skittering over my shoulders. “It’s Alloway’s most famous landmark.”
The gray arch I could see from my window was the Brig o’ Doon? I spun around and strained my eyes through the looming darkness … wondering if it resembled the stone pathway from my vision. “Can we walk down there?”
“Sure, but not tonight. There’s a trail from the backyard, but the caretaker, Mrs. Dell, warned me before we arrived that it’s badly overgrown. No sense breaking a leg our first night here. Get it? Break a leg?”
Kenna’s drama club pals back home would’ve appreciated the joke, but I couldn’t even muster a chuckle. I shoved my hands in my pockets to hide their shaking, and turned from the window to see Kenna analyzing me, her head cocked to one side. “Are you okay?”
I stared at her for a moment, considering if I should tell her about the visions … or hauntings … or whatever. Instead, my brain circled back to the arch of ancient-looking stones I’d seen and the possible connection to the actual bridge outside my window. “So, why is the Brig o’ Doon famous?” I was pleased my voice only sounded a few octaves higher than normal.
“Uh,
Brigadoon
!” At my lack of recognition, she added, “The musical by the immortal Lerner and Loewe?”
She hummed a haunting melody as she ran her fingers along my stack of books, knocking them over like dominos, and then turned to me expectantly. “Surely you recognize ‘Almost Like Being in Love.’”
“Nope.” She’d made me watch so many musicals over the years … I certainly couldn’t remember them all. I pressed my lips together and shook my head as I walked over to the dresser and righted my precious tomes, glancing at my copy of
Oliver Twist
. That musical I remembered, due to its grievous omission of the character Monks.
Kenna rolled her eyes. “You researched Alloway, right?Robert Burn’s poem,
The Tam o’ Shanter
, is set on the Brig o’ Doon. That ring a bell?”
“Of course. I just didn’t realized that the Brig o’ Doon was so close to the cottage.” It’s not like any of the roads we’d traveled had been straight. However, the more I thought about it, I did remember her telling me something a long time ago about a bridge near her aunt’s and a dark-haired boy with a brogue that used to call to her. “Didn’t your imaginary friend live under that bridge?”
Kenna snorted. “Not under the bridge—he wasn’t the troll from
The Three Billy Goats Gruff
. Finn lived on it. I can’t believe you remembered that.”
It was a random thing to remember … or was it? What were the odds that both she and I imagined Scottish boys standing on an ancient stone path and calling for us to come? One in a million?
“Vee …” Kenna stalked toward me with narrowed eyes. “You’re doing that twisty thing with your hair. I can read you like a script, remember? What’s really going on?”
Not realizing I’d been tying my hair into a knot, I lowered my hands and pushed out a loud breath. It had always been hard to keep secrets from the girl who knew me better than anyone on the planet. “Remember when I asked if you’d seen that hot blond guy in the kilt earlier?”
“Yesss …”
“Well, I … ah … keep seeing him … everywhere. The same gorgeous boy in a kilt. Even once in Bainbridge, right after I broke up with Eric.” I slumped back against the dresser and stared at my cuticles. It sounded even more insane when I said it aloud. But if I was going to tell her, I might as well tell her everything. “He was here just now. Before you came in, and he … ah … talked to me.”
“Really? You know what my dad would say, don’t you?”
I shook my head. Kenna’s dad taught undergraduate psychology. Growing up, he’d had a psychological reason for everything, even why my dad walked out on us. Kenna crossed to the bed and sat on the edge, staring up at me with grave eyes. “He’d say ‘Kilt Boy’ is your