“Bloody hell, it’s gotten colder,” he said, kicking off his boots and putting his jacket on the pegboard by the door. “I got her back to her cottage, stoked the fire, and made sure she had matches to light the stove for some tea. I waited until she was settled in and then headed back.”
“I’m so glad you suggested we go look for the downed power line. God knows what would have happened to her out there,” Nora remarked.
“Me too,” he said, walking over to the fireplace. He added more wood to the bed of thick coals. A plume of sparks hovered in the air just above the logs for a brief moment before petering out and floating down as ash.
“Looks like I need to bring more wood in if the power doesn’t come back on. Without the oil furnace, this place is going to burn a ton of wood to keep it livable,” he said, poking the logs and sending apuff of wood smoke out into the room. “What do ya have there?”
“My grandmother’s photo album of her time here in Scotland when she was younger.”
Alistair walked over and sat next to her on the sofa, catching her off guard. Betty’s presence today seemed to have thawed him a bit more. Surprised by his interest, she tilted the album toward him slightly. He was so close she could smell the fresh air that still clung to his clothing, and she struggled to concentrate on the album in her lap.
“Oh look, it’s the spot after the bridge on Old Military Road,” Alistair said, pointing down at the picture of her grandmother blowing the kiss.
“What?”
“You must have passed it coming here. I can tell from the break in the stone wall and the mountains off in the distance. It’s definitely the spot,” Alistair observed.
Nora looked down; he was right. She remembered the spot; it had been where Stuart pointed out the river. How had she not noticed that before? She knew her grandmother must have visited Letterfearn because of the postcard in the album, but now she was curious how many of these pictures were actually taken here. She began flipping the pages, looking for any landmarks she might recognize, when Alistair stopped her.
“No way! Look,” he said, pointing at a photo of a loch with rising mountains in the background. Far off to the right sat a small cottage near the water, the very cottage they were sitting in.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Finding the Truth
Nora’s eyes fixated on the photo. The area no longer looked as it had back in the forties, with a lush green hill sloping down to the cottage. The hill now housed four tiny cabins and a long wooden walkway. The recent development in the area had taken away from its original rustic Highlands charm. The cottage in the photo looked like it had been sitting snugly in that cove, untouched by time for centuries. Alistair had been right; the Airbnb culture had overrun such secluded pristine places like this.
“This is outside a pub in Kyle. I had a dram there before I got the last cab back here yesterday,” Alistair said, looking at the photo that showed her grandmother resting against a post outside a building made of stone. A large body of water took up most of the background as the dark stormy sky reflected back into it. Herprofile looked out toward the watery horizon, and there was a dark shadow across her face from a large-brimmed hat.
“She was beautiful,” Alistair said, looking at it.
“She was,” Nora said, flipping the page.
“What year were these taken?”
“Between the fall of nineteen forty-three and the spring of nineteen forty-four. My grandmother was stationed in Scotland during the war.”
“Is that why you wanted to find a certain doctor stationed at Craigleith Military Hospital back then?” he asked.
She paused for a moment. His eyes were fixed on hers, and it took everything inside her not to stare back. Instead, she turned her attention back to the album and away from his gaze.
“Yes, I want to know if my grandfather was stationed at the military hospital during the time my grandmother was there. Some things in her timeline are not adding up,” Nora said.
“Interesting. What does this have to do with the MacDonald tartan?”
“What do you mean?” Nora asked, closing the album and turning to look at him.
“You asked me to help you look for that doctor after you got all weird when I told you your scarf was the MacDonald tartan, not Cameron,” he said, lifting his eyebrows in question.
Crap,she had forgotten that he was an investigative journalist. He was already starting to put the puzzle pieces together. She paused, mulling whether she wanted to share her theory with him. He was a stranger, after all, but that might not be a bad thing. He would have an outsider’s perspective on things that Nora might have overlooked. After a drawn-out silence, she decided to let Alistair in on what she thought she had discovered.
“When you told me the scarf was the MacDonald tartan, itforced me to look at something that had been right in front of my face for a long time. I believe my grandmother held on to a very big secret for many years,” Nora explained. Just thinking about it raised her anxiety. She could feel her heart start to race again.
“What kind of secret?”
“I’m not a hundred percent certain, but I don’t think she was telling the truth about who my grandfather was,” Nora said, running her thumbs on the grooved edges of the album.
Alistair said nothing but pulled his phone out of his pocket and stood up, walking over to the windows overlooking the loch.
