“Aye, you don’t leave a house to mind itself. I’ve had a key since Ealasaid MacCallum took her father’s place.”

“I don’t know—” McKinstry said again, but the man cut him short.

“The cat’s to be fed. Are you taking her, then? The lad will grieve for her. And he’s lost his ma already.”

McKinstry said, “Very well, then, as long as you don’t touch anything!”

The man glared at him. “I’ve no’ touched anything of anybody else’s since I was his age and didn’t know better!” He inclined his head toward the child.

Hamish had been saying something, but Rutledge had found it hard to make sense of it—he himself was silenced by the doleful stare of the child.

This, then, was Ian Hamish MacLeod.

Rutledge felt his heart turn over. A handsome child, this was. A small, lost child.

Rutledge dropped to one knee, and the man holding the boy’s hand stepped forward, tense and prepared to intervene. But something in Rutledge’s face stopped him; he stepped back again.

“Hello, Ian,” Rutledge said, trying to speak through a constricted throat. This might have been Hamish’s child if he’d lived. This might have been Jean’s if she and Rutledge had married in 1914— “Going to see your cat, are you?”

Ian nodded. His eyes solemnly moved across Rutledge’s face and then to McKinstry’s. McKinstry must have smiled as he said “Hallo, Ian,” because the child smiled and it was as if the sun had come out. The eyes filled with light and with warmth, and the sadness vanished.

“Is Mama here? Has she come back?” he asked breathlessly.

“No, but I have seen her,” Rutledge said. “She’s well, and she misses you.” He looked at the man’s face and dared him to contradict him. But the man didn’t, and although McKinstry stirred at Rutledge’s back, he, too, said nothing.

“When will she come back?” Ian insisted, anxious now.

“Soon, I hope,” Rutledge answered. “I’ll do my best to bring her home.”

The boy’s eyes swept his face again, as if to judge how truthful he was. Then he nodded, turned to the man holding his hand, and said, “Clarence?”

“Aye, we’ll be feeding her. As soon as these gentlemen have gone away.”

“Good-bye,” the child told them, his voice firm. “Clarence is hungry.”

“Clarence?” Rutledge questioned as they walked away and left the odd pair to do their duty by the cat.

McKinstry’s eyes crinkled. “Well, there was a litter of kittens, you see, and Peter, the old man who worked in the stables, brought the boy one of them. Peter had named her Thomasina, after another cat he’d once had in the stables. But Ian has called her Clarence instead. I wondered why at the time, but haven’t thought about it since.”