What Lies Between (6 page)

Yes, the city girl is hilarious.

“It’s not too far now, just up the side of the brae. You’re lucky. You missed the midges. They love to congregate down here in the wet, boggy areas,” he said, pushing on up and around the edge of the hill in front of us. “But since they can’t stand up to strong winds, they don’t tend to gravitate to the broch itself.”

Midges.
I’d watched and re-watched a video online of a guy whose arms were completely covered with what he’d called “flying, biting wee monsters.” He ran around shrieking and slapping at his arms while his friend cackled and filmed.

I was happy to have missed the midges. Mosquitoes in Oklahoma were bad enough, and they always zoomed straight for my skin in a group of people.

A strong gust nearly blew me off my feet on the brae’s exposed edge, bringing on a wave of dizziness. A glance down revealed how easily one misstep could land me on the rocks below. I
would
need to toughen up to live around here.

After skirting a thicket of trees, we took the path leading away from the edge and up a steeper slope, but at least solid ground met the trail on both sides. I followed Ben along the footpath and soon caught sight of a crumbling structure made of loose stones similar to the low walls that seemed to be everywhere. The stones formed a circular, domed building, or what had been a building once. Pieces of it spilled down the side of the hill and lay covered in moss, probably having fallen hundreds of years ago.

Ben crouched to enter a low passage marked by a massive, triangular stone positioned over its entrance. A keystone? How had these ancient people constructed a dwelling so well-engineered that part of it was still intact after more than two thousand years? Once we were through to the inside, Ben pointed to large holes on both walls of the passage.

“Bar holes. They would have held the door in place.”

“I’m assuming either the prehistoric Scots were little people or the opening was low for defensive purposes. Invading this broch would have been a hard job hunkered squat like we had to be to get through.”

He cocked his head, sarcasm crinkling his brow. “Defensive! The people, possibly your ancestors, weren’t little people. Did you mean wee people, faeries, like?”

“No, I meant short. Why would I mean fairies,
like
?” I taunted.

A stern look settled over his face. “You should ken yer ain history an’ respect it.”

His accent definitely became more pronounced and more difficult to understand at times. I suspected he worked hard to enunciate for the Yank.

My face grew equally serious. “Aye, laddie. I hear you, laddie. Anything else, laddie?”

He narrowed his eyes on mine. “You’re fraucht wi’ mischief, you are. But life would be boring without a pauchle o’ trouble somewhere in it, aye?”

“Aye,” I said dramatically, sounding more like a pirate than a Scot. I didn’t care. Amusement lit up my mood, gloriously free of worry for the moment.

Ben shook his head in mock exasperation and started up the stairs inside the broch’s outer ring.

With my first step on the ancient stairway, the hairs on my neck vibrated like someone had breathed on my skin. A tremor zipped up and down my arms and shimmied through my spine. I didn’t sense danger but had the distinct impression of something hovering near me. I swiveled around but couldn’t see anything there. I shook off the sensation and clambered up next to Ben on top of a tumble of stones where the stairway abruptly ended.

The second floor had long ago crumbled away. The thought of climbing on the exposed outer ring sent a premonition of a video clip through my mind—a reporter speaking to a news camera about the collapse of a significant historic ruin caused by a reckless American woman, Elliotte Jameson, whose body had just been plucked from the rocks below.

Entirely plausible.

I didn’t move from the stairwell.

“This broch would have had a couple of floors above us where people lived. The ground floor was most likely for storage and livestock. They could keep enough provisions in here to last a long time and the burn below provided water. Families living here could see anyone coming by land or sea and shut themselves inside until the threat passed.”

The mountains of Kintail curved around the horizon, towering beyond Loch Moran, cocooning everything and everyone in the glen from the rest of the world. Despite whatever I wished I’d had with Gerard and my lingering anger at all the years lost, he had chosen to lay a key to this gorgeous secret in my hand. The chance to make this place my home was a life-altering gift from my father to me.

Locking my gaze on the view, I refused to turn and meet Ben’s eyes, unwilling to break the enchantment of the moment or interrupt the gratitude coursing through my heart.

A few minutes later he broke the quiet. “Do you fancy some lunch? The wee bit of food you had earlier wasn’t much.”

What was his thing with pushing food on me all the time? He acted about food the way I imagined a granny would. Yet my stomach rumbled its agreement at his suggestion. “Lunch sounds perfect.”

I followed him back down to the broch’s grassy floor and chose a large rock for my perch.

“Which wine would you like?” He held up tiny bottles of merlot and pinot.

“You definitely do know how to picnic.” I pointed at the pinot grigio.

He unscrewed the cap of the single serve bottle and poured it into a clear plastic cup.

I picked up an egg salad sandwich and a bag of chips. “Not high maintenance, just saying.” I took a huge bite of the sandwich to emphasize my point.

“Don’t get me wrong; I think it’s fine to know what you want.” His tone hinted he wasn’t only talking about food.

I stuck a potato chip in my mouth.

“Those crisps are made here in Scotland,” he said, a swell of pride brightening his face.

“Crisps. I have to get used to the lingo.” I popped a couple more. “Prawn cocktail flavor honestly sounds horrible, but these aren’t half bad.”

“I also brought haggis flavored crisps.”

I wrinkled my nose in disgust. “It’s one thing to think about sheep parts cooked and served in the sheep’s own stomach for dinner, but why would anyone make a chip—
crisp
—in a haggis flavor?”

“You have to try it,” Ben prodded.

I licked the crisp, not willing to bite into it. Not bad. Still, the idea of haggis—even the sound of the word—pretty much ruined any chance I had of liking it.

“We need to get some proper haggis into you. You can’t have a disgusted look on your face when guests come to Glenbroch looking for their idea of Scottish food.”

“Good point.” Just like Kami had warned me. “I’ll give it a try—once.”

“Everything deserves at least one go, eh?”

I searched his face for another meaning in his words, but he was rummaging in his pack. He pulled out a tub filled with a spread resembling finely blended figs and a container filled with a white substance. He handed me the fig-looking spread.

“This you will like—it’s quince. And this other is crowdie, a soft cheese,” he explained, removing the white substance’s lid.

He spread the quince on an oatcake, pulled a grape off the bunch he’d brought, and held the trio out for me to taste. I reached to take it, but he popped the lot in his mouth, flashing me an impish smile.

Rolling my eyes and affecting a flat, bored tone, I said, “Really? I’ll manage my lunch on my own, thank you very much.” It was a solid effort at disapproval, but amusement crept onto my face, ruining my bluff. Having fun with him made me not care how cold I was tucked into the floor of the broch, out of the sun’s reach.

He handed me a spoon loaded with crowdie and put the oatcakes, tub of quince, and a sprig of grapes within my reach.

“I am sure you can manage on your own quite well in pretty much any situation. But it never hurts to have some help now and then.” Leaning over, he gave me a soft nudge with his elbow.

Ignoring him, I placed a smidge of quince on one thick, crunchy oatcake, the crowdie on another then bit off a piece of each.

“I’m impressed! I thought you’d pull out haggis and fried candy bars.”

“Och, we’re not all sheep stomachs and deep-fried heart attacks.”

Kami may have been right about the accent and kilts—although I hadn’t seen any men in kilts yet—but she was wrong about the food. I had the idea America had everything, but I was wrong, and I had been missing out. Scotland’s food was proving more interesting than its reputation let on. Establishing Glenbroch as a dining destination might be a viable opportunity.

Busy putting away ample amounts of my new food obsessions, I grew quiet. Ben didn’t speak either but his fidgeting was hard to ignore. I had a feeling he was working up to something.

“Coming here must be a big change for you. How does your family feel about it?”

“It’s a world away from the life I had and more than in distance. I’m sitting here eating food I’ve never heard of in a two-thousand-year-old broch.” I popped another quince-covered oatcake in my mouth.

I know how to talk about this without feeling any pain
.
I’ve done it countless times.

I began my practiced self-disclosure. “My parents were killed in a car accident—drunk driver—when I was five. I was home with the sitter. She stayed with me all night because the police were going to take me away right then. I didn’t have anywhere to go. My parents didn’t have close friends except each other, and no other family. Well, my birth mother, Sarah, is out there somewhere I suppose. She refused to meet me when I found her, wanted nothing to do with me, and I have no idea if she’s still alive. You know about Gerard. That’s about it. No family to feel anything about what I do.”

Ben’s face creased with what looked like concern. At least his expression wasn’t one of pity. I’d supply it myself if pity was needed, but I couldn’t stand it from someone else.

“I’m sorry about your parents. Who did you live with after they died?” He added quickly, “If you don’t mind the questions.”

“It’s fine. I bounced around. Landed with a foster family who had a farm out in Oklahoma and stayed there for two years. I would have stayed with Alan and Sandra forever because believe me, none of my other foster experiences were anything like that one. In fact, by the time I came into Alan and Sandra’s home, I wasn’t easy to be around, had an attitude. But they loved me like real parents. Some of my favorite memories to this day are flying on the tire swing over the creek, pouring in the rock salt and ice and cranking the ice cream churn, riding my bicycle up and down the dirt roads . . .”

“Sounds like a wonderful home. You were there two years? What happened?” He rubbed his hands over his face. “I hear myself grilling you. I’ll stop. Sorry.”

I waved my hand to indicate it was okay and swallowed my mouthful of food. “Alan was out working in a field a long way from the house. I’d taken my bike out to bring him lunch and a fresh canteen of water. He’d been driving the combine that morning and it was sitting in the field with the engine on. I remember thinking it was strange. Anyway, he was gone. Heart attack they said.”

I untied and retied the wet laces of my boots as memories I hadn’t visited in years engulfed me. “Sandra didn’t feel she could adopt me on her own—they’d planned to—and I had to go.” My shoulders shrugged off the pain swooping through my heart. “It’s hard to believe that anything I really want will work out. I mean, I still hope, but something always seems to mess it up.” A hesitant smile worked its way free and onto my face. “Yet I keep trying . . .”

Why do I want to tell you secret things?

Opening up and trusting someone wasn’t like me, but I wanted it to be.

“What you’ve been through . . .” Ben’s gentle tone drew me to lift my head and look him in the eyes. “And now more change. Moving over here must have been hard, leaving everything.”

I watched him twist a long blade of grass into a knot. My voice came out hushed. “Most of my life I’ve wandered, kind of lost, like I’d been dropped off on the side of the road in the middle of the night. Couldn’t find my way back. Didn’t know where I’d come from in the first place. I’ve had an ache in my heart for so long . . . the first moment my feet touched MacKinnon land, the ache . . . it softened. Makes me think I was meant to be here. Strange, huh?”

“Not at all. There is a word in Welsh for what you describe:
hiraeth
, a feeling of loss and intense yearning for home, whether about a place or someone. The thing about hiraeth—it remains even in happy moments. You can have it for what you can’t even describe but you know is missing.” He turned his gaze to the rain-laden clouds hovering over the mountains. “I believe the Highlands run in the blood and even if you move away, or were born somewhere else, this land holds onto its own. A heart whose home is meant to be here will always be restless anywhere else . . . hiraeth.”

What he said hit me in the dead center of the ache in my chest. I turned again to look at him and his expression was soft, encouraging me to relax. “You have a way of describing how I feel . . . like you hear more than the words I say. You nearly make me believe there’s something at work in this world besides a mess of human actions. I can’t argue things feel different here—
I
feel different here—but still . . .” My words faded away and silence fell between us once again.

“Ellie.” He willed my downcast eyes to look up. “I believe your feelings are right, no matter how odd you think they are. I don’t know exactly how, and I don’t think it will be easy, but things
can
work out for you here.”

I hoped he was right. In any case, I was beginning to like being around this guy. I tossed a grape at his head to lighten the mood and interrupt the pull drawing me toward him.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, but I have a ton of work to do to get this place ready to go for its first season.”

“About that . . . you shouldn’t . . . I can’t . . .”

He didn’t complete his thought, and I threw another grape, hitting him square on the bridge of his nose. “Can’t what? Say it,” I demanded, grabbing a handful of grapes for ammunition. “You can’t finish your work? Because you’re running off to join the circus?” Grinning, I tossed two more at his head. “Do you even have the circus in this country?”