HAW SAT UP IN BED. He smelled his adult sweat, tasted it too as it trickled into his mouth. He rose, opened the window of his hotel room, and let the cool Edinburgh air sweep away the terror of a six-year-old boy.

His room at the Balmoral looked out onto Princes Street, a grand thoroughfare of shops, pubs, and restaurants. On a high hill to his right lay the imposing footprint of Edinburgh Castle that would dwarf Malahide if they’d been set side by side. The Palace of Holyroodhouse anchored the other edge of the city and was the official summer residence of the British royal family.

Must be nice, Shaw thought, to have an official residence.

“Mudder,” he said in a low voice. He hadn’t experienced the pain of that nightmare in nearly a year. He thought it was gone forever. As with many important things in his life, he’d been wrong.

He’d been thrown out of the orphanage the next day despite the old nun’s impassioned pleas to allow him to stay. The other boy, a bulky lad of twelve, had been severely injured by the young Shaw. Some had wanted to call in the police. Yet how could one hold a six-year-old criminally liable? Shaw remembered terms like malicious intent, willful assault. He hadn’t known what they meant. But he did know that he wanted to kill the other boy. Kill the other boy so he would hurt as much as Shaw did.

In the end it was determined that a child who couldn’t even pronounce the word “mother” properly because he’d never really had one could not be charged with a crime.

Sister Mary Agnes Maria, what a truly beautiful name that had been. They all called her Sister MAM, which Shaw had translated to MOM. She was as close to a mother as he would ever get in life. He’d never had another.

He hadn’t called himself A Shaw because he was a Shaw. It was because of the orphanage. Painted on the wall over the bed of the boy who slept opposite his was the letter “A.” It was not just randomly there; not the beginnings of an alphabet train. It had once been part of a word, but the “M,” “E,” and “N” had been worn away over time, and poor busy Sister Mary Agnes Maria had never had the time or apparently the paint to put the M-E-N back into AMEN.

Shaw wasn’t sorry about that. He would look at the letter and imagine the long vertical lines of the “A” softening to form the rounded face of his mother. The horizontal slash connecting the two long lines would curl into a smile on his mother’s face, because she was so happy to see him. She had come back for him. They would leave together. They would leave right now. The “A” was his friend. It held so many good possibilities. And then the sun would rise and vanquish them all. Ever since then Shaw had enjoyed the night far more than the day. He would always be a person of the night now.

The years had passed swiftly with a quick succession of orphanages, none of them with a Sister Mary Agnes Maria. Then came foster homes, and other facilities for children who, while not technically criminal, were so close to the line that no one wanted the problem. That was every day of his life until Shaw the boy became, at age eighteen, Shaw the man.

By then he could clearly say “mother” but had not a single reason to do so.

He shut the window and sat on the bed. The man on the high-speed ferry from Dublin had connected with him. They’d gone to the open boat doors at the stern. With the wind and the engines covering their conversation he’d told Shaw the first phase of what he needed to know. As he was leaving the man had stared back at Shaw, his expression clear. If you survive this, it’ll be a miracle.

On the express train from Wales to London, Shaw had stared out the window, alternately taking in the sea vistas and the views of the Cambrian Mountains, shutting out the desultory conversations from the passengers around him. There was nothing normal about his world, and he felt it nearly impossible to relate to anything outside his own sphere.

Except for Anna. She was his first and only connection to the rest of humanity.

On the overnight train to Scotland he was visited again, in his sleeper compartment, this time by a woman. She was young, but looked old. She was physically attractive but her spirit seemed to be gone. She was a vessel only. People like Frank had torn her soul right out so they could fill it up with what they wanted. In a monotone she told him the second phase of what he needed to know. Nothing was ever written down, so he memorized every detail. If he made one slip he was dead. It was that simple.

He rose, dressed, and looked once more at the book Anna had inscribed for him.

Love without trust is nothing.

She’d be asleep. He called anyway. Surprisingly, she answered on the second ring.

“I hoped it might be you,” she said, her voice wide awake. “How was the trip?”

“I read the inscription.”

She said nothing.

He swallowed hard. “I want to trust you. I do trust you. I told you what I did. Do you realize how hard that was for me?”

“Yes, but there are obviously things you can’t tell me.”

“There are,” he admitted.

“So after we’re married, you will go away without a word and show up without one either?”

“I’m retiring. I told you. And I have a desk job.”

“Don’t insult my intelligence with tales of luggage falling from aircraft bins. And people behind a desk don’t go to castles without bothering to take a tour. Or take the time to travel by ferry from Ireland to Scotland. Was it to meet someone?”

Her words stung him. “You followed me?”

“Of course I did. I’m planning on marrying you. And I hate that I have to even think of following you, much less do it.” Her voice shook and he heard a small sob. Shaw wanted to reach across the phone line and hold her, tell her everything would be okay. Yet he had lied to her enough.

He found his own voice. “There’s still time to back out, Anna. You said yes, you can also say no. I’ll understand.”

Her tone became harsh. “I don’t like that you would understand. You should not understand. The same for me if you walked away. I would not understand.”

“I love you. I will make this work. I will.”

He thought he heard another sob escape her lips and his guilt increased.

She said, “And how you will make this all work, you can’t tell me?”

“No,” he admitted. “I can’t.”

“Where do you go after Scotland?”

“Heidelberg.”

“My parents live about an hour from there. In a small village called Wisbach, near the town of Karlsruhe. They run a bookshop, the only one in Wisbach. Go to see them. Their names are Wolfgang and Natascha. They are good people. Kind people. I wanted you to meet them before now, but you were always too busy.”

He hadn’t always been too busy, Shaw knew. He’d been too afraid.

“You want me to see them without you?”

“Yes. Ask my father for my hand in marriage. If he says yes, we will be married. If you still want to.”

This request stunned him. “Anna, I—”

She rushed on, “If you think it is worth it, you will go. I will tell them you are coming. If you do not go, then I will have my answer.”

The line went dead. Shaw slowly put down the phone and looked at the blotting paper on the desk where he had written the name Anna Fischer over and over, driving the letters hard into the thin surface. He tore the paper up, left the Balmoral, and walked down Princes Street, past all the closed shops. Two hours later he was still wandering through the ancient Scottish capital as the sun started to creep up, illuminating the aged stone bridges and casting shadows behind which Shaw could imagine every single one of his nightmares. And he had more than most.

He would go to see her parents at the bookshop in Wisbach. He would ask for their daughter’s hand in marriage.

Yes, he would do all that. If he was still alive.

“Where’s Mudder?” he whispered to the semidarkness as he walked back to the Balmoral to prepare for what might be his last few hours on earth.