Total pages in book: 153
Estimated words: 146289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 731(@200wpm)___ 585(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 146289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 731(@200wpm)___ 585(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
“Sorry,” Maddie says. “My knowledge of Scotland is thanks to Braveheart and Outlander. Tell me more.”
So I tell her about the naked man on the rocks days ago. About drawing the shape of him from memory, and finding I couldn’t remember his face. About the swimmer in the loch on the drive back from the village. The conversation overheard in the pub. About the man on the road in the fog. About the knock at the door that same night, his voice through the door, his refusal to give me a last name. The way he said Goodnight, Iris.
I tell her about the thicket this morning. The bones. The thing that wasn’t a footstep behind me. Running in wellies. The police.
But…I leave out one thing.
I leave out that he came to my back window tonight with wet hair gleaming black and the gold light on his jaw, and that I stood inside with my thumb in my mouth and looked at him as long as I could bear to without looking away. I leave out that I almost said you don’t have to go and how badly I wanted to say it.
“Iris. Holy shit.”
“I know. I know, I’m a hot mess.”
“Iris, when I said living at the cottage could be good for you, I did not mean open the door at night to the local neighborhood nudist who won’t give you a surname and is possibly a murderer.”
“Except that I didn’t open the door,” I point out defensively.
“But you’re going to.”
“I’m not going to.”
I also didn’t mention the letter I found from Effie. Why let her worry about me even more?
“Right.”
“Maddie—”
“You only use this voice when you have decided something already and I know what you’ve decided about the beautiful naked man-not-guy.”
“Alasdair,” I whisper.
“Right. Alasdair. God, what a fucking name, huh?”
“What voice am I using?” I wonder, mildly curious.
“That same one you used when you said you were moving to Scotland, the one that tells me your reckless impulsiveness has burst forth and taken the wheel. Listen. I’m not your mother. No one is, thank god. I’m not going to tell you what to do, because you don’t take that well. In fact, your pathological avoidance thing or whatever makes you do the opposite—and frankly the only reason I survive you—is that I have stopped trying. But you called me, late your time, about a man—and not just any man, but a naked swimmer who lives in a castle, and that means I get one piece of advice. Are you ready?”
“No.” I sigh heavily.
“Tough tits. Here it is: get out of the house. Drive into a town. Go to a pub. Talk to humans whose names you know in full. Do not let yourself get laid by your only neighbor. Especially not this neighbor. Even if he is, and I’m quoting your voice here, unreasonably hot.”
“I never said that.”
“Oh, yes, you did. You said it three different times in three different ways.”
I sigh again and sink back further into the chair.
“He’s very tall,” I whine, miserable. She knows I love them tall.
“Of course he is.”
“His eyes are gorgeous.”
“Ted Bundy had nice eyes too.”
“His hair is—”
“Stop talking. Listen to yourself. You called the police about him this afternoon. The police.”
“I called the police because I thought he was chasing me in the woods. I thought he was the serial killer.”
“Iris! You still don’t know that he isn’t!”
“I know.”
She lets out the loudest, most disgruntled sigh, so loud that I hear Andrew in the other room ask if she’s okay.
Her voice is now a vicious hush. “You called the police about him this afternoon, you think he might have murdered some women, and now you’re waxing poetic to me, cataloging his eyes.”
“I like cataloging things.”
She lets out a long breath on the other end. I hear my niece shriek, then laugh in the background, and then Andrew is laughing too. For a moment I feel a sharp pang of homesickness. I never felt at home at their house, but they were family and they loved me. Suddenly I feel very, very alone and very far away and I’m wondering if that reckless impulsiveness might have led me to yet another mistake.
“Okay,” she says eventually. “I’m glad you got to talk to me, but I want you to hear me in return. Three things: one, lock everything every night. Two, you go to the village or the hotel, and you talk to people who are not him. Go get yourself fucking laid—I don’t care who by, but it has to be anyone but a serial killer. Tonight, you do not let him in. Tomorrow, you do not let him in. I don’t care how many times he knocks at your door or waves his dick around from across the bay. He stays the fuck outside the cottage until you have a clearer head about whatever is going on out there.”