At 5:12 p.m., the rain had not yet begun, but everyone on Sgarra was talking about it as though it were someone they expected to arrive.
It would come from the west. It would take the sitting room windows first, then the terrace, then the low causeway linking the main house to the landing. By nine, the cook said, no one should count on crossing with dry feet. By midnight, according to the forecast pinned behind the bar, the next morning’s ferry would probably be canceled.
Eilidh Kerr listened to these predictions while correcting the guest list.
She had found the document on a side table beneath a vase of white ranunculus. Four cream pages held with a copper paper clip, listing names, rooms, and dietary restrictions. In theory, no one needed it: everyone had a key, the tables were set, the luggage upstairs. In practice, a wedding always brought together people who had forgotten where they were sleeping, what they had stopped eating the previous winter, and whom they had promised not to speak to.
“You came as a friend,” Mairi said.
Eilidh looked up.
The bride was not in her dress yet. She wore black pants, an oatmeal sweater, and thick socks in open-backed loafers. At thirty-four, Mairi Lennox still had her university habit of standing halfway into a room, as though another conversation was already waiting behind the door.
“I’m a very organized friend.”
“You crossed out two names.”
“A room error and a duplicate.”
“You circled Angus.”
Eilidh looked at the pen circle around “Angus Ross — room 7 — vegetarian.” She did not remember drawing it.
“He asked for a ground-floor room and they put him on the second.”
“He’s thirty-one and has two legs.”
“And an ankle operated on three times.”
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