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CHAPTER ELEVEN

TWO HOURS EARLIER.

“You made it!”

The relief in Becca’s voice was palpable.

Madeleine smiled at the phone display as she sat down on the hotel bed.

“I think I did. I’ve been traveling so long, it’s hard to be sure.”

“You spent last night in John O’Groats, right? On the mainland?”

Madeleine chuckled.

“The word ‘mainland’ is a bit confusing out here. The largest island is named Mainland too—and locals call it the Mainland.”

“What? Why would you call an island Mainland?”

“The UK is an island,” Madeleine pointed out.

“And I stayed in last night. There was an awful storm.” She shuddered.

“I hate thunderstorms.”

“Yeah, I remember the first time we had one and you said we couldn’t sit near any windows. Booster was calmer than you were.”

“Anyway,” Madeleine growled, “I spent the night on the other mainland, and then took the first ferry to South Ronaldsay. Then I island-hopped. It took four hours to get here.”

“Four hours? I looked on Google Maps. Those islands are tiny.”

“Tiny on a map, but plenty to wrangle when you’ve got to time it with ferries and buses.” The Orkney Islands featured a tiny airplane that hopped between many of the islands, but just the sight of it had made Madeleine claustrophobic.

Years ago, the school group had been too large to take it, and she wasn’t anxious to try it this time, so she’d stuck with alternative methods.

Besides, the plane didn’t go directly to Jorsay, so why bother?

That said, her stomach hadn’t been thrilled with the choppy waters beneath the ferry either.

“So if you spent that long in transit I guess nothing’s, you know, happened yet?”

Madeleine sighed.

“Not yet.”

She’d expected to feel something when she set foot on Jorsay: some shock of recognition, a sense that she was in the right place.

No dice. It was ground like any other ground.

But she wouldn’t let herself be disappointed.

Not yet. She’d just gotten here, and she had a month left to go.

“So now what?” Becca asked.

“I’m starving. I’ll go out, forage, and explore the place a little more. It seems more developed than the last time I was here.”

“Are you going to look for that guy right away? What’s his name. Jonathan?”

Madeleine took a deep breath.

“Yes. Jonathan.”

The man who’d found her on the shore.

The man who’d taken her story seriously, to a degree she’d found alarming at the time.

He’d been drunk and unsteady, but he was also the only person she could think of who might have some answers for her.

She hadn’t gotten his last name—she’d been too discombobulated to ask.

By the time she’d thought of it, she was already on her way home.

“Jonathan” wasn’t much to go on, but this was a tiny island, and he’d given the impression of a lifelong resident.

Surely, with a name and a description, someone here would know him.

If he was even still here.

Anything could have happened in the meantime.

She’d told herself this often, but hope was the hardest thing in the world to kill.

“All right,” Becca said.

“Be safe. Do regular check-ins, okay?”

“I will,” Madeleine promised.

“I didn’t come this far to get myself into pointless trouble.” Just trouble with a point .

“If you say so.” The doubt in Becca’s voice could have rivaled that of Saint Thomas as he questioned the wounds of the risen Christ. “Get something to eat and enjoy your look around.”

Madeleine bade her farewell and disconnected before looking around the room.

The Merryweather Hotel hadn’t changed.

Even the slightly musty smell was the same.

Her suitcase rested on the luggage rack by an old chest of drawers and beneath a mirror that was barely big enough to show all of her face and shoulders.

Next to the window sat a shabby armchair accompanied by a table with an electric kettle, mug, and two teabags.

The last time she’d been in a room like this, she’d worn a nun’s habit, with no idea what was about to hit her.

Now she was a woman who still struggled to recognize herself in the mirror.

She’d given up so much, almost everything, to be where she was right now.

Would it, could it possibly be worth it?

Madeleine crossed herself and bowed her head in prayer.

She murmured, “Thank you, Heavenly Father, for my safe arrival, and for opening my eyes five years ago to what I had to do. Please bless my endeavors here, guide my feet, and protect me from evil. Amen.”

She crossed herself again and waited hopefully for the sense of peace that had once filled her after prayer.

As happened more often now, it didn’t come.

In fact, the closer she’d gotten to this trip, the less serenity she felt with every amen .

Well, God wasn’t a teddy bear you hugged for comfort.

He didn’t promise you an easy time; her life was proof of that.

If Madeleine felt unsettled right now, then she ought to.

She went to the window.

Condensation fogged the glass, but she could still see the rolling green landscape beneath a gray sky.

No ocean view from here.

The hotel was far enough from the shore that she wouldn’t be able to hear seductive voices calling to her from the waves.

Which was, Madeleine told herself, a good thing.

She took a deep breath against her squirming stomach.

No point in further delay.

She’d finally made it to Jorsay, and she wasn’t about to hide away in a hotel room.

It was time to begin her investigations.

And to pray, with all her heart, that she’d be equal to whatever she finally found.

She stopped by the front desk on her way out.

Almost immediately, she wished she hadn’t.

The young woman who’d checked her in was gone.

In her place stood Harry Duggan, the hotel’s proprietor and manager.

A busybody, as she recalled.

The last time she was here, he’d asked her and Sister Agnes—in great detail—what “nun life” was like.

And he had not been deterred by Agnes’s glare.

Hopefully, he wouldn’t recognize Madeleine.

It was amazing what a nun’s habit covered, and not just physically: people saw it as a part of your identity.

Out of it, you were a stranger.

She’d felt that way herself.

Duggan, who looked to be in his mid-sixties, stood behind the desk where she’d checked in just a few minutes ago.

When he saw her coming, he beamed.

By the time she reached the desk, he already had a folded piece of paper waiting for her.

“Take a map,” he said as she approached.

A half-finished pastry sat on a plate next to him, and his gray beard had crumbs in it.

“Stepping out on your own? Or have you got friends here?” Before Madeleine could reply, he continued, “Nobody’s mentioned having visitors, especially American ones. Let me see, who’s got American friends or family round here? Isla, I reckon, at the pub. She went to New York once. I saw her at the chippy yesterday, and she didn’t say anything about you, though. And I suppose you’d be staying with friends if that’s why you were here?”

Madeleine wanted to say she wasn’t here to visit anyone, but that wasn’t precisely true.

“I have no friends or family here, Mr. Duggan.” I have no family anywhere.

“Just visiting.”

“Call me Harry. How long are you with us?”

“The next month, actually.” She’d have preferred to rent a cottage for so long a stay, but Jorsay had fewer rental cottages than the other islands, and they’d all been booked.

At least the Merryweather wouldn’t break the bank.

His eyes widened. “Ah, you’re Madeleine, then! I know your name—we don’t have many who stay for that long. Welcome, welcome. Visiting, you said?”

Madeleine could be vague.

Clearly, Harry Duggan wasn’t the person to ask about Jonathan.

Better to keep her eyes open as she explored, and if she didn’t happen to spot him, to inquire with someone less nosy.

“Um, well…”

“You’ll love it. Can’t say we get much sunshine, and watch out for the wind. You missed a bugger of a storm last night. I spent all morning cleaning up. Still, there’s nowhere better on Earth. And you’ve picked a grand time to stay on Jorsay. We’ve got new things coming up, but it’s not overrun with tourists like the Mainland. Not that anything’s wrong with tourists,” he added quickly.

“I can tell you’re the right sort, not here to run folk over with a bicycle or complain that the food’s different to home.”

“I’m not,” Madeleine agreed.

“New things on the island?”

“Right! Well, we’ve got some lads who work at the oil terminal, but that’s not enough to make us rich, is it? And fishing’s worse. Then, a few years ago, a local fella started a sheep farm that’s done better’n anyone would’ve thought, and it’s bringing in money. Money’s good, right?”

Madeleine nodded.

It’d be a waste of breath to speak.

“Keeps more people here working in the spring,” Duggan continued.

“He deals with local businesses—Annie’s Crafts only uses Rendall wool now, and there isn’t a restaurant in the islands where you won’t find his sheep in a shepherd’s pie. Fine, healthy animals. Fetch a high price at market too. Have you ever seen a sheep farm?”

“No, I…”

“Right, course you haven’t. Good soul he is. Was a sot for a long time, but he’s turned himself right around—well, you can change, can’t you? Of course, it all happened after that lass showed up. Funny how it worked.” He leaned across the desk and then glanced to the left and right, as if checking for eavesdroppers.

“I shouldn’t be telling you this.”

That was undoubtedly true.

Madeleine said quickly, “I don’t need to?—”

“Then again, it’s not a secret, is it? His daughter arrived on his doorstep in need of a home—covered in bruises and cuts no less! Might have been running from a cruel fella, but it’s not for me to say. I expect that’d make you clean yourself up, wouldn’t it, if your lost bairn just appeared in need of help?”

Harry Duggan was surely proof that gossip kept small towns alive.

“I guess, but…”

“Mind you, there’s something off about her. We all say so.” Harry’s eyes glittered for a moment, lighting up with more perception than Madeleine was comfortable with.

“Not to his face, of course. But thanks to him, Jorsay’s got more than the chippy and the pub. Got a proper bakery and everything. A fancy clothes shop, even, if you’d like to buy something nice.”

Madeleine managed not to glance down at her jacket, sweater, and jeans, which admittedly didn’t look very nice.

“And there’s a café too. Run by a couple of lads. They’re a bit…that is, they don’t fit in , but they’re nice enough, and we all stay out of each other’s business here.”

Do you really?

Madeleine thought. “That sounds perfect. I’m looking for some lunch.”

“Why, we do a lunch here! My wife, Margaret, serves it herself. Why not tuck in before you go?”

I’d rather fall off that dock again.

“Thanks, but I want to stretch my legs. Where’s the café?”

He looked unoffended, probably because at some point she was bound to get lunch at the hotel.

“Take a left from the front door and pass the civic center. It’s across the street from there. Called the Sunrise Café.”

She looked down at the map he’d given her.

It was the same map the hotel had offered six years ago.

No Sunrise Café on it.

“Sounds perfect. I’ll just…”

“Hang on.”

A sudden, sharp note in Harry’s voice caught her attention.

Madeleine glanced up from the map to see that he’d narrowed his eyes at her.

Her stomach flipped over.

“I know you,” he said.

“Don’t I? But where from? I can’t be imagining it. You don’t forget eyes like yours.”

So much for not being recognized.

He’d figure it out in a moment, and now she had to deal with his questions when she hadn’t even adjusted to his time zone.

Or she didn’t. She could tell him to mind his own business.

She could even do so politely, as you should when you were stuck with somebody for a whole month.

“Mr. Dug—Harry…”

“You’re the nun!” He snapped his fingers as his mouth widened in a grin.

“The one who hit her head and fell off the dock! You’ve got the scar and everything, haven’t you?”

Madeleine managed, with all her willpower, not to touch the scar.

As if she wasn’t self-conscious enough about it.

He continued, “Of course I remember you. You were here with a whole pack of schoolgirls. Can’t believe I didn’t recognize you straightaway. Why didn’t you say something? Special deal for repeat guests. We don’t have many.”

She had to play it cool.

Madeleine managed a chuckle.

“I guess I didn’t know how to bring it up. It’s nice to be back. I remember the hotel, um, fondly.”

“I’d hope so. What are you doing back here? It looks as if you’re, er…” He glanced down at her clothes again, and this time his brow creased.

“I mean, are you still a…”

“I’m not.” He wasn’t owed an explanation.

She’d given enough of those over the years.

“But I am hungry, so I’ll just head out. I’m sure we’ll be able to catch up later,” she added, able to find a thread of generosity for a man who might be pushy but meant no harm.

“Right, yes. I can’t wait to tell Margaret. She’ll never believe it. Have you got dinner plans? We’d stand you a meal. Must be quite a story!”

Blessedly, at that moment, a man and a woman came down the stairs, both of them in fleece pullovers and jeans.

“Hello,” the man said in a German accent.

“We want to ask about bike rentals.”

Harry said, “Oh, you’ll want the Cliffside Store for that! They’ve only got five, though, so they might be out. Martin Heriot, that’s the owner, he’s had a devil of a time with…”

Madeleine never heard the rest. She’d already escaped.

The Sunrise Café was just where Harry had said, across the street from the civic center.

The civic center itself had seen better days, its doorposts in need of a fresh coat of paint and its bricked steps crumbling.

The café, however, was clearly well kept, with a trendy logo painted over the front window.

A sign beneath promised free Wi-Fi.

Madeleine crossed the street.

Halfway across, she thanked heaven that there were no cars, because she’d looked the wrong way again.

That would take getting used to.

The bell jangled as she opened it, and the aroma of fresh coffee tugged her inside as if it had taken her by the hand.

She inhaled deeply through her nose and sighed in pleasure.

The café had few tables, and most of them were full: three women sharing coffee and conversation, a man in work clothes reading a newspaper, and two people who looked like tourists frowning at their phones.

Behind the register stood a slim young man with brown skin and black hair, who smiled when she came in.

“Welcome,” he called in an English accent.

Harry had said the owners of the shop were two lads who didn’t “fit in.” This must be one of them.

Madeleine smiled at him.

“Thanks.”

“What can I get for you?”

She reached the counter and squinted up at the menu.

Just a few years ago, those letters would have been easier to read.

“Just coffee and one hot filled roll with sausage, please.”

“Coming right up. Oi, Jeremy!” the young man called to the back.

“One sausage roll. Will that be all? Comes to ￡4.95, VAT included. That means you don’t pay tax. And you don’t tip.”

Madeleine grinned at his explanation as she offered her credit card.

“See a lot of Americans?”

“Mostly in the summer. Where are you from?”

The inquiry contained genuine interest but none of Harry Duggan’s nosiness.

That made it easy to answer.

“Pennsylvania. Do you know it?”

“Is that where they make the chocolate?”

She laughed.

“You mean Hershey! Yes, that’s in Pennsylvania. But I grew up in New Orleans.”

“New Orleans?” His smile widened.

“I always wanted to see Mardi Gras. I expect everyone tells you that.”

She couldn’t deny it.

Nor would she say, yet again, that there was more to her hometown than the French Quarter and plastic beads.

It was a losing battle.

“Looks like you settled somewhere pretty different. You’re not local, are you?”

“What gave it away?” He handed back her card.

“I’m from London originally. Name’s Arjun. My husband and I came up from Edinburgh about two years ago. Wanted to take advantage of the culture shift and get away from it all. We sure did, didn’t we?”

My husband and I .

Madeleine’s fingertips went cold as she took her card.

Her spine stiffened.

No, she ordered herself, don’t be rude, don’t be ridiculous, don’t let him see…

But he did see. Her face had frozen, and it must be obvious, because Arjun’s own expression closed.

“Sit anywhere you like,” he said.

What was she supposed to say?

I’m sorry, when she hadn’t actually said anything, and an apology would only hang an ugly wreath on a door that should have stayed shut?

Instead, she whispered her thanks, and when the other owner—a white man, the husband named Jeremy—brought her coffee and hot roll to her table, she whispered it again.

He said, calmly, “You’re welcome. We close in fifteen.”

She’d been hungry, close to starving.

Now, even though the sausage roll was delicious and the coffee hot and fragrant, she could barely get it down.

Could she have handled that worse?

Maybe if she’d actually jumped back and screamed.

You don’t understand, she wanted to tell them.

I didn’t expect to find it here.

I wasn’t ready .

She couldn’t say that.

Madeleine managed to get down her food and flee the coffee shop within five minutes.

This trip was off to an inauspicious start.

Her first thought was to run back to the Merryweather and dodge Harry Duggan’s questions as best she could.

She could lie down, take a nap, and wake up to find the whole humiliating incident was a dream.

Instead, Madeleine hung a right out of the café.

The cool air soothed her burning cheeks somewhat.

You’ll have to deal with this, her inner voice whispered.

It wasn’t talking about the café.

You’ve put it off all your life, and now it’s here.

Here, you’ll face yourself .

That seemed a little melodramatic, Madeleine thought desperately.

Sure, she’d struggled for decades with urges the Church told her were unholy.

Yes, Jorsay was the place she’d come to find answers to a mystery.

But not that one.

Unless she found herself lying beneath her angel again, kissed until she was taken into a realm of joy where everything felt right.

Nonsense. She couldn’t expect that!

Madeleine shoved her hands into the pockets of her jacket, walking so briskly that her legs felt the strain.

Few people were out and about, unlike the enthusiastic summer crowds she’d seen on the Mainland.

Jorsay might have “new things,” as Harry had put it, but it hardly bustled.

Thornhill Village was tiny.

She’d probably see Arjun and Jeremy again.

She’d have to think of something to say to heal the wound she’d inflicted.

One of many just like it that they’d received over the years, she could imagine.

She’d received wounds of her own.

Decades of her family, her Church, her home, telling her that her desires were sinful and unnatural.

Then, she’d kissed an angel and emerged into a world where there were other ideas, and now she didn’t know what to think or how to feel, and when she prayed, she wasn’t getting answers.

If only teleportation were possible.

She could pop back into her apartment with Becca for a pep talk before returning to her quest. As it was, she was stuck here in the wind, alone under a gray sky.

With a jolt, she wondered: when was the last time she’d been alone ?

She’d lived in community with the Daughters of Grace for so long, and then she’d moved in with Becca.

While it had been lonely at first, she hadn’t truly been on her own.

Now it was just her, standing on her own against a mystery.

“Grow up,” she muttered.

“You’ve got to do this. There’s nobody else to do it for you.”

She’d said the same thing decades ago, after her brother had?—

“Oof!”

She hadn’t seen the man coming before she collided with him on the sidewalk.

The breath rushed out of them both, and she staggered backward, an apology already in her mouth.

Maybe she’d save time by traveling through the whole village and apologizing to everybody in advance.

She looked up and began, “I’m so?—”

And found herself looking into the wide brown eyes of the man who’d found her on the beach.

Jonathan.

Judging by how his mouth hung open, he recognized her too.

He stared at her. Unable to speak, she stared right back.

He looked better than he had six years ago.

He stood up straighter, his white beard and hair were neatly trimmed, and no glaze of alcohol covered his eyes.

And there was no drunken thickness in his speech when he whispered exactly what she was thinking:

“I don’t fucking believe it.”