Текст книги "Long Shot"

Автор книги: Hanna Martine

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

Chapter

17

“Speaking of not answering questions, you still haven’t answered mine from last night.” Jen slid into the nook between the counter and the window overlooking Bleecker Street, marveling over the fact that Leith MacDougall was sitting at her tiny kitchen table, devouring a bowl of Frosted Mini-Wheats.

An impish look preceded his smart-ass comment. “Which question again? Was it: ‘Do you like that?’ or ‘More?’ Because the answer is ‘yes.’ To both.”

Though she acknowledged him with a smile, she clutched her coffee mug in both hands and tried to look as earnest as possible. “No, the one about why you aren’t staying in Gleann for the games. Or competing. The real reason. I know part of it, but I think there’s more. And I’m here to listen, if you want.”

He set down the cereal spoon so carefully it didn’t make a ripple in the milk. “You do know part of it. Because I showed it to you.”

She wanted to touch him but he’d gone shuttered, and he leaned so far back in his chair she couldn’t easily reach him. “Your dad. The house. You haven’t dealt with losing him yet, and going to the games, which was such a huge part of growing up—for both of you—would be too painful a reminder.”

He coughed. “Put like that, it seems so easy to fix.” The sun coming through the window turned his eyes the color of the whiskey they’d drunk last night.

“It’s not. I know it isn’t. But it’s something you have to do on your own. No one can make you get over losing the most important person in your life.” He nodded slowly, and she leaned over her mug. “But I can make you talk about the other reason you’re not competing.”

Narrowed, challenging eyes focused on her. The corners of his mouth drooped. “And what would that be?”

She’d thought about this for several days, ever since Olsen had told her about Leith’s final games. “You won the all-around three years in a row, coming on the heels of the best high school football season the valley had ever known and two state track championships. You’ve never not won anything your whole life. You said it yourself the other night at the Stone, that you’d never really been given a challenge. But then you didn’t win those final games, and then you stopped throwing.”

She’d never seen him so still. He looked into his bowl. “That was the last time Da saw me throw.”

“And I bet he loved it. I bet he cheered you the whole time. Didn’t you see that photo he had hung in your old room? Those last games where he looked proudest of all?”

Leith squeezed his eyes shut.

“You didn’t fail him,” she said. “You didn’t fail, period. Not winning doesn’t mean failing.”

Those whiskey eyes flew open. “Who said I thought that?”

“No one. No one had to. I know you, Mr. All-Star. I also know how Gleann worships you.” He winced. “I know it bothers you, but now I know it’s deeper than that. That it pressures you to not let them down. But since no one else will say it, it’s fallen on me to tell you that no one except you expects you to win everything.”

He opened his mouth and she sensed his protest. She held up a gentle hand.

“You think people love you because of the feats you’ve accomplished, but that’s just stupid. I’m sorry, but it is. They love you because you’re Leith, you’re impossible not to love, and you’re theirs. Do you think that if you go out on that field and throw shitty, Gleann will, I don’t know, erase you from memory or take down the caber monument and that billboard—”

“I want them to take those things down.”

“What I’m saying is, that because they are still up there, you feel responsible to uphold them, to keep them true. And because your dad taught you to throw, you think a bad day out will somehow sully his memory. Once upon a time you threw because you loved it.”

With a great inhale, his chest expanded. “You’re wrong. I’m fine with losing.”

See? she wanted to say. It’s either “losing” or “winning” with you. No in-between.

“Then prove it.” She pushed her mug away. “Throw in the games next weekend. One last time before you leave for good.”

He spread his palms over the table. “Can’t. I’ll be transporting a lot of big equipment down here and finally meeting with Hal Carriage to get his approval on his yard plans. It’s a big weekend for me. A lot rides on it.”

It was a good reason, one she could definitely relate to, and she nodded, her stomach suddenly pinching in hunger.

“Trying to fix me, too, Jen?” Suddenly he was smiling again, wiping away all that she’d just said. Just like he’d done with his father’s house: ignoring it, pushing it to the side.

She wadded up a napkin and threw it at him. He snatched it out of the air and tossed it back onto the table.

“I’m not afraid of failure.” He stood, taking her hand and drawing her to her feet and into his arms. Framing her face, he kissed her, and she couldn’t deny that he tasted like the warm sunshine filling her apartment.

“What I am afraid of,” he murmured during a break in the slow kiss, “is not seeing you naked again until after the games.”

So she fixed that and, two hours later, they left her apartment separately.

* * *

Jen had her hand on the gate latch, about to head up the flagstone path into the Thistle, when her phone chirped with a text message.

Back in Gleann tomorrow. Can’t wait to see u.

Like a schoolgirl, she read Leith’s words over and over again, hearing them in his voice. The drive back up north from the city had flown by, her little rental zooming over the highways on a warp speed that seemed fed by this crazy new energy zipping through her system.

Leith had returned to Connecticut to make sure his project was moving forward and to check out more locations for a permanent move of his business. It was an aspect of him she’d never witnessed before, this businessman who clearly knew what he was doing and whose love for the work transcended that knowledge. It made her exceedingly proud, and it endeared him to her even more.

Ugh, listen to her. Forget the flowery language. It made him hot as all hell.

For the second time, a very calm, very rational voice asked, How on earth do you expect to make this work with your jobs, your lives in different states, your separate lifestyles?

The first time it had happened was when they’d been lying naked, when he’d asked again if she wanted to try a relationship. Her immediate thought? Yes. Hell yes. The thought that came quickly afterward, however . . . So he moves to Connecticut. Still an hour by train, more with traffic if he drives in. She doesn’t own a car. She works insane hours, often at night, plenty on the weekends, nothing that would fit neatly into a train schedule. He works weekends during every season but winter. When could they possibly see each other? Would phone calls and occasional visits work? Could that ever be enough?

And then there was the possibility of her partnership within Bauer Events. The very real chance she could be sent to London. More distance, more time away.

Yet she and Leith were adults, not kids with a world of unknown spread out at their feet. They were more grounded now, more passionate and reasonable. Maybe it would work. So she’d agreed to try, and told him so, and prayed that it would be enough.

The Thistle’s front door opened and Ainsley bounced out, wearing a two-piece bathing suit covered in sequins over her flat chest. Denim shorts just barely covered her bottom and her flip-flops had even more sparkles on them. A beach towel swung over her shoulders.

“Hey, Aunt Jen.”

“And where are you going, Sparkly McGee?”

“T and Lacey are working at the pool and I wanted to go say hi.”

The local pool was still open? Ten years ago it had been nothing more than a concrete hole in the ground, and Jen doubted it had changed much in her absence. She pictured T and Lacey snapping gum behind the stainless steel counter of the snack stand.

It worried her that Ainsley was going to go see Owen and Melissa’s girls when it sounded like she’d invited herself. It worried her that her niece was attaching herself to older girls whose connection to her could very well snap at any moment.

Jen tousled a wave of Ainsley’s dark blond hair. “What happened to Bryan and his slingshot?”

Ainsley made a thoroughly confused face. “I’m not bringing Bryan to the pool.”

Jen smiled, though it felt forced. “How silly of me.”

Ainsley walked down the sidewalk, doing a little dance and snapping her fingers to some song Jen couldn’t hear.

“You’re back in town,” came Aimee’s voice from the front steps. “Looks like I’ll win that bet.”

Jen turned to her sister. “What bet?”

Aimee crossed her arms and wore an inscrutable expression. “Whether or not you’d come back again from New York. I knew you would. Vera wasn’t so sure.”

Jen pulled the gate shut and latched it behind her. “The trip to the city was worth it. Everything’s falling into place for the games.”

“Come on in and tell me about it.”

As they entered the kitchen, which was filled with the sweet scent of vanilla French toast batter, Jen told Aimee about Shea Montgomery’s whiskey tent and how Duncan had called earlier this morning to tell her more about the group of heavy athletes he’d rounded up at the last minute to compete this weekend. None of them were pros, but Jen didn’t care. There would be enthusiastic bodies on the field, throwing heavy weights around, and that’s all that mattered.

“There was a rumor that Chris’s band wasn’t going to play?” Aimee dipped slabs of white bread into the egg batter and set them to sizzling on the hot skillet.

Jen frowned. “Where’d you hear that? I may have teased him a bit, but I’m not about to turn them down. I love their sound, they’re local, Chris seems really excited. Man, he can play that fiddle, can’t he?”

Aimee shrugged. “It’s just what I heard. There was that fight over at their house a few months back, and then Chris moved out. The sheriff said there was trouble at his bandmates’ place two nights back; I thought maybe they’d broken up. Guess not, though.”

Jen vowed to look into it.

She turned in her chair and realized what was different about the Thistle. The plastic work drapes in the front sitting room had been taken down, and the new drywall was up and taped. The furniture was covered, the room ready for the paint cans stationed around the perimeter to be opened. The place would be finished by that weekend, just in time for the Scottish Society president to stay here.

“Wow,” Jen said, impressed. “Owen works fast.”

Aimee’s voice pitched low. “Only when he has to.”

Jen winced and turned back around, but said nothing. Sex had never been something the sisters talked about, not even in playful terms. Maybe because it had been such a big deal because of Frank’s constant cheating. Maybe because it had gotten Aimee into such trouble when she was younger.

Aimee set the butter and powdered sugar on the table. No syrup on French toast in this house—a little quirk Aunt Bev had taught them that they’d both carried through to adulthood.

Jen changed the subject. “Oh, I have other good news.” And she told Aimee all about Bobbie and the craft convention now set for March. Jen had called Bobbie on her way back from New York to tell her everything, and Jen could have sworn the older woman had gotten a little choked up. The thing was a go, and Jen couldn’t have been more excited for her and for Gleann.

Aimee’s spatula, piled with three slices of French toast, stopped halfway to Jen’s plate. “All those people coming for it will need places to stay.”

Jen grinned. “Exactly. They’ll need lots of things. I was going to talk to Sue about it later, after our games meeting. Lodging, food, transportation—”

“Let me do it.”

The French toast plopped onto Jen’s plate and she looked up from it into her sister’s face.

“I want to do that,” Aimee said. “I want to talk to Mayor Sue about bringing in or starting those kinds of businesses.”

“But—”

“No ‘buts,’ Jen. I’ll be here long after you’re gone. I’m the one who could see that kind of thing through. I’m the one who wants to open up more B&Bs.”

Jen felt horrible for thinking it, but . . . Aimee? A business owner of something other than the Thistle, which had been practically gift wrapped for her? “You do?”

Aimee straightened. “I do. I want to own something that’s mine, that I created. I know how to run one B&B. I want to create another from my own vision.”

Jen had never seen her sister look so sure, so confident. She opened her mouth but shock prevented anything from coming out.

Aimee rolled her eyes and sat. “I know that look. The one that thinks I can’t do anything for myself.”

“Please forgive me,” Jen said, keeping calm and maintaining direct eye contact, “but experience is proof.”

“I told you I’d prove it to you, that what happened with the burst pipe and Owen wasn’t really me. That I’ve changed, that I’m a different person. This is it. My chance. Give it to me.”

Jen sat back and folded her napkin. Folded it again. “Honestly, it’s not my thing to grant or take away. I just thought that I could—”

“What? Do everything?”

Now Aimee was starting to sound like Mom. “Wait a minute. You called me here, remember?”

Aimee’s voice gentled, her eyes closing for a long blink. “I did. For the games. I know it’s in your nature; I should have seen this. But you swoop in, pick out all these other peripheral things that you think need fixing, and then take them on yourself, because you think you have all the answers.”

“Maybe I like to help. Maybe I like to see good things grow out of bad things, or out of other good things.”

The sigh Aimee let out was large enough for two people, and she lifted glistening eyes and a sad smile to the ceiling. “I know you do. I know you do.”

Was that . . . envy?

Jen started to pick at her French toast. Aunt Bev’s recipe, but somehow better because Aimee had made it, here in the kitchen that was now her own.

“Shouldn’t you be focusing on keeping the Thistle up and running,” Jen asked, “before even thinking about opening up something else?”

Aimee gave the kitchen a sweeping, loving look. “I have dreams now, too, you know.”

They ate in silence for a bit, their forks clattering on the porcelain, as Jen turned over and over in her mind all the ideas she’d had during that long drive up from New York. All the potential changes that could be made to make the town more conducive for events and tourism and marketing . . .

“I know things,” Jen said, unable to keep silent. “I know people. Let me—”

“Thank you.” Aimee set down her fork rather deliberately. “And I will probably take you up on that, too.”

Jen couldn’t deny the itch that burned just underneath her skin, that feeling of starting something and not seeing it through. Not applying her ideas, not giving input. It was like leaving dirty dishes in the sink from now until the end of time, and it made her dig her fingernails into her palms.

Then Aimee’s kind hand curled over hers. And suddenly Jen felt it: that feeling of being cared for, of being mothered. Of actually being the younger sister, and not having to act like the older one. This wasn’t a gradual role reversal over the course of years, but a turn on a dime, one that had her tripping over her own choices and actions.

“You can’t take on everything,” Aimee said. “I know you like to tell yourself that, but you can’t.” She gave a little shake of her head. “I actually have no doubt that if I hadn’t said anything today, you would’ve found a way to live and work in New York and also take on Gleann’s transformation single-handedly.”

Jen just sat there because she couldn’t deny that truth. The thought of working with Gleann to turn it around to attract potential events, and then assist in putting on those events . . . it was incredibly exciting. And it shocked the hell out of her because it was something she’d never before considered. In her mind, bigger had always been better.

Aimee released her hand and rose. “You’re my biggest influence, Jen. You always have been. You teach me, even when you aren’t here, even when you don’t know it. You saved my life.”

Holy shit.

“But don’t you get it?” Aimee continued. “Everything you’ve ever done is to get out from under Mom’s shadow. Hers is dark and horrible, and I totally get that. But you throw a shadow over me, too, sis. It’s a good shadow—it’s always protected and directed me—but it’s time I cast it aside.”

Chapter

18

The bed in the 738 Maple house was way more comfortable than the one in 740. Leith should have tested each of them out before he’d dropped his bags in Mildred’s Old Lady Museum. Or maybe this mattress was better simply because Jen was curled up next to him in it.

On cue, her eyes cracked open. Since the sun was just coming through the window, they were a sparkling, sleepy green. The color reminded him of dew on early morning grass as he arrived on site for a day’s hard work. He could get used to waking up like this.

“Hey,” she said, stretching. The sheet slipped just enough to show the outer curve of her breast. He tried not to touch and failed.

Arriving back in Gleann late last night, he hadn’t even bothered pulling his truck into 740. He’d seen Jen’s kitchen light on, her silhouette pacing behind the curtains, and swerved right into 738’s driveway. She’d actually locked the door and he’d had to knock, but when she opened the door, the metal window blinds slapping against the wood, he’d immediately been on her. Pushed her against the bad wallpaper and kissed away all her excuses about having a million things to do. Turned out that he got rid of those pretty easily.

“What do you have to do today?” he asked, pulling the sheet down to give himself free access to her perfect nipple. It tasted just as amazing as it had last night, only for some reason her high-pitched sigh sounded even better.

“Everything.” She pushed at his head. “Someone distracted me last night and I’m behind.”

He came up on an elbow above her. “Sorry.”

“No, you’re not.” She craned her neck to look at the clock, which showed six thirty, and winced. “I’ve got to get going. Tell me about Connecticut while I get ready.”

He was struck momentarily speechless as she slid from the bed and bent over for her robe. Throwing his bare legs over the side of the bed, he pulled the sheet over his lap. “It was great. Put a deposit on a new storage facility and signed a lease for an apartment until I can find a house I love, made nice progress in the Carriage assessment and planning. Still need the official sign-off and contract, but that’ll come this weekend when I go back.”

She peeked her head out of the bathroom, toothbrush sticking out between her lips, her hair in that messy knot on the top of her head that, for some reason, drove him crazy. “So you came back to get the rest of your equipment? Start moving things down by the weekend?”

Though he responded with a “yes,” the weird, uncomfortable twinge in his chest told him there was something else he had to do before that happened. He turned to look out the window toward town.

Jen finished brushing her teeth and came out to kiss him with a minty mouth. Then she took his hand and placed it high up on her inner thigh, where she knew he liked to touch. “Sure I can’t convince you to stay for the games?”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with being convinced.”

Suddenly he remembered what she’d said to him the other morning in the kitchen of her city apartment: Your dad. The house. You haven’t dealt with losing him yet, and going to the games, which was such a huge part of growing up—for both of you—would be too painful a reminder.

The house.

The tightness in his chest now had a name, a purpose. That house was why he’d truly come back. Because once he started transferring his big equipment and computers and supplies down to Connecticut, he would convince himself there would be no reason for him to come back to Gleann. Except that there was. Da’s house was still sitting there, filled to the brim with things of a life gone, and it would sit there forever if Leith didn’t do something about it.

“I know,” Jen said softly, and moved to the closet to pull down one of the long sundresses he loved on her. He watched her dress, watched how the fabric flowed over her body.

She’d been inside Da’s house, had seen how he’d left it, how he’d locked up his emotions. For a moment he was moved to ask her to come with him that day, but she was already starting to talk to herself, her lips moving through silent lists, her brow furrowed in a look of concentration, and he knew that her mind was already back at work. He’d already stolen a lot of her time last night.

Besides, he wanted to sort some shit out on his own before he talked to her about his mindset.

Before she left for a meeting with the caterer, he kissed her with resolution. He liked that, kissing her good-bye in the morning. He wanted that every day. But first there was something he needed to do.

After he made one phone call to an old contact who could help him out on short notice, he called Duncan and then Chris, asking them both the same thing: “Hey, man, you busy today? I kind of need your help.”

* * *

Leith was standing on the flagstone path leading up to Da’s house—the closest he’d gotten to the front door in three years—when Chris pulled up in his crappy Chevy two-door. Leith’s lone remaining employee got out of his car, worry plastered on his face, his shoulder-length hair bed-messy.

“I just did the yard two days ago,” Chris said. “Everything okay?”

“No, no, the yard looks great.” The younger guy had taken too much off the euonymus shrub there in the corner, but it didn’t matter now. “I need you for something else.”

Duncan arrived then, heavy metal screeching out from behind the closed windows of his SUV. He parked crookedly in the grass on the opposite side of the road and crossed to the two men, his shaved head already shining in the hot summer sun. He slapped palms with Leith and gave a polite nod, hands on hips, to Chris as Leith introduced them. Duncan shaded his eyes with a hand as he took in the tiny, dark ranch house. “So what the hell is this place? What do you need help with?”

Chris gave Duncan a funny look, like he should have known this was the place where Leith had grown up, but Duncan was a throwing buddy, not a Gleann local, and Leith had already moved out of here by the time they’d become friends.

Just then came the rumble of a heavy truck at the top of the hill, then the shrill beep beep beep as it reversed down the slope. It took several attempts and lots of time between the three men to direct the truck down the curving road, but eventually it deposited its load in the MacDougall driveway.

As the disposal company truck struggled back up the hill, Leith surveyed the giant Dumpster now sitting in his driveway, the one his contact had pulled through at the very last minute. He took a deep breath. Words still wouldn’t come out. He cleared his throat. “I need some help cleaning out my old man’s house. Do you mind?”

And there it was.

Though he didn’t look at his employee, he knew Chris’s face would be twisted in a confusion he’d never voice to his boss. But Duncan, in his trademark “Fuck it. Whatever” attitude, just clapped his hands and said, “Let’s do it.”

Yes, Leith thought. Let’s.

The keyhole was much stickier than he remembered, the doorway much tighter. He’d waved off the guys, telling them to wait in the driveway and give him a sec. If they saw his sorrow and his discomfort, so be it. It was time to stop hiding it anyway.

The door opened inward, throwing light into the tomb. He didn’t smell the must and dust, as he knew he should. Instead he smelled Da’s old pipe filtering in from the front stoop where he’d smoked every evening. He smelled Sunday morning bacon and the fresh Christmas tree they’d chopped themselves and that stood tilted in the corner every year. He heard Da’s old folk albums, played on that turntable still sitting on the coffee table, and the yap of the small mutt they’d had when Leith was a boy—the best dog neither of them had been able to replace because there simply was no replacement.

The world shifted and Leith sagged against the big hutch, a few unknown items rattling around inside. Without realizing it, he’d moved deep inside the living room, the light from the front door like a faraway mouth to a cave. Nothing had been changed, nothing moved, yet everything seemed different. Felt different. He was a man separate from the one who’d buried his beloved father, literally and figuratively, and he hated that he’d allowed himself to split apart like that.

He hated what he’d allowed this house and his memories to become.

Pushing off the hutch, he skirted around the coffee table, and edged along the kitchen counter pass-through. To the left stood the door leading into the garage, and as he went toward it, his thigh brushed the folded afghan crocheted by his mother long before he’d been born. A plume of dust shot up, tickling his nose and settling into his eyes. He rubbed them. Damn, the dust was making him tear up.

The garage was pitch-black, so he left the house door open to guide him as he went to the single-car rolling door, bent down, and heaved it up manually. The screech of metal on metal made him cringe, but not as much as what filled the garage floor.

Growing up, he’d watched Da lean back on that workout bench and do reps using those ancient black weights on that tarnished bar. When Leith was little, he used to sit on his bike and count while Da used the big dumbbells to do curls. And when he was old enough, when Da finally gave him the okay and taught him proper technique, Leith had learned how to lift.

And then Da had taught him how to throw the traditional Scottish events.

The old hammer still leaned against the back wall. So did the weight used for the height throw—a round metal ball topped with an attached ring for your hand. The weight for distance—its ball on the end of a short chain—sat in the corner. The caber, the one they’d used to practice with, was sitting pretty in the town park.

He remembered Da perched on the edge of the bench, the weight-for-height on the floor between his feet.

“Come ’ere, boy. Pick it up.”

So excited. At nine, Leith was so excited he didn’t recognize the teasing gleam in Da’s eyes as he braced his feet on either side of the weight and yanked. The ring didn’t budge. Leith stumbled.

Da chuckled, slapping his knee. A good-natured laugh, though Leith didn’t realize that at the time.

“Someday, boy. Someday, I can already tell, you’ll be a better man at this than I.”

Impossible, Leith had thought.

He still thought it.

Leith just stood there, looking at all the equipment. He could still feel the roughness of those bars in his palms, could still hear Da coaching him from the lawn chair when he’d gotten too weak to lift himself—though he often tried to lift anyway, covering up his disappointment over aging and illness with self-deprecating laughter.

“You ready for us?” Duncan called from where he’d taken to leaning against the landscaping truck.

“Not yet,” Leith said over his shoulder. “Just give me another moment.”

“Take your time.”

He’d already taken three years, but he only had his friends for today, and he needed to determine what would go and what he’d keep this week, before it came time to move away for good. Passing back through the living room, he headed down the creaking, claustrophobic hallway to the bedrooms, thinking how much longer the hall had seemed when he’d been a teenager.

He knew what Da had turned Leith’s old bedroom into after he’d moved out: a monument to their relationship. Documentation of pretty much every feat Leith had ever performed. That level of pride was still too much for now, so the door remained shut. Instead, Leith turned another doorknob and entered his father’s bedroom.

He didn’t remember making the bed the last time he’d been in here, but the blanket was pulled neat and tight over the mattress, the pillows still propped against the chipped headboard. If he’d sit down on the bed, he knew it would squeak something terrible, but that’s not why he’d come in here.

Why had he come exactly? What did he want from this room? The hat on the dresser and the cane still leaning by the door? Yes, definitely. His father to still be sleeping in here? Absolutely.

But instead Leith headed for the closet. He was drawn to it without explanation. As he cracked open the door, the smell of old wool and leather leaked out. Leith flicked on a flashlight and peered inside. All the sweaters and pants and coats he remembered, still in a neat line, waiting to be worn by a man who’d never come back.

Oh God. Oh God.

The stale air in the room—the whole house—caved in on him. Three years of loss that he’d buried somewhere outside under the new viburnum and roses slammed into him, knocking out his knees and collapsing his body to the floor. He sat there at the bottom of Da’s closet in a heap, gasping for breath and pounding a fist into the plaster. The loss was too great for tears. Crying simply wouldn’t be enough, although if Da were here, he would have clapped Leith on the back and told him to let it out, and to take his time doing it, because that’s what a real man did.

His eyes stung and burned, and his chest heaved with great effort, but the tears still wouldn’t come. Leith pressed his back to the closet wall and lifted his head to look at each article of Da’s clothing, recalling days and moments when the older MacDougall had worn them. Leith reached out and thumbed through them . . . until he got to one piece in particular, and stopped.

The MacDougall tartan, brought over from Scotland decades ago, the wool now thin and worn. It was a field of red crossed with thin white lines, thicker blue ones, and intermittent green and blue squares as accent.

And this was Da’s kilt, the one he used to throw in. The old man had been in his formal Highland dress for his memorial, but this kilt, the one he wore all the time with great love before it no longer fit him, still dangled from a hanger.

That’s when Leith cried, a slow leak of tears. He had no idea how long he sat there, a blurred tartan pattern dancing across his vision. Finally knuckling away the tears, he shoved to his feet and reached for the kilt. Unhooked it. This was why he’d come in here. Neatly draping the thing across his arm, he grabbed the hat and the cane and left.