I sighed, no longer patient with all his local Skye-isms.
“I’m haunted by the ghosts in my head.”
Harris’s eyebrows shot into his hairline. “Yeah? Sounds interesting. Tell me more.”
“There’s a girl, and I swear my mind is playing tricks on me, but…I think it’s Annie from the story. I think I’ve seen the plague doctor too. And Keats—don’t even get me started on him. I have a hundred questions for my mom, but Leith doesn’t have a phone line and my cell doesn’t work at all up here.”
Harris was laughing now, hand over his belly before he paused to pour himself a cup of coffee and then leaned both elbows on the counter to look at me. “Keats looks like a corpse, but trust me, he’s not. You’re welcome to use the phone here at the pub.” He set the old landline phone on the bar and gestured for me to use it.
“Are you sure? I’ll pay you for the charges when the bill comes.”
“I know where ta find ye.” He winked, and it brought a flush of warmth to my cheeks. My mind whirled with questions as I picked up the receiver and dialed my mom’s number. It rang for a minute or more without the voice messaging system picking up. I frowned, hanging up and figuring I’d missed her on her way in or out to her Pilates or art class.
“No answer?” Harris asked when I set the phone back down and shook my head. “You’re welcome to ask me any questions.”
I thought about the burning questions I had for my mother about her own mother. My grandmother loved America so much, but a cloud had hung over her head when she’d spoken of her homeland and the family she’d come from. Bitterness seemed to burden her in old age, bitterness over what, I wasn’t sure. I only knew that by the time I knew her, America didn’t seem so much the answer to her problems as the cause of more pain and regret than happiness.
Harris’s eyes lingered on mine as if waiting on my next word.
I finally replied. “I feel like there’s more between the lines of each of the stories I’m not getting. I feel like my entire life has been this way. My family buried their skeletons so deep, it’s impossible to find them.”
“I think that’s the point.”
I laughed. “My great-aunt Beth, her real name was Lisabet, I didn’t even know that until I was in college. Nobody talked about what happened to her. They acted as if she never lived at all. I feel like this place holds the clues, I only have to put them together in the right order.”
“Most families have stories too painful to speak. You’re not alone. Trauma affects everyone differently. There’s no right or wrong way.”
“But it’s driving me mad. I even dreamed that I went back to the cave in search of more clues and Alder Maclean had to save me from the waves. I don’t think my great-aunt vanished. I think she was murdered.”
“Really? That’s a big secret. And you’ve been seeing Alder Maclean in your dreams?” Harris’s eyes darkened before he cut his gaze from mine.
“Only once or twice.” I thought of how intimate each dream had felt and how real. So real, I could still feel his grip on my flesh where he’d broken capillaries. Alder’s bruises, I’d taken to calling them in my mind.
“He’s a dark character, and here I thought you had your hands full with all that research you’re doing. Leith is getting in your head.” Harris’s eyes lingered on me. “You’re lucky you came in when ye did. I’m just closing down. How about a game of darts to clear your mind?”
“That sounds perfect.” I sighed with relief. I just needed to be occupied by something other than the legends in my head. Once Harris locked the main doors to the Hazelwood, he poured us each a pint of cider and then met me at the dart board.
“First to twenty-one has to share their deepest, darkest secret.”
“Uh, no deal.”
His laughter echoed around the room. “All right, winner of this round picks the playlist.”
“Game on.”
Three rounds of darts and two pints of cider later, I was looser with my tongue as I began to think about the legacy that Leith had over this land.
“Do you ever think about leaving this place? Starting over somewhere new?”
“Nah, this is my home. These people understand me.”
“Fair enough.”
“Why would I leave a place that people spend their hard-earned cash to vacation in anyway? Skye has fairy pools and rocky crags and cranky fisherman for days—what’s not to love?”
I giggled, the cider and his soliloquy going to my head.
“You’re a romantic.”
