A Wreath of Snow Read Free Page A

to arrive before someone recognized him.
    It was not likely he’d be discovered, Gordon reminded himself. He’d left Stirling a smooth-faced lad of seventeen with lanky forearms poking out of his too-short sleeves. Now he sported a closely trimmed beard even redder than the hair on his head and a wool suit tailored to his fuller, taller frame. Time had done its duty by him. Once he reached Edinburgh, any fear of being identified could be put to rest.
    His conscience prodded him.
Is that all that matters, Shaw? Your reputation? What about the injured lad? What about Alan Campbell?
    Gordon shifted his stance, uncomfortable with such questions. Of course the Campbell boy mattered. He would be a man now. Twenty-two. Bedridden, perhaps, his legs all but useless.
    Every detail of that January afternoon was seared into Gordon’s memory, from the fir trees beside the curling pond at King’s Park to the frigid weather, even colder than today. It seemed all of Stirlingshire had gathered along the edge of the pond, waiting for the match to begin, when he stumbled onto the ice, laughing and loose-limbed from too many drams of whisky. He grabbed his curling stone by the handle and swept the heavy, teapot-shaped stone around him in a lopsided circle, taunting the other lads by promising to crown one of them King of the Bean for Twelfth Night.
    Then it happened. Gordon lost his grip on the handle just as ten-year-old Alan Campbell darted onto the ice. The granite curling stone struck the lad squarely in the lower back. Alan cried out in such pain that every spectator turned to see who was injured. And who was responsible.
    I didn’t mean to hurt him
.
    How many times had Gordon said those words? Though his apology that night was sincere, it could not heal the little boy or comfort the sister who held him across her lap, weeping.
    The town turned against him overnight. When he knocked on the Campbells’ door to apologize, he was not received.When he wrote to the family, the letters were returned unopened. Within weeks he left Stirling in disgrace to seek a fresh start in Glasgow. His parents had remained in Stirling until they could bear the shame no longer and moved south to England, his mother’s home.
    Since that January afternoon Gordon hadn’t touched a drop of whisky, hadn’t missed a Sunday in church, hadn’t given any man or woman further cause to despise him. He’d also refused to touch a curling stone, praying the Lord would heal Alan and undo the damage his carelessness had wrought. But here in the town of his birth, memories ran deep, and forgiveness was hard to come by.
    In the distance a shrill whistle pierced the air. Gordon eased closer to the rails, anxious to be gone from Stirling, to disappear like the Ochil Hills that were now hidden behind a thickening curtain of snow. When the train finally entered the station and ground to a halt, he bolted through one of the narrow wooden doors, then headed toward two vacant seats at the front of a second-class carriage. He chose the spot by the window and placed his bag beside him, hoping no one would have need of the aisle seat.
    Seeking refuge behind his newspaper, Gordon scanned the columns of ink. The choppy cadence of the voices around him marked them as Stirling men. “Sons of the Rock,” they were called, a nod to the massive crag that dominates the town, withold Stirling Castle at its pinnacle. As a lad he’d chased many a ball down Castle Wynd. Some of the men conversing behind him had probably done the same. He might even find fellow curlers among them. Old friends who’d long forgotten him. Or who remembered him all too well.
    Gordon looked over his shoulder. Was the dark-haired fellow one of the Gillespie brothers? Hard to be certain. Stuart and Roy would both be in their thirties now. He eyed the other travelers, recognizing none of them. Not the older man clenching his unlit pipe between his teeth or the surly lad with a jagged scar across his chin or the