The Secret Gift Read Online Free PDF Page B

for—”
    “I know bloody well what you were looking for. You’re not the first, and I’m reasonably certain you won’t be the last. So let me save you the trouble. I’m not interested.”
    “I beg your—not interested—in what?”
    “I’m not interested in
you.”
    “But I’m not—”
    “You’re right, miss. You’re not. You’re not going to get what you came here for, so why don’t you save us both a lot of trouble. Turn your car around, drive back the way you came, and never come back again.”
    Libby just stared at him, blinking, trying to think of something to say. A moment later, everything, the exhaustion and stress of the past few hours, the emotion, the grief, the confusion, the terrible loneliness she had been buried beneath the past weeks, all of it came bursting out in a sudden shower of sheer, utter hysterics.
    “But that’s what I’m trying to do! I have been driving for three hours, and now I don’t know where in the world I even am. I mean, what is wrong with your roads? None of them have names, only numbers, and some of them don’t even have that. There are no street signs anywhere. The roads just turn and twist till I have no idea what direction I’m going. I don’t even know where I am. There aren’t any houses. Where do people live? Where do you buy food to eat? The sign said three miles! Are miles longer in Scotland than everywhere else in the world? Or do you just make up fake villages and distances to confound drivers for your own personal entertainment?”
    By the time she finished her tirade, she was crying.
Damn it!
And what was worse, she couldn’t seem to stop herself. Her shoulders were hitching, and her breathing was coming in strangled little sobs. Then she started to hiccup. She couldn’t imagine how pathetic she must look, strapped in her little Vauxhall Astra with its worthless NAV button, exhausted, flight-haggard, bawling her eyes out and hiccuping like a drunkard. She half expected the dashboard voice to suddenly scold, “You—are—making—an—idiot—of—yourself—tears—flowing—freely.”
    Libby put her head in her hands and just let it go. She cried for her mother, for the loss of her, for the horrible guilt she felt over not having been there for her in her last days. She cried for the sheep that had stood in the middle of the road, refusing to budge. She cried for the fact that while she lived and worked in one of the largest, most complicated cities in the world, she couldn’t follow a simple road map to a Scottish village. She cried for the disaster of that April day. But mostly she cried for the fact that at that very moment, this lunatic with the gun could kill her and no one, not a single soul on the face of the earth, would ever even realize it, because there was no one. No one in her life anymore, no one but her.
    It had to have been several minutes later when Libby finally managed to collect herself. He was still standing there, next to the open car door, saying nothing, just looking at her with that same bland expression that wasn’t even an expression at all. Libby turned her head, peered up at him. She could barely see him through the smear of tears that clouded the lenses of her eyeglasses.
    He said nothing, but he reached into his pocket and took out a handkerchief. He offered it to her. Libby took it, cleaned her glasses, dried her tears, wiped her sniffly nose.
    “Thank you.”
    “Keep it.”
    Then he said, very quietly, “If you are looking for the village, it is just down the drive, past the gatehouse, and to the right. You’ll have to go down a steep hill and across the stone bridge. It may seem like you’re driving straight into the sea, but it is the right way, I assure you.”
    Libby simply nodded. She knew exactly where he had directed her. She had already gone that way twice before and had indeed assumed she was driving straight into the sea. So she had stopped, and turned around, and on the third try, had ended up