Текст книги "Long Shot"

Автор книги: Hanna Martine

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

Chapter

9

“Yeah, sorry I can’t go in with you,” Leith told her as she sat next to him in his truck. He jabbed up the air conditioner, even though the cab was already Frigidaire cold. “I gotta get on the road if I want to make it to Stamford by tonight and find a motel.”

When he’d gone inside 740 Maple to grab the key to his father’s house, he’d also come out with a packed bag.

“It’s okay,” Jen said, while wondering who the hell this pale, fidgety guy was sitting next to her. “Tell me where the photo albums are again?”

He squinted through the windshield at the brick two-bedroom, one-car ranch house plunked at the foot of a steep hill. “Da kept all the stuff like that in the den. In the big hutch along the wall. Bottom shelves. Here.” He flipped open the glove compartment and took out a huge flashlight, slapping it in her palm. “You might need this.”

“Why?”

“No power.”

She opened her door and gracelessly finagled her way to the ground. One hand on the door handle, she peered back inside the truck. But Leith wasn’t looking at her. The house had him entranced.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Sure.” A stiff nod of the head.

“When will you be back?” As if she had any right to know, or any claim on him.

“Not sure.”

Alrighty then.

His thigh twitched and flexed, preparing to lift off the brake. She took the signal and shut the door. It was barely latched before he pulled away, tires grinding in the gravel driveway. When he hit the asphalt, he gunned it back up the hill, on his way out of Gleann. She watched him go until the truck was no more than an obnoxious lumbering sound filtering through the trees. When silence fell, she turned to the only house in this quiet, lovely part of the valley.

The house she had once thought of as heaven now seemed dark and sad. It looked almost exactly the same—the same row of wind chimes dangling from the eaves, whose sound was a glorious, calming memory; the same patio furniture sitting on the giant slab of concrete serving as a front porch—but the melancholy surrounding it was ghostly.

Upon closer look, the furniture she’d sat on for so many summer nights, holding a glass of lemonade—and later a sneaked beer poured into a coffee mug—was terribly weathered. She wondered why Leith even bothered to keep it out. The concrete slab was cracked and uneven, and several sets of wind chimes were missing pieces and hung crookedly.

But the yard . . . the yard and the front flower gardens and the raised vegetable boxes were lush and lovely. Tended with care. Like a grave.

The grass had been mown in perfect diagonals, the bushes neatly trimmed. The produce was magazine perfect. She remembered that when Mr. MacDougall was alive, he’d spent hours in his yard, tinkering and digging and planting and pruning, Leith always by his side.

It made sense to her then that Leith had become what he had: a landscape architect to honor his upbringing and to satisfy his own soul. He’d kept up his old house as a memorial. But . . . why, if he didn’t live here? There was no For Sale sign anywhere, and this place hadn’t been listed on potential rentals when she’d looked through them at Sue’s just the other day.

Jen negotiated the slim flagstone walk, noting the way the flowers and shrubs perfectly draped over the edges, beautiful and artistic. They gave atmosphere to the wonderful memories made here, the ones outside of the evenings looking through photo albums or playing Scrabble at the kitchen table.

This house was where she’d first learned what a true family should be like.

Aunt Bev had brought Jen and Aimee to Gleann with the sole purpose of giving them time away from their mom, Bev’s own sister, but it had taken a few awkward years for Jen to warm up to the aunt who was essentially a stranger. She was, after all, related to her mother. But Leith and his dad had lived outside of Jen’s wicked experiences, and she’d clung to that. She’d clung to them.

A real family, she discovered, had nothing to do with the number of people involved, or the titles of the family members, or even if they were blood related. It was about interaction. Support. Jokes. Generosity. Teaching. Respect. Everything Mr. MacDougall had passed on to his son.

She couldn’t help it; she smiled as she pushed the key into the front door lock. It took a good effort to slam it home, and turning it to the left required even more power. She pushed open the door with a wobbly jerk, as it finally came free from the ill-fitting frame.

That emptiness she’d sensed outside instantly transformed into a heaviness that settled on her shoulders and dug into her soul.

Daylight spilled from the front door into the tiny, cramped den, but even that was quickly swallowed up and she could barely see. The heavy curtains in the front window were drawn, but the shadows and silhouettes told her that every piece of MacDougall furniture was placed exactly where she remembered. The couch beneath the window, the hutch against the wall to the right, the TV in the corner, the pass-through window to the kitchen straight ahead.

A musty scent assaulted her nose and made it tickle. She went to the window and yanked back the curtain. A cloud of dust rained down and she waved it back, peering through the particle-riddled air into the lightened room. As the air cleared some, she could see where her footsteps had left prints on the dusty, matted carpet. No others accompanied it; no one had walked through this room in a really long time. The layer of dust covering every surface was so thick it would take twenty vacuums to suck it all up. The air-conditioning hadn’t been turned on in ages; the smell could attest to that.

All of the knickknacks she remembered in foggy images were still there, sitting and waiting for use or attention. She passed through the den and into the tiny kitchen that had never been able to fit more than one MacDougall male at a time. The yellow plastic clock still hung next to the refrigerator, stuck on 7:56, and the waffle maker still leaned against the microwave, all coated with a gray film.

The floor groaned as she left the kitchen, walked past the hutch, and went down the hall toward the bedrooms. Mr. MacDougall’s bedroom faced the backyard that sloped severely up toward town. She recalled him saying once that he liked how dark and cool it got in there in the evenings. Leith’s was the room facing front, which had made it convenient for him to sneak in through the window when she and he had been out past curfew.

She went first into Mr. MacDougall’s room, cracking the door and flinching at the awful, dry squeal of the hinges. The room was darker than midnight. By habit she flicked the light switch, but nothing came on. She remembered the flashlight hanging loose in her hand and shot the powerful beam into the room.

The bed was made, the dresser neat. Mr. MacDougall’s gray wool cap sat on the corner edge, waiting for him to come in and put it on. Jen had rarely seen him without it.

A lovely cane with a brass tip tilted against the wall near the door. When she’d watched the games with him, he’d held that cane between his legs with both hairy-knuckled hands.

Shaking a little, she closed the door and turned to the opposite side of the hallway. The sight of Leith’s bedroom door—just the door—made her smile. Whenever she and Leith had been in his room, they’d been required to leave the door open. Mr. MacDougall would then sit on the couch, less than thirty feet away, and pretend not to be listening.

That’s because the one time they’d closed the door, they’d gotten caught with Leith on top of her, making out like they would die the next day. His dad had put a quick and embarrassing end to any more of that kind of private time in his household.

Now she opened Leith’s bedroom door, prepared to see the room inside just like all the others: left exactly as her memory recalled. And it was, with the queen bed against the far wall, its dark green comforter now pilled and completely dusted over, the big dresser close to the door, its legs making huge divots in the old carpet. In high school, Leith had kept his discus and shot put trophies and medals lined perfectly on a set of shelves next to the closet. They were still there, arranged biggest to smallest, their luster now dulled.

The one thing different was the walls. She vaguely remembered plaid wallpaper, but it was no longer visible. Framed photos covered the walls from ceiling to baseboard, and she stepped deeper into the room for a closer look.

Almost every single one of them was of Leith and his “da,” arms slung around each other’s shoulders, identical grins facing the camera. At the Highland Games, at high school football games, camping at the state park, gardening . . . at all stages of Leith’s life. Just the two of them, inseparable.

This place was a fraction of the size of that great, obnoxious billboard out on Route 6, and not as odd as a displayed caber and a plaque, but this small, crowded room held a world more heart. She knew that once Leith had moved out, Mr. MacDougall had hung this visual display of pride and joy.

She let the flashlight fall on the largest picture near the door. An 8x10, it showed Mr. MacDougall in his gray cap, big arm clamped around Leith’s neck, pulling in tight his only child, a gigantic smile on his wrinkled face. Leith wore a kilt, his face and T-shirt damp from his having recently thrown. Jen recognized the old games grounds in Gleann. It was the only photo in the room in which Leith’s grin looked strained. A date had been scrawled in ballpoint in the bottom corner—the year after Leith had last been all-around champion.

Jen suddenly felt guilty for being in there. She backed out, closing the door against the very personal nature of the place, and leaned against the wall. Leith had let her into the house to get the photo albums, nothing more. Yet . . . he had to have known she’d take a look around—that she’d see what she’d just seen—and realize the extent of his grief. The grief he’d been hiding so well for three years. He had to have known she’d realize he’d been lying about getting over losing his dad. That he still felt lost.

He trusted her enough to show her this, trusted her with his pain. Hell, maybe he wanted to show her. Maybe this was his way of asking for help.

Or maybe, to him, this had been a necessary casualty. Maybe his only intention had been to help her do her job with the games—like he had back in the Kafe with the townspeople—and he’d cut himself open to do it. He’d taken an invisible knife, carved out his despair and heartbreak, and displayed it. For her.

Muscles didn’t have anything to do with strength. If she could, she would absorb his pain and relieve him of all that pressure of putting on a good, healed face for everyone.

She pushed off the wall and went back to the hutch in the den. Sunlight streamed in the front window now, the air clear of dust, so she easily found the latch and opened the hutch doors. Inside, the shelves were stacked with disorganized photo albums that might have made Bobbie “Roberts” twitch.

Jen ran her fingers down the spines of the thick, relatively new albums, the ones from the last thirty years, the ones dedicated to Leith’s life. Placed on its own shelf was one labeled “Margaux MacDougall,” and if ever a single, earthly item gave off a saintly vibe, it was that. Though Jen had never seen a picture of Leith’s mom, who’d died when he was just a baby, cracking open that album seemed far too personal, far too invasive.

She touched the albums near the bottom, where Leith had said the ones she was looking for would be. No, no, no, no. Ah, there.

The documentation of the elder MacDougall’s life in Scotland was in big, thick treasuries made of actual leather. The two burgundy covers had cracked and dried at the edges, their spines brittle. They didn’t have labels and they didn’t need them.

Because the concrete porch was where Mr. MacDougall had showed her and Leith these books long ago, that was where she took them now. Blinking hard in the bright sunlight, she gingerly sat on the rickety wood bench, hoping it wouldn’t splinter and crack under her weight. It held, and she flipped open the first album.

Pages and pages of mustard-yellow photos and paper, of blurred, black-and-white children running around Highland meadows, dark skies billowing overhead. She could have stayed there all day, flipping through the past of a man she dearly missed, but there was a purpose to this, and unfortunately it wasn’t nostalgia.

The second album was almost entirely dedicated to Mr. MacDougall’s teens and early twenties, namely, his throwing days in the old country. Nibbled-edge fliers for the Fort William and Dufftown and Aberdeen Highland Games, their words typed on, yes, a typewriter. Line drawings of heavily muscled athletes wielding competition stones and cabers and hammers. Competitors’ listings, with MacDougall’s name circled in pencil. Ribbons of all places stuffed into the cracks, their adhesive long since gone. Swatches of tartans, their clans unknown to her. A single pressed flower.

Photos upon photos of a young MacDougall: throwing, smiling, posing with other men in kilts, standing at attention as the massed bands strolled past.

Jen studied each photo with an eagle eye, calling back to mind Mr. MacDougall’s accented voice as he’d told each scene’s story—and even more stories from off-camera. She paid attention to the backgrounds, to the setting and atmosphere. She picked out details and let her mind trail off to brainstorm possibilities. Setting the album to the side, she took out her laptop and let her fingers fly, recording all her random, scattered ideas. She’d make sense of the lists later.

A million new pieces clicked into place. Her brain buzzed with the possibilities.

Gleann had been trying to compete with the bigger, more well-known games across the state, going for showy but ending up cartoonish and laughable. She lifted her face to the sun and pictured the beautiful town of Gleann, built by Scottish hands and inhabited by people with deep roots. That’s what their games had lost: that link to their history. The fearless Scottishness of the event.

She was going to get that back, and she held the key to success in her hands.

Chapter

10

Five hours on the road, and Leith’s eyelids felt coated in lead and sandpaper. He entered the lake valley just as the sun lifted itself above the eastern horizon and painted the hills that hid Gleann from the rest of the world.

He’d spent almost three nights down in Connecticut. Two full days of walking around the Carriage’s new estate with Rory, taking measurements and soil samples, sketching, and tossing ideas back and forth with her, then back to his motel at night to fire up the computer design programs he hadn’t used in months. This job was everything he’d wanted and more. Dream landscape with incredible topsoil, dream client who wanted to give him his freedom, new dream location. The adrenaline rising out of the potential—out of what could possibly signal his future—pumped through his system.

Early yesterday evening, when he’d started a new computer file outlining what kind of equipment he’d need to transport down from Gleann and in what order, and then had made lists of potential plants and supplies, he thought of Jen and her mosaic of windows always open on her laptop.

He’d expected to hear from her while he was gone. Hell, he’d expected to get a phone call an hour after he’d left her at that mausoleum of a house, once she saw what he’d been purposely forgetting. He could almost hear the questions, the concern, the disbelief. But the call never came.

Maybe she’d just gone in, grabbed the photo albums she wanted and then left. Ha! This was Jen, and he highly doubted that. She’d probably inventoried the whole place and had drawn up a schematic and schedule over what needed to be done to get the place cleaned out and sold. And that was okay, he told himself. He knew what he’d opened himself up to, and he’d deal with it when he got back. Maybe, he thought with a twinge, it was exactly what he needed.

Or maybe he could just leave the house shut tight and continue to pay Chris to take care of the yard.

The day of Da’s memorial, after Leith had illegally spread his ashes in various spots around Gleann and the valley, he’d locked up his childhood home and hadn’t opened it since. The following month Chris had come around to tell Leith the yard was beginning to look like shit, so Leith had sucked up the grief and drove down to the house, waving off Chris’s offer to help. At first he’d only meant to mow and clean up the overgrowth, but as soon as he started working, he roped off new flowerbeds and dug out the old vegetable garden. He’d stopped when it got too dark to see, and only then did he step back, hand on the shovel, and felt Da all around him.

That work—the kind of work they used to do together, before the pain had got to be too much for all that bending and Da had taken to sitting on the front porch and ordering his son around the yard—had kept Leith tethered to the warm memories of his father without drowning in them. Which was what would happen should he go inside that house again. It was easy to not feel sorrow when his body didn’t stop moving. It was helpful in keeping the sadness and loss at bay when he could step back and see the immediate fruits of his efforts—the kind of results Da would have loved.

Why was it necessary to go back into that house anyway? Why risk getting mowed down by an absence when he could stay outside and bask in the good memories? So he’d kept the door locked and had remained satisfied in his ability to keep his grief and acceptance at bay.

That is, until Jen had wanted to go inside, and he was reminded of all that he’d shut away. All that he’d never addressed. He’d sat there in his truck in the driveway, and it seemed like the house was ready to burst at its seams from all that he’d shoved inside and let fester over the past three years. No one could see those ghosts but him.

Except now Jen knew they existed. Now she would know that leaving Gleann was a lot more difficult than he’d been letting on, but that staying would be even worse.

He slowed his truck as Route 6 narrowed through the dramatic cut into the mountains, sheer, jagged cliffs rising three stories on both sides. The road curved here like a roller coaster, and when it spit him out into sloping, open land overlooking the valley lake, he knew he was five miles from Gleann. But something felt off. The sky was cloudless, the sun near blinding, and yet the valley looked dull, the water matte when it should have sparkled. To the east, where Gleann’s rooftops and lone stone church steeple poked between the trees, it looked like an extremely localized storm had focused on the town. Then he realized: That was no storm. It was a fire.

Pedal to the floor, he prayed his truck would stay on all four wheels as he sped around the curves toward the thick plumes of black smoke rising from what he guessed to be Hemmertex. The glass walls of the headquarters were obscured; he couldn’t see if that was indeed where the fire was centralized.

He drove until he could physically drive no more. Half the town of Gleann had filled up both lanes of Route 6, people clustered together in tight, murmuring groups, making no room to let him through. The other half of the town was lined up along the shoulder and against Loughlin’s cattle fence, staring across the fields and into the fairgrounds . . . where the barn serving as storage for the Highland Games was little more than a charred skeleton, its rib bones pointing angrily toward the sky.

“Shhhhit,” Leith said, throwing the truck in park and shutting it off. He got out, leaving the thing blocking the right lane. No one was going anywhere for quite a while. He pushed through the crowd, for once no one paying him any mind. He found an open spot on the fence and stared at the destruction.

Fire trucks from the larger community of Westbury, across the lake, had circled the blackened barn. All the water from putting out the fire had turned the fairgrounds into a mud pit, and violent tire tracks cross-hatched the grass. The air stung Leith’s lungs. Around him people coughed and held handkerchiefs and their shirtsleeves over their noses and mouths, but no one went home. Why would they? This was the most exciting thing to happen in Gleann in a hell of a long time, and misery and speculation would be conversation fodder for decades to come.

Though ninety percent of the stuff in that barn had seen its best days years ago, and the other ten percent was cheesy crap and as far from the Highland Games Da had described from back home, it was still Gleann’s, and they’d need it. Jen would need it to do what she’d come here to do.

As though his thinking of Jen had called her into the collective consciousness, he heard two women whispering behind him.

“Do you think she burned it down on purpose?” the first woman said.

“Maybe. Vera told Annabelle who told my Jack that she wants to change everything. And I mean everything.”

The first woman made a sound of disgust. “Don’t know why Sue brought her in. We could’ve just taken over, had it ourselves, the way we like it.”

Leith almost laughed. Jen burn down a barn? And yeah, the town probably could all gather in the middle of the destroyed fairgrounds and play some pipes and stuff, but the Scottish Society would pull support, no one who lived outside Gleann’s borders would attend, and then they’d be just a bunch of people standing around doing watered-down events that once upon a time had actually meant something. Jen wanted something bigger and better and she would work her ass off for that. To her, burning down a barn would be an insult to her prowess. To her, it would be taking the easy way out.

Where was she anyway? The fire was out and the firemen were picking through the smoking wreckage, but no one was dissipating. He had to say, despite his belief she had nothing to do with it, it would definitely look bad for her if she were the only person not here.

He rounded on the gossiping women. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Jen’s here to help.” He got the reaction he was looking for: fish mouths and huge, shocked eyes.

“But . . . but, look at her,” the first woman said, nudging her chin to the south, “sitting down over there, on her computer and phone, not even caring what’s going on.”

“And she’s not even doing anything to stop that trashy sister from coming between Owen and Melissa . . .”

That’s when Leith turned away. Let them say dumb, meaningless things.

There was a shift in the crowd, and then he saw her.

Jen had plopped down in the grass on the very edge of the gapers, her back to a fence post—and also the burned scene—her laptop open over her crossed legs, her phone pressed between ear and shoulder. Talking and typing simultaneously. In her pajamas and mismatched flip-flops. Her hair wound messily around a rubber band, and her glasses framed dark smudges underneath her makeup-less eyes.

He recognized the two lines between the dark arch of her eyebrows; he’d seen them in the barn that no longer existed, when she’d switched into severe work mode and nothing else existed but the task at hand.

Goddamn it. He’d missed her.

He’d felt it as he’d pulled away from Da’s house three days ago, that sickly twist in his stomach as he’d glanced into the rearview mirror and saw her standing in his driveway. He’d sensed something nagging at him as he’d driven south in search of his new life. Something that told him maybe he’d just driven away from a pretty big part of himself that had nothing to do with Da’s house or his business or Mildred’s properties.

He wasn’t supposed to miss her. Not after only a few days. He’d already gone through that need and separation once before, a long time ago, and with Jen both were especially potent. He wasn’t doing that again. Nope.

Yet as he sifted through the people he’d known all his life, drawing closer and closer to where she sat, all he could imagine was kicking aside that laptop and phone, dragging her up by the shoulders, pinning her to that leaning fence post, and kissing the hell out of her. Then, after he caught his breath, he’d apologize for driving off the way he had, and kiss her all over again.

He stopped just beyond her flip-flops. The townspeople had given her a wide berth, though he saw Mayor Sue lingering nearby, the bright orange of today’s Syracuse gear proclaiming her presence.

Jen was typing furiously while saying “Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh,” into the phone. He just stood there watching, wondering what exactly she was doing.

“Oh, that’s great to hear. Thanks so much. I’d say I owe you, but it seems like we’re even now.” Then she laughed, said good-bye, and dropped the phone from her ear.

He cleared his throat. It took her a moment to look up, but when she did, something inside his chest did this uncomfortable flip because those facial lines of concentration and problem solving disappeared. Just vanished.

“Hey!” She saved whatever it was she was working on, shut the laptop, and scrambled to her feet. “When did you get back?”

He gestured down the hill, over the heads of the crowd, to where his truck was parked jauntily in the road. “Just pulled in now.”

“Silly me. Should’ve heard that thing coming. I’ve been a bit busy.”

He threw a look of regret at the barn. “Hate to say it, but you look way too pleased. The people are talking.”

She grinned, but he got the feeling she was reining in her true pleasure. As she leaned closer, he saw how sleepy she was, even underneath the projected alertness. “Because everything’s taken care of,” she whispered.

“See, now even I’m starting to see you with matches and a crazed smile.”

“No, no.” She waved the hand that still held her phone. “I mean that I’ve fixed things. Hemmertex landowners have agreed to let us rent their land, and I’ve called in a few favors. New tents, new tables, new signage, they’re all on their way.” She wiggled the phone, then playfully hit him in the shoulder with it. “And you make fun of me for having it on me all the time. This thing is going to save the games, you know. I need to go tell Sue.”

Jen walked off, leaving him in a sort of wondrous daze. He watched her gesture excitedly to Sue, who just looked squinty-eyed back at the woman who was telling her that she had it all under control, that everything would be all right. Sue merely nodded. Jen never faltered.

He wanted to walk right over to those two women who’d bashed and speculated about Jen and set them straight, tell them all about what Jen had just done. How she’d probably been dragged from her bed before the sun—a hysterical phone call from Sue, most likely—and had been working her ass off for hours to fix it all for the benefit of people she barely knew and who didn’t appreciate it.

Except that Jen would probably hate that. She’d want her actions to speak louder than any of his words could possibly do. She’d want to prove herself. So he just stepped back and watched.

Watched as Jen turned away from explaining to Sue, and finally let her frustration show at still not being able to get a positive reaction from the mayor. Only Leith could see Jen’s face, the tightening of her lips, the pained squint of those jewel eyes. Only Leith saw her hold a hand to her stomach as though she might be sick.

As Jen bent over to gather her computer and purse from where it sat in the grass, the movement of bright orange caught his eye. Mayor Sue was on the move, weaving in and out of her people like a chieftain after a particularly intense and bloody battle. She was rubbing the backs of some people, patting children on the head, and clasping hands with others. Nothing too unusual for the woman who loved Gleann perhaps most of all, except for the fact that he could read Jen’s name on Sue’s lips. And when the mayor gestured to Jen, there was satisfaction on her face. A little bit of surprise. Perhaps even . . . pride. Sue was many things, but inauthentic wasn’t one of them. She was just slightly prickly and sometimes difficult to please.

He considered pointing out to Jen that it seemed she had impressed Sue, but then Sue turned around and the moment was gone. He knew Jen would never believe it had happened.

“So, what now?” he asked as Jen straightened.

She jammed fingers into her hair, unknowingly snagging some of it free from the rubber band and making it even messier. There were a few sun-damage freckles sprinkled on her shoulders; he didn’t know if they’d appeared in the past ten years or if they’d always been there and he’d just never noticed.

“Now?” She glanced sheepishly at her pajamas and flip-flops. “Coffee. And likely clothes.”

“What about sleep? Your eyes are closing.”

She looked at him as though he’d suggested giving the State of the Union in clown makeup and a feather boa. “But that’s what the coffee is for.”

When she started to eye him in a serious way, he knew her quick-firing brain had switched from thinking about the smoking barn to how they’d parted three days ago. He knew this because her expression softened with exactly the kind of pity he’d wanted to avoid.

“Well”—he took off his Red Sox baseball cap, scrubbed through his hair, and then repositioned the cap—“I’ve been driving since midnight so I’m gonna hit the sack.”

“Okay.” The pity disappeared, which shocked him. She’d always been good at picking up hints, but not necessarily as good at heeding them if they didn’t fit into the direction she wanted to go. “Talk to you later?”

He knew what she meant by “talking,” and he still nodded, because he’d knowingly thrown wide open the door into his mind and allowed her to take a good long look inside.

Now that Sue had made the rounds with her reassurances, the flashing lights on the fire trucks had been turned off, and the big hoses were spraying down the last of the barn ash, the townspeople started to dissipate. He wouldn’t have to mow anyone down to get his truck back to 740 Maple.