We scatter my father’s ashes in the wood a few weeks later. The remaining McCues come along, with Sheba and Toast in tow. The wind is flighty that day; it’s prone to sudden changes of heart and direction, which is how a most indignant Callum and the two dogs come to find themselves showered in some of the said ashes. It’s frankly hysterical, if not exactly respectful.

It’s late when we all head back to the Manse, and the light is fading. Callum and I are a little ahead of the others. As we approach the garden wall, I can barely see Toast. “Look,” he says suddenly.

“What?”

“The cat.”

“I see her.” The gray cat is prowling on the wall as before. As we get closer, she turns her head to us, her tail swaying menacingly as she stalks. “Can you see what she’s stalking?”

“The bird, of course.”

“Wha—” But we’re close enough for me to see through the bars of the iron gate to the injured bird. As we watch, the cat leaps lightly down from the wall into the garden and starts to stalk the bird from within the walls. I’ve been assuming it was the carbon monoxide poisoning that led me to see the bird. I don’t know what to think now.

Callum takes hold of my hand. “Dinnae worry,” he says, anxious to reassure me, though he misconstrues the source of my consternation. “I dinnae think the cat will get it. It will slip away in time.”

“Time folds here,” I murmur. I don’t believe it, and yet there’s a splinter of myself that can’t entirely reject the notion. Just like with my feelings on Fiona, there’s a part of me that can’t quite subsume into the whole.

“Aye.”

“I wonder what could make it do that.”

Callum looks surprised. “It’s the Manse,” he says, as if speaking a self-evident truth. Which he may be. Callum McCue, babe in arms. I think of Fiona, weeks ago in the Quaich: He put them out of reach. “But it’s okay now. Look, the animals go into the grounds now.” He gestures at Sheba and Toast, waiting impatiently for us at the gate.

I open the iron gate, the dogs slip through and we follow, and the Manse watches us all. I suppose I’m glad of it now. The Manse will always be watching us.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Writing a second book is not like writing the first. I don’t mean that every book is different, though of course there’s an element of that. The crucial difference is that when you write your first book, you don’t have a publisher, which means you don’t have a deadline. Deadlines—well. Deadlines put a whole new spin on this writing lark.