Page 122 of A Scot in the Storm
“How far into the future? Where?”
Tears rolled down her cheeks.
“A place called California. It’s west, all the way across the country from Philadelphia and Boston which you’ve seen.” She took a breath. “I’m from the year 2026.”
He turned abruptly toward the sea then, one hand braced hard against the stone wall beside them as though the world itself had shifted beneath his feet. For the first time since Abigail had known him, Rory Sinclair looked briefly unmoored.
“By the saints,” he said softly, crossing himself.
“Yeah. That was more or less my reaction too.”
Something very near a smile touched his mouth for the briefest instant before fading again.
“And Sam?”
The question hollowed her out.
“He’s there.” Her voice broke completely now. “He’s still there, in the world I came from. Sick, and stubborn, and probably eating something terrible out of a paper wrapper while pretending everything is fine.”
Understanding moved slowly across Rory’s face, probably not belief, but understanding the loss of her brother.
Abigail wiped angrily at the tears freezing against her cheeks.
“I never meant for this to happen.”
“What?”
She looked at him helplessly.
“You.”
The word broke softly between them. For a long moment neither of them spoke, then Rory stepped closer, brushing tears gently from beneath her eye with his thumb.
“I kent there was something beyond ordinary about ye,” he said softly.
His mouth twitched faintly, though the humor soon faded.
“And the storm brought ye here?”
“I think so.” She looked toward the Wine Tower, dark against the snow and sea. “The Cailleach appeared to me on Halloween, I mean Samhain, she told me the storm was the door.”
Rory’s hand stilled against her cheek.
“She came to ye?”
Abigail swallowed. “She knew things. She said I’d written to you before I ever had.”
Rory’s brow furrowed.
“I found your letters,” Abigail said quietly. “In the archive of the lighthouse museum.”
The wind seemed to draw back from them for one strange breath.
“My letters?”
“To Thomas Smith. To the Commissioners.” She looked up at him, feeling suddenly as exposed as if she had opened a locked drawer in his soul and found her own name written inside.
“You wrote about the light, the bearings, and the construction problems, but then you started writing about the woman who came from the storm.”
