How long has it been? At first, I carefully kept count, and though I’m probably off by a few days, I estimate I was with Callum for about two months.
I lived a lifetime in eight weeks.
I swallow hard past the ache in my throat. “Yes, the ruins.”
“That’s nae such a great sight. There are plenty of tourist attractions. There’s a wee display?—”
“No. Just the ruins. Please.”
He shrugs, annoyed that I’m not taking his advice. “As you say.”
He stops trying to make conversation, and is soon pulling to the side of the road. He points at the door handle, in case I needed him to draw me a picture.
“Is this it?” I ask.
“Aye.” He nods toward a bunch of nondescript green and brown nothingness. “Just through the gate there, and mind the latch. If you don’t close it proper, the cows will wander all the way to Edinburgh.”
I barely wait for him to finish before I’m spilling onto the side of the road. He calls something to me, but I only wave, pretending not to hear over the creaking pop of metal as I shut the door.
I’m so close now. Too close to consider anything or anyone but Callum.
Ignoring the gate, I hop the fence, race-walking up the hill and down again, repeating his name like a mantra.
Callum Callum Callum Callum.
The cars and smells are jarring, but this land—this feels familiar and right. I pass the ruins. Then the Campbell burying ground. I bypass it all, heading straight for the lone grave at the base of the apple tree.
Thieves must die.
I push myself harder, faster, through the woods, on that familiar zig-zagging path. Until I’m standing at the edge ofthe clearing. I stumble to a halt the moment I see the tree’s distinctive silhouette. It’s hundreds of years older, more gnarled and knobby, but the same one.
My heart is pounding. Will I meet another ghost? Will I meethisghost?
“Callum?” I hold my breath and wait. But there’s no reply.
I feel nothing. Just emptiness. My heart plunges, my chest a hollow cavern.
I remind myself how Callum’s taish had appeared inside the hotel, how I’m sure I’ll feel him there.
A taish is an apparition, Rosie-love. Of a dying man.
What if Callumhadbeen a ghost when he’d come to my room? He’d looked the same. Had he come to me after his death?
No.He’d seen me too, and remembered it. Callum is alive in my mind. I will see him alive again.
But the older man, he had been a ghost, and I’d met him here. He was the one who’d originally pointed me to the grave, which means he couldn’t have been just some random spirit. Was he from Callum’s past? From my future?
“Hello?” I spin a slow circle, but I’m alone.
Legs trembling, I make my way to the tree. Maybe there won’t even be a marker there. I kneel down.
Oh God. Oh, God.Here it is, just the slightest jut in the grass now. If I didn’t know, I might’ve thought it was only a rock.
I sweep away leaves. My hands shake.
Whose grave?
It can’t be his.
