Snowed In With My Stepbrother novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Watchnight

I left the key exactly where it was.

I put on my one decent dress, dark green wool, and my coat over it, and went down to the cars without touching that door again.

The kirk at Kinlochmorran was a white box on the shore with a bell that sounded cracked.

Half the glen was crammed into it at a quarter to midnight, steaming in their good coats.

The MacPhersons had their own pew at the front, with a little brass plate on the end.

Alasdair went in first, then Elspeth on her stick, then my mother, then Euan.

Finlay stood back to let me in.

Then he sat down beside me, and there was no room left at all.

His thigh pressed against mine from hip to knee.

I could feel the heat of him through two layers of wool.

The minister said something about the light coming into the darkness.

I didn't hear the rest of it.

We stood for "O Come, All Ye Faithful."

Finlay held the hymn book low between us so I could see it.

His little finger lay along the edge of my hand on the cover.

It didn't move for four verses.

I sang every word wrong.

My mother leaned across Euan in the second verse.

"Stand up straight," she hissed. "People are looking at us."

"People are singing, Mum."

"You're slouching all over Finlay. It's embarrassing."

Euan smiled at the altar.

His shoulder was touching my mother's, and she didn't move away from it either.

I noticed and didn't think anything of it.

When we sat down again, Finlay crossed his arms.

His knuckles were white.

At midnight the bell clanged out over the water and the whole kirk said "Merry Christmas" at once.

Old men shook Alasdair's hand.

A woman from the shop kissed Elspeth's cheek.

Someone's grandad told Finlay he'd make a fine laird, and Finlay went red to the ears.

We walked back to the cars along the shore in the snow.

Elspeth took my arm instead of her stick.

"You sang like a crow, lassie."

"Thank you."

"It was a compliment. That minister's the dullest man in Ross-shire and you made me laugh twice."

"Was I that bad?"

"You were in the wrong key for a whole verse. Finlay was in it with you."

I looked at her sideways.

She was watching the dark loch with a pleased face.

"He sang at the back of that kirk every Christmas," she said. "Stopped when his mother died. That's the first time in eight years."

I didn't know what to say to that.

So I didn't say anything, and she squeezed my arm.

Back at the house everybody went up at once.

Doors shut along the corridors.

A toilet flushed. The pipes knocked. Somebody laughed in the east corridor and stopped.

I stood in the middle of the blue room in my green dress with the fire burning low.

I took my earrings out and put them on the mantelpiece, one and then the other.

I looked at the key with its faded ribbon.

There was a line of light under the papered door.

He was awake.

He hadn't knocked.

He wasn't going to knock.

Through the door I heard him cross the room, stop, and cross it back.

He was going to lie on the other side of that door every night until I drove away, and never once try the handle.

That was worse than anything.

I crossed the room and turned the key.

It was stiff, and loud.

The light under the door went still.

I opened the door.

Finlay was standing in the middle of the tower room in his shirt with the cuffs undone.

The round walls. A wide old bed. A window full of snow.

He looked at me in the doorway the way he'd looked at me in the shack.

"You said never under this roof," he said quietly.

"I know what I said."

"Then say what you're doing."

"Breaking it," I said.

He crossed the room.

He crossed the room.

I didn't move from the doorway.

He stopped close enough that I had to tip my head back.

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