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hair, shorter than it was the last time the girls had seen it but still curly. His face was red, either from too much sun—which was doubtful, given the overcast skies—or because he was totally blushing.
    As they exited, a large blue sign hanging from a streetlamp greeted them in the country’s two languages, English and Gaelic: “Welcome to Scotland” and “Fàilte gu Alba . ”
    Lola was wearing sandals; pretty, but not particularly practical on a day like this.
    “You’ll catch a cold,” Rory told her, looking down at her exposed feet.
    “I’ll keep that in mind for tomorrow,” Lola said, still smiling happily.
    “You’re all so tan,” said Rory. “I miss the Barcelona sunshine.”
    “It looks like we will too,” noted Berta, looking up at the sky.
    Lola gave her friend a little shove. They’d just arrived, and it wasn’t a good idea to start in on the bad weather.

    Rebecca, squinting in the drizzle, also glanced up at the overcast sky. She hoped her dismay was not too evident. And although the typical comment about the weather in Britain was on the tip of her tongue, she kept it to herself; she didn’t want to feel Lola’s elbow in her side.
    Lola was excited. Rebecca figured it wouldn’t have mattered if it were raining cats and dogs—an English expression she’d learned a long time ago, even though she never really understood the reference to animals. “It’s raining buckets,” another idiom she had learned, made sense to her. But “cats and dogs”?

    They walked to the parking lot, stowed their three big suitcases as best they could in the trunk and backseat of Rory’s red Ford Mondeo, and climbed into the sedan.
    Leaving the airport, they headed southeast on a highway that ran parallel to the estuary.
    The scenery was as expected: lots of green wherever they looked, with a few houses scattered along both sides of the road. Their walls were white or stone, and the roofs were peaked and covered with flat, black slate tiles. Very British, thought Berta. She asked how far it was to Beauly.
    Rory grinned upon hearing her pronounce the name, the laughter in his eyes reflected in the rearview mirror.
    “What?” Berta said.
    “Nothing,” he replied. “It just sounded funny.”
    “It’s pronounced like beauty ,” Lola corrected her. “You made it sound French, with an o.”
    “It’s pretty much the same thing, isn’t it?”
    “Well, if you go back, the origin of the word is French,” Rory said.
    “See?” Berta raised an eyebrow and gave Lola a look.
    “Beauly is twenty miles from here; it’ll take about thirty minutes.”
    Those in the backseat were clearly relieved; they didn’t much like the idea of a long ride when they were surrounded by suitcases that penned them in with little wheels and polycarbonate walls.
    “You’ll love the cottage I’ve reserved for you,” Rory was saying. “It’s the best in the area, but Mrs. Munro wouldn’t budge on the price. Three weeks was all I could get you.”
    “Oh, don’t worry about that,” Berta said, observing Rebecca rolling her eyes. “Three weeks is more than enough.”
    “I’d spend my whole summer here,” Lola said, turning to look at Rory, who beamed back at her with a wide, promising smile.
    The girls studied their friend and her college flame and couldn’t stop smiling or giving each other encouraging looks. They could see the two holding hands. They both knew Rory’s relationship with Lola had been a blip in Lola’s hectic love life. He’d been a side thing during her six-month relationship with Santi, a classmate during her third year. In the end, Lola had left them both. She’d always said Santi never really cared, but Rory had been deeply hurt. Clearly, he still adored her. They could tell by the way he looked at her.
    They saw a sign that directed them to turn left for Culloden Battlefield.
    “A field of battle?” Berta asked, translating the English literally.
    “Culloden Field,” Rory explained,