“Your gran thanked me for fixing the radiator in the blue room,” I said before I could stop my mouth.
One of the reasons I’d woken so suddenly from my nap was that I’d sensed a presence in my room. Even now, I still wasn’t sure if I’d been dreaming or awake. When I’d slitted my eyes open, Skye’s gran had been in the corner in a sliver of light and had offered me thanks. She’d also told me not to give up on her granddaughter before she’d winked out of sight. I’d closed my eyes again, my heart hammering, and now I was only partially certain it had just been a dream.
She paused. “Did she, now?”
“She’s very persuasive.”
“That’s a nice way to phrase it,” she said, but the edge of a smile had snuck up on her mouth. “I thought I saw her as well, but I put it down to stress.”
My eyebrows drew up.
Had we really been visited by a ghost? But Skye’s smile was pained, and the lines on her forehead tight, and I didn’twant to make a big deal about it if she wasn’t comfortable discussing it more deeply.
“That’s fair. I was probably still dreaming.” I glanced over at her, trying to judge her mood. “It was nice to see her, even if it was just a dream. Do you miss her?”
“Aye.” Skye shrugged but offered nothing else. Perhaps it was too much to hope that she’d share more of her life with me.
“The radiator still sounds like an asthmatic accordion, by the way. I’ll have another go in the morning. I picked up more keys at the store.”
“Thank you,” she said, quietly and real in a way that made me feel unsteady.
I freed the last loop. Held up the lights like a fish I’d just caught. “Victory.”
“You’ve got glitter on your face,” she said, amused.
“You’ve got glitter on your soul,” I said and then when her mouth rounded, I immediately felt awkward for what I’d just said. Had that been too romantic? Too complimentary? Navigating conversations with Skye right now made me feel like I was picking my way through a minefield.
“Come on, let’s test these.”
Skye bent and plugged the lights in and they blinked obediently, warm and soft. She made a small, pleased noise she probably didn’t know she made, and my stupid heart obligingly fell down a flight of stairs.
She used to make that pleased noise in bed with me, after making love, and right before she drifted off to sleep. I wanted her to make that sound for me again.
Instead, I stood, and we strung the lights together,doing that instinctive dance two people do when their bodies remember being a team. Soon enough, the tree was well lit, and I stood back, pleased with our work.
“Star or angel?” I asked.
“Gran liked the star,” she said, digging in the box, then surfaced with a brass ornament that had been polished within an inch of its life. “It’s older than I am, I think.”
“Up you go, then.”
I held the chair while she set the star, doing my best to not admire her bum that was dangerously close to my face.
Who was I kidding? I was one hundred percent admiring her bum. I wanted to lean in and bite it, but that would likely get me a swat to the head or her tumbling off the chair.
“Not bad,” I said, admiring our work so far.
“Ornaments now,” she said briskly, and crouched by the box. “These are the good ones. Don’t manhandle them. If you break an heirloom, my gran will haunt you.”
“I honestly don’t know if that’s a joke or not,” I said, and sat on the rug with her because it felt cozy. I needed some cozy in my life.
She held up a glass bauble with a crack running through it like a tiny lightning bolt. “This one’s from when I was six and thought glitter glue could repair anything.”
“Was it a wrong assumption?”
“Glitter glue repairs nothing and resides everywhere,” she said. “Like hope. Or mold.”
I took a tiny wooden stag ornament and held it up. “We had one like this in my mum’s box. Remember how she’d invite everyone over for decorating the Christmas tree?” Iasked, and then immediately hated myself for throwing the past into the room like a lit match. Skye had lost her parents young, when she’d been just a baby, and most in Kingsbarns had collectively joined to help her grandparents raise her, my parents included.
