Fin swallowed a bite of his club sandwich. “Ans really surprised me when she told me she wanted to come and share everything. Now that I’ve met you, I can see she made the right choice.”
“Fin, you mentioned your mother as the second reason you reacted the way you did at the Games. Why?” asked Ian carefully. “If you’d rather wait until after you’ve finished eating, we understand.”
Fin shook his head. “No need. You may have noticed when we first mentioned my brother, we said he used to play the bagpipes.” Ian, Annie, and Alice solemnly nodded. “Tor died in January of 1986, while he was participating in extreme sports in Colorado. Our mother has never recovered from it.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that.” Annie’s voice was soft. “I can’t imagine losing my daughter.”
Fin bowed his head briefly, acknowledging her sympathy. “My father kept thinking her grief would lessen in time, so he kept the bagpipes and other personal items in Tor’s room at home and simply shut the door.”
“Do you know how the ferrules and sporran ended up in Annie’s attic?” asked Alice. She spooned some chowder to her lips.
Fin nodded, setting his cup on the table. “I never knew exactly what had happened to them and had to do some quiet detective work myself, making sure my mother didn’t hear about it. We have to go back to 1978 to give you the foundation.”
“That’s the year the Highland Games started, isn’t it?” asked Ian.
“Yes,” answered Fin. “My family has always been very close to the Gunn family. Our farms are adjacent to each other, and we always had picnics and played sports together, like one giant family.”
Ansley spoke up, her fork poised in midair. “So of course our families not only entered as many of the Highland Games competitions as possible, but also made up their own spin on it. My dad donated his sealskin sporran as a trophy of sorts, to the family who collectively brought home the most honors at the Games. The triumphant family would display the sporran prominently until the next Games. It was a crazy, fun time for us each year.”
“The competition grew to other Scot families in the area, as well,” added Fin. “In the last year, I think we had seven or eight families vying for the prize. We were all so evenly matched, the sporran changed hands often.”
“Do you know which family had it the final year?” asked Ian.
“Yes, we Roses won it that year,” answered Fin. “But we don’t have it now. The August after Tor died, my mother was still so distraught, my father returned the sporran to Mr. Gunn.” He glanced over at Ansley.
Annie had quietly been following the story, melding it with her grandpa’s journal entry. She added, “And Mr. Gunn then gave it to my grandfather, Charles Holden, his veterinarian.”
Both Ansley and Fin were startled. “How did you know?” Fin blurted.
Annie gave them a sheepish look. “After I came home from the Games, I doubted I’d ever hear from anyone. So I did the last thing I could think of, which was to read through my grandfather’s vet journals. He kept notes on his practice every year until his retirement. In the 1986 book there was an entry about tending a sheep with an abscess at the Gunn farm.” She paused, a glance darting toward Alice. “He mentioned the sporran.”
Ansley stared at her coffee cup, nodding slowly. “I can see my dad doing that. He trusted your grandfather completely—trust built through years of bonding over the animals. He attended Dr. Holden’s funeral.” She shook her head at the realization.
“Grandpa always said you can tell a lot about a person by how they treat animals,” Annie said. “What I still don’t know from his journal is why the ferrules were in the sporran.” She looked at the visitors. “Do you know?”
Fin brushed sandwich crumbs from his fingers. “My father told me he had the silver hawk-and-rose ferrules removed from Tor’s bagpipe, reassembled it with regular ferrules, and gave the bagpipe to another family friend for safekeeping. He put the ferrules in the sporran.”
“And the family friend was … ?” Alice asked, raising an eyebrow.
Ansley answered, “Logan Bell.”
The three Stony Point friends were silent for a moment, knowing the next logical question most likely would tread on very personal ground for Ansley. Ian gave the slightest of nods to Annie, feeling it should be her who asked it.
Annie reached over and placed a hand upon one of Ansley’s. “Then why do you have a solitary ferrule with the design?”
The woman’s eyes grew distant, yet soft, as she returned to the very young woman she once was. She whispered, “I took one ferrule from the sporran. I heard Dad talking to Dr. Holden on the phone, saying he had a special request to make of him. Something told me it had to do with the sporran, and I had to keep something … ” Her voice caught, and she paused before continuing, “… something to remember Tor by. He was, after all, my first love.”