The storm sits on the horizon like a bruise, purple-gray and heavy. A waterspout threads down from the cloud base, thin as a pencil line, and I watch it dissolve before it reaches the sea. The tenth-floor condo balcony door is cracked, and the slight breeze of Biscayne Bay and yesterday's coconut sunscreen drift in. I have three utility bills spread across the kitchen table like a map, a property management notice about a HOA increase, and a mug of Earl Grey going cold beside my elbow.
The numbers on the electric bill don't add up. I run them again, pencil tapping while the waterspout reforms farther out. What else is new.
Sophia's bedroom door flings open.
"You're not going to believe this." Sophia's voice hits before she does, bright and carrying, the way it always is when she has pressing news. She kicks the door shut behind her and crosses the room in four long strides; phone clutched in her hand like a relay baton. Her contact lenses today are amethyst which matches her energy. "Darla. Darla. Put down the pencil." She acts if I am going to do something criminal.
I don't want to put down the pencil. "The electric bill is wrong."
"The electric bill is always wrong." She leans over the table and shoves my mug aside so she can set her phone down in front of me. "Look."
The screen shows an email with the Sons of Scotland logo at the top, a stylized stag's head in gold. The subject line reads: Contest Winner Confirmation. My name is in the body of the email. Darla Deeds. Your prize includes round trip airfare, all transfers, seven nights at a five-star hotel in Edinburgh, hotel credit for meals and a private dinner with Knox McKay. I read it twice.
"This is a scam; I didn't enter a contest."
Sophia drops into the chair across from me and helps herself to a pink gummy bear from the bag she's produced from thin air. "I know."
"Sophia spill it!"
"You never enter anything. You never do anything." She chews, unbothered. "So, I did it for you. They had this thing online, a trivia quiz about the show, and then an essay prompt about why you deserve to visit Scotland. I wrote in your information."
I set the pencil down. The waterspout has collapsed again. "You wrote an essay as me."
"You can thank me later." She grins.
"I can't go to Scotland."
"You can, I know you have plenty of vacation hours left. Look, I entered this contest about a dozen times. You were entered only once and somehow the odds chose you. They're sending a car."
"A car."
"Yes, Cinderella a car, next week." She pops another gummy bear into her mouth. "And before you say anything else, the email says all contest results are final, and the prize is non-transferrable. I would volunteer to take your place in a heartbeat, but I can't. So, you have no choice but to go."
I look at it, then at the bills, then at my half-sister. She is twenty-five and has never paid a utility bill in her life, and she is beaming at me as if she has handed me a winning lottery ticket instead of a week in a country, I have no desire to visit. If I want to visit Scotland I can from the couch watching a travel channel.
"I have work," I sharply say.
"You have spreadsheets. They'll survive."
"I don't watch the show."
"Everyone watches the show. Josie watches the show. You work three cubicles down from Josie. You've heard her talk about it."
I have heard Josie talk about it. I have heard Josie talk about it for three years, every Monday morning, recapping episodes I wrote in a college dorm room in my sophomore year. The pencil is still on the table. I pick it up again.
"Fine," Sophia says, reading my silence the way she always does, as surrender. "You're going. I'm going to help you pack."
She is already scrolling through her phone, probably looking at weather in Edinburgh, probably coordinating designer outfits I don't own. The gummy bear bag rustles. Outside, the storm has moved closer, and the first fat drops of rain hit the balcony railing with a sound like fingers drumming on metal.
I close my eyes and don't say what I'm thinking, which is that the last time I set foot on a plane was the year I sold a screenplay to an independent production company that promised me a check and nothing else. I can never say I wrote it. I am an accountant for a Medical Supply Company with a condo HOA increase and a half-sister who submits contest entries in my name. I was not about to question that I could be disqualified from the contest if they found she was posing as me.
"You're going to love Edinburgh," Sophia says like she has been there in dreams.
The rain comes down harder like the storm is coming for me.
The town car is shiny black and smells of leather conditioner. It arrives exactly on time one week later, and a driver in a dark suit snatches my luggage without question. I resist the urge to tip as it is an all expenses paid type deal but still feel uneasy about it. Sophia waves from the balcony, both hands over her head, as if I am departing for the space station instead of an airport. I don't wave back. I am too busy weaving in and out of my work emails on my phone, confirming that the quarterly reports have been assigned to someone else.
Heather Briscoe meets me at the private terminal. She is dressed in beige linen, immaculate, a Bluetooth earpiece tucked into her ear like a permanent fixture. She smiles like she is paid to smile.
"Ms. Deeds. Congratulations." She extends a hand, shakes mine once, firm and brief. "The jet is ready. We'll be in the air shortly."
"I've never been on a private jet."
"Most people haven't." She is already walking, and I follow because there is no obvious alternative. "The flight is approximately nine hours. You'll have a meal service and a full entertainment suite. Knox Mackay's schedule is still being finalized, but your promotional dinner will occur at some point during the trip. I'll update you when I have the time confirmation."
"At some point." I do not like surprises.
"His availability is subject to production demands." She says it without breaking stride.
The jet is fresh white leather and polished wood, too clean to be real. I sit in a seat that reclines fully flat and accept a glass of sparkling water with a twist of lime from a flight attendant whose uniform probably costs more than Sophia's wardrobe. Heather sits across the aisle and opens a tablet. She does not remove the earpiece.
Somewhere over the Atlantic, I stop checking my email. The cotton ball clouds outside the window are endless, and I think about the screenplay, the one I sold for enough money to finish my sophomore year in college due losing my state grant; the one that became Sons of Scotland years after I signed away my name. I think about the dialogue I wrote for a character named Roy Maclachlan, a Highlander with a deep scar through his eyebrow and an authoritative voice. I think about Knox Mackay, who plays Roy, who has never met me, who has no idea that the words he says on camera are words I typed on a laptop with a cracked screen in a dorm room that smelled of briny ramen noodles.
I close my eyes. The engines hum. When I open them again, the sky outside is a black fog and Heather is tapping her tablet.
"We're beginning our descent into Edinburgh."
The time change hits me like a physical weight. the clock on the wall of the Balmoral Hotel suite says it is nearly 1130 in the evening. The suite is all tartan and dark wood, a four-poster bed I am too exhausted to appreciate; a view of the castle that I register only as a shape against my featherdown pillow. I sleep for twelve hours and wake up disoriented; the blackout curtains being an overachiever.
Days pass in a blur of guided tours and cordial meals with studio representatives in the hotel. I visit the castle properly, walk the Royal Mile, stand on Calton Hill and watch the clouds move low and fast over the Firth of Forth. Heather is a persistent presence, efficient and unreadable, always with the earpiece, always with a schedule she checks but never shares.
On the fourth day, early evening she finds me in the hotel lobby.
"It's time," she says in a low, weighty voice like I am meeting a king.
I follow her to an obscured service elevator. She swipes a black keycard and presses a numberless button. The elevator rises smoothly, and my stomach stays somewhere behind us.
"Security will need to check you in before you enter," Heather says. "Standard procedure."
The doors open onto a small, marbled floor anteroom. Two men in dark suits wait there. One of them asks me to empty my pockets. I have my phone, my room key, and lip balm. The other man waves a wand over my arms, my torso, my legs. It beeps once at my belt buckle and goes silent.
"She's clear," the first man remarks.
Heather nods and gestures toward a door at the end of the hall. "Through there. He'll join you shortly."
The penthouse suite is larger than my condo. A towering wall of windows faces the castle, and the furniture is arranged in careful groupings, sofas and armchairs angled for conversation. A soft, warm fire crackles in a stone fireplace. I don't sit. I stand near the window and pull out my phone, scrolling through work emails I've already read, because it gives my hands something to do.
Software updates. A reminder about the quarterly review. Deduction questions. Bi-monthly Potluck Bulletin.
The door opens behind me. I ignore it.
"Well," a voice says, deep and dry, with a Scottish burr that curls around the edges of the word. "I've seen super fans before, but this is a new level of enthusiasm."
I turn. Knox Mackay is taller than he looks on screen, his auburn hair pulled back, the scar through his left eyebrow a pale line against his skin. He wears a Shetland wool sweater and relaxed fitting blue jeans. There is no costume, no cameras, and he is looking at my phone with an expression caught between amusement and annoyance.
"Sorry to disappoint," I say. "I was catching up on deductions."
His eyebrows lift, just slightly. "Deductions."
"I'm an accountant."
"An accountant, of course you are." He says with a hint of sarcasm. "You won a contest to have dinner with an actor and your worried about work."
"The contest was my sister's idea."
"Ah." He strolls into the room, hands in his pockets, and stops near the fireplace. "So, you're not a fan."
"I've seen the show here and there."
"That's not the same thing."
He is watching me with his head tilted, struggling to be polite. I realize I am still holding my phone. I tuck it in my pants pocket because even though I am uninterested, I didn't want to be rude.
"What do you actually do?" he asks. "As an accountant day to day."
"I make sure numbers add up. I find the ones that don't."
"And do they? Add up."
"Yes, that is what they pay me for."
He nods slowly, as if this is genuinely interesting to him. "I'm terrible with money. My brother handles all of it. I just sign things."
"That's a good way to end up broke."
"Aye. Is that professional advice?"
"Free of charge."
The corner of his mouth moves. Not quite a smile, but close. "So, you're an accountant who doesn't watch the show and I suspect didn't enter her own contest. What do you do for fun? Balance a checkbook?"
"Spreadsheets," I say, deadpan. "Very thrilling."
He laughs, a short sound that seems to surprise him. "I've spent the last six months reading scripts that couldn't hold my attention past page three. At least a spreadsheet knows what it is."
"Scripts are just spreadsheets with more ego."
"Aye. That's the most accurate description of the industry I've ever heard." He takes a step closer, and the firelight catches the green in his eyes. "You should be a writer."
My thumbnail finds my index finger. I press down, hard, and keep my face still. "I'll stick to numbers."
The door opens. Heather stands in the threshold, earpiece in place, expression perfectly neutral.
"Dinner is served," she says. "Whenever you're ready."
Knox doesn't look away from me. "Shall we, then? I have questions about spreadsheets."
"I have answers about basic financial literacy."
"I might need both."
He gestures toward the door, and I walk past him into the dining room, where a table is set for two and the castle glows gold through the window, lit from below against the Scottish dusk.