Minnie [#Wattys2017]

Bring Them Home

Bring Them Home

The Reverend Robert McGonagall fell to his knees beside his bed and clasped his hands to his forehead, tears trembling in the corners of his eyes. "Bring them home," he begged. "Father God, bring my wife and baby girl home."

What had started as a birthday treat - an ice cream in the village down the road from the manse where they lived - had turned into a four day absence.

"Where is your wife and daughter, Reverend?" the parishioners had questioned him Sunday, when he arrived to the church with only Malcolm and Robbie in tow.

"Minerva wasn't feeling well this morning," he lied, "Isobel's stayed at home to care for her."

In the car, Malcolm had said, "Da, why did you lie to Mrs. Mackinnon about mum and Min? Don't you remember it's 'gainst the Bible to be tellin' a lie?"

"Some things are needin' to be kept private in a family, m'son," Robert had answered in a shaking voice, his fingers tight 'round the wheel of the car - so tight that his knuckles were pale from the grip. "Some things needn't be shared. And those things - those things God understands if we be lyin' about them, now and then, so long as the lie isn't hurtin' another soul."

Malcolm had said, "But I thought all lies were evil."

"You'll understand it when you're older, I s'pose, the difference," Robert had replied.

On Monday morning, on his way to school, Dougal McGregor stopped by the McGonagall house with a handful of wildflowers and couple of honey straws for Minerva. "To be makin' her feel well again, Reverend," Dougal said, "My mam heard from Mrs. Mackinnon at the fishery that you was sayin' Minnie's not feelin' so well, and I was wantin' to wish her well. May I see her very briefly?"

The Reverend had shaken his head, "She's asleep and I ain't waking her to speak with a little heathen like yourself, now skit."

But Dougal had left the flowers and honey sticks on the porch stairs nonetheless and the Reverend had collected them and put the flowers in a jar of water for Minnie to appreciate when she got home.

"When's mother coming back? I miss her!" Robbie pleaded that night, "I miss her stories before bed!"

"I can tell you stories until mother comes home," Robert had suggested.

"But mother tells better stories -" argued Robbie, "She tells me stories of flying dragons and goblins, not the same stories of Jesus and men who are swallowed by whales!"

The Reverend had bit his tongue.

Now, he knelt beside the bed in the bedroom, his knees aching on the wood floor, praying.

It wasn't the first time that Isobel had disappeared from home like this. She'd left several times over the past twelve years since they had eloped - much to the shock and despair of both his parents and hers. Ever since Minerva had been born - which had been little more than a year into their marriage - the disappearances had begun. For days at a time, Isobel would take Minerva and go and when she returned it was always with some silly excuse for where she'd been, usually claiming she'd been to see her parents in Shetland... but never a note, never a warning, simply an untraceable disappearance.

It had been when Minerva was only five that Robert had returned home from the church late one evening, after overseeing a funeral, to find his bagpipes playing of their own accord in the living room as little Minerva clapped and danced along to the tune, that Isobel, pregnant at the time with Robbie, had asked little Minerva to watch over baby Malcolm for a moment while she brought Robert upstairs and withdrew her wand from beneath the floorboards and told him what she was.