Chapter One
In the moments before, she laid a hand on his arm. "No matter what," she said,giving him a look, "you cannot stop."
He turned away. "I'm not sure I can even start."
She brought his hand to her lips, kissed each finger. "If you don't do it," shesaid simply, "who will?"
For a long while they sat side by side, staring out a streaked window at a townneither of them knew very well. He watched her breathing pattern in thereflection of the glass, and tried to slow his own heart until they were equallymatched. The quiet dulled his senses, so that he became fixated on the clockbeside the bed. He would not blink, he told himself, until the next minute bledinto the last.
With a fury that surprised him, he turned his face into the bow of her neck,trying to commit to memory this softness and this smell. "I love you."
She smiled, that crooked little curving of her mouth. "Now," she said, "don'tyou think I know that?"
In the end, she had struggled. He wore the scratches like a brand. But he hadheld the pillow to her face; calmed her by whispering in her ear. Mylove, he had said, I'll be with you as soon as I can. At the wordsher arms had fallen away; then it was over. He had buried his face in her shirt,and started himself the very slow process of dying.
For the hundredth time that day, Cameron MacDonald, Chief of Police in Wheelock,Massachusetts, closed his eyes and dreamed of the Bay of Biscay. If he got itjust right — the thrum of silence in the station, the afternoon light dancingover the corner of his scarred desk — he could make himself believe. Therewas no Smith and Wesson jabbing into his side; there was nomountain pass outside the window; hell, maybe he wasn't even Cameron MacDonaldanymore. He opened his mind as wide as he could, and let himself tumble into thebeautiful blue of it.
He blinked his eyes, expecting the bobbing shoreline of Prest, or the sweetscent of the Loire Valley that you could carry in your pocket when you werewithin a reasonable distance, but he found himself staring at the pale, pastyface of Hannah, the secretary at the police station. "Here's the file," shesaid. "He was indicted." She turned to leave, but stopped for a moment with herhand on the door. "You sure you're not coming down with something, Chief?"
Cam shook his head, as much to clear it as to convince Hannah. He smiled at her,because if he didn't, he knew she'd be on the phone with Allie and within a halfhour, his wife would have him drinking a tea made of nettle roots and feverfew.
He put the file down, glancing longingly at Gall's Buying Guide catalogfor public safety equipment, inside which he'd stuffed a Travelmagazine. Hannah was right — there was something wrong with him. It was the samething that happened every year since he'd returned to Wheelock, as was expected,to become police chief after his father's death. He was suffering fromwanderlust, complicated by the tension of knowing that he was rooted to thistown by something as simple as his name.
Wheelock looked like other small western Massachusetts towns: the centerconsisted of a simple white church and a lending library, a joint building forfire and police, the local coffee shop, and a dotting of old men who sat onstone benches and watched their lives slouch by. But what made Wheelockdifferent from Hancock and Dalton and Williamstown was the fact that had it notbeen for a twist of fate, nearly every family in Wheelock would still be livingin Scotland.
At first you wouldn't notice. But then you'd see that the town restaurant servedits specials on "ashets," not plates; that its serviceable stocky white chinawas decorated with the fat square rose of Bonnie Prince Charlie. You'd attend amarriage at St. Margaret's, and realize that the ceremony still ended with ablood vow. You'd drive through the winding side streets and see the nameMACDONALD painted on an alarming number of mailboxes.
And if you happened to travel to the Scottish Highlands, you'd notice that asmall town called Carrymuir on the banks of Loch Leven was an uncanny twin toWheelock, Massachusetts.
In the 1700s, the Clan MacDonald was the largest and most powerful clan inScotland, spread from the western isles through the main Highlands. Oneparticular sect of the clan lived in Carrymuir, a small town north of Glencoewhich was nestled between two jagged crags of mountains. In spite of the rampantclan warfare in Scotland, Carrymuir had never been defeated, built as it was ina natural, easily defended fortress.
Clann was the Scottish Gaelic word for children, and a clan was made upof relatives, some more distant than others, who happened to live on a givenpiece of land. The clan chief, or laird, had the power of life and death overhis tenants and tacksmen, but the authority wasn't quite as one-sided as aking's. After all, the chief's subjects were his brothers and nephews andcousins, and the trust and respect they offered up to him came at the price ofhis protection and his promise to care for them.
Cameron MacDonald of Wheelock, Massachusetts, had been named for hisgreat-great-great-great-great-grandfather, a legendary soldier who had fought inthe battle of Culloden, where the English routed the Highlanders. Cameron hadheard the story over and over as a boy: When his namesake realized that BonniePrince Charlie's Highland army didn't stand a chance against the Englishsoldiers, he tried to save his clansmen from being killed in battle. He securedtheir honorable discharges by promising, in exchange, his own remarkable skillin a fight to the death against the British. But he hadn't died, as he hadexpected. And after Culloden, when the victorious English came through Scotlandburning towns and slaughtering livestock and raping village women, the firstCameron MacDonald realized he had to again save his clan.
So while he went to jail as a Jacobite prisoner, he arranged for the families ofCarrymuir to leave, one by one, on packets bound for the American colonies.Which explained why, when most Scots were being hanged or sold as indenturedservants to the West Indies, this small sect of Clan MacDonald remained intactand resettled in the wilderness of Massachusetts.
They found a spot that looked like home, with a brace of rolling mountains and anarrow body of water that was more of a pond than a lake, and sent word back toScotland about this place. Wee loch, they wrote. It's set by a weeloch.
And eventually, the laird and his family came over too, leaving a trusted uncleto watch over the land in Scotland. They traded the comfortable kilt fortrousers; they proudly flew the Stars and Stripes; they accepted theAmericanized name of the town. And as a natural extension of inbredresponsibility, the man who was the figurehead of the Clan MacDonald also becameWheelock's police chief.
In 1995, that position belonged to Cameron MacDonald II, having been handed downfrom his great-grandfather to his grandfather to his father, passing along thesame line of succession as the honorary title of clan chief. He'd be the firstto tell you that things had changed. Obviously, although he was considered thechief of a clan and duly noted in the Scottish records, he was no longerdirectly responsible for the welfare of the townspeople. At least three-quartersof the town had never even seen the lands in Scotland that technically belongedto them. Hardly anyone spoke with a burr; fewer still knew more than asmattering of Gaelic.
On the other hand, old habits died hard. There was no tarnished silver bowl orroyal edict that proved that Wheelock was MacDonald land, but it was theirs justthe same, in the way that their ancestors had laid claim to that narrow pass inthe Scottish Highlands. It was land, quite simply, they'd lived on forever.
At age thirty-five, Cameron MacDonald knew he would stay in Wheelock for therest of his life; that he would be the police chief until he died and passed theoffice to his firstborn son. He knew these were things he did not have a choiceabout, no more than he had a choice about tossing off the choking obligation ofbeing the current laird. Sometimes, in the very still parts of the night, hewould tell himself that an honorary title did not mean today what it meant twohundred and fifty years ago. He'd reason that if he picked up his wife and movedto Phoenix for the climate, everyone would take it in stride.
Then he would remember how Darcy MacDonald, his third cousin's daughter, hadtripped right on Main Street when Cam was no more than three feet away, talkingto the town barber. She'd had seventeen stitches in her knee because he hadn'tmoved quite fast enough, or been in the right place at the right time. In fact,some days he felt that every arrest, every conviction, was a reflection ofsomething he'd done wrong as a leader.
He'd press up against the soft, snoring curl of his wife, Allie, because she wasas solid as any truth he could spin. And he'd try to push himself back intosleep, but his dreams were always of chains, link after link after link, whichstretched across the vast Atlantic.
When Allie Gordon was in high school, she was not the most popular girl in herclass. She was nowhere even close. That honor belonged to Verona MacBean, withher cotton-candy puff of hair and her Cover Girl mascara and her pink mohairsweater molded like skin to what the boys referred to as the Hoosac Ridge.
And today, fifteen years out of nowhere, Verona MacBean herself stepped intoGlory in the Flower and ordered three large centerpieces for a library luncheonto be given in her name.
"Verona!" Allie had immediately recalled the name. There was somethingdisconcerting about seeing her classmate dressed in a severe beige suit, herhair scraped into a knot at the back of her head, her cheeks flat beneath asheer layer of foundation. "What brings you to town?"
Verona had made a little clicking noise with the back of her teeth. "Allie," shesaid, her voice just as thin and breathy as it had been in high school, "don'ttell me you're still here!"
It was not meant as an insult, it never was, so Allie simply shrugged. "Well,"she said, drawing out her words and savoring them like a fine French delicacy,"since Cam's here to stay..." She let her voice trail off at the end, peeking upat Verona from the order form she was filling out. Then she stared her in theface. "You did hear about Cam and me, didn't you?"
Verona had walked over to the refrigerated case, as if inspecting the quality ofthe flowers she had already commissioned. "Yes," she said. "I seem to recallsomething about that."
A few minutes later Verona had left, specifying the exact time for thecenterpieces to arrive (it was an author's luncheon; it wouldn't do to havewilted roses for an author who, as she put it, was just coming into bloom).Allie had walked to the back room of the flower shop, where she kept her foamand moss and desiccants, her raffia and wire. She stood in front of the tinymirror over the bathroom sink, assessing her complexion. Then, rummaging througha bookshelf, she found her high school yearbook — kept solely for puttingtogether names and faces that walked into the shop. She let the book fall opento Verona's page. It was much easier to believe that she, Allie, had grown olderand wiser, while Verona MacBean, in glossy black and white, was trapped in time.It did not matter that Verona had gone on to Harvard and then to Yale, that herfirst book — philosophy — was the talk of the town. It only mattered that inthe long run, Allie Gordon had married Cameron MacDonald, which no one inWheelock would have guessed on a long shot.
On the other hand, it was no great surprise when Verona MacBean became CameronMacDonald's steady girlfriend in the fall of 1977, although Cameron was a highschool senior and Verona was a freshman. They were both undeniably beautiful,Verona in a collectible doll sort of way, and Cam towering over nearly everyoneelse in the school, his wide, strong shoulders and bright shock of hair alwayseasy to spot.
Allie fell in love with his hair first. She used to sit in the school librarybent over a slim volume of Plath's poetry, waiting for him to come through thedouble glass doors that blocked off the bustle of the hall. He came in every dayduring the period she worked at the counter checking out books for the grateful,understaffed librarian. She'd straighten the shelves behind the spot where hesat down, imagining her fingers weaving through that hair, separating it so thestrands that looked like fire prismed off into reds and rangy yellows. At theend of the class period, she would pick up the books he'd left behind and tuckthem back in their Dewey decimal places, trying to hold on to the heat Cam'shands had placed on the protective plastic covers.
The truth was that Cameron MacDonald did not know Allie Gordon existed for mostof the time they had lived in the same town. She was far too quiet, too plain toattract his attention. There was only one incident in high school where Cam hadever truly come in contact with her: during a blood drive, they had been lyingbeside each other on the donor tables, and when she sat up and hopped from thestretcher to get her promised juice and cookies, the world spun and went black.She awakened in Cam's arms; he'd jumped off his own table to catch her as shefell, unintentionally ripping the intravenous from the crook of his elbow sothat when Allie went home that afternoon, she realized that Cam's blood spottedthe back of her blouse.
Allie had trouble convincing herself that the reason they had gotten marriedyears later did not have to do with the fact that after college, theywere two of the few who had come back to Wheelock. Cam had returned because itwas expected of him, Allie because there was nowhere else she really wanted tobe.
If she stood on the bottom ledge of the refrigeration unit for the fresh flowersand craned her neck in a certain way out the window, she could see Cam's officeat the police station, even make out his shadowy form hunched over his desk. Itwas the reason she'd chosen this particular real estate space when she openedthe flower shop eight years ago.
She saw that he was in, not out on patrol, and decided now was as good a time asany to bring him his arrangement and tell him about Verona. She crawled downfrom the ledge, rubbing her hands against her knees to warm them up, and closedthe sliding glass door of the cooler. Absently, she ran her fingers over thesweet chestnut and barberry foliage that made up the greens in the piece shewould bring over to Cam.
Allie knew the language of flowers — the idea that every bloom stands for somequality of human nature. Bouquets sent from the shop for the arrival of a babywere stuffed with daisies, for innocence, and moss, for maternal love.Valentine's arrangements had roses, of course, but also lilies for purity,heliotrope for devotion, and forget-me-nots for true love. To Cam, she oftensent designs that were full of messages she knew he could not understand. Sheeyed her latest work critically, nodding over the tulips which made up the bulkof the piece. In Persia, a man would give a tulip to his betrothed to show thatas red as the flower was, he was on fire with love; as black as its center, hisheart was smoldering like a coal.
She filled out the vase with Michaelmas daisies, China asters, and fire thorn.And then, as she always did for Cam's arrangements, she added as many sprigs ofpurple clover as she could without making the lines of the flowers seemoverblown. Clover, which simply meant, Think of me.
When she walked out the door to take the flowers to Cam, she did not bother tolock it. Very few people would try to rob the wife of the Wheelock police chief.
Hannah was on the telephone when she walked through the door of the policestation, but waved her toward Cam's closed office door to tell her he wasn't ina meeting. "No," she was saying firmly. "We don't use psychics, but thank you."
Allie set the tall vase in the center of the main desk, where bookings weredone, and then walked to Cameron's office. She gave a quick knock and pushed thedoor open with her shoulder before Cam could tell her to come in. He was asleep,his head pillowed on his arms on top of his desk.
Smiling, Allie crept around behind his chair, running her fingers through thehair at the back of his neck. She bent close to his ear to whisper. "Whilejustice sleeps," she teased.
Cameron came awake with a start, snapping his head up so abruptly he clippedAllie's chin. Allie staggered back, seeing black for a moment, until Cam grabbedher and pulled her down onto his lap. "Jesus, Allie," he said. "You scared thehell out of me." Allie rubbed her jaw, testing it gingerly by setting her teeth.Cam's fingers came up to brush her throat. "You okay?"
Allie smiled. "I brought you your flowers."
Cam rubbed his hand down his face. "I told you you don't have to do that."
"I like to."
Cam snorted. "This is a police station, not a hotel lobby," he pointed out."People who are arrested aren't much interested in interior design. They don'teven notice."
"But you do," Allie pressed.
Cam looked up at her wide brown eyes; her hands, gripping each other. "Sure," hesaid softly. "Sure I do."
He glanced out the open doorway to the front desk where Allie's latestarrangement stood. She was an artist; he told her that often. The mixtures ofreds and blues, of stark lines and soft curves, and the overall whimsy of herfloral designs gave her creations a comfort and an ease that did not exist inAllie herself. Once he had peeked at her personal journal when she was at work,hoping to find a layer to his wife that she didn't have the courage to reveal.But there had been no racy thoughts or dreamy recollections, just a review ofhow she had acted and what she had said to Cam, and then notes on what she mighthave done differently.
Sometimes he woke up in the middle of the night, sweating, worried that afteryears of marriage to Allie he, too, would wind up editing his life, instead ofsimply living it.
"Guess who came into the store today." Allie moved off his lap to sit on thecorner of the desk, swinging one leg.
"Am I supposed to go through everyone in the town?" Cam asked.
"Verona MacBean." Allie frowned. "Well, I don't know if it's MacBean anymore,but she's here, all the same. She's a famous writer now. They're doing somehotshot lunch for her at the library."
"Verona MacBean," Cam said, grinning. He tipped his chair onto its two rearlegs. "Good old Verona MacBean."
"Oh, cut it out," Allie said, lightly kicking him in the leg. "She's pinched andpruny and her boobs don't look nearly as big now as they did when she wassixteen."
"Probably grew into them."
Allie picked up a catalog and whipped it at Cam's head. A glossy travel magazinefell onto the desk between them. Her eyes widened at the white spray of beachand the weaving red sloop splayed across the front cover. She picked it up andcuriously thumbed through it. "Well, at least it's not Playboy," shesaid. She skimmed a list of all-inclusive resorts, and peered closer at anadvertisement depicting a tastefully nude sunbather.
Cam reached across the desk and plucked the magazine out of Allie's hand. Hisface felt hot, his collar too tight; he didn't want Allie to know what he spenthis time daydreaming about.
Allie raised her eyebrows as a blush crept across Cameron's face. "I'll bedamned," she said. "You're trying to keep a secret." She leaned close to Cam."Not that it's up to me or anything, but I'd rather go sailing than skiing." Shehesitantly moved forward an inch, keeping her eyes open, and touched her lips toCam's.
For a moment, Cam let her breath brush his mouth and then he kissed her quicklyand pushed her back. "Not here," he murmured.
"Then where?" Allie whispered, before she could stop herself.
They both looked away, remembering the previous night. Allie's hands had stolenacross the bed, slipping under the blue T-shirt he was wearing, moving in quietcircles. That was her invitation. And Cam had simply turned toward her, his eyessetting a distance, his fingers staying her own.
"Oh," she had said, her hand dropping away.
"It's not you," he'd explained. "I'm just exhausted."
Allie wondered where the myth that men wanted to make love more than women camefrom, since in her experience it was always the other way around. She did notlike being less beautiful than her husband, or being the one who always made anadvance. Sometimes Cam did not even bother to tell her he was tired. Sometimeshe simply pretended to be asleep.
She questioned if it might have been different if she were a classic beauty, orif she were sexy. She told herself that she'd lose ten pounds and cut her hairand mold herself into someone irresistible, and then when Cam came grabbing forher she'd simply turn away.
Maybe she'd find someone else.
And then she'd laugh at the very thought of letting anyone touch her the wayCameron MacDonald had.
As if she had conjured it, Cam reached for her wrist and began to stroke it withhis thumb. He did not know what else to do. There were some things he just couldnot tell Allie, not even after five years. There were some times he needed to bealone with thoughts of what he might have otherwise done with his life, andunfortunately that was often in the hollow of the night when Allie needed morefrom him. But in spite of what she thought when he rolled away from her, therewas never any question in his mind about his feelings for Allie. Loving her wasa little like taking the same seat day after day on a commuter train — youcouldn't imagine how it might feel to be in the row behind, you could swear thatthe dimensions and hollows of the seat were made just for you, you came back toit repeatedly with a whoosh of comfort and relief that it was still available.
Allie was staring at him. If only she'd stop looking at him like that, her eyescatching his excuses and throwing them to the wind. He wished he could make herhappy, or even spend as much time trying to as she did for him. Cam dug histhumbs under the loops of his heavy ammunition belt; out of the corner of hiseye he saw a two-page spread of Acadia National Park. "I'm sorry," he said.
No, Allie thought, I am.
The woman stood behind the counter of the flower shop with her hands flying overa mix of fan palm, angel wings, bells of Ireland, gaultheria, oats, andmilkweed. Cuttings carpeted the Formica and the black and white tiles of thefloor. For a moment, Allie stood shocked in the doorway of her own store,watching a stranger do her job. Then she focused on the arrangement to the rightof the cash register.
It was bell-shaped and quiet, a delicate arch of every shade of greenery thatAllie had stored in the refrigerated case. At two spots, a splash of bright redcaladium peeked from behind feathers of grass, shocking as blood.
Allie took a step forward, and the woman jumped, her hand at her throat. "You'rein my place," Allie said.
The woman smiled hesitantly. "Well, then...I'll move." She hastily gathered upthe tools she'd filched from the back room, and in her hurry dropped a pair ofshears on the floor. "Sorry," she murmured, dipping below the line of thecounter to pick them up. She stepped around the counter and handed them to Allielike a peace offering.
It was the most presumptuous thing Allie had ever seen — some stranger walkinginto the store and making her own flower arrangement — and yet this woman seemedto blend into the shadows, like this had all been a mistake and out of her rangeof control. Allie glanced at the plum beret on the woman's hair, the nailsbitten to the quick, the heavy knapsack slung against her right foot. She wasabout the same age as Allie, but certainly not from Wheelock or anywhere nearby;Allie would have remembered someone with eyes the wet violet color of prairiegentians.
Allie walked up to the counter, letting the softer greenery graze her palms. "Ithought you might be looking for an assistant," the woman said. She held out herhand, which was callused at the fingers from florist's wire, and shakingslightly. "My name is Mia Townsend."
Allie could not tear her eyes away from Mia's arrangement, which brought to mindrolling fields and nickering horses and the hot, heavy press of a summerafternoon. She knew it had nothing to do with the actual flowers and ferns Miahad chosen, but rather the skill of the placement and the thoughts that had goneinto it.
Allie had not been looking for anybody; in fact in a town the size of Wheelockmost of her business came from the shop's association with FTD. But then again,Christmas was coming, and Valentine's Day, and she'd kick herself if she letsomeone with Mia's talent walk out the door before she could learn a thing ortwo from her.
As if she knew that Allie was equivocating, Mia suddenly reached down for herknapsack and pulled out a carefully wrapped package, which she began to unwind.Allie found herself looking at an exquisitely twisted bonsai tree; miniature,gnarled, ancient.
"Lovely," Allie breathed.
Mia shrugged, but her eyes were shining. "This is my specialty. They remind meof those babies you see sometimes, the ones with tiny little faces that looklike they know all the wisdom of the world."
The wisdom of the world. Allie looked up. "I think," she said, "we canwork something out."
Hannah, who had a talent for eavesdropping, told Cameron that Verona MacBean hadwritten a book on the image of hell.
"It's not like it used to be," she said, tracing the top edge of her coffee cup."You know, fire and brimstone and all."
Cam laughed. "Don't tell Father Gillivray; he's looking forward to that stuff."
Hannah smiled at Cameron. "Verona says that instead of physical pain, it's moremental. Like, you know, if you marry this gorgeous guy only to find out in hellthat he really married you for your money."
"I wouldn't worry," Cam said. "I don't pay you nearly enough."
She smirked. "And suppose that in order to marry this hunk, you gave up someonewho was really in love with you. The pain you'd feel knowing you pickedthe wrong guy is supposedly what hell is like." Hannah wrinkled her nose. "Notthat I can see where Verona MacBean, Wheelock Queen, would know what hell islike at all."
Camerona's full-time sergeant, Zandy Monroe, stuck his head out from the lockerroom. "You forget, Hannah, that Verona used to date the chief."
Cam threw a stack of mail at him. "Don't you have anything better to do?"
"That depends," Zandy said, grinning. "You taking me out to lunch?"
"No," Cam said. "I'm taking Allie out." He surprised himself; this wasn'tsomething they'd planned when she stopped by earlier, but he knew she'd jump atthe offer to spend an hour with him. He pulled on his heavy blue coat and lockedhis office door behind him. "If the town comes under siege," he said to Hannah,"you know where I'll be."
Walking down the half block to Allie's flower shop, he started to smile. He'dstep into the store and tell her he was looking for a bouquet, dahlias andlilies in colors that called back August. He'd say it was for someone specialand he'd make her play along and give him a gift card and then he'd write,What are you doing for the rest of your life?
Humming, Cam threw open the door of the flower shop and came face-to-face with awoman he had never seen before. Allie's name died on his lips as he stared atthe tangle of hair that bobbed just to her shoulders, the soft swollen curve ofher lip, the pulse at the base of her throat. She was not beautiful; she was notfamiliar; and still all the breath left Cam's body. As he grasped the hand sheextended in greeting, he realized that her eyes were blue-violet, the shade thathe'd dreamed as the Bay of Biscay.
Oh," Allie said, coming out from the back room. "This is Mia." And that was allshe had time to tell Cam before Zandy Monroe burst through the door of the shop,throwing it back against its hinges hard enough to crack one pane of glass.
"Chief," he said, "you'd better come."
Years of instinct had Cameron flying out the door behind his sergeant, left handtrained and ready on his gun. He saw a growing crowd of people in front of thepolice station; from the corner of his eye he noticed Allie and Mia shiveringtheir way closer to the commotion.
With adrenaline pulsing through his limbs, Cam stepped into the center of thegroup, where a red Ford pickup truck was parked. Zandy walked up to thedriver's-side window. "Okay," he said, "this is the chief of police." With ashrug at Cam, he murmured, "Wouldn't talk to anyone but you."
"Cameron MacDonald?"
The man's voice was strong but strained; an officer with less experience thanCam might not have noticed the pain that ran ragged over the syllables. "Yes,"he said. "What can I do for you?"
The man stepped out of the car. He did not live in Wheelock, but Cam thoughthe'd seen him around town this past week. At the post office, maybe the tavernat the Inn. He was every bit as
tall as Cam, but thinner, as if being alive had simply taken its toll.
"I'm James MacDonald," the man said, loud enough for everyone to hear his lastname. "I'm your cousin." He took a step back toward his truck, gesturing towardthe passenger seat, in which a woman was slumped over, sleeping. "My wife here,Maggie, is dead." He looked up at Cameron MacDonald. "And I'm the one who killedher."
Copyright © 1996 Jodi Picoult. All rights reserved.
