The Legacy by Michael Phillips

Author:Michael Phillips
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Contemporary Fiction;FIC042000
ISBN: 9781441231291
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2017-05-08T04:00:00+00:00

54

Laird and American

Emily lay on her bed wide awake. Across the room Mrs. Barnes’s rhythmic breathing was deep and steady. She had hoped to work a little tonight on the notes for her paper. Mrs. Barnes had retired early, however, and she didn’t want to wake her. She could try to work downstairs in one of the Hotel’s sitting rooms, thought Emily. But there were always people about.

She drew in a deep sigh. She knew well enough that the other Hotel guests weren’t the impediment to her concentration. She could not stop thinking about today’s picnic and the episode with the runaway bull. Brogan’s laughter still rang in her memory. It was such a contagious laugh—so spontaneous and full of life . . . exactly like what she had heard from the older Tulloch. Laughter must run in the family, she thought. How changed Brogan seemed from their first encounter on the moor. Was it really only a few days ago?

Her thoughts were obviously too full to concentrate on her paper. Nothing would do but to go out and walk off the energy of her preoccupied mind.

Emily rose, picked up a light wrap, and slipped quietly from the room. The clock struck ten as she crossed the lobby. Moments later she emerged into the open air. The evening’s chill felt good on her cheeks. A flash of sunlight from the southwest took her by surprise.

Emily walked down the Hotel drive until she reached the main road. With no destination in mind, she turned away from the village. A few minutes later she found herself standing on the deserted ferry landing, staring out across the isthmus, waves gently lapping against the pillars and gravelly shore.

She would be here again soon, she thought, boarding the ferry for the last time to return to Lerwick, then Glasgow, then home to America. Suddenly her mind was full of strange new thoughts.

After a minute or two Emily left the landing and walked back the way she had come, pausing at a road leading to her left. Some two hundred yards up the hill, bathed in the low light of the sun off the sea, rose a small gray stone church with a bell steeple above. Drawn toward the reminder of her family and its spiritual roots, she turned into the drive and made her way toward it.

Reaching the solitary building a few minutes later, she gazed up at the solemn stone structure with its darkened windows of stained glass, red-painted door, and steeple stretching into the night sky. Seen at this hour, so stoic and stern, the cold, hard stones seemed lonely—a peculiar way to describe what was supposed to represent the living, breathing body of Christ on earth. If the church were truly made up of living stones, the granite blocks of which this church was constructed appeared anything but alive.

Emily read the sign on the front wall: Church of Scotland. She wondered what a devout Quaker like her father would think of this church and its doctrine.

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