I turned a little, touched the wrapping with my fingers, looked at this man, my beloved. He had made his vows to another me, the one I was, the one before … I did not know if or when I would be that girl again.

He nodded slightly, encouraging.

I picked it up, and the paper slid easily away. Inside, a small hairbrush, the wooden back dark and rich like honey, gleaming in firelight. The bristles felt soft against my palm.

I looked at him, a half smile.

Magnus Tulloch untied the ribbon at the base of my head, pulled the pins from the sides, unwound the taming twist of hair. Taking the brush from me, he began to pull it through thickly from crown to the ends, the long wiry sheets of hair heavy in his hands.

And then he kneeled forward to face me.

Is not just a hairbrush, not just that.

Then what?

A promise, my Meggie, a promise for every day. Every day an’ always, Meggie, every day, this.

And I felt the weight of my hair in his hands, his hands gathering to him its burden, each stroke pulling me closer to him, away and to him again.

Magnus Tulloch was my heart, breath, blood, when I had none of my own. So much I do not want in my memory of those times, but that … I am grateful to remember that.

~

The season began in March. The comfort, the distraction, of work. Aye, I kept working. It never occurred to me not to, though Magnus Tulloch’s sister Gracie gasped and fussed and glared at Magnus as if he was giving the nod to a great mistake. She delivered her pronouncement that what I needed to help me through my grief was rest and being looked after—what I needed, in fact, was her good self.

I liked Gracie straight away when Magnus Tulloch took me to Sandwick that Sunday to meet his kin. I took as a kindness when she invited me to stay awhile, Safe an’ sound in a nice wee village away from that city, but the last thing I wanted was village eyes on me. Work, Clementina’s bright, round, frowning face, the girls, familiar patterns—these things laid down a way to follow, a map for us, Magnus Tulloch and me. A constant in a blur of the new.