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“Noooooo!” Dropping her cumbersome school bag, Fiona scrambled after the airborne pin-up. “Please! Somebody help!”

Envy wouldn’t hold Evie back. THUMP! Her backpack hit the footpath. “I’m coming!” She swerved around several befuddled tourists and past her Kirkwall Grammar classmates, their mouths gummed up with chewy cola cubes as she clambered over the wire fence.

Sunita hung back. “Good luck!” She snickered, retrieving the discarded magazine and Evie’s belongings.

“Arghh! Why don’t we have trees?!” Fiona bellowed as Evie caught up, sprinting through the waving fields of grass leading to Skaill House, the haunted 17th-century manor overlooking Skara Brae.

“It’s the salty winds,” answered Evie, her words labored and a stitch pinching her side. “Trees struggle to survive here—”

“I know that!” Fiona blurted, hobbling over a rabbit hole. “I’m just saying, maybe their branches…” She wheezed. “…would catch him.”

The poster frolicked and dipped, kissing the bristly brush.

“Grab him!” Fiona lunged, but another blustery surge snatched Nikolai, lifting him up, up, and away. Fighting for breath, she stumbled to a stop. “Ahh, it’s no use.” She prised an inhaler from her coat pocket.

Evie continued on, arms and legs pumping despite her exhaustion. Glancing over her shoulder, she sputtered quizzically. “Fi! C’mon—”

“No, Evie!” Fiona shook her canister of asthma medicine. “Forget it. Let him go. It’s not meant to be.”

TWO

EVIE

Now, Wednesday, June 21

With a decision made, all Evie had to do was stick with it.

Skirting the short midday shadows thrown by the imposing red sandstone of St. Magnus Cathedral, she let out a determined huff and swept her long hair out of her face, a losing battle Evie knew well. The island gales didn’t care about her fresh blowout. They didn’t care about the bagpipers wearing kilts or the homemade crowns they stole from the heads of the town’s schoolchildren. Blustery weather and the Orkney Islands were like tea and biscuits—a double act for better, for worse—and nothing, not the spritzy rain nor the rolling clouds would halt the annual June magic that was the St. Magnus Festival parade.

Great turnout so far. Evie unscrewed the cap on her water bottle, tossing back a quick gulp.

“Aw, there they are! My little bairns!” The chatty woman by her side beamed, her kind eyes crinkling with great-grandmotherly pride. “What about you, sweetie? Seen Fiona’s eldest yet?”

“Ava should be along soon. Her class is in charge of flags this year.” Evie searched the rabble of giggling children for her beloved goddaughter. “Can you believe it? She’s nine now! Had her birthday two weeks ago.”

“Such a cutie, and she worships you!” The woman, a regular in Marwick’s, Evie’s mother’s café and shop across the road, rested a wrinkled hand on the arm of her raincoat. “Ahh, must make you feel broody, eh, love?”

Different day, same question. Evie adopted a polite grin and left the messy conga line of children behind. “I love Peedie, but bairns of my own?” She shook her head. “I don’t think so.” That would put an end to the prying questions, surely. Raising her water again, Evie downed a long, generous sip.

“A good man will change that!” The granny pulled out her phone. “I’ll text you my son’s number.”

Evie sputtered. Never mind the baby question, this was worse—much worse. Fifty-plus, recently divorced from his second wife, and father to twins Evie babysat once upon a time, she knew this “good man” had a proclivity for shower dodging and a taste for road rage.

Wiping her mouth, Evie fought through her fluster. “Oh! That’s”—she fastened the lid on her water as the phone in her jacket pocket vibrated against her thigh—“really sweet of you, but I—”

“Auntie Evieeeeeee!”

Rescued by Ava’s bubbly salutation and her gap-toothed smile, Evie lit up and waved fervently. “Peedie, look at YOU!”

“Like my flag?” Ava hollered, poking the air with her wind-whipped pink and silver triangle, her red ringlets bouncing with each jubilant step. “I used all the glitter!”

“It’s perfect!” Setting her water bottle on the ground, Evie grabbed her phone, ignored the elderly lady’s text, and fired off a burst of photos for Fiona, who was at home nursing Ava’s three-and-a-half-year-old sister Poppy through a nasty bout of chickenpox. “Your mum’s gonna be so proud!”

Ava skipped triumphantly and bobbed into her best friend, who nudged her back with a playful hip bump.

Just like Sun and me at that age. Evie’s heart felt full. Toes tapping along to the stirring drone of the bagpipes, her eyes skated over Marwick’s then far down Broad Street where she spotted him.

Square jaw, rakish brown hair, shoulders broad and muscular. And his height—yeah, Evie liked them tall.