I stepped off the platform and busied myself by tidying away the cable. “It’s all right,” I said lightly, though my heart was racing. “It happens to the best of us.”
“Does it?” he said. He was still standing on the platform, looking up over the mural. “I get so lonely. It can do things to you. Loneliness, I mean.”
I rose to my feet, feeling slightly sorry for him now. “Do you have any friends or family here on the island?”
“Not anymore.” He lifted his eyes to mine, and that weird moment was back, his stare boring through me. “You do look very . . . familiar,” he said.
I didn’t know what else to tell him. “Shall we go back to the bothy?” I started to say, but he cut me off.
“When you were painting the runes, did anything come to mind?”
I looked at him, puzzled. “Like what?”
“Maybe you remembered something?”
“Remembered something?” I said. I was lost. What on earth did he mean?
“It doesn’t matter,” he said after a long silence. He smiled, breaking the tension. “Forget it.”
IX
I was glad to get back outside into the cool air, where the seals were barking and the ocean was sweeping up the bay—both good distractions from what had transpired with Patrick inside the Longing.
“I’ve left my jacket in the bothy,” Patrick said, striding to keep up with me as we walked across the rocks. “Would it be OK if . . . ?”
“Of course,” I said brightly, glad to be ending the night. I made sure to leave the front door ajar as he came inside and plucked his denim jacket. But as he made to leave, Finn and Cassie appeared in the hallway.
“Mr. McAllen,” Patrick said nervously. He looked a little surprised, then seemed to realize that Finn and Cassie were coming to see me.
“Patrick,” Finn said. “Always a delight.”
Patrick gave me a last nod good-bye as he brushed past Finn into the night.
“Where are Clover and Luna?” Cassie asked loudly.
“In their bedroom,” I said, closing the door. Through the glass I could see the blurred shape of Patrick outside, moving slowly toward the road.
“I can see there’s no love lost between you two,” I told Finn.
“Aye. You arranged for him to come over tonight?”
I bristled. “He just called by. He wanted to chat about the mural.” Why was I having to explain myself?
Finn wouldn’t make eye contact. Part of me felt his mood was unfair—this was Patrick’s bothy by right. It wasn’t my fault he called, and I was irritated by Finn’s question—or was it an assumption?—about whether or not I’d arranged for Patrick to come over. But then he produced something from a bag and told me it was a gift, and the mood shifted again.
“What is it?” I said, pulling out a round glass vase half-filled with water and a web of orange roots, a thick green shoot winding upward.
“This is a gift,” he said. “It’s an oak tree. Or a seedling, as you can see. But it’s not just any oak tree. It’s a seedling from the Birnam Oak on the River Tay.”
“Birnam,” I said. “That name sounds familiar.”
“You must know your Shakespeare, then. It’s from Birnam Wood in Macbeth. The Birnam Oak is the last survivor of that wood.”
I set the glass container carefully on the windowsill behind the kitchen sink, watching the light play among the roots tangled in the glass. My chest was still tight from the standoff between Patrick and Finn.