Page 158 of Bonetide

“I googled it, Alasdair. While we were walking back from the castle and you made a joke about me having two different sets of eyes.”

A long pause. The boat lifts and settles on the open swell.

“Googled,” he repeats, tasting the world.

“Yes. Welcome to the real world. Do you want the words or not?”

“Aye, foxglove. Say the words.”

So I say the words, which sound pretty and hope mean something more.

“Go out with the tide and not back with it. What was taken from you, the taking is ended. What was kept of you, the keeping is done. No name of yours is held in any stone, no bone of yours in any well; the bay forgets you, the sea receives you, and the door is open. Go home by the western water. Be done with us. Rest with love.”

The sea breathes under the boat.

And I swear the water lightens, like a cloud comes off the sun, and the whole field of the water around the boat goes one degree brighter, clearer. The swell flattens a little and far off toward the headland, where the loch’s mouth opens, something like a long exhale moves across the surface and is gone.

Alasdair makes a sound I’ve never heard from him.

I look over and he’s bent forward over his knees, his hand pressed flat to the middle of his chest. For one lurching second, I think, heart, mortal heart, something’s wrong, he’s having a heart attack. But then I see his face and it’s not pain, not physical anyway.

He’s…crying. For real. Shoulders going, the way someone cries when the crying has been waiting longer than the body’s been able to hide it, a cry I know too well. The weight is coming off him, centuries of it, shelves of it, and a well full of it. All of that weight now gone, sinking to the depths with the bones of his victims.

“They’re away,” he manages with an astonished gasp. “Iris. I can’t feel them. The bay’s been full my whole…the whole expanse of my monstrous existence. There’s always been the weight of them in the water, like stones in a coat, and it’s…” He lifts his head, tear-streaked and absolutely wrecked, and light. “It’s just water. It’s just water now.”

I shuffle along on the boat and wrap my arms around him, holding him, and the boat rocks under us, and he cries into my shoulder in the middle of the bright empty sea. I look out over his shoulder at the place where the women went down and the place beyond it where Skye stands blue and the Hebrides lie like damp breath on the horizon, and I say nothing at all, because witness is still the job, and I think I’m pretty good at it now.

We don’t start the motor for a long time. There’s no reason to. The day stays warm and the swell stays kind and the boat drifts and Alasdair comes back to himself little by little, washing his face with a handful of the cold sea. Away from the looming mountains that make up the western Highlands, things feel open and bright and we share the tea from the thermos I brought and the chocolate from my pocket, and the silence between us is full and comfortable.

And maybe it’s the fullness that does it. This comfort that has now become easy between us. Or maybe it’s the damn emotional rollercoaster I’ve been on for the last two months finally evening out at the end.

And maybe it’s because I’m nosy, and I don’t forget things and I don’t want him to forget them either.

“So,” I begin, clearing my throat. “Two nights ago. In the chapel.”

“Mm.” He’s leaning back against the bow bags; eyes half shut against the sun.

“You were telling me why you’d never stand for Effie, and you said—and I’m direct quoting here, because I’ve thought about it a million times since—you said you’d felt the thing inside you close your hand on the woman you love.” He stiffens slightly. “And then you just kept going, like it was a fact you’d mentioned. Sea’s cold, castle’s old, love this woman, yadda yadda yadda. And it occurred to me, out here, that everything you said back then, the glamour was still doing its thing.”

I keep my eyes on the horizon, because I’m brave, but I’m not that brave. “Soooo I find myself curious how the fact is holding up. Now that it’s just you in there. And me here.”

The boat lifts on the swell and settles.

“Look at me, foxglove.”

I look at him. And even though I’ve looked at him countless times before, sometimes as this otherworldly creature, sometimes as this incredibly handsome man, all I can think is that it’s him and he’s beautiful and no matter what he says next, he is, in some way, still mine.

“I love you,” he says, and my ribs seem to contract around my heart, or maybe now my heart is too big for my ribs. The feeling is so immediate and all-encompassing I can barely breathe.

“It held,” he goes on, when it’s apparent that I’m speechless. “It was the first thing I checked inside me. I went looking for it the way you’d go looking for the one thing you’d want out of a burning house, and it was there, and it was mine. No lure in it, no pull, no creature’s wanting wearing my face. Just a man’s love, the ordinary kind, the kind that dies when I do or perhaps lives on in the stars.” He says it steadily, plainly, like coordinates. “I love you, Iris Galloway.”

I’m grinning at him like a fucking loon.

“And you…?” he prods, and is that a touch of red on his cheeks?

“I love you too,” I say, though I would rather drag it out for drama. “I have no idea when it started. Somewhere between the kippers and the binding, in one of those moments in between. But it’s mine too. I checked the same as you did, that whole horrible day you didn’t come back. I stood in my kitchen with all the glamour gone and went looking for what was left, and it was all still there, Alasdair. It turned out that I loved you, and there was no one else to blame for it.” I wipe my face with the heel of my hand, because of course I’m crying now like a sap. “So, there it is. Verified on both ends. Love, the ordinary kind.”

“The ordinary kind,” he agrees, but it’s the voice of a man agreeing to a miracle.