eleanor asked in a small and tired voice from one of the overstuffed chairs, where she rubbed tiny circles across a sleeping Lizzie's back.
"No." I studied the faces of those I'd come to love before pulling a folded paper from my pocket. "Something better." I spoke to Cairn.
"After you told me about Lizzie, I got tested. I'm a match." Something started to work in his eyes. Disbelief, maybe? And hope? And something else, something I hadn't seen in a long time.
Eleanor cocked her head, and Max let out a strangled sound. I kept my eyes on Cairn.
"I'm going to be her stem cell donor."
Eleanor started to cry.
The rest of the words rushed out. "I got good feedback on my results. I'm going to start the meds to stimulate my stem cell production on Monday. It won't take long for me to be, uh, ready for the procedure, and when my levels are good, I can donate."
By now Eleanor was weeping, as were Brian and Ansley. Lizzie woke and, upon seeing everyone else cry, burst into tears. Max pulled her into his lap.
I examined my notes, blurry through my own tears.
"Um--" I faltered. I glanced at Cairn again, who sat immobile with a hand over his mouth. Tears shimmered in his eyes, eyes filled with so much emotion I could barely breathe.
"This is going to work," I managed. "This is going to work. I know it."
Cairn got up from his chair and went to his mother, who was now folded over Brian at her feet. He put a hand on her shoulder and leaned down to say something in her ear, his eyes fixed on me.