The Child Garden by Catriona McPherson

was starting to sound panicky again, like the night before when he was pacing.
    I didn’t tell him to slow it down, but I breathed slowly myself, hoping he would follow. Modelling. I learned it in the conflict resolution bit of my induction training. All registrars get it, I think, but you only need it in big cities where weddings can get raucous and when there’s two lads wanting on the birth certificate and a girl that won’t give a glance to either. That doesn’t happen very much in a place like Dalry.
    â€œWhat’s that thing?” said Stig, still with his head against the window.
    I knew what he was talking about, of course. It’s hidden from the lane and the gate and the path. The only view of it is from the kitchen.
    â€œThat’s the only possible problem with you lying low,” I said. I joined him and looked out at it. Six feet tall, six feet round, mossy and lichened on its shady side and bleached pale grey where the sun hit it, it sat basking in the dawn, enjoying the dew rising from it for the day. “That’s the Stone of Milharay. It’s the reason I’m here. Well, that and Walter.”
    â€œBut what is it?” said Stig.
    â€œCome and see,” I said. “What size are your feet? You can jam on my crocs and shuffle out there.”
    It was cold, of course, but with that fresh, keen wind that makes me think of hares streaking across the fields, so different from the bellowing storm last night. Over by the stone we could hear the wind whistling.
    â€œIt’s a rocking stone,” I said. “Push it. Gently!”
    He set one hand against its shady side and pressed. His eyebrows shot up. “Whoa!” he said, jumping back. “That felt really weird.”
    â€œI’m pretty sure it wouldn’t pass health and safety.”
    â€œIt felt like it was going to roll on top of me,” he said, putting his fingertips against it again.
    â€œIt doesn’t matter where you push, it always does that.”
    â€œWhy would you ever push it?”
    â€œOld wives’ tales,” I said. “Twelve pushes for luck.”
    Even more gently, he rocked it again, not even hard enough to whiten the skin around his fingernails. He was so restrained—not like my brother-in-law shoving it with the side of his arm as if he was trying to break down a door and then just laughing when it threatened to topple.
    â€œI’d have been homeless,” I’d screamed at him. “And thousands of years of history gone because you’re such a He-Man.”
    â€œWho says He-Man?” Scott sneered. “You’re a throwback, Gloria.”
    â€œFishwife, more like,” said my sister. “Don’t screech like that. You’ll upset the baby.” She rubbed her stomach that way she was always doing.
    â€œWhat about my baby?” I’d roared at her. I knew I shouldn’t be raising my voice, but their visit had made me scared of what they were up to, why all of a sudden they wanted to be coming to see me. “Eh?” I demanded. “What about how upset Nicky would be if I didn’t live here any more and couldn’t get to see him every day?”
    â€œNicky,” Scott had said, “would be as upset as this bloody rock.” And my sister, Marilyn, actually smirked. She had the decency to turn away, but she was smiling. So I never met my niece, or the nephew that followed, and Nicky hadn’t seen his auntie and uncle since he was six.
    â€œHardly any of them still move,” I told Stig. “They get choked up with leaf litter or tufts of grass or people try to clear them and go too far and they roll off. Miss Drumm’s been looking after this one since she was twelve and her dad trained her. Then when she got too frail, she trained me.”
    â€œAnd how exactly could this thing scupper me hiding?”
    â€œBecause the only time in ten years anyone has ever turned up here