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He straightened, though he didn’t quite recover his usual grin.
“Morag told me tales of ye when I was a lad. I believed a fair few of them, especially when the winter storms came down off the hills, but I’ll confess I never expected to find ye in my own courtyard.”
“It’s a fine courtyard,” she said, glancing at the broken walls. “Though the roof wants seeing to.”
That brought a flicker of Jamie’s familiar smile. “Aye, my lady, so I’ve been told.”
He turned to Olivia, the wonder still plain in his face. “The goddess herself brought ye through the tunnel?”
“Yes.”
Jamie’s gaze returned to the arch. He kept close to Olivia, but his voice had lost its teasing edge. “There’s a light there. What is it?”
“A door,” Olivia said. Her voice sounded thin to her own ears. “I can see through it.”
Jamie looked at the shimmer, then back at her, and the delight he’d worn only moments earlier faded. He understood perfectly well what that door meant even though it showed him nothing of the world beyond.
The Cailleach stepped aside. “Ye may return to your own time, Olivia Bennett. The crossing will hold until the storm passes. After that, it will close to ye forever.”
Thunder rolled above the ridge. A few fat drops of rain struck the courtyard and darkened the stones at Olivia’s feet.
“And Calum?” she asked. “The man who was with me when I went into the tunnel?”
“He walked out beneath his own sky.”
Olivia closed her eyes briefly. Thank God. She’d carried that worry since the day she’d vanished and hadn’t known how to ask it without giving herself hope that the woman would return.
“If I go through, will I reach Boston?”
“You’ll return to the time ye left.”
Grandma Bennett. Olivia pictured her in the pub, arguing with a supplier while she counted change into a customer’s hand, and felt a longing so fierce that it seemed to push against her ribs. Grandma had raised her after her parents died. She’d taught Olivia how to spot a cheat, keep her own money, and stand tall when somebody wanted her to be smaller. She was also the person who’d always come looking when Olivia was late home.
And if she stayed, Grandma would never know what had happened to her.
She tried to imagine the next ordinary Thursday at the pub. Grandma reaching for a second mug without remembering Olivia wasn’t there to fill the first, coming downstairs after closing to find the little room above the bar silent, perhaps still refusing to believe that her granddaughter was gone. The thought hurt so much that for a moment she thought she was having a heart attack. Olivia had made a life with Jamie, but she would be asking the woman who’d raised her to live with a loss she could never explain, without closure.
She touched the shawl Jamie had bought her. The wool was warm against her throat, and he stood beside her, close enough that she could hear him breathing. After the raid he’d told her he loved her and kissed her senseless. He’d promised to help her find her own time if the crossing ever opened. She knew what his silence cost him now.
The light in the arch brightened, the sound of a phone ringing made Olivia take one step toward it, wanting to see whether the sounds were real, and then Jamie caught her hand.
His grip tightened instinctively. She looked back at him, surprised, and saw the expression he’d tried so hard to hide whenever the subject of going back to her own time arose.
“Stay,” he said.
It was scarcely more than a whisper. Then he looked down at their joined hands and let go.
“Forgive me, lass. I promised myself if the day ever came, I’d never make this choice harder for ye.”
Olivia stared at him. This was the man who’d faced soldiers with a grin, who’d offered his money to send her across an ocean, who’d spent half his life helping people without making them feel indebted. Yet for one honest moment he’d reached for the thing he wanted most.
She took his hand again before he could step away.
“Jamie Campbell, if you think I spent all that money on dresses and a new roof for this place just to abandon it all, you’ve taken one too many blows to the head.”
He blinked as he searched her face. “Olivia, are ye certain?”
She looked once more at the bright opening. There was a whole life beyond it, and she knew she would miss parts of it every day, her grandmother most of all. But here was Jamie, his hand warm in hers, and beyond him a village full of people who had become her friends. She’d learned the taste of Glenbrae water, the sound of the wind in the broken tower, and the joy of making a whisky she’d once believed she might never figure out how to reproduce. She had money of her own, work she loved, and a man who would happily get into trouble with her for the rest of his days.
