Finding Fraser (39 page)

Facing Forward…

12:15 pm, August 31

Nairn, Scotland

Saying goodbye to Nairn is just about the
hardest thing I have ever done. But truthfully, compared to the panic attacks and
nonsense that attended leaving the US to come here, things have been relatively
calm.

I am facing forward with a steely
resolve. This country has taken its place in my heart, and I know I will be
back.

- ES

Comments: 1

HiHoKitty, Sapporo, Japan:

So sorry you cannot stay just a short
while longer, Emma-san. For we——myself and the members of our book
club——have taken you and your adventure into our own hearts. We
face the great unknown ourselves…and are set to join you as world travelers.
Perhaps one day, we shall meet. We wish you Godspeed, Emma Sheridan.

That
HiHoKitty.
Loyal to the end. I had to admit to
being a little confused by her comments now and again, and this final one that
arrived right on the heels of my posting, was no exception. But I could not
fault her sincerity, and I was strangely grateful for her good wishes. They had
sustained me for so long, I couldn’t really imagine having done without them.

By the time I picked up my final paycheck,
I’d been what the United Kingdom Immigration authorities apparently call an “Overstay”
for six days. When I sat down and counted my money, I realized that if I passed
on buying new contacts, I would have just enough to pay for my ticket home and
still stop on the way to see Gerald. He’d sent me an address by email, and
since it was walking distance from the bus station in Fort William, I would
even be able to save the cab fare.

For all my talk of steely resolve in the
blog post, when I climbed onto the bus heading south on that last afternoon of
August, and saw Morag lift her arm to wave goodbye, I sat back in my seat and
cried like a baby.

Clutching the address Gerald had sent, I
walked up to the front door in Fort William, just as a warm, summer dusk was
falling. Still, I could feel the cool wind slipping down the slopes of Ben
Nevis, and I pulled my hoodie tightly around my waist as I waited for someone
to answer my knock.

Gerald and Clarence came to the door
together, and welcomed me into their home. Gerald introduced me properly to
Clarence, and they shared the news he had been holding out—they were
going to be married.

“None of this ‘civil partnership’ for us,”
Gerald said, after we’d clinked our glasses. “We’re heading to Canada this fall
and doing it right.”

“And then,” added Clarence with a grin, “perhaps
a tour of the deep South.”

Gerald snorted, and poured us more
champagne.

We had a lovely evening, eating Brie and
cranberries melted on crackers, and laughing about our first meeting in that
stone circle outside of Inverness.

“It feels like a lifetime ago,” I said,
after Gerald had told his side of the story.

He smiled and squeezed the hand of his love.
“I
am
a sucker for a happy ending,”
he said.

I grinned at him, knowing I’d heard that
somewhere before.

The boys had insisted I stay over, but
early the next morning, clutching a cup of tea and leaning against a rock wall,
I waited for the bus that would carry me to Edinburgh. I stared through the
window of the teashop, watching images flicker across the television screen on
the wall inside. Two impossibly perfect-looking hosts bantered as they prepared
some kind of elaborate breakfast dish. None of the sound traveled through the
window, of course, and for a moment I thought it might be Good Morning America.

I leaned up closer against the glass and
caught a glimpse of the UK Channel 4 logo in the corner of the screen, and
realized my mistake. I also caught the eye of one of the servers inside, who
looked a little alarmed at the way I was fogging up the glass with my breath.

I hurriedly stepped back, my stomach
twisting inside me. I would be watching Good Morning America or one of its
dozens of clones within a couple of days.

It was time to go home. But somehow the
thought of America just—didn’t feel like home any more.

I tried quelling the panicky feelings that
rose up by focusing on the visit with Gerald. It had been great to see him
looking so well, and so happy. We’d both been looking for a Highland warrior on
that long-ago cold night, and in spite of the ghost-sighting, neither one of us
had found him. But fate had sent Gerald into the arms of an English nurse named
Clare. A happy OUTLANDER ending if ever there was one.

And I really couldn’t complain. I’d had an
adventure of a lifetime.

Inside the teashop, a sports clip had
replaced the cooking segment and I stared idly at images of Glasgow Rangers
fans, roaring their joy at a goal. The camera panned the studio audience,
filled with delighted, screaming faces, and I had a moment to wonder how such a
large group of people could look so awake at such an early hour, when the
picture changed again.

The hosts were welcoming a guest, who strode
across the stage with his hands up, waving at the clearly delighted audience.

It was Jack.

I bumped my chin on the window, and the
people seated at the closest table jumped back a little. I shot them an
apologetic smile and focused on the screen.

He wasn’t wearing his kilt this time, and he
looked a little startled at the audience reaction, as the camera panned back
and forth. Many of them bore little Scottish flags that they waved in the air
with enthusiasm. The hosts greeted him warmly, and along the bottom of the
screen, the caption read:
Best-selling
Inverness author Jack Findlay brings William Wallace back to life.

I could see he still had a slight limp as he
walked across the set, and I was trying to lip-read what the female host was
saying to him when the bus pulled up. The driver allowed the bus to stand
idling a moment, and then honked at me, so I was forced to tear myself away
from the screen and jump aboard.

As I stepped inside the bus, I looked back.
The teashop server emerged carrying a spray bottle and cloth, and shot me a
nasty look through the window. The bus pulled out as I dropped my pack onto the
floor and fumbled for my ticket.

So Jack’s new book was a success. That was
certainly quick.

“Oi—I need yer ticket, Miss.”

I scrambled back up to the front, my warm
glow at seeing Jack dissipating under the weight of the driver’s scowl. “Sorry.
Here it is.”

He grabbed it from me, glanced at it, and
shoved it back at me.

“Y’er on the wrong bus. We’re fer Glasgow.
Ye need to get off at the next stop. Or ye can pay me ten quid to change yer
ticket.”

I grabbed the handrail behind him as we
careened through a roundabout. I wasn’t about to pay extra for a ticket to
somewhere I couldn’t afford to go.

“Can I get out here, then? I can walk back
and get the right bus if you let me off at this corner.”

He didn’t even look up at me, just tapped a
little notice he had tacked up beside the swing arm to open the door. NO
UNSCHEDULED STOPS.

“Well, what’s the next stop, then?”

“Crianlarich. Ye can change there and go
through Stirling to Edinburgh.”

“Seriously? That’s going to take…”

His glare stopped me in mid-sentence. “Yer
lucky I’m not fer chargin’ yeh. Pay better mind the next time ye get on a bus,
aye?”

Duly chastened, I struggled toward the back
to find a seat as the bus rocketed along the motorway. At least it was not
likely to be a long detour.

The bus was almost full, but I managed to
jam my pack into an overhead bin and fall into a seat beside a lady whose
knitting needles were busily clacking. I apologized when I realized I was
sitting on her bag, but she waved it off.

“Ach, niver mind, Miss. I shoulda been
quicker to move it away when I saw ye comin’.” She tucked the bag with the ball
of wool inside between her feet and handed me a newspaper. “Here’s your paper,
dear.”

“Oh, it’s not—” I began, when I caught
sight of a teaser on the front page.

“Thank you,” I said, instead, and sat back
to read an excerpt of my friend’s new bestseller.

My plan to keep my eyes to the windows
and drink in the last of the Highland scenery had washed away in light of the
found newspaper. I’d hardly noticed anything of the trip to Crianlarich as we
sped along the road, the sound of the knitting needles beside me competing with
the belches and gurgles of the bus.

The piece was in the Entertainment section
of the
Daily Scotsman
. Apparently
they had been running sneak peeks for a week or so. This issue held an excerpt,
an interview with Jack and a rave review noting that the new book had bumped
Ian Rankin’s latest thriller out of the number one spot on the bestseller list.

After the reception he’d received on that
morning show, I didn’t doubt it. The three articles, along with an ad for Irn-Bru,
took up most of the lower half of the page. The interview focused on the
political implications of writing a book about a Scottish hero at a time when
popular opinion in the country was surging toward independence from Westminster.

The excerpt, on the other hand, looked like
Mrs. McCarthy from Edinburgh had picked it out. It was a love scene, depicting
Wallace’s last night with his wife sometime before leaving to fight at Stirling
Bridge. It was the steamiest thing I had ever read, apart from my favorite
scene with Claire and Jamie in the hot springs. And I found it interesting that
Wallace’s wife was no red-head, but had “wheaten” curls and hazel eyes. She had
a decent grasp of the dire political position her husband was in, too. I’d
never read a love scene with quite so much intellectual foreplay. It was—thought
provoking. And hot.

Which made me smile.

“Lovely piece o’ writin’, aye?” said the
lady with the knitting needles as I put the paper down. I nodded, still caught
up in the scene Jack had woven.

“I pre-ordered the book at Waterstones,” she
said from under a cloud of pale blue wool. “Been a fan o’ his work fer years,
but the man has really stepped up his game wi’ this one.”

With the clicking needles, her warm smile
and the tight brown curls around her head, I was reminded of a pre-alcohol
Genesie.

The thought of Genesie actually made me
laugh out loud.

“Oh—I was just remembering someone I
met in New York,” I said in response to the woman’s questioning look. “Your
knitting reminded me of her. She loves Braveheart.”

The knitting lady’s brows drew together,
reminding me even more startlingly of Genesie. She folded her knitting into her
lap.

“You Americans,” she said—quite
scathingly, I thought—“Yeh allus get yer history wrong. Even the title o’
that fillum was wrong. The Braveheart was the Bruce, not Wallace. Robert the
Bruce, tae be exact, another giant of a man who died years after William
Wallace. He’d tasked his friend the Black Douglas to take his heart to the Holy
Land, but they were set upon and the Douglas were kill-et. Before Douglas died,
he threw the heart toward the east, calling upon it to carry on bravely. That
American fillum got it entirely wrong.”