“Moving Lizbeth and Seanisabout control.”
He nodded again, looking at his glass.
I picked the pen back up. “Whatelsedo we want to take?”
Magnus said, “I think that is it.”
Emma said, “It’s been a while since we’ve taken toothpaste and toiletries. I’ll grab that from the store tomorrow.”
I wrote down a few more things. “I guess that’s it, but if you think of anything to put on the list, add it. I’ll leave it here on the counter.”
I leaned back in my chair and put my feet up on Magnus’s knee. “Should we tell the kids together?”
“Nae, ye talk tae them, I will also tell them. We will do it separately.”
“Then I won’t overhear you making promises to Isla?”
“Och, she exacts a high price when I go away. I ought tae start thinkin’ on her present now, or twill never be good enough for her.”
I raised my brow. “It will never be good enough for her.”
“Aye, tis true.”
CHAPTER 4
KAITLYN
TO SEE BALLOCH, TO SAY GOODBYE
The night was winding down, longer quiets between the conversations. Hayley said, “So it’s good you’ll only be gone for a day, I have so many plans for our summer. We have like eight birthdays starting now, you have a wedding anniversary, your eighth I think?”
Magnus said, “As the crow flies, yet as the wheel rolls it seems as if we hae been married for much longer.”
I smiled and recited the Burn poem I loved with the words changed a bit, “I will love thee still, my dear, while the sands o’ life shall run. And I will come again, my love, though it were ten thousand years…”
Magnus put his hand on his heart. “Och, ye are verra sweet on yer husband, tis verra fine.”
“This is so true.”
Hayley said, “You changed the words though, from ten thousand miles to years?”
“Seems more fitting as we’re time travelers.”
She pulled out her phone. “What’s your anniversary gift for eight years…?” She typed and searched. “Looks like the eighth anniversary is your bronze anniversary, you gotta get each other something bronze.”
I said, “What on earth — a sculpture? What kind of sculpture should we get?”
Beaty grinned. “We could put a statue of Mookie with his chicken, Saddle, upon his back in the front near the gate!” She had a small twitch at the corner of her mouth to show she was joking. But, still it was impossible to dismiss the idea, somehow or other she had a way of making her ideas reality, probably because Quentin loved her so much.
Quentin looked incredulous. “Howbigwould this statue be?”
“Och, I think twould need tae be verra big, ye ken? Tis the scale of it that would make it grand. The tourists would drive by the gates tae see it peekin’ over the top and they would say, ‘He is a verra majestic mucag.’”
We all burst out laughing.
She said, beginning to laugh herself, “At dawn I could sit on the statue and play m’bagpipes and all the neighbors would love it, they would say, ‘Och, tis rare tae make a statue of a pig and a chicken, but we are glad tae hae it in our neighborhood!’”
I said, “Oh man, Beaty, I bet the neighbors would love it.But, I’m not sure how the bronze statue of your pig is a good anniversary present for me and Magnus.”
