Page 75 of Kilt Trip

At the top of the battlement, a row of cannons stuck through rectangular cutouts in the stone wall and pointed over the city. Addie knew zero things about what distinguished cannons from one another, but they looked like the one in the photo. Her breath swirled in her lungs.

She pulled a Polaroid from her bag, holding it out to Logan. “What do you think?”

Same glossy black finish, same cannonballs stacked inside wire pyramids.

“Aye, look at the brick pattern in the wall, it’s definitely here.”

Addie’s heart soared like the blackbirds overhead.

Around them, kids climbed on the cannons and made booming noises. Logan nudged her lower back with his fingertips. “Go on, then.”

She looked back at him, but he was serious, encouraging. Feeling silly and childish, she glanced around at all the people who might see her stepping onto the locked wheels of the cannon and climbing up sidesaddle. No one was paying her any attention.

Heather would not have cared who watched her. For reasons still unclear to Addie, her mom bit the bottom of the cone to suck out ice cream. She wrote notes from the tooth fairy in loopy handwriting on sparkly paper. She was on a constant quest for the perfect skipping stone. She’d been playful and adventurous.

Addie could see why her dad took a snapshot here, capturing Heather’s spirit.

The chill of the metal seeped through her jeans as she ran her hand over the shiny black paint. The cool wind blew strands of hair across her face and toyed with the ends of her navy scarf, lifting them up toward the gray sky before suddenly letting go.

It wasn’t a ghost, but a lightness settled around her, a contentment she couldn’t remember ever being so solid.

“Off the cannons, aye?” an exasperated voice called. Addie turned to find a burly security guard headed their way. He gave her extra stink eye, probably for being over the age of seven.

She slid down, picturing her mom getting told off. Heather would’ve given him the finger or at the very least made moose antlers with her hands behind his back. Addie tucked her smile into her scarf.

She leaned against the battery wall, pressed up tight against Logan, taking in the view. The land seemed to go on forever, dappled in shades of yellows and greens, the gray hills blending with the sky in the distance.

She dug through her shoulder bag again and pulled out the worn pictures of her mom and the cannon. Happiness danced in her veins. “It’s pretty cool to be where she’s been.”

“Aye, lass.” Logan wrapped his arm around her.

She’d been afraid of finding the places in the pictures and feeling nothing, but it was powerful and comforting to stand where her mom had stood. The closest thing Addie had to handwritten recipes.

What she hadn’t expected to find were new places to visit the memory of her mother besides a graveyard in the desert.

Places that felt like bright life, like a beginning instead of an end.

Addie flipped to the picture on the moor. The vibrant green of summer stretched across the valley and crept its way up to the tops of the mountains, capped in misty clouds. Of course Heather was down by the stream.

“She could find endless wonder near a river.”

Logan slid his arm up her back and into her hair, and she relaxed against the gentle movement of his fingers.

In one of Addie’s surly teenage moments, as her mom had basked on the banks of the Rio Grande, her dad had gone on and on about rapids and currents and the bridled power of the water.

“It takes the path of least resistance,” Addie said with an eye roll.

Heather had gazed out at the river, sunlight dancing in tiny bursts across the ripples. “But look what a long way she’s come.”

Addie had come such a long way, too.

Churning and tumbling but finally ending up here. She’d avoided the memories and reminders—hell, this entire country—hoping to stifle the pain of remembering, but it didn’t hurt so much now.

Her heart no longer felt crushed. Fragile, certainly, but hopeful.

Like she was starting to heal after all.

Logan took the fourth picture from Addie, gently holding the worn edge of the photo. “This one’s pretty washed-out.” The sun spots blurred everything in the background except a moss-covered stone wall. “We may not be able to find it.”

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