“Och,” he answered, with the thickest accent I’d ever heard. “I only wanted to show the wee thing that she oughtn’t be alarmed at the space in my mouth, because I was getting my bridge back tomorrow!”
I smiled politely, but couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Thankfully, my grandmother spoke. “How was your flight, dear?”
“Fine,” I mumbled. I glanced around, desperate for some common ground, for something, anything to say. “Do you play a lot of golf?” I asked, nodding at a set of clubs on the porch.
“Do I play a lot of golf?” my grandfather boomed. “Does a bear crap in the woods?”
“Murdo!” my grandmother chided again. I couldn’t help but chuckle just a little. These were definitely not the mean old people I’d expected to meet. They were actually kind of funny.
“Yes, I play as much golf as Mother Nature and my bum knee will allow,” my grandfather continued. “As Liz here well knows, my fondest wish is that I die on the golf course. Club in my hand, right by the tee, what a way to—”
“MURDO!” my grandmother shouted. “Do shut up!”
“Oh, sorry, sorry,” my grandfather apologized. “Me and my big mouth. I shouldn’t be joking about death . . . with your mum and all.”
I kept smiling, without teeth, but my eyes filled with tears. Is this really my new life?
I felt my grandmother’s thin arm around my shoulders. “Come now, dear. I’ve got your room all prepared for you. You must be exhausted after such a long journey. What you need is a wee nap, and you’ll be right as rain.”
I lay on the bed in my new room, determined not to fall asleep.
The small room was stuffed with ancient, mismatched furniture: a rolltop desk marred by varnish bubbles, a shabby, fabric-covered armchair, and a massive armoire for clothes. Faded pink floral wallpaper that oozed apart at the seams clung to the walls and even the vaulted ceiling.
I didn’t care about the room’s décor. Its location more than made up for anything. The rooftop window did belong to a real room—a single room at the very top of the house. And it was mine.
I was kissing the hottest guy ever. He was so hot, even his hair was red. We were lounging in the long grass, kissing deeply, like it was our new way of breathing.
It was hot outside, and the kissing was making me even hotter. Everywhere he touched me, my skin burned. I’d never kissed anyone before, and certainly not like this.
The sun was blinding me, searing my eyes. Even when I squeezed them shut, I still saw and felt a deep, hot red.
When he started kissing my neck, I wanted to melt into him. I opened my eyes and discovered that he actually was melting. His body liquefied into a pool of blood that burned into my stomach. I started cramping, curled my body into a tight ball, and screamed.
My eyes shot open. Tiny pink flowers. Sloped ceiling. So moving to Scotland wasn’t a dream.
Hopefully, I hadn’t screamed out loud. I shook my head and tried to calm my racing heart.
I hadn’t had a bad dream since the night before my mom died. I slid off the soft bed, not wanting to believe that my nightmares had followed me to Scotland. Maybe they weren’t back for good. Maybe this was an isolated one—a hallucinatory effect of extreme emotional and physical exhaustion. At least no one had died in this one. Except maybe me . . .
I shook my head and reminded myself that my worst nightmare had already come true: I’d lost my mom. At this point, if I died kissing a hot guy, so be it.
CHAPTER 2
Fear of future nightmares didn’t stop me from spending my entire first week in Scotland in bed. And, thankfully, neither did my grandparents. They were super sweet, but treated me like a guest, not a long-lost grandchild, which was fine with me. I wasn’t up for a family reunion. I wasn’t up for anything. I wasn’t even up.
I missed my house, my old room, and more than anything, I missed my mom. When I crawled under the covers and closed my eyes, I was back in Missouri, back with her.
I only emerged to eat, and I was not excited by the food I found waiting for me. Breakfast, which I’d always assumed was a fairly safe meal for picky eaters, in Scotland consisted of insane things like clotted cream and black pudding. The first is exactly what it sounds like: chunky, spoiled, warm cream. The second is not to be believed, let alone eaten under any circumstance: congealed pig’s blood deep-fried, sliced, and eaten with a knife and fork.
Even the “normal” food in Scotland wasn’t normal. French fries, which were called “chips,” looked like the fries back home, but instead of being crispy and yummy, they were soggy and not. Chips were called “crisps,” which was a true description, but they didn’t have any fun flavors like ranch or hickory barbeque. In fact, they didn’t barbeque anything at all. They’d never heard of brownies or cornbread (“Why would you put corn in a bread?” my grandmother asked). They’d heard of peanut butter, but they didn’t believe in eating it. They didn’t put ice in their drinks (“Waste of money,” my grandfather explained). And even though the can was identical, their Diet Coke tasted gross.
By the sixth day, after I’d eaten every crushed mint and fuzzy piece of gum in the bottom of my backpack, I couldn’t ignore my rumbling stomach. I was miserable enough without the headache from my unintentional hunger strike. I needed to get out and find edible food.
When I came down the stairs and announced my desire to go to the grocery store, my grandparents greeted me with the same exaggerated politeness I’d gotten since I’d first arrived. My grandfather said he would be delighted to drive me, and my grandmother smiled widely from around her romance novel.
They were nothing but nice, but I had the feeling they would treat a beggar off the street the same way. The thought stirred something inside me. I wanted them to treat me differently than a stranger—bad, good, anything but this fake pleasant nothingness.
I’d been frozen in a state of numbness since my mom died, but I’d always been the opposite: very passionate about everything, bordering on histrionic, according to my mother (although, compared to a systems analyst, like my mom, anyone with a pulse could be considered overly dramatic). I realized I needed to feel something again.
I wasn’t ready to dig into my own damaged life, but decided it would be interesting to pick at my grandparents’. I didn’t know how, but I was going to break through their fa?ade and find out what they were hiding behind their charming, gap-toothed grins.