Chapter 5 - Ghosts of Stolen Days
The rain on the Isle of Skye does not fall from the sky; it sweeps horizontally across the peat bogs from the Atlantic, driven by gales that make the telephone wires along the A87 hum like cello strings.
It was May 10th. Two days before the ceremony.
We had rented a stone croft cottage outside the village of Carbost, tucked beneath the shadow of the Black Cuillin mountains. The walls were three feet thick, whitewashed fieldstone that kept the wind at bay, and the air smelled of burning peat from the small cast-iron stove in the corner of the sitting room.
In Columbus, it was 2:00 PM on a Tuesday. Here, the twilight was long, violet, and cold, lasting until nearly ten at night.
My phone sat on the wooden kitchen table, connected to the local Wi-Fi router. For two months, the Miller family communication channel had been a wasteland of cold silence punctuated by occasional, toxic flares.
Paige had created a private family group chat titled *BABY CARTER UPDATES* that conspicuously excluded Ben and me, though Cousin Greg’s wife, Chloe, had secretly sent me screenshots.
The screenshots were an anthology of grievances:
*Paige posing in front of paint swatches for a nursery: "Wish my baby had an aunt who cared enough to help paint, but some people are too busy planning overseas getaways!"*
*Linda hosting a family luncheon at her country club: "Celebrating our true blessings today. Family isn't about biology; it’s about who shows up."*
Then, three weeks before our departure, Paige’s husband, Carter, had sent me a direct message on LinkedIn—the only platform where we hadn't blocked each other.
Carter was thirty-one, a commercial real estate broker who wore custom-tailored suits and spent an enormous amount of time curating his personal brand on social media. He was not a bad man, but he was a man who had long ago decided that total capitulation to Paige’s emotional weather was the only way to maintain domestic tranquility.
*Emily,* Carter had written. *I know things are tense. But Paige is really struggling with the third-trimester transition. She’s retaining water, her blood pressure is borderline, and she feels like the whole family has been fractured because of this wedding thing. Would you consider sending her a video message from Scotland? Just wishing her well with the baby? It would go a long way toward healing this before she delivers in August. Linda is still furious, but if you extend the olive branch first, Paige might convince her to let you come to the baby shower when you get back.*
I had stared at that message for twenty minutes before deleting it without replying.
*If you extend the olive branch first.*
The phrase brought back the ghost of my tenth birthday.
I had wanted a telescope—a small, blue refractor from the Sears catalog. I had saved my allowance for six months; Dad had promised to match the rest. On the morning of my birthday, there had been two boxes beneath the dining room table.
The large one was mine: the telescope.
The second box, wrapped in identical silver paper, was for Paige, who was seven. Inside it was an expensive, professional-grade French drawing set with sixty colored pastels.
"Why does Paige get a present?" I had asked, bewildered. "It's my birthday."
Linda had pulled me into the pantry, her fingers sinking into my shoulder with that familiar, bruising urgency. *“Because Paige is sensitive, Emily! She feels left out when you open things! If you don't share this morning with her, you will ruin the entire day for your father and me. Be the big sister. Be the generous one.”*
And so, for twenty-three years, I had been the generous one.
I had stepped aside at graduations. I had smiled through engagements. I had allowed my mother to treat my life as the sensible, sturdy background curtain against which Paige’s golden, dramatic existence could perform its perpetual solo.
"Penny for them," Ben said.
He came out of the cottage kitchen carrying two mugs of tea and a plate of shortbread. He was wearing thick woolen socks and a heavy cable-knit sweater he had bought in Portree the day before.
He set the mugs down, pulled a chair close to mine, and looked at the phone on the table.
"Carter?" he asked.
"Old ghosts," I said. "Just remembering the Sears telescope."
Ben reached out, his thumb catching a strand of hair that had come loose from my clip, tucking it behind my ear. His fingers were slightly rough from his work, but his touch was impossibly light.
"You know what happens when you look through a telescope from Columbus?" he asked.
"Light pollution," I smiled faintly. "You see about six stars."
"And you know what the sky looks like out there right now?" He pointed toward the small, deep-set window that looked out toward Loch Harport. The clouds were finally breaking, torn apart by the Atlantic wind, revealing a sky so dense with cold, ancient light that the water below looked like hammered silver. "There isn't a single streetlamp for fifteen miles. No signs. No smoke cannons. Just the sky."
"Are we terrible people, Ben?" I asked, the question slipping out before my defenses could catch it. "For leaving them behind?"
Ben didn't answer immediately. He picked up his tea, blew across the surface, and looked into the dark amber liquid.
"My granddad had an old workhorse on the farm in Guernsey County," he said quietly. "A Belgian draft horse named Major. Strongest animal in the township. Granddad used him to pull stumps, haul timber, drag the disc plow through heavy clay. And Major did it. Every day. He never kicked. He never bit. He just leaned into the harness."
He looked up at me, his gray eyes steady and clear.
"One day, Granddad’s brother—Uncle Pete, who was a mean drunk—hitched Major to a two-ton boulder that was anchored in bedrock. Pete wanted to see if the horse could move it. He took a leather trace to him, shouting, trying to make him pull. Major leaned into the collar once, felt the mountain on the other end of the chain, and stopped. He just stood there. Pete whipped him again. Major didn't bolt. He didn't fight. He just backed out of the traces, walked over to the fence line, and started eating clover."
A tiny, wet laugh escaped my nose.
"Granddad came out of the barn," Ben continued, "took the whip out of Pete’s hand, and told him that if he ever hit an animal for being smarter than a fool, he’d put him in the ground. You didn't run away, Em. You just backed out of the traces. There was a mountain on the other end of that chain, and your mother was holding the whip."
He stood up, took my hand, and pulled me to my feet.
May you like
"Come on," he said. "The kiltmaker in Portree altered my wool vest, and we have to pick up the heather bouquet from the florist by ten tomorrow morning. We have a cliff to climb."
***
