As she brought the big tin plate to the table and was about to set it down, it slipped from her fingers a little. Fatty juice spattered everywhere.

Consternation.

Eh, ah! Da jumped up.

Liza squealed like the ninny she was still.

Unty Jinna rushed for cloths while Kitta tried to mop up the table, dab at our sleeves, but Jamie waved her off.

No harm, lass, he said, picking a piece of stringy meat from Will’s gansey and shoving it into his mouth.

I licked the back of my hand. Mmm, good!

Kitta relaxed and pulled a face at me.

Great clumsy quinie. Granda Jeemsie narrowed his eyes. Ye’ll not be goin’ back to the fish now. Never.

I glared at him. She will. Course she will.

Not with her hand like that. Canna gut herrin’ with a hand like that.

Kitta was mopping furiously.

Her hand is better! All healed over.

Ah, he said, smug, but weak, no strength in it. Eh, quinie? Eh?

Kitta just kept mopping, tears in her eyes.

Granda Jeemsie was smirking. Cruel. Hard as glass. I know ye, I suddenly thought. I know what ye are because I’ve seen what ye’re afraid of. I shone it onto him, the fullness of my hate, all of it there in my eyes, and he was the one to look away first.

Sinful, he muttered, brazen quinies …

But Da’s fists thumped on the table, surprising us all.

Hush your mouth this day, Jeemsie Neish! he thundered. None of us here be without sin! It’s a day to be rememberin’ that.

~

In the hour between Christmas dinner and darkness, when Jinna and Liza had gone home, the men were asleep and Kitta with Ma, I wrapped up well and crept outside. The sky was blanched and grainy and I thought Ma might get her wish for snow.

In the sheddie up on the braes, I took from my pocket a brown paper parcel with my name on it in handwriting that was familiar now. It had come yesterday, delivered to the door by the post cart, and so glad I was that I was there to take it from Postie Andrew.

Inside, a box, plain-looking, small. I prised off the lid. A letter? No, there was none, just a wad of wax paper, light in my fingers. Gently I peeled it open.

Ohhh!

It was the most beautiful thing, lambsie, you canna imagine—a message without words.

A sugar biscuit in the shape of a butterfly.

~

Ma died in the early morning hours after Christmas night, as the first snow fluttered from the sky.

17

On the Sunday after Ma was buried, I went to kirk because I knew she would have a jamaica in heaven if I didn’t. We sat at the back, all of us but Kitta, who was poorly.