I exhaled and rubbed my eyes, wanting to crawl back under the covers again. “Well, when I say I found a little bit, it was basically just the birth records of my grandparents and mother. They were residents here and had no family aside from each other.” I rested my head in my hand and stared at the screen. “That’s weird, right? Like only the three of them. No cousins. No nieces or nephews or siblings or anything like that.”
Evelyn shrugged. “I think that can be normal in circumstances. I mean, look at me. Aside from my cracked-out mother, I’ve got no one else in the world but you.”
That brought a smile to my face. “You’ll always have me. But needless to say, I didn’t find out much more than that. And with it being Sunday tomorrow, they won’t be open. And there are so many possible hits I could get if I have enough time to weed through all the documents and files.”
“Good Lord, this angle makes me have three chins,” Evelyn mumbled and sat up, holding the phone away from her, then grumbling about how uncomfortable that new position was and fuck her chins.
Sometimes her attention span was little to nonexistent.
“Before you say it, because I can see it on your face, yes, I’m listening, and yes, I heard everything.”
I grinned and flopped over so my belly was flush with the mattress.
“So what are you doing the rest of the day? It's only, what…?” She held her hand up and counted off. “Five?”
I nodded. “Yeah, dinnertime. I guess, on Saturdays, businesses here close early, if they even open at all.” I rubbed my face, feeling tired but not in the way that I needed to sleep. “Pretty sure bars are open until calling hour, which is like sunrise,” I joked.
Evelyn started laughing. “Wish I was there. We could have hit up the pubs. Wait, there are pubs there, aren’t there?”
“A few, which should be weird because the town is so small, but they are more like family-owned restaurants where people go to get trashed regardless.”
“Any cute guys? Maybe you’ll fall in love there.” She sounded so whimsical.
I snorted. “Hardly. The average age of the population here is like sixty. Although you’d probably think the B and B owner is cute. He looks around our age. Blond hair, blue eyes, and a Michael Phelps–type body.”
That had Evelyn perking right up. “You don’t say?” Her grin was slow, but it spread across her face in no time. “Maybe I should make a trip to Scotland and put on my charm with the bed-and-breakfast boy. He’ll fall for my witty sense of humor and stunning good looks,” she teased.
I snorted again, but then it turned into a laugh. “Yeah, he’s nice and all, but…” I looked over at the bedroom door, which was closed and locked still.
“What?”
I focused back on Evelyn and shrugged. “I don’t know. He just comes off as a little bit weird.”
Her eyebrows pulled low. “What do you mean ‘weird’? Like how?”
“I don’t know. I’m being stupid. He’s really nice. He’s not Scottish, but I’m not sure where he’s from. I can’t place his accent.”
I saw the hard look on her face. “I’d comment on him being a sexy foreigner, but if he’s making your weird-radar go off…”
“No, no. He’s harmless. I’m sure it’s just different cultures, a language barrier, and me being in another country for the first time that things just seem weird. I’m probably the one who seems strange to him.”
I saw Evelyn rest back on the bed, clearly relieved. I’d seen how worried she was. Despite us being the same age, she’d always taken on a kind of motherly role. But then, I guess I did with her as well. I supposed you naturally do that when you had no one else.
“But I’m actually going to brave socialization and eat dinner at one of those pubs.”
“Eat something exotic. Like haggis. Is that considered exotic?” She furrowed her brow as if she was actually trying to figure it out. “I don’t know, but try it anyway and report back to me.”
I wrinkled my nose. “I don’t know if I’m brave enough to jump right into the whole Scottish meals thing right now. I was thinking—hoping—I could get some fries and a cheeseburger first.”
Evelyn started laughing and shifted on the bed. “Okay, well, try it all for me. I’m living vicariously through you.”
We stayed on the video chat for another five minutes before the call was disconnected, and I lay on my bed, staring out my window as the colors in the sky from the setting sun started to become yellows and oranges, pinks and hints of ducky blue. I could have stayed on the bed just staring at the beauty of that, for in that moment, my thoughts were calm and not worried about my task or why I was really here. But my stomach gave an answering growl, a reminder I’d hardly eaten anything today.