The Silver Bough (2 page)

Ashley was here because Phemie and Freya were dead, although neither of them would have wanted her to go to Scotland. Really, this should have been her father’s journey.

Since his mother’s death, Jesse Kaldis had been trying to find out where he came from. He knew a fair amount about his father’s family, which combined Greek and German stock, but about his mother’s origins he knew very little. When she was alive, she’d discouraged his interest. The past was past, she’d say, and hers was not very interesting. She claimed her parents had been dead for years, and gave vague and contradictory answers to questions about exactly when, why, and how she’d come to America. He knew that his father had met her in California and married her in 1952. She’d acquired American citizenship and what was sometimes taken for a Canadian accent by the time Jesse was born. He knew that “Phemie”—which everyone called her—was short for Euphemia; that her maiden name was MacFarlane, and that she’d been born somewhere in Scotland in 1931. It wasn’t a lot to go on, but within six months of her death he’d discovered that one Euphemia MacFarlane, born in 1931, had disappeared from her hometown of Appleton, on the west coast of Scotland, in the autumn of 1950, and that people still remembered her there.

Phemie’s parents were long dead—although nothing like as long as she’d always implied. Her mother had survived until 1975, never knowing she had a grandson in America. Phemie’s older brother, Hugh, had died three years ago, but his three children were all alive and well, with families of their own. One was in England, one in Australia, but the third, Shona, had remained in Appleton. She was married to a man called Graeme Walker, who worked as a postman and turned out to have a passion for local history. He was even more thrilled than his wife to learn what had become of Phemie, and no sooner had Jesse made contact with Graeme than he’d been invited to visit Appleton and offered free accommodation and introductions to the town’s oldest inhabitants, some of whom could surely tell him more about his mother’s early life.

Jesse meant to do it—but now was not a good time for him to be away from work. (It never was, thought Ashley.) Maybe next year, he said. Strangely, as the quest lost its urgency for her father, Ashley became more interested. She’d loved her grandmother Phemie, but she’d never been especially curious about her, taking her for granted the way kids did. She hadn’t even realized that “Phemie” was short for “Euphemia”—she’d thought it was a peculiar family variant on “Granny,” like Freya’s grandmothers being known as “Gaga” and “Mimi.” To Ashley it had come as a shock to learn that the sweet, rather dull old lady she had known and loved had once been an impulsive, smoldering young beauty, whose flight had made a deep and permanent impact on her local community.

She remembered telling Freya about it shortly before Christmas, as they sat together in her room wrapping presents.

“Nobody had any idea she was planning to leave; they all thought she was perfectly happy. Everybody liked her, and she was engaged to be married to the richest guy in town.”

“Rich isn’t everything. Maybe he was a creep,” Freya suggested, pausing in her ribbon-curling to examine the small black-and-white photograph Ashley had borrowed from her father. It showed Phemie as a vibrant young mother in the early fifties, holding up her baby boy and laughing, her hair hanging in dark, lustrous waves around her face, looking at once glamorous and maternal. She nodded slowly, approving. “She was gorgeous. What about the guy she left?”

“I don’t know. Dad didn’t say much about him. I think he was older than she was…anyway, it sounds like he was pretty shattered when she dumped him; he left town himself within a couple of months, and the family business went to pot without him. That was bad news—it was a major employer. From what my dad’s cousin says, it was the beginning of the end for the town. Local economy in ruins, all on account of this one girl deciding to run off. Although, of course, they didn’t know for sure that she
had
run off—some people thought she’d been done away with. Maybe that’s why her fiancé left—too many suspicious looks, like they all thought he’d killed her and buried her in the woods and was just pretending to be heartbroken.”

“Well, it usually
is
the boyfriend—although, of course, Phemie wasn’t murdered! But who knows what might have happened if she’d stayed?” Freya looked thoughtful. “Could it have been like an arranged marriage? You know, she was supposed to save the town by keeping him there and giving him an heir or whatever? So she couldn’t see any other way of getting out of it? And even though he was rich, he was maybe a lot older than her, and really awful, but she had to do it because the families insisted?”

Ashley frowned, uncertain. “Could Scotland have been that feudal in 1950?”

“Not an official arranged marriage, then. Maybe more like a done deal between him and her dad. Women didn’t have that many options back then. And there must have been some reason why Phemie wouldn’t talk about where she came from. Seems like she was scared of something, even after she was married to somebody else. She didn’t want to be found. Because she knew they’d never forgive her, and the town would rise up and take revenge, no matter how much time had passed.”

Freya laughed suddenly and rested her warm hand on Ashley’s. “Ooh, or maybe her dad abused her, and she wiped it all from her memory. Or maybe…maybe I just watch too much TV! Probably it was just a really dull, boring place, and she felt guilty about dumping her fiancé, so she just decided she’d pretend none of it had ever happened. Did your Phemie seem to you like somebody hiding a deep, dark secret?”

“Not really. But she never would talk about her past—nothing about her family, or anything that happened before she met Grampa.”

Freya shrugged. “Still…now she’s gone, I bet she wouldn’t mind your dad finding his relatives. It’s made him feel better. He’s made some new friends, and he’s got a project. It’s always good to have a project. Takes your mind off being unhappy.” She spoke, as she sometimes did, with absolute assurance, like someone wiser than her years. Two weeks later, she was dead after losing control of the dark green Camry she was accustomed to drive so fast and skillfully around the crowded, chaotic Houston freeways.

They’d been best friends since they were eleven. Losing her was like losing her soul or half her brain, Ashley thought despairingly. She couldn’t believe she was still alive, left alone. Nothing made sense anymore. But she remembered Freya’s comment about having a project, so she went back to school two days after the funeral, because at least there she would have something to do. Teachers were understanding, everyone was sympathetic, but without Freya she was just the ghost of herself. She experimented a bit with drugs and sex, trying to jump-start her life. When that failed, she threw herself into schoolwork, attended every class and lecture, took copious notes, did extra reading, and turned in every assignment on time. She also acquired a steady boyfriend, Brandon, to occupy the hours when she couldn’t work; but well before the end of the semester she knew it wasn’t working, that it couldn’t work. More than willpower was required. She needed a change.

On the last day of classes, she’d arranged to meet Brandon at four o’clock in the sandwich bar—it was a crummy little place with few customers except at lunchtime, conveniently located halfway between her place and his. He was resigned, if not happily, to the fact that they’d be spending the summer apart, and wanted to talk about getting together over the Fourth of July weekend.

She ignored this opening gambit, and plunged in with her news without pausing for a sip of her usual Diet Coke.

“I’m not coming back to school in the fall. I can’t take business classes anymore; I just can’t think in those terms. Nobody knows what’s going to happen; I always thought I could be practical and plan things out, but it’s impossible. How can I take five-year plans seriously when I don’t know what’s going to happen in five years? When nobody knows?”

He looked pained. “Ash, it’s just
work.
You can’t take it personally. It’s not meant to be applied to your personal life.”

“I
want
to take it personally. I want to learn something that matters to me.”

“Like what?”

How could he not know? “Art.”

He looked even more pained. “Drawing pictures? Painting?”

“I’ve always liked…”

“I know that,” he jumped in. “Your drawings are good. But I thought it was more like a hobby. You never said anything about doing it professionally. Can you make a living from drawing?”

She shrugged impatiently. She wasn’t ready for a big discussion about career possibilities, but it was her own fault for starting it. “I like
looking
at art, too, so maybe I should learn more about it. I could see myself maybe working in a gallery or something.” She imagined spending her days surrounded by beauty, saw herself moving confidently through a large, well-lit space, the white walls hung with paintings.

“You want to be an art major?” His eyes flickered; she imagined him consulting a mental database of all the colleges in the area. “Where would you go for that? SMU? That’s good, I think, but pricey. Could your parents afford it? Could you get in there?”

“I don’t know.” Majoring in art was something she’d decided against in high school, on practical grounds. Leaving aside the whole question of talent (if she could), she didn’t have the right temperament for an artist
or
a teacher. There were other possibilities, which she’d discussed with Freya, but she felt no need to rehearse them with him. “I need time to think. That’s why I’m going to take a year off. I can get a job and live at home.”

“Thanks for telling me.”

“What do you mean? I
am
telling you.”

“But you made up your mind without talking to me.”

“I’m sorry.” She sighed heavily, bored and guilty. “But it’s my life, my problem, and I have to solve it.”

“I thought I was part of your life.”

There was nothing she could say to that. He
had
been a part of her life for almost four months, but really only in the way that a bandage or a wound dressing is after a major accident. It doesn’t replace the missing part, and eventually has to be peeled away and discarded. He was a nice guy and deserved better, but knowing that made her no less cold. “I need time to think. I need to get away from everything for a while.”

“Including me. I see.” His shoulders sagged; he looked as if he would crumple and fall forward, grabbing on to her for support, but he stood up, steadying himself by resting his knuckles against the table where their two drinks waited, still untouched and sweating onto the pale Formica. “If it’d been me who’d died, I bet you wouldn’t have dumped your best friend like this.”

She caught her breath. “
She
wouldn’t have tried to make me feel guilty if I needed to leave.”

“So I make you feel guilty?” He groaned. “Is that supposed to make me feel worse, or better? I can’t win, can I?”

“No, you can’t. I’m sorry, Brandon.”

She’d expected to have a much harder time getting her parents to accept her decision; they’d always been so firm about the importance of college. For the first month she was home she worked hard at two jobs, at Kinko’s in the daytime and in the evenings as a waitress at Chili’s, and scarcely had time to talk to her parents. When it finally came out that she didn’t intend to return to school in the fall, she was surprised by how calmly they took it.

“Only for a year,” she said quickly. “I just want a year off, to think about things and…well, I’d like to do some painting. Maybe I could take an art course somewhere.”

“You were thinking of staying here?” asked her mother.

“Yeah…if that’s all right. I mean, you weren’t planning to rent out my room, were you?”

“The thought crossed our minds,” said her dad with a straight face. “But then I thought of how much it would cost to put all your things in storage and decided against it. But wouldn’t you rather go somewhere else? Travel?”

She stared at him in surprise. “Well…yes. That’s kind of what I’m saving up for…”

“I’ve got enough frequent flyer miles to get you to Scotland.”

She wasn’t sure she’d heard right. “To get
me
to Scotland?”

“You’d like to see where your grandmother grew up, wouldn’t you? You could take pictures. Maybe even solve the mystery of why she left.”

“Paint the Scottish landscape,” suggested her mother.

“The Walkers would be happy to put you up. After you’ve tasted the delights of Appleton you could check out the museums and galleries in Glasgow and Edinburgh.”

“You can be our advance scout. Tell us what to see and what to avoid—because we are definitely going next year.”

It was completely unexpected, and, unexpectedly, she decided it was perfect: exactly what she needed. A complete break from the world she knew, yet with relatives to provide a link. Investigating her grandmother’s past would give her a project to work on, supplying a reason to be there instead of somewhere else.

Now she gazed out the window at the famously beautiful Loch Lomond. She remembered learning a song about it in elementary school: a lifetime ago, in another century. The scenery beyond the bus window belonged to an even more distant past; it looked like something in a movie, and she felt rather as if she was watching one now, as if this bus was a theme park ride, and everything outside created to give pleasure. It was even her favorite kind of weather, cool, cloudy, and mysterious, with the tops of the hills—or were they mountains?—hidden in low cloud.