Page 97 of The Devil Wears Tartan

“I just had a hunch you might be here and that it might be nice to have someone check in on you. I can leave if you want. No pressure.” She hooks a thumb over her shoulder to point back at the door.

“Oh, no. You don’t have to leave, Mrs. Murray. I just...how did you know I was going to be here?”

“You can call me Margaret, honey.” She waves my formality off. “I heard...I heard some of what’s going on from Moira, and after bumping into you at the competition, I just thought...well, I’m a mom. I worry. It’s my job. Call it a mother’s instinct, or maybe just a highland thing, but I figured if you’re the kind of person who loves dance as much as my Moira and I do, you might end up here on a day like today.”

“I...I...” I splutter myself into silence as she looks at me with so much warmth and concern I almost collapse back into sobs. Her caring tone has part of me wanting to rush right into her arms, even though we’ve hardly spoken before today.

“Ah, so you’ve got a Stewie hall of fame.” She takes a few steps closer to the front desk as her eyes dart over to the gallery wall, chuckling to herself. “Did you know that’s what Moira calls everyone here? Stewies?”

My chest tightens, and I press my lips together as I nod. “Yes.”

I can see Moira in her face, hear Moira in her voice every now and then, and it leaves my heart aching.

“Catherine has a lot to be proud of.” Margaret gets quieter as she scans the photos. She rests her hands on top of the wide desk, and I watch one of her fingers tap out a slow rhythm. “You know, the Rebecca Stewart Academy looked very different back in the day. I didn’t even know the address for the new location. I had to look it up. It’s...” She pauses and glances around the room. “It’s very Catherine in here.”

I huff a laugh. “Yeah, you could say that.”

She turns back to the photos, and I stare at her profile. There’s a shift in her expression I can’t quite place. She almost looks wistful.

Curiosity gets the better of me, and I ask, “So you’d been to the old school before? You used to compete against Catherine, right? I think I’ve heard you had some sort of...like kind of a famous rivalry?”

The corner of her mouth lifts. “You could say that.”

She’s silent for a few seconds, and I start to think that’s the only answer I’m getting, but then she sighs.

“We had a rivalry, yes. Our rivalry could have rivalled you and Moira’s, but...everyone seems to have forgotten that for a few years, Catherine and I were very good friends. Best friends.”

She must hear my stifled gasp; she breaks her focus on the photos to grin at me.

“Shocking, I know. My family moved to Ottawa when I was in junior high. I’d been doing highland out on the east coast, and I joined the Rebecca Stewart Academy when I got here. It wasn’t...this back in the day.” She lifts a hand to indicate the high class vibe of the room. “But it was a good place to learn. Catherine and I hit it off right away. We went to different high schools, but we had sleepovers almost every weekend and called each other on the phone almost every night. At competitions, they used to call us the dream team. We always said we didn’t care who won as long as it was one of us.”

I blink a few times, leaning my weight against the desk as I process. “You’re serious?”

She gives my arm a playful swat. “Of course I am.”

“Sorry. I know you’re not lying. It’s just...Catherine’s never mentioned any of that to me.”

She shrugs, and that same wistful look takes over her face. “Like I said, most people seem to have forgotten about it, including Catherine herself.”

“So you grew apart?”

She opens and closes her mouth a few times, one of her hands rubbing the other on top of the desk. “It was a bit more...abrupt than that, although she got distant for a while before. Catherine...she went through some hard times.”

I drop my gaze to the floor, my voice lowering. “You mean things with her dad, right?”

Margaret’s voice lowers too. “So she’s told you about that?”

I was in junior high when Catherine told me. I’d bombed at a competition after a shit week at home during the initial phases of the divorce between my mom and Chris’s dad. Catherine found me practicing alone in one of the studios the next day, working myself dangerously close to the point of injury.

She sat me down and listened while I told her what was going on, and that’s when she told me about her dad getting violent when she was in high school. She said he mostly threw stuff and screamed, and that it was enough to have the whole family terrified of worse.

I’d weathered some shouting matches, but nothing like that. Still, we both knew the need to escape, to want better. It was the same drive that already had me sure I wanted to be a social worker one day.

After she told me, Catherine helped me create a training schedule that wouldn’t kill me, and from that day on, we both committed to me making it to the world championships before I graduated high school.

“She has.” I nod, still looking at the floor. “I...Things haven’t always been great at home for me either. I never dealt with abuse, thank god, but it’s been...tough.”

Margaret shuffles closer and slides her hand over to mine. She gives me a questioning look, and when I nod, she closes her warm fingers around my palm.

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