A love across Time

2. Where The Wind Waits

Manhattan did not believe in silence. Quite the opposite, actually. It hummed at all hours—taxis arguing with traffic lights, subway grates exhaling steam, voices layered over sirens. Even at dawn, the city felt awake before the sun.

Vicki stood outside Romano’s Tavola with Scotty tucked under one arm and her suitcase at her feet.

The restaurant windows reflected her back at her — composed, capable, controlled.

She’d left a four-page operation packet for her staff.

She’d scheduled supplier confirmations two weeks out.

She’d pre-written social media posts.

There was nothing left to manage.

Which, oddly, made her uneasy.

“You’ll survive,” Gia had said the night before, hugging her hard. “And if you don’t, we’ll sell the place and move to Italy.”

Vicki smiled faintly at the memory.

She locked the restaurant door, slid the key into her purse, and stepped toward the waiting car.

As Manhattan blurred past the window on the way to JFK, she felt something unfamiliar twist in her stomach.

Not fear.

Anticipation.

At the airport, Scotty charmed three TSA agents and barked indignantly at a rolling suitcase that dared pass too close. Vicki moved on autopilot through the motions — boarding pass, security, gate number.

It wasn’t until she sat by the window of the overnight flight to Edinburgh that it truly settled in.

She was leaving.

The man who took the aisle seat beside her looked to be in his late sixties, with kind eyes and a navy wool sweater that smelled faintly of cedar.

“First time?” he asked gently as she fastened her seatbelt.

She glanced at him. “Is it that obvious?”

He smiled. “You’ve got the look.”

“And what look is that?”

“Like you’re not sure whether you’re running toward something or away from it.”

She laughed softly. “I own a restaurant in New York. I don’t run. I schedule.”

“Ah,” he said knowingly. “Then Scotland will do you good.”

“Oh?”

He extended a hand. “Malcolm Reid. Born and raised near Inverness. Been in the States visiting my daughter.”

“Vicki Romano.”

“Scotland has a way of interrupting people like you,” Malcolm said as the plane began taxiing. “Especially the Highlands.”

“I’m staying in a cottage outside Inverness,” she admitted. “Apparently I’m meant to find adventure.”

Malcolm’s eyes twinkled. “The Highlands don’t hand out adventure. They reveal it.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“There are places there,” he continued, lowering his voice slightly as the plane lifted into the night sky, “where the wind doesn’t quite sound like wind. Where the stones hum if you stand still long enough. Old land. Older than memory.”

Vicki smiled politely. “You make it sound mystical.”

“It is,” he said simply. “Scotland remembers things. People feel it when they don’t belong where they are.”

She glanced back out the window as New York became a scattering of lights beneath cloud cover.

“And what if someone belongs exactly where they are?” she asked.

Malcolm considered that.

“Then the land will let them leave unchanged.”

Something about the way he said it made her chest tighten.

The flight stretched long and quiet. Scotty slept curled at her feet. At some point, she drifted off, her head tipped toward the cool glass of the window.

She dreamed of wind.

Not the sharp city wind between skyscrapers.

But something wilder.

Open.

When the plane descended into Edinburgh, morning light spilled gold across the landscape below — rolling hills, ribbons of water, fields divided by ancient stone walls.

It was nothing like Manhattan.

It was everything Manhattan wasn’t.

She said her farewells to Malcom before collecting her carry on. After exiting the plane she looked around to find the baggage claim, when she spotted it she waited until her bags appeared. She collected them and began her first few steps out of the comfort of the airport.

The air that met her outside the airport was crisp and clean, tinged faintly with earth and distant rain.

She inhaled deeply.

For the first time in years, her lungs felt full.

She flagged for a taxi, patiently waiting while the driver exited the car to place her bags in the trunk.

The drive north toward Inverness unfolded like a painting — mist clinging to valleys, sheep dotting green hills, mountains rising like quiet giants in the distance.

The further they drove, the quieter it became.

No sirens.

No honking.

Just wind brushing against the car.

When they passed a weathered wooden sign pointing toward a narrow road leading deeper into the Highlands, something strange happened.

A pull.

It wasn’t dramatic. Not visible.

But her heartbeat shifted.

“Could you slow down?” she asked the driver suddenly.

He glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “This turn, miss?”

She stared at the road disappearing into open moorland.

“Yes.”

He slowed.

Scotty lifted his head, ears perked.

Vicki felt it again.

Not fear.

Not logic.

Recognition.

As if she’d been here before.

“That leads toward some older crofts,” the driver said casually. “Not much out there but wind and sheep.”

Wind.

She watched the hills stretch beyond sight.

Somewhere out there, unseen by her and separated by nearly eighty years, a man stood on that same land, staring at the same horizon.

And the wind moved the same way around them both.

“Actually,” she said slowly, “could we take that road?”

The driver shrugged lightly and turned the wheel.

As the car carried her deeper into the Highlands, Vicki pressed her palm lightly against her chest.

She didn’t understand it.

But she knew one thing with unsettling certainty.

She hadn’t come here by accident.

Granted, her family had pushed this trip on her, forced her to relax, but fate had a big part to play and it was only the beginning.