“You haven’t seen anybody—” Joe started, frowning, but she shook her head.

“Not in California. And not here. But I keep watching.” She’d taken a few other precautions, too, things she’d recalled from her father’s brief—and discreet—memoir of his World War II experiences, but no need to go into those.

“And you have some idea how to keep the kids safe in Scotland?” Gail was perched uneasily on the edge of her seat, as though wanting to spring up and go check on the kids. Brianna knew the feeling.

She sighed and wiped a straggle of hair out of her eye.

“There are two people—well, three—there that I think I can trust.”

“You think,” Joe echoed, sounding skeptical.

“The only people I know I can trust are right here,” she said simply, and lifted her wineglass to them. Joe looked away and cleared his throat. Then he glanced at Gail, who nodded at him.

“We’ll go with you,” he said firmly, turning back to Bree. “Gail can mind the kids, and I can make sure nobody bothers you ’til you’re set to go.”

She bit her lip to quell the rising tears.

“No,” she said, then cleared her own throat hard, to kill the quaver in her voice—caused as much by the vision of the two Drs. Abernathy strolling the streets of Inverness as by gratitude. It wasn’t that there were no black people in the Highlands of Scotland, but they were sufficiently infrequent as to cause notice.

“No,” she repeated, and took a deep breath. “We’ll go to Edinburgh to start; I can get the things we need there, without attracting attention. We won’t go up to the Highlands until everything is ready—and I’ll only get in touch with my friends there at the last minute. There won’t be time for anyone else to realize we’re there, before we—before we go … through.”

That one word, “through,” hit her like a blow in the chest, freighted as it was with memory of the howling void that lay between now and then. Between herself and the kids—and Roger.

The Abernathys hadn’t given up easily—or altogether; she was sure there would be another attempt at breakfast—but she had faith in her own stubbornness and, pleading exhaustion, had escaped from their kind worries in order to be alone with her own.

She was exhausted. But the bed she’d share with Mandy didn’t draw her. She needed just to be alone for a bit, to decompress before sleep would come. She could hear going-to-bed noises on the floor below; taking off her shoes, she padded silently down to the first floor, where a light had been left on in the kitchen and another at the end of the hallway by the den, where Jem had been put to bed on the big couch.

She turned to go and check on him, but her attention was diverted by a familiar metallic chunk! The kitchen had a pocket door, slid half across. She stepped up to it and glanced through the opening, to discover Jem standing on a chair next to the counter, reaching to pull a Pop-Tart out of the toaster.

He looked up, wide-eyed at the sound of her step, held the hot pastry for a second too long, and dropped it as it burned his fingers.

“Ifrinn!”

“Don’t say that,” she told him, coming to retrieve the fallen tart. “We’re about to go where people would understand it. Here—do you want some milk with that?”

He hesitated for an instant, surprised, then hopped down like a towhee, both feet together, and landed with a light thud on the tiled floor. “I’ll get it. You want some, too?” Suddenly, nothing on earth sounded better than a hot blueberry Pop-Tart with melting white icing and a glass of cold milk. She nodded and broke the hot tart in two, putting each half on a paper towel.

“Couldn’t sleep?” she finally said, after they’d eaten their snack in companionable silence. He shook his head, red hair ruffled up in porcupine spikes.

“Want me to read you a story?” She didn’t know what made her say that; he was much too old to be read to, though he was always somewhere nearby when she read to Mandy. He gave her a jaundiced look, but then, surprisingly, nodded and scampered up to the third floor, coming back with the new copy of Animal Nursery Tales in hand.

He didn’t want to lie down right away but sat very close to her on the sofa while she read, her arm round his shoulders and his weight growing warm and heavy against her side as his breathing slowed.

“My dad used to read to me if I woke up and couldn’t go back to sleep,” she said softly, turning the last page. “Grandpa Frank, I mean. It was a lot like this; everything quiet.” And themselves cozy and bonelessly content, alone together in a puddle of warm yellow light, with the night far away.

She felt Jem’s sleepy interest rise.

“Was he like Grandda? Grandpa Frank?” She’d told the kids little things about Frank Randall, not wanting him to be forgotten, but she knew he’d never be much more than a faint ghost beside the vivid warmth of their other grandfather—the grandfather they might have back. She felt a sudden small tearing in her heart, a vivid second of understanding for her mother.

Oh, Mama …

“He was different,” she said softly, her mouth brushing his bright hair. “He was a soldier, though—they had that in common. And he was a writer, a scholar—like Daddy. All of them were—are—alike, though: they’d all take care of people. It’s what a good man does.”

“Oh.” She could feel him falling asleep, struggling to keep a hold on consciousness, the dreams beginning to walk through his waking thoughts. She eased him down into the nest of blankets and covered him, smoothing the cowlick on the crest of his head.

“Could we see him?” Jem said suddenly, his voice drowsy and soft.

“Daddy? Yes, we’ll see him,” she promised, making her own voice solid with confidence.

“No, your daddy …” he said, his eyes half open, glazed with sleep. “If we go through the stones, could we see Grandpa Frank?”

Her mouth dropped open, but she still hadn’t found an answer when she heard him start to snore.



BE THOSE THY BEASTS?

WHILE IT WAS undeniably true that standing stones didn’t bite, Roger thought, that didn’t mean they weren’t dangerous.

It had taken them only a day and a half to find the stone circle. He’d made a quick sketch of standing stones on the back of his hand with a bit of charcoal, to assist communication, and it had worked surprisingly well. While the scattered people they’d found had regarded them with immense curiosity—and not a few private glances accompanied by whirling motions of the forefinger beside the head—no one had found the visitors more than odd, and everyone had known where the stones were.

They’d come across a tiny village, in fact—consisting of a church, a public house, a smithy, and several houses—where the last household they’d approached had even sent one of their younger sons along to guide Buck and Roger to their goal.

And there they were now: a scatter of stumpy, lichened, wind-scored pillars beside a shallow lake filled with reeds. Ageless, harmless, part of the landscape—and the sight of them filled Roger with a fear that shivered as coldly over his skin as though he stood there naked to the wind.

“Can ye hear them?” Buck muttered under his breath, his own eyes fixed on the stones.

“No,” Roger muttered back. “Can you?”

“I hope not.” But Buck shuddered suddenly, as though something had walked across his grave.

“Be those thy be-asts?” the boy asked, grinning at Roger. He pointed at the stones, explaining—Roger thought—the local legend that the stones were in fact faery cattle, frozen in place when their drover had too much drink betaken and fell into the lake.

“Sooth,” the boy assured them solemnly, making a cross over his heart. “Mester Hacffurthe found es whip!”

“When?” Buck asked sharply. “And where liveth Mester Hacffurthe?”

A week ago, maybe twa, said the boy, waving a hand to indicate that the date was not important. And he would take them to Mester Hacffurthe, if they liked to see the thing.