Page 46 of Bonetide

—Eufemia

I sit back on my heels.

She didn’t send any of them? I suppose that’s why they’re all gathered here.

I read the next, dated 2014.

Eachann. I saw the woman from Inverness on the eastern shore this morning. I have not asked you and I will not ask you. I think that means something between us. I hope it does.

I read down.

The letters span the decades in the rhythm of a woman who knew a man for a long time and wrote to him often without ever sending them. References I can’t trace—the spring storm that took the boat, the woman who came with the dog, the cold winter when the loch froze the full way across—and references I can. Mainly names I recognize from the list of forty-seven. Bridget. Pavlina. Mary. Catriona. The names appear in Effie’s letters one by one across the decades, never in accusation, never in explanation. Just named, documented.

A letter dated 11th of August, 1962, is folded in three; the paper is creased deep with handling.

I open it carefully.

Eachann.

They came to my door today. I told them what I could and what I could not. I know what you did and don’t need to ask but they are hungrier than I am.

For what it is worth, I don’t regret the bargain. I don’t regret you, even on the days it feels like I do.

—E.

I read it again, slowly this time. The date…there’s something about the date.

Then I remember what Sinclair said. She wrote to him on the day they came about Catriona Carmichael. Whatever arrangement they had, she chose not to tell on him, for lack of a better word.

She loved him. All of these letters are nothing more than love letters she was too afraid to send to a man named Eachann. She refused to invite him in, for whatever reason, whether it was real or just superstition. She wrote to him for decades and never sent the letters, never let him in, never let her wishes be anything other than dreams.

That is a story. That is a love story I can hold, albeit a tragic one.

What I cannot hold is the man across the bay who told me, in a firelit room three days ago, that he knew her. Well enough.

But that was Alasdair. This Eachann is someone else, some other man. A predecessor. A man much older than the one in the castle now. Alasdair’s father, maybe? After all, Caisteal Eachainn was the name of his castle. Spelled differently, but too big of a coincidence to not matter.

What happened to Eachann? Was he still out there, killing and disappearing women? God, he would have to be Effie’s age, in his nineties I imagine, at least. Can ninety-year-olds do that? How old was the oldest serial killer?

I gather the letters back into their bundle. The twine is fraying in one place, so I tie it loosely and put it next to the mystery box. Blue light slants in through the mudroom window.

The afternoon has gone.

I’m about to stand up when I hear it.

Thud.

A single soft thud from above me.

Not loud. One muffled sound from the floor over my head, a sound like a book dropping.

My heart lurches. Every muscle in my body freezes, including my lungs.

No, not again, I think as I look at the ceiling. I can’t deal with finding more bones, not now.

But the cottage is silent around me. I only hear the faint drip from the kitchen tap. I strain my ears even harder but there’s nothing but a gull crying in the distance and the rustle of the wind outside.

I slowly get to my feet.