Page 39 of Time of the Druid (Stones of Scotland #7)

Chapter 39

T he next few days were gloriously peaceful. Norah and Matthew lounged about in her old bedroom at her parents’ house, not venturing out except to stroll in the park. At meal times, Norah gradually told her parents the story of the last few years, but she left out a lot of the detail. It was enough for her parents to know she’d been forced to keep working for Professor Edmondson; they didn’t need to know what kind of work she’d been doing. She also left out the detail of Matthew’s surname, or how he’d got involved in the time travel mess. All her parents needed to know was that he was a good man, and she loved him.

Norah very quickly realised, though, that Matthew did not take well to doing nothing. He moved through her parents' house like a caged animal, pacing the hallway in quiet bursts of restless energy. More than once, she caught him standing stock-still at the window, his gaze distant and unfocused, as if he expected something—or someone—to appear at any moment. When he was in the kitchen, he tapped his fingers rhythmically against the counter, the tense beat echoing off the tiled walls like a ticking clock. There was a tension in his shoulders that never quite eased, a quiet urgency in his movements that betrayed just how unused he was to standing still.

“Do you want to go out somewhere today?” she asked hesitantly. “If you’re bored-”

“I’m fine,” he snapped, and Norah decided to leave it at that.

She cleared out her old apartment – Edmondson owned the place, and even just stepping back inside felt like walking into a ghost. The air seemed stale with memory, and her skin prickled as she moved from room to room, packing up her things in a hurry. Every wall seemed to whisper with old orders and obligations, every creaking floorboard echoing with footsteps she no longer wanted to follow. It didn’t feel right to keep living there. It didn’t feel like hers.

“I probably own it now,” Matthew pointed out, but Norah just shrugged. She’d be happy enough to never see the apartment again.

“I should probably look for another job, though,” she said mournfully. “Maybe we could both get hired by another time travel firm.”

Matthew shook his head.

“It’s not for me,” he said. Norah got the feeling he didn’t want to say anything else on the matter, so she didn’t talk any more on the subject. It niggled at her, though. She’d worked for Edmondson Laboratories for years. What was she going to do next? Freedom was all very well, but suddenly her future loomed up before her, blank and empty, and it scared her more than she’d expected.

“I just don’t know how to discuss these things with him,” she said to her mother as they sat on either side of the kitchen table, mugs of tea in their hands. Matthew was out on a run, burning off some of the energy that seemed to bubble through him constantly. “We met under such strange circumstances, I don’t know what it’s like to be a normal couple.”

Her mother sighed heavily.

“I can’t pretend to know the details of how you two met,” she said. “But communication is so important for any couple. By the sounds of it, he still has a lot to process. Perhaps you can help him with that.”

More than you know, Norah thought, a wave of guilt sweeping her. Matthew had just lost his father, and here she was making a fuss about jobs and apartments. How much more callous could she be? Matthew and Lucanus Edmondson might never have been close, but that was his father , for God’s sake. He couldn’t just shrug that off and move on with life.

So, that evening, Norah and Matthew snuggled up in bed with a bottle of wine, and Norah finally worked up the courage to ask Matthew about his father—not about the cruel Professor Edmondson, but about the man he remembered from his childhood.

“We were never especially close,” Matthew said, gazing out of the window at the trees that blew in the wind on the opposite side of the road. “But there were good times, occasionally. When he stopped shouting at my mum.”

With a little nudging from Norah, the stories all came tumbling out, each one faster and faster, until Matthew was pouring out every snippet of memory about his father. He spoke of long-forgotten childhood picnics under the shade of ancient oaks, the sound of bees humming around their sandwiches and his father's rare, unguarded laughter. There were visits to the lab, where young Matthew had sat wide-eyed among blinking monitors and strange, glowing samples, always hoping to earn a proud word from the man who never seemed quite present. He remembered working with his father as a teenager, hands deep in tangled wires or dusty spell-books, when hope still flickered that his father could change, could love him the way he needed to be loved. Each word carried weight, sometimes sorrowful, sometimes tender, and each memory seemed to lighten a burden Matthew hadn’t even realised he’d been carrying. It all spilled out, until finally Matthew ran out of words, and Norah ran out of wine.

“It sounds like you and your mother were always close,” she ventured at last. “I remember her a little.”

“My mother is wonderful,” Matthew said with a smile. “I miss her.”

And that made up Norah’s mind for her. The thought of leaving again tugged at her heart—of stepping away from the comfort of her childhood home, from the quiet security of her mother’s tea and her father’s steady presence. But when she looked at Matthew, at the distant ache still lingering in his eyes, she knew it wasn’t a choice at all. Her parents would understand. They’d always known she didn’t belong to them forever. She would miss them, and they would miss her, but she didn’t need them in the way Matthew needed his mother—like a thread that still tied him to the best parts of who he was.

“Get yourself all packed up again,” she told him. “Tomorrow, we’re moving again. It’s time to visit your parents.”

The brightness in Matthew’s face told her that she’d made the right decision.