Yet she still felt slightly out of sorts as she listened to Archie and Zac debate the merits of different kind of sheep feed—who ever would have thought her nephew would have an interest in such a thing, never mind an actual opinion on it—and then tidied up.
“I suppose we should get going,” she said, once the dishes were washed, dried by Archie, and put away.
“Yes, I need to get my skates on, as it is.” He checked his battered-looking watch with a grimace.
“I’m sorry if I’ve made you late—”
“Not at all.” He turned to Zac, who was by the back door, putting on his coat. “Happy Christmas, lad. Perhaps you’ll do a few days for me in the new year?”
Zac nodded, and with a jolt Laurel realised tomorrow was Christmas Eve. “You’ll still come to us on Christmas?” she asked. “After you’ve been with your dad?”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Archie replied cheerfully.
Laurel had the sense that time was slipping away far too fast, and she didn’t like it. “All right,” she said at last. “See you then.”
Zac was quiet in the car on the way back to the cottage, and then Laurel tidied the kitchen while he took a quick shower before they decided to walk into Stromness for the ceilidh.
“What is this thing, anyway?” he asked as they headed down the darkened street towards the town.
“A ceilidh? It’s a country dance. Lots of swinging partners round and things like that.” Zac made a noncommittal noise, and Laurel was just glad he’d agreed to go. “Are you having a good time here, Zac?” she asked hesitantly. She’d been afraid to ask him so directly before. “Are you glad you came?”
He shrugged, making some sort of mumbling assent, and Laurel decided she would take it as a yes. It was progress, of a sort, and she was coming to realise that what Archie had said might be true—she couldn’t force the magic.
As they came into town, she saw the narrow streets were strung with bright, multi-coloured lights, with a huge Christmas tree in the square, people streaming towards the hotel on the waterfront, creating a buzz of anticipation. Even Zac seemed to catch the mood as they joined the crowd—well, crowd by island standards, anyway—and headed for the hotel.
The ceilidh was already in full swing as they came into the hotel, a band with several fiddles, banjos, and other instruments Laurel didn’t even recognise belting out a merry tune. The hotel’s ballroom was decked out in evergreen and tinsel, with an enormous tree perched in one corner, glittering with lights and shiny baubles. Laurel’s heart lifted at the sight of it all.
She headed to the bar for soft drinks, and she and Zac sat sipping their lemonades as they watched a country reel, with partners dosey-doing and flying around.
“Shall we give it a go the next time?” Laurel asked and Zac looked taken aback.
“Seriously?”
“Why not?”
He shrugged. “Okay, I guess.”
She smiled, and Zac smiled back. This was going to be fun.
A few minutes later, a new dance was called and they took their places in the circle. Laurel’s head spun along with her body as she tried to follow the directions, going this way and that, spinning in a circle, linking arms. She barely knew what she was doing, but she was having fun, and when she glimpsed Zac linking arms with a teenaged girl across the circle, her spirits lifted even more. Maybe, just maybe, it was all going to be okay.
The realisation shuddered through her, as she acknowledged just how tense and stressful she’d found taking charge of her nephew’s care. How afraid she’d been, without even realising how much, for Zac’s well-being. For Abby’s, whose she still didn’t know. For everything, and still so much was uncertain, yet right now she had a glimpse that it could, just maybe, be okay, and it was such a relief.
The dance ended, and the circle re-formed, with Laurel smiling and out of breath. Within a few seconds, the music started again, and she started forward to link arms with the person across the circle, only for everything in her to jolt when she realised who it was.
“Archie…”
“In the flesh.” He grinned as he linked arms with her. “If I’d known you were coming to the ceilidh…”
“But I thought you were taking your dad out!” Belatedly Laurel was noticing how different Archie looked. He’d combed his hair into some semblance of order, although some still sprang up, and he was wearing a button-down shirt in blue check that was neatly pressed, with a pair of jeans that were not his usual, baggy, mud-splattered workwear. And he smelled… nice. Some sort of bay rum aftershave, very old-fashioned, and exactly what she might have expected him to wear.
“I am,” Archie replied as they reeled around. “He’s watching over there.” He nodded towards the corner, where Laurel glimpsed a slightly blank-eyed man in a wheelchair, nodding along to the music. He had the same sticky-up hair as Archie, but it was all white.
“Oh… right.” Laurel’s emotions felt as if they were tilting and sliding into each other, so she didn’t know what she felt anymore. Archie danced back to his side of the circle, and Laurel linked arms with her next partner, a middle-aged woman with a loud laugh who might have had slightly too much to drink. She glanced again at Archie, who was dancing with a young woman in a slinky dress. She looked away, focusing on the reel, pushing away all the confusing things she felt, because she didn’t know what any of it meant.
Two dances later, Laurel was out of breath and breaking a sweat. She retreated from the dance floor, noting that Zac seemed to have made friends with a couple of kids his age, and they were all goofing off in a corner of the room. She realised she hadn’t seen him smile like that before. Properly.
She fetched herself another glass of lemonade and took it to one side of the dance floor, sipping it slowly as she scanned the room, realising only after her gaze trained on Archie bending down to talk to his father that she’d been looking for him.