Page 77 of Bonetide

I have just lied to my best friend by omission, which I hate. Ryan did the same to me, and look how that turned out.

But while I can’t tell Maddie what’s happening without her freaking out or me getting a (probably well-deserved) lecture, I want to tell someone.

I want to tell someone what I did last night, what I have planned for tomorrow, and I want to be heard by a person who won’t pick up a phone and call the police or worry about me.

There is only one person who fits that description.

And she’s been dead for quite a bit.

I get up. I put on my boots and her wax jacket and I get in the car.

The graveyard—or kirkyard, as it’s called here—is in the village, behind the small, white-painted church I’ve driven past a few times now. The gate is iron, low, the kind a person leaves unlatched. I push it open. It doesn’t creak. It has been kept oiled, I think, by Mhairi or someone like her who takes care of such village things, I don’t know.

The stones are mostly old, some going back to the 1700s, the lettering on them worn down to ghosts. The newer ones are at the back, near the wall. I walk through them slowly, looking at the names. There are Mackenzies and MaCraes and MacLeods and Rosses, the same surnames recurring for two hundred years, families staying in the same place.

No MacCoinnich, though. Not on any of the new stones, not on any of the old ones.

I find that interesting. Could he have lied about his name? Why? I try to make a mental note to google it later.

Eventually I find Effie.

Her stone is grey and plain. Eufemia Galloway. 1927–2025. No epitaph. No flowers, at least none that have been brought here recently, which I register with a pang of guilt because I should have been by here sooner. I suppose since I’ve been living in her cottage, sleeping in her bed, wearing her clothes, reading her letters, and befriending her neighbor, I haven’t felt much of a separation from her.

But though there are no bought flowers, something is growing at the base of the stone.

A foxglove.

A single foxglove. Tall, in full bloom, the deep pink with the dark spots inside the throats of the bells. It is rooted at the foot of the stone as if it has been there for years.

Effie’s grave grew its own flower. A deadly flower, but a flower nonetheless.

I kneel.

I’m not the praying kind. My family didn’t go to church much outside of Christmas. I just sit cross-legged on the grass with my hand flat on the cold top of the stone, and I talk to her.

“Hi, Effie.”

The wind moves through the grass.

“I’m sorry I haven’t come.”

The foxglove at the base of the stone tilts slightly in the same wind, as if listening.

“I’ve been a little busy, as it turns out. I’m sure you know.”

I look at the stone for a long moment. I look at the carved letters. I look at the dash between the two dates.

The dash that is a person’s whole life.

Tears immediately prickle behind my eyes, and I take a breath.

“I slept with him last night, Effie. The man at the castle. Alasdair. The man…I think you knew him. I think he is some…I don’t know…younger version of the Eachann you wrote to. I can’t quite tell. He’s being careful with me about his own history, which is annoying as hell. But I slept with him. Last night. In his bed, in the castle. Okay, maybe we didn’t go all the way, but you know…times were had.”

The wind dies down as if it also doesn’t want to hear this TMI.

“He was… so careful with me. He’s been careful with me from the start. He warned me. He warned me this morning. He told me that when we go further than we’ve gone, when I let him have all of me, that things will change. That he won’t be the version of him I’ve been falling asleep next to. Not that I’ve done that often. It was only last night, I promise.”

I press my hand flatter to the stone. The stone is cold under my palm.