Secret Garden. Cathryn Parry
maybe Daisie Lee had given her that impression. Colin hadn’t really talked with his grandmother about the sleeping arrangements—he’d just exchanged that one email about his estimated time of arrival, because frankly, it was all the contact he’d been able to take for the moment. He was filled with resentment, it seemed, and this wasn’t like him. He hated feeling this way.
He was also sobering up.
“Are you going to phone them?” Mack asked.
“Not yet.” Colin needed to calm down first. He was a mellow guy, laid-back. That was his reputation. That was what kept him sane.
“Let’s sit here, get a drink first,” Colin said. There was a pub attached to the restaurant, so they headed over to check it out. A three-person group was performing. Guitar, vocals, drums. Celtic music—they were pretty good.
Colin and Mack found chairs at a table. Before Colin knew it, two local women gravitated toward them. Mack talked with them—Colin was too busy getting his mind comfortably numb again to interact much. One song flowed into another. One beer flowed into another.
Somewhere along the line Colin noticed that one of the women was sitting on Mack’s lap. By now, there was lots of laughter. He kept forgetting the names of the people they were talking to—the faces started to blend. Mack was getting friendlier with the two women... Bonnie and Clyde...that was what Mack was calling them. Colin was clear that Bonnie was the tall redhead currently sitting in Mack’s lap, and the other woman wasn’t really named Clyde, but Clara or Cassandra...something along those lines. Still, Mack coined them Bonnie and Clyde, which the two ladies thought was hilarious.
Mack was wearing his cowboy boots, and the more he drank, the more pronounced his Texas drawl became. Bonnie especially seemed to like that.
After the pub closed, the party moved to a local house. Even though it was well after midnight, Colin didn’t feel tired at all. His body clock was seven hours behind the local time. Mack took the front seat of Bonnie’s car, and Colin crowded in the back. Colin wasn’t going to end up with either of the women—that would be stupid for someone with his profile, and he wasn’t stupid, he was just prolonging the inevitable pain of meeting his grandparents.
In the back of his mind, he knew he had to deal with a potential confrontation that he just wasn’t ready to face.
He also felt sick, and sad, and he didn’t want to be. His father was dead and he was too late to do anything about it. This wasn’t a jam Colin could talk his way out of. A problem he could smooth over with a laugh and a joke. He was here, in Scotland, and he needed to somehow get beyond the anger.
Because he wasn’t a kid being manipulated or dragged around any longer. Those days were over. It was years ago that he’d overheard his parents arguing on that last trip to Scotland. Overheard his father telling his mother that it just wasn’t worth it. His mother screaming back, “What about your son, isn’t that reason enough?” His father answering, “No, that’s not enough. It’s not enough!”
All those years, deep down, Colin had spent feeling guilty and ashamed, as if it were his fault. Anger, because rationally, he knew it wasn’t his fault. He’d felt sad, for his mom and for him, too, because their lives had changed so drastically.
Or maybe he was slowly making up his mind to decide to get over it. To forgive his grandparents for not reaching out earlier—and himself for reaching out only now, when it was too late. Maybe he should just start the weekend with a fresh slate. Colin still wasn’t sure, though. Mack obviously sensed his inner turmoil, and seemed to be steering clear of Colin’s mood, or of any discussion regarding it.
“Do you want us to drop you off at the hotel?” Mack asked him finally. “Because I’m gonna stay over with Bonnie. She said she’s got a couch you can stay on, too, if you want. When we wake up, I’ll help you call your grandparents. How about if we just arrange a time to meet them before the funeral on Sunday? Will that work?”
It was the coward’s way out, and it was tempting. Colin could avoid the whole three-day wait this way and then meet them at the funeral.
But now that he was sobering again, something bothered him. Avoiding his grandparents sounded too much like running away from the problem. Colin wasn’t irresponsible. He didn’t want to be like his father.
Especially not like his father.
“No,” Colin said, “I need to talk with Jamie and Jessie. I’ll head over there now. They always were early risers.” Hopefully, they still were.
In the end, Bonnie drove him to his grandparents’ cottage. She went slowly and carefully, weaving her way down a single-lane Scottish country road and playing Fleetwood Mac on the stereo—old stuff Colin hadn’t heard since he was a kid. “You Make Loving Fun.” None of it fit with the fact that he was the estranged grandson returning to Scotland for the funeral of a father he hadn’t heard from in twenty-some years.
Colin pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. The sun was streaking over the horizon. The digital clock on Bonnie’s dash told him it was six o’clock in the morning.
“Jamie always liked to get up while it was still dark,” Colin said, to no one in particular. Snatches of memory were coming back to him. From what little he remembered of his grandfather, he was set in his ways and brooked no nonsense.
“Would you mind turning down the music?” Colin asked as Bonnie pulled up beside the whitewashed cottage. Now that he was here, he felt completely sober. They were out in the middle of nowhere, in the Highlands. Somehow he had to get along with his grandparents for four more days. Then he could leave.
With the music subdued, Bonnie and Mack climbed out and hauled Colin’s two bags to the dewy grass in front of his grandparents’ cottage. The zippered bag holding his golf clubs made muffled clanking noises. Colin glanced at the cottage, studying it. It looked so much smaller than it had in his memories.
He’d never felt more alone than when he stood on the roadside in the silent, cool morning, his belongings dumped on the pavement.
“You gonna be okay?” Mack asked.
“I doubt it,” he said drolly.
Mack laughed. Colin smiled. They hadn’t said a damn serious thing all night anyway—even though his father had died and he was here for his funeral. Why should they start now?
His grandfather stood on the porch with his hands on his hips, watching everything. Fittingly, it had started to rain. There was no more delaying the confrontation, and Colin felt as if he’d reached rock bottom. In his heart, he was ready to consider that maybe it was both their faults that nobody had kept in touch.
Not just his fault. Not just his grandparents’ fault. Just one big, snowballed mess that they might begin to melt together with a face-to-face conversation.
He took off his wet cap and turned to the grandfather he hadn’t seen or heard from since he was an eight-year-old boy. He didn’t know how to begin, except to say, “Granddad?”
“Where the devil have you been?” his grandfather thundered in return.
Colin wiped his hand on his pants. So much for the triumphant celebration of the prodigal grandson returning to the fold. He shrugged in a what can we do? pose and gave his grandfather a wayward smile that usually worked for him. “You know how plane travel is.”
“No, I don’t.” His grandfather’s answering scowl sent chills through Colin. “And don’t you have a mobile phone?” he demanded.
“Ah...somewhere. I hope.” Colin patted the side pocket of his cargo pants. Yeah, the hard plastic lump was there. “Sorry. I should’ve called to warn you I was running late last night.”
His grandfather glared harder. Maybe Colin should give him the benefit of the doubt. Colin’s father had been this man’s—Jamie’s—son. Jamie was no doubt grieving his son’s death.
“I should leave you out