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The smell of the sea was a tiny balm and the sand between my toes felt so good having removed my flip-flops. My big dark glasses hid the shadows.
“There’s something ye should ken about me,” he said, “and it’s a wee bit silly really.”
“You’re a secret knitter?” I glanced at him, cracking half a smile.
He barked out laughing. “Nae, lass. Although, I can knit. Harold taught me, he did. Scotsman’s needs and all, on those hills.”
“Bawbag warmers and all that.”
He wrapped an arm around my neck and dragged me closer, kissing my hair. “There’s ma Flora again.”
I put an arm around his waist and leaned into him while he wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “Is it wrong that I should be relieved? That I feel like I’m being cleansed? Relieved of something.”
“Nae, I dinna think so. This is a sign whatever it was, it wasna meant to be. The future isna determined. It’s yet to be had.”
I was in agreement with him, though this feeling of emptiness, hollowness, like being scooped out, continued to rake its nails down my very soul.
“As I was saying, there’s a secret ye ought to ken about me,” he continued, “and it’d help ye make sense o’ this shithead ye married.”
“Go on,” I lightly giggled.
“I’ve lived all of my adult life chasing one thing.”
I raised my eyebrows. “That tree thing? The caber, or whatever you call it. Or is it wheels of cheese you lot chase up there?”
He tipped his head back, his nostrils flaring as he resisted laughing.
Then he gave me a wink. “I’m driven by duty. I canna help myself.”
“Duty?” I took a deep breath. “You mean, like, doing the right thing?”
I was suddenly afraid of what else he had to say.
He quickly cut off my doubts, adding, “To make amends, for the thing I did when I was wee.”
“I see.”
“That’s why I rush off to save the day; why I am the best of the best. Even now, I canna relax and wanna be off somewhere running, tossing cabers and javelins and whatnot.” I guffawed in response. “Because I never feel like I’ve atoned enough.”
I rubbed my forehead. “I never thought.”
“Maybe for a wee second I imagined you’d be better off with Eric, or I thought, in some sick, twisted way that letting you go so you could come back to me might be a nice test that’d make me feel better.”
I stared at my feet as they sank into the sand, fascinated as my footsteps changed the way it looked. “That’s why I never got involved with anyone before you. Not seriously, anyway. I felt unclean.”
“I ken that feeling,” he said, and reached over to kiss my hair again. “But although it steered me for so many long years, to become something I could never turn ma back on now, my sense of duty wasna what took me to Ukraine or kept me there, okay?”
I turned my head, eyeing him suspiciously. “No?”
“It was that I kent something had gone wrong. And something wasna right. I’d promised to stand at your side, with the bairn, and I’d meant to keep that promise. But all ma experience, all that wisdom, was telling me something was damn well wrong and I was right, Flora. I was on the money.”
He wasn’t wearing sunnies and in his eyes, as I turned my head slowly to catch what he was getting at, I saw vindication and anger.
“Eric did engineer it?”
“Aye. I’m just waiting for the proof that that sleekit yin meant for all that happened, and all that has taken place since.”
The truth shattered through me. “You saw Sherry, didn’t you? Visited her. And she had nothing to do with any of it.”
