by Molly Ringle
She grinned. “Thanks.” She grabbed her cell and started tapping keys.
“Aren’t you going to ask Laurence and Shannon? They’ll be dying to meet him, too.”
“Laurence is working a long shift.” She kept typing her reply. “Shannon’s doing that day trip to Hadrian’s Wall, with Thomas.”
“Oh, that’s right.”
“If my dad’s up for it, I’ll drag him back so he can meet Laurence. But that meeting might not be pretty.”
“How so?”
She shrugged, tapped a final key, and set down the phone. “You know how Laurence gets. Protective. He’d probably say something snippy to my deadbeat dad.”
“I could see that.”
“So.” Amber took in a breath, and let it out in a tea-scented gust. “Tomorrow. Jesus.”
Chapter Twenty-Two: Amber’s Dad
Amber’s dad looked so much like Johnny Depp it was unfair. I loved my own dad dearly but, to be honest, he resembled Dustin Hoffman with a larger nose and less hair. Still, if Rick Willock did look like Johnny Depp, at least it was Johnny in one of his scruffier roles.
He strolled into the appointed chip shop to meet us--ten minutes late--wearing a long black coat over jeans, a black vest, and a faded light-blue shirt with the top two buttons open. His cowboy boots clacked against the tiles. His hair, black like Amber’s but with gray threads running through it, fell in layers to levels between his chin and shoulders. You could tell women went for that hair, and definitely for the eyes, deep and dark and soulfully liquid. He couldn’t have been more than about forty.
Day-old stubble rearranged itself around his mouth as he smiled at Amber. “That’s got to be my girl.” His voice was lazy, taking its time to spin out sentences. “Look at you. Come here.” He stretched out his arms.
Amber burst into a nervous giggle, bounding forward to hug him. “Hi. Wow.”
The smell of recently extinguished cigarettes wafted off him--he smelled much like our hostel that way. He stepped back from Amber, looking her up and down. “Crazy, huh? About time I got here.”
“Sounds like work’s been insane.”
“Running me ragged. Finally got a free day, though.”
I noticed he didn’t actually say sorry for postponing the meeting.
He turned to me, and extended his hand. “Hey. Rick. Nice to meet you.”
I shook his hand. “Eva. Hi. You too.”
“Let’s order and sit down, what do you say?”
We placed our orders at the chip shop counter and chose a table, chatting about what we’d been up to in Edinburgh. On our way there, Amber had said to me, “I haven’t told him about the ghost thing. I didn’t want to sound weird, and I don’t know if Mom ever told him about it. So, don’t mention it until I do, okay?”
Therefore we kept off that topic, talking mostly about our jobs and how things were going back in Wild Rose. He called some of his clients “fucktards” at one point, apologized to us, then said, “Nah, you’re grown-ups, right? I can say that stuff to you.”
I suppose it should have seemed cool. But he was supposed to be a dad, so it only made me tense my legs under the table and fake a smile.
If I were Amber, I’d have wanted to know more about why he left, what happened with her mom, why he didn’t come see her. But I also saw how she’d be reluctant to bring up a touchy bunch of subjects like those. Rick, too, steered clear of saying anything like, “Hey, sorry I totally missed out on your growing up.” Maybe people didn’t say those things in the first meeting, or at least not with a third wheel along for the conversation.
But they opened up to some degree. When the subject turned to the ghost legends centered around Edinburgh, Amber finally admitted, “That’s originally why I wanted to come. I, uh, sort of see stuff. Ghosts. Or at least sometimes I think I do.” She chuckled, flexing her hands on the table and examining her orange nail polish.
Rick chuckled too. “My mom was that way.”
Amber looked up. “Really?”
“Yeah. Started out saying she saw ghosts, felt vibes, all that.” Elbow on the table, he leaned his temple on his hand and regarded us with a lifted eyebrow--an expression Amber had inherited down to the last muscle fiber. “Turned out she had schizophrenia.”
Amber’s smile shrank. “Schizophrenia.”
“Nasty case. Total raving nut by the end, at least on her bad days.”
“You mean she...”
“Died four years ago.” He showed no emotion; he might have been discussing someone he’d never met. “She had a ton of meds to take, and OD’d one day. Could’ve been suicide; hard to say. That’s pretty common with schizos.”
I went cold at his choice of words. This was how he talked about the death of his own mom? It sure wasn’t how Laurence talked about his mom’s death. He barely talked about it at all, and when he did, he sounded careful and restrained.
Amber looked pale. “Are you telling me I could have inherited schizophrenia?”
The possible impact of Rick’s gossip finally dawned on him. He straightened up in his chair, and assumed a look of optimism. “Oh--nah. Probably not. She had all kinds of problems. You seem totally with it.”
“But aren’t these things genetic?”
“Hell, I’m okay, right? Really, you didn’t know my folks. They had their own issues.”
Whatever that meant. I’d be scared if I were Amber, too.
“What about your dad?” she asked. “I’ve never heard anything about him.”
“Drank himself to death when he was fifty. Looked seventy by that time. Waste of human space, seriously. No wonder I had no clue how to be a parent, right?” He grinned.
Amber never quite recovered from that part of the conversation. We moved on to other topics, which I tried to sustain with my best impression of cheeriness, and twenty minutes later Rick checked his cell phone and said he had to “jet.”
He shook my hand again outside the chip shop, and hugged Amber. “Got your email now. We’ll keep in touch, right?”
“Totally.” Her smile didn’t extend to its usual length.
“Awesome. This was awesome. Thanks, ladies.” He hopped into his car, a beat-up little brown European thing, and putted away on the bumpy street.
“Could’ve offered us a lift,” I remarked, pulling up my collar against the cold drizzle.
“Oh, my God,” said Amber. “Oh, my God.”
We started walking. “Okay,” I said, “so he wasn’t perfect, but he could be worse, right?”
“Schizophrenia? I could have schizophrenia?”
“Amber, seriously, I wouldn’t worry.”
“Here I thought I had dark mystical gifts, and I might just be insane?”
“But that can’t explain it, right? I mean, you see stuff you couldn’t have always known or imagined...” Although, let’s be honest, I’d often suspected she made it all up, or tricked herself into seeing things suggested by a spooky atmosphere. Any of us can do that at the foot of a dark staircase. Still, psychological imbalance seemed too extreme an explanation.
“My grandmother was schizophrenic. Fact. She said she saw ghosts. Fact. So with me...” She grimaced at the walls of a medieval courtyard we passed. “My mind could completely fall apart someday, and maybe it’s already started. Only how could that be, when...”
“When what?”
She shook her head. “I’m all confused. And freaked out.”
“Let’s talk to Laurence,” I said. “He’ll throw stats and probabilities at you, and make you feel better.”
“Yeah. He’s good that way.” She sounded mollified, which had been my aim in bringing him up.
In truth, though I knew he would make her feel better, I doubted he’d shrug off this news lightly. A genetic link to a serious mental disorder was exactly the kind of clue his scientific mind would latch onto, and form theories around.
My instincts proved correct. At the hostel’s front desk, where we poured out the story, Laurence immediately Googled the topic
, and told her, “Okay, according to this, if your grandparent is schizophrenic, you only have a five percent chance of developing it yourself. It’s one percent for the general population, so it’s really not that great an increase of risk.”
“It’s five times as much!” she wailed.
“Only because the numbers are so small. Look, it’s good you know about it. Now you can have a shrink monitor it if you want, and catch it early.”
“But what if it’s already started? The ghost stuff, it’s been going on...well, you know.”
She and he exchanged a look, scrutinizing on his side, miserable on hers.
“If you really think that’s schizophrenia,” he said, slowly, “then sure, talk to a professional. But you don’t show any of the other signs.”
She heaved a sigh, slumping over the counter. “I guess. Ugh. Why’d he have to be such a jerk? Breaking it to me like that. All those little things he said. Rrrgh!” She pounded her fists on the counter, jolting a chained pen over the edge.
I didn’t get a chance to catch Laurence alone until the next morning, when I happened to meet him in the kitchen. “So, what’s your diagnosis on the schizoid thing?” I asked him.
He inhaled cautiously, cutting a banana into little slices and letting them fall into his cereal bowl. “I’d hire a shrink if I were her. Schizophrenia’s not a condition you want to leave untreated.”
“But does she really seem to have it? The ghost thing, do you think...”
“That’s always been a fuzzy area. I used to tease her and say she was just hallucinating, but I don’t think I better say that anymore.”
“So it might be true.”
“I’d suck as a scientist if I ruled it out for reasons of wishing it weren’t true.”
With that troubling idea in mind, I wrapped myself up in my quilted coat and marched to work, my breath clouding in the air and my shins freezing in their tights.
If Amber was insane, couldn’t I be, as well? I wondered if they had a name for my malady--my special house blend of indecision, cowardice, vanity, and nymphomania.
Whatever we called my condition, it only got a lot more complicated and unpleasant the next day.
Chapter Twenty-Three: Unexpected Visit
The following day was Friday. I had the day off, and Gil didn’t have to work until evening, so we agreed to meet in the morning and hit the shops to find him a suit. When I emerged from the third floor, I met Laurence coming down the stairs, attired in coat, scarf, and gloves.
“Going out?” I asked. I was in a good mood. The sun had just risen and it was looking to be a clear day. Cold, undoubtedly, but at least sunny.
“Yep,” he said. “Thought I’d pick up some haggis and give it a try. I’ve read up on the ingredients and I’m convinced it’s no worse than sausage.”
I laughed. “You’re brave.”
“I’m making you try it, too, so don’t laugh yet.”
We pushed through the double doors in the lobby, emerged into the pale sunlight, and began walking down the street. “What are you up to today?” he asked.
“I’m...meeting Gil, actually.” We hadn’t really discussed him since the pub night, and I half hoped that Laurence assumed the affair was over.
He only nodded, squinting ahead at the crowded sidewalks. “There he is now.”
Gil emerged between clumps of holiday shoppers, elf hat bells jumping merrily. His eyes took in Laurence, and accordingly, he didn’t kiss me when we met. Instead he smiled and said, “Hello. Both out today?”
“I’m just buying food.” Laurence sounded a bit cool. “And you kids?”
“Clothes,” I said. “For him, for an interview.”
“Ah.” Laurence glanced back toward the hostel, as if seeking an excuse to leave us. Then he did a double-take. “Um,” he said, “I don’t have the best vision, but, getting out of that cab, with the suitcase, doesn’t that look like...”
I gasped. “Tony.”
The cab idled outside the hostel, less than a block behind us. Tony, leaning in to pay the driver, wore his black ski coat with the hood fallen back on his shoulders. His suitcase with its St. Mary’s sticker sat on the sidewalk.
I wanted to scream and cry with fear. I also wanted to run and hug him. What I did was stand there petrified.
“It is him, isn’t it,” Laurence said, as close to astonishment as Laurence ever got.
“Tony?” said Gil. “You mean your Tony?”
I kept staring at “my Tony,” certain I was in a nightmare--or a funny, sweet dream, hard to say which. “I can’t...he never said he was...oh, God.”
The cab pulled away and Tony turned around with his suitcase in hand. He spotted me and his face lit up. We rushed toward each other--he with joy, me trying to distance myself from Gil momentarily.
“Wow! That was easy,” he said, in the warm, familiar, American altar-boy voice that tugged at my heart. “I thought I’d have to wander all over town looking for you. Thanks, God!” He dropped his suitcase and hugged me so tight he lifted me off the ground.
I was trembling. “What are you doing here? Is anything wrong?”
“No, of course not. I wanted to surprise you. Remember when I said I might visit? Bet you didn’t know I actually saved up for it.” He grinned and gave me a long kiss.
I didn’t know whose eyes I dreaded seeing more when I turned around, Gil’s or Laurence’s. But turn around I must, because when he was done kissing me, Tony said, “Hey, it’s Laurence!” and pulled me over to them.
Laurence and Gil stood there like two gawky scarecrows, Laurence wearing a warped smile and Gil looking withdrawn and pensive--a strange look on someone wearing an elf hat.
“Hey, Anthony.” Laurence shook his hand. “Surprise, surprise. Welcome to Siberia.”
“Thanks! That was an incredibly long flight. I see why it knocked you guys out.” He turned with a smile to Gil, awaiting an introduction.
Laurence filled in the silence. “Uh, this is Gil. He’s a local.”
“Hi!” Tony shook his hand. “I’m Tony.”
“Aye, Eva’s mentioned you.” Gil sounded polite, though not enthused.
“You live in Edinburgh?”
“Indeed.”
“The city’s amazing. Beautiful.” Tony turned around, taking it all in: the castle on the rock, the gardens with their iron fences, the church spires, the Christmas garlands. He threw his arm around me. “I see why you haven’t written much lately. I’d be out here exploring every second I could.”
“Yeah. I’m sorry about that...”
“Is it winter break for you already?” Laurence asked.
Good question. I should have known his schedule better, should have suspected this could happen.
“Yep! Think I did okay on my finals. We’ll see.” Tony glanced at the building behind us. “I hope there’s room in your hostel.”
“Probably. Um...?” I sent Laurence an inquiring look.
Laurence nodded. “Plenty.”
“Great!” said Tony. “What are you guys up to? I’d love to tag along, even if it’s just buying stamps or something. This is all new and awesome to me.”
“You sure?” I said. “You don’t want to sleep or anything?”
“Nah, I’m fine. I’ve had, like, three gallons of coffee.”
“Well...” I looked at Gil, who shrugged, the picture of tired resignation. “We were going to go shopping, I guess. You could come.”
“Can I leave my stuff here first?” Tony asked.
“Sure.” Laurence nodded toward the hostel. “Come on.”
Laurence checked Tony into the hostel, giving him a spare bed in Room 17. Gil dropped into a folding chair in the lobby and waited with Laurence while I accompanied Tony upstairs. I didn’t dare imagine what those two might be saying to each other in our absence.
“How long are you staying?” I asked Tony.
“Just a week. I promised my folks I’d be back before Christmas.”
“Ah.”
Only a week. I admit feeling some guilty relief at that figure.
We trotted back down to the lobby. While Tony asked Gil a question about the city, I whispered to Laurence, “Will you please come with us?”
He sighed, rolled his eyes, and nodded.
“Thank you. I owe you.”
“Yes. You do.”
I couldn’t face a threesome date, with Tony all unawares of what Gil and I had been doing. Laurence might be a hostile buffer zone, but at least he was a buffer zone.
“How did you guys meet again?” Tony asked as we walked down Princes Street, turning his sunny smile from Gil to me.
“Oh, uh, he works at this bar we go to sometimes.” I hoped my evasive usage of “we” would be enough to hoodwink Tony off the truth.
It seemed to work. He nodded, and as Laurence asked Gil something about clothing shops, Tony bent his head closer to mine and said, “I’d have figured Amber was after Gil, if she wasn’t already after Laurence. He looks like her type.”
I chuckled, a little hysterically. “Yeah. He does, doesn’t he?”
Either Laurence funneled his annoyance into a lecture about clothes, or he honestly had opinions on suits. While he shoved through the hangers and advised Gil on fabrics and colors in a corner of Marks & Spencer, Tony wrapped me up in his arms and kissed me again. Ridiculously, I hoped he wouldn’t notice any new styles or habits I might have picked up from Gil.
He released me and said, “You look absolutely great.”
“I do?”
“Yeah! Your hair, and your face, and...you just look so healthy.”
This surprised me, considering the headaches, colds, stress, and food poisoning I’d suffered since arriving. But lately I’d been eating real food: meat, cheese, and vegetables, and water or tea instead of coffee. Laurence told me that people who ate a healthful diet developed glossier hair and smoother flesh. It had something to do with providing the essential fats and nutrients.
Besides that, I had probably been walking three hours a day at least twice a week, thanks to Gil and his inexhaustible legs. The exercise was bound to pay off.
“I do feel pretty healthy,” I said.
