Kate sets down her water. “Wow. Shit.”
“Thanks. That’s about the same face I made when I found out she’d been cheating on me,” he says, with a half smile that lightens the moment. “But hey, it’s led to this, right? I get to be here with you.”
He keeps talking, moving on from his ex, but Kate watches him, takes in the laugh lines around his mouth. Despite the hardships of his life, he’s still nearly always smiling. He’s somehow managed to maintain his positivity. She wishes she could be more like him, wonders if she has it in her. She fingers the condensation on her water glass, notices that the ice has split. Most of it is floating, but two pieces are joined together and stuck to the bottom. Variations in ice density determine whether a piece sinks or floats. The ones at the bottom are under more pressure. But give the glass a little swirl, a gentle agitation of encouragement, and the chunks at the bottom will eventually rise to the surface.
Revived and full, they explore the neighbourhood a little. After wandering the narrow, pedestrian-only Rose Street, they come to a busy thoroughfare blocked off with a wall of police barricades.
“Sniper?” Kate asks at the same moment Ian says, “Parade?”
They glance at each other. Ian’s face splits into a grin and Kate begins to laugh. It feels good, as though one of the weights on her shoulders has tumbled off. Ian has that effect on her. He’s looking at her now, still smiling, but there’s a tenderness in his eyes.
He leans down and kisses her, right there on the crowded sidewalk. Kate responds with enthusiasm, her body warm and tingling despite the cold.
“Should have seen that coming, I guess,” she says when they break apart.
His nose brushes her cheek. “You can’t predict everything in life.”
They circle back to the Christmas Market in the midafternoon, hand in hand. The air smells like baked goods, beer, and hickory. Kate used to love these sorts of artisan markets, buying whimsical gifts for her girlfriends and parents. There was a time she would have left this one with bags full of scarves, ornaments, and kitschy mugs, but as she sets a scented candle back down on the vendor’s table, it hits her—she has no one to buy for this year besides Audrey and Ian. She thinks of her few girlfriends back in London, all married with children now. In the wake of her trauma, Kate had curled into herself, then written off their lack of attention with valid excuses: they were simply too busy, too tired out by their own young families, too emotionally taxed to spare much energy for her. But now she wonders whether she should have asked more of them—that they stick by her, check in with her, even on the days where her bed felt like the only answer to the impossible riddle she’d been tasked with solving.
“See anything worthwhile?” Ian asks, jostling Kate’s wandering mind back to the present.
“Nothing I’ve really decided on.”
“How about a drink?”
“Sure.”
Ian leads her down the red carpeted path to a stall offering mulled wine, hot toddies, and apple cider. They carry their drinks out of the crowd and find a place to sit on the edge of a low stone wall. Kate sips her cider, letting the spicy scent waft over her face as the unpleasant memories float away on the chilly wind.
Ian inhales the steam from his toddy and looks sideways at her paper cup. “You don’t drink much, eh?”
“No. Not for a while now.”
“Mind if I ask why?”
She blows on the surface of the cider, watches a woman hold up a red knitted baby cardigan at the stall across from them, and turns away, huddling into Ian.
“My dad drank too much sometimes,” she says. “And it kind of turned me off it.”
“Ah,” Ian says, resting his free hand on her thigh. “I think people sort of go one of two ways with that, don’t they?” he says gently.
“What do you mean?”
“When I was at uni here, I used to tend bar on weekends at a pub just off the Royal Mile.” He gestures across the rail lines to the Old Town. “There was this old bloke, Archie, with no front teeth and this yellowing moustache who used to spend hours at the bar every Friday and Saturday night. He was always one of the last to leave. After all the students and the band had cleared off, he’d stagger the two blocks to his flat. We all knew where he lived. Sometimes we had to walk him to his door; he could hardly stand.” A ripple of pity passes over Ian’s features. “This one night he was more shattered than I’d ever seen him. Even after we cut him off, he just stayed there at the bar. I don’t think he wanted to leave. Not sure he had anyone, you know? I ended up walking him home that night, and he stopped at the door to his flat and said it was the anniversary of the day his old man beat his dog to death in a drunken rage. When Archie tried to stop him, the bastard kicked his teeth in.” Kate gasps. “He said he drank more than his dad ever did, pickled himself so hard that he couldn’t have thrown a fist at anyone if he’d wanted to.” Ian pauses. “Do you know why your dad drank?” Tinny music from the nearby Ferris wheel sings out in the background, just audible over the constant murmur of the crowd.
Kate shakes her head. “He had depression, I know that much. Not always. It came and went. And I’ve wondered how much the drinking contributed to it. He was open about a lot of things, but very private about others. I’m still trying to figure him out, to be honest. My mum was a lot more transparent. But she was too tolerant of his drinking. Or, I don’t know… maybe she’d just given up trying.” She clears her throat with a sip of cider. “Do we ever really know our parents? Like, really? Did you feel like you knew your dad?”
Ian opens his mouth to answer but is interrupted by shouting over near the main road. They twist around, looking for the source of the commotion, and see a cluster of people bent over a middle-aged man with greying hair lying prone on the pavement.
“He just dropped!” they hear a woman wail.
“Whoa,” Ian mutters.
An ambulance blares down the street, lights flashing. They’re so close that the sirens shred the air. Kate sets her drink down on the stone beside her and covers her ears, eyes still on the ambulance as a pair of paramedics exit with a slamming of doors.
“He collapsed,” the woman cries out again. “He was talking one moment, and the next—”
“Okay, ma’am, step aside, please.”
Kate trips down into her own memory, falling through the rain. The paramedic is pointing something at her face as her eyes flutter open.
Miss? Miss? Can you see this light? What’s your name?
And later, the glaring overhead halogens of the hospital room.
What happened, Kate?
She squeezes her eyes shut, but all she sees is the dark, wet road. Her parents’ faces. The blood. The flashing lights are there no matter how much she blinks.
“Kate?” Ian’s voice is at her ear. “Are you okay? Kate?”
Her eyes flash open, but she can’t breathe. She turns away from the emergency lights and Ian’s concerned face, pushes through the crushing, chattering crowd.
“Kate!” Ian calls.
She breaks into a run, trying to get as far away from the scene as possible.
Ian catches up to her at the gates to the Princes Street Gardens. She hurries down the stone steps, panting as she comes to a stop near a border hedge. It’s darker, quieter here. The castle is lit now, glowing orange on the rocky cliff behind her.
