You helped me pick the dandelions and string them together that day, and when we hung the chains across the stone you asked me what they said.

I canna think now what I told you, lambsie. Some pretty thing to lighten the weight in your eyes. But what I thought as I swept the words clean and brushed my hands across the precious earth was this: If I could have chosen my memories, Magnus Tulloch, I would have remembered us, I would have remembered you.

Can Granda Magnus hear the flowers talking? you asked, scuffing the path with your tight little shoes.

I don’t know. But we can hope, aye. And I took you by the hand and we walked through the stones, both of us listening.

~

d. 1924. Pneumonia. But your granda died years before that.

October 1974

October 1974

Do you remember him, lambsie? I was always glad for him that he knew his beautiful daughter at least for a time, and for you that you might have some memory of your father. But now I wonder—was he taken too soon for that? Can you remember back that far, really? I would like to believe it’s so, that there is some part of you that knows the touch of Magnus Tulloch’s hands, knows that you once crawled onto his chest like a kitten in front of the Metters stove and pushed his mouth around with your fingers, telling him to smile, Dada, smile, and giggled when he frowned all the more …

No.

That’s not right, is it. Of course not, lambsie, my Laura-lamb. It’s your mother I mean. Kathryn.

And she doesn’t remember any of it, no. She told me that.

15

Mills & Ware again

When your grandfather died, lambsie, I packed my grieving into a box already weighed down with loss. Among the things I kept in there was the boy whose heart had never come back from the war, and when I stowed away this latest grief it was like they came together again, boy and man—Magnus Tulloch, love of my life. It made it harder to turn from, but I’d no choice. Sealing that box, it was the only way I could go on.

That’s what we did in those days, and I canna tell you now whether it was a good thing or bad. Sometimes I wished again to have a dog that would throw back its head and howl for me, for all I had lost, all I had put away. I remembered what it felt like when Crusoe had bayed at the night sky, the sound barrelling through Tiller Street, swelling in the spaces between the granite houses and flowing back over me like a healing balm. But there was no dog now, just the cries of my children, and they just made me sadder.