Chapter Five
Callum had led me to a bench at the center of the graveyard. I’d never spent much time in a cemetery, and I was surprised to find that it was serene. The old statues and tombstones stood watch over us as we sat together, knees and sides touching.
I looked down at my gloved hands and then back up at Callum, who had gone silent a few minutes before. I wasn’t sure how long he needed for us to be quiet, but I was willing to just sit and be if that was what he needed.
His hand on my knee pulled at my attention, and I placed my hand on top of his at the look on his face.
“Are you okay?” I ventured.
He sucked on his bottom lip and shook his head. “Not sure sometimes.”
I nodded but said nothing, waiting for him to continue.
“D’ye ken what it’s like to forget who ye are?” he asked.
I let out a sigh. “All too well.”
“That’s what it felt like when I realized I couldn’t remember how my parents looked or sounded,” he said.
I couldn’t imagine what it would be like when my mother’s memory faded from me. I could hear her, even smell her in our home, and I hurt for his loss.
“My parents died when I was very young,” he told me. “I was mebbe five when they died in a car accident.”
I touched his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
Callum shook his head. “It’s just one of those things. Life...is like that. It doesn’t make sense, but we can’t change it. Agnes took me in when they died and she raised me like I was her own. I dinna ken what would have happened to me if she hadn’t wanted me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was a troubled lad. Prone to fits and dreams.” He blew out a sigh and said, “People said I was touched or some shite about fey folk and the moon I was born under. People in the Highlands have ideas, and things run deep here. Agnes didn’t listen to them, but they all thought she was crazy then.”
“Why would they think that?” I asked. I had seen nothing but respect from the community toward Agnes, and her bakeshop seemed to be a cornerstone of the town. I couldn’t imagine the townsfolk he described.
Though her attitude at my disbelief over the fairies had to have roots somewhere.
“She said she saw fey,” Callum told me, glaring in the direction of an angel statue a few feet away. “That she talked to them and they guided her. Gave her gifts, even. She’d been that way since she was little, said she’d rescued an injured one, a highborn one, which made them indebted to her. Highland fey are not said to be kind, but they were with her.”
“She said they were evil,” I murmured, recalling her comments the first time she’d brought them up to me.
Callum snorted and grinned. “They are, or…” He made an annoyed face. “They are if you believe in them, and I do not believe in the fey.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Then why do you have a fey lock on your door?”
“S’not mine,” he said. “It’s my family’s, and that means it stays.”
“I can see why it would be special...but what does this have to do with you exploding on me?”
“I did not—” Callum sighed and scrubbed his free hand over his face with a groan. “I did not explode on you.”
“Sure.”
“Let me finish before we end up fighting again, Del.”
I hummed, conceding the point.
“Agnes accepted me. Didn’t care if I was touched and came with a whole mess of fey on my heels. She took me in, loved me, showed me how to be a man, and she did it with the whole town talking about her. Over the years people took care to hide it more, to do it behind her back or mine, but they never stopped. And Agnes never stopped telling people the fey were real. She’s been quieter about it over the years, except to you, and when you encouraged her I just...I worried she might start talking about them and bring the whole town down on her head again.”
“They love Agnes.”
