“You need to know,” her father said, hobbling up behind her. “It wasn’t that I didn’t mean to come down to you for Christmas.”
She turned away from the window, but he met her eyes only briefly then went to stand beside her looking down into the glen.
“I kept telling myself I’d feel better,” Donald continued slowly, as if the words were painful, “and the more it sank in that I never would, the more I couldn’t seem to make myself do anything to acknowledge it. You get the feeling it all has to be a mistake, something like cancer. Then I realized, maybe it could be a blessing in disguise.” He tightened his grip on the cane, his knuckles white and his hand trembling, and darted a glance at her. “I should have told you, though. I know that, and the fact that I didn’t shames me. I should have said I didn’t have the strength to come to London or the heart to celebrate anything. I never set out to let you down, Caitie. It was hard enough last year when we were together to keep you from seeing how much the memories were wearing on me. I knew I couldn’t manage it this time around. I had too much to hide.”
“You never let me see how hard it was last year,” she said carefully. “I thought we had a good time together.”
“We did.” He nodded and finally turned to face her. “We did. And I’ve never meant to make you feel as if you matter less than Robbie. Rob was always easy. Like your mum. And I knew the things to teach him, to say to him. The things my father said to me. But I didn’t have sisters, and you weren’t easy. From the day you were born, you were as prickly as a box of hedgehogs. I’d tell you something, and you’d ask me for an explanation. Or a reason. Or you’d have your own idea. You always had an opinion.”
“Like you.”
He smiled faintly. “Aye, maybe. Like me, I suppose. Maybe that’s why we’ve always butted heads, but it’s never meant I love you less.”
He’d never said anything like that before. Hearing the words, Cait felt as if a weight had lifted, one that had been pressing on her for so long she’d forgotten it was there. Her throat tight and aching, she said, “Can we start with a fresh slate, then?”
Her father put both hands on his cane and leaned heavily against it, but he managed to smile at her. “I’d like that. Only I’m not making any promises about the cancer, mind. So long as that’s understood and you don’t nag me.”
“I’ll try not to,” Cait said, smiling back. “Only I’m not making any promises about not trying to change your mind.”
Glass Houses
“We are all strangers in a strange land,
longing for home, but not quite knowing
what or where home is.”
Madeleine L’Engle
The second of the shortbread Christmas trees that Cait had fashioned turned out better than she’d hoped, especially given that she’d left the first attempt in the oven long enough that it had baked to a caramelized brown instead of the delicate ivory it was meant to be. She iced the second attempt in a mixture of milk, vanilla, and confectioner’s sugar, and then hand-painted green branches, red balls, and gold ribbon by dipping a brush first in whiskey and then in food coloring. If it tasted as good as it looked, she decided as she finished cleaning up and looked down at the finished effort, she could do variations of this for the Tea Room. Offering five or six different types of painted shortbread, a mixture of pastries from the hotel, her mum’s famous scones, and a variety of soups and tea sandwiches, she thought she could make the menu work.
She hoped.
Working quickly because she was running out of time, she wrapped the tree as a gift for Brice and set it on top of the fish she had already sealed up earlier in a plastic bin. The sound of the shower upstairs had finally stopped, so she decided her father was done, and she galloped up to shower herself and dress in a red hip-length sweater and a nice black skirt over tights and black suede boots.
She was glad she’d taken the trouble when Brice arrived. His hair was still damp, and he’d put on clean gray trousers, a pale blue shirt, and a soft sweater beneath his leather jacket. He looked wonderful, but it struck her abruptly that he, too, looked tired. Which was no wonder considering the time he’d been putting in for her at the Tea Room in addition to whatever other work he had going at the garage.
He helped her father into the back seat of the Land Rover, then came around to open the door for Cait, surprising her yet again. The way he smiled at her warmed her cheeks, and she slid in quickly and busied herself with the seat belt while she held the warm plastic container with the fish on her lap.
Her nerves grew as they approached the small cottage where he lived. She hadn’t seen it since the day she’d left the glen, and she didn’t know how she was going to feel. Whether she had really let all the old hurt and raw emotion go.
But nothing looked the same as Brice turned into the drive that led to the garage and his cottage. The old garage building that she remembered—half-derelict with a leaky roof, a broken window, and only a single bay for car repairs—had been fixed and painted. Beside it, an entirely new building had been added with three additional bays hidden behind automatic doors. Above that, higher on the hillside, the small structure where Brice had been raised had grown into a fair-sized house, with additional rooms added onto the original building and a whole new second level added on as well. Surrounded by decking that appeared to circle the building on both levels, floor to ceiling picture windows looked down over the treetops to the loch. The moon was out, just shy of full, and it reflected brightly off the glass, combining with lights that blazed inside to make the entire structure sparkle. The whole house looked as though it had been made for the landscape, grown out of it, with naturally wood-stained walls and all those windows to reveal the view.
Brice mashed a garage door clicker and pulled into a pristinely white-painted space alongside the house, then he switched the Land Rover’s engine off.
Cait turned in her seat to face him, feeling shocked. And more than a little stupid. “Did you build all this?”
“Not all of it. I had help putting up the framework and then paid to have the difficult bits done. The plumbing and electrical, and the fireplace, roof, and windows. I’ve had a few of the lads in at weekends helping, too.”
“Why didn’t anyone tell me?” Cait asked, feeling as though she’d been asking that question far too often lately. Feeling wrong-footed all too often.
“Where’d the money come from?” her father demanded from the back seat. “That’s the bigger question.”
“Nothing illegal.” Brice sounded even more tired—and . . . disappointed. Definitely disappointed.
Had he imagined this moment, Cait wondered, envisioned showing her what he had built? That had to be part of inviting the two of them here. Had he been hoping for her approval? For her father’s?
But how had he done this? And where had the money come from? And why? Why build all this?
He came around to meet her as she slipped out of the car. Taking her hand, he pulled her toward a side door that led inside. “Do you like it?”
She paused in the doorway, stunned.
The balconies around the house had no railings, the inside wasn’t quite finished yet, and there wasn’t much in the way of furniture, but the bones of the place were . . . perfect. She couldn’t have chosen them better herself. No interior walls divided the space or obstructed the views of the glen. A tidy, modern kitchen on one end flowed into a dining area which became a beautiful, high-ceilinged area that culminated in a fireplace that tapered dramatically into a slate-tiled chimney surrounded by honey-colored walls. Brice’s familiar old sofa and two battered armchairs sat in front of it along with a low table and a pair of end tables whose surfaces were marred by a mosaic of stains left by countless beer bottles and whiskey glasses.
She had spent more time than she cared to think curled up with Brice in the chairs, on that sofa, putting her own beer bottles down on torn napkins or dirty dishes so that she didn’t contribute to the patchwork of stains on the tables.
Maybe that was why the whole house seemed familiar. But Cait didn’t honestly believe that. Everything about the house felt as though she knew it. Everywhere she looked, she found something that was exactly as though she had chosen to put it there herself, the color and pattern of the slate around the fireplace, the fact that there was no mantel to clutter the clean look of it, the warm honey of the paint, the dark stained oak on the floor, the windows with that view, the way the staircase up to the second level seemed to hang, suspended by nothing at all, in the air. The balconies. She could picture herself spending hours and hours sitting on those balconies watching the light change on the loch. Watching the sun set and rise again. Watching the seasons change.
“It’s still a work in progress,” Brice said, his expression still too anxious. “I’ll get new furniture for it eventually, and I haven’t put in the bookshelves on that back wall there—they’ll go from floor to ceiling eventually. And I’m not quite done with two of the bedrooms and the guest bath upstairs.”
It was all too much for Cait to take it in. “I can’t believe you’ve done this—all of this.”
But that hadn’t come out right. It wasn’t what she meant to say at all. It sounded too critical, not nearly awed enough by the achievement, and she needed him to see that she understood. Turning, she caught his arm, held him in place until he was forced to look at her instead of trying to study the house with a critical eye as he had been.
“It’s absolutely beautiful,” she said. “Incredible. It would be even if you’d spent five years building it. I can’t believe you’ve managed to get so much done since I was here.”
“I’ve Brando to thank for getting me started. He went in with me to buy a Jaguar I restored, and I sold that for a fair bit then reinvested in a McLaren. I delivered an Aston Martin DB5 to a client just this morning, the biggest restoration so far.”
“How did you find the time?” Cait asked. “Not to mention the knowledge. You’ve always been a brilliant mechanic and I mean no disrespect, but don’t those cars require specialized technicians and engineers?”
Brice smiled, a wry smile, not a happy one. “I find cars with problems I can manage, and I hire specialists when I need them. I’ve learned a lot and done a few certifications. The truth is, without you here, there hasn’t been a whole lot I wanted to spend time doing. Mostly, I work. Either here at the garage or on the house.”
“But why?” Cait couldn’t help asking, couldn’t help feeling like she needed to hold her breath. “Why push yourself so hard to do all this?”
He leaned in closer and said into her ear, “Because every day when I woke up I discovered all over again that you weren’t here, and every night when I went to bed, I dreamed that in the morning you’d be back. I hoped you would finally realize that this place, with me, is where you are meant to stay. I needed to believe that.”
Shards
“Love never dies a natural death.
It dies because we don't know
how to replenish its source.”
Anaïs Nin
Cait finished washing the last of the colored earthenware dishes and handed it to Brice for drying. It was a new set, one she had never seen before, but she liked the simplicity of it, each plate a different primary color without any pattern or artifice that had made a beautiful backdrop for the beef roast, Yorkshire pudding, and roasted vegetables that Brice had served. Picking up her half-empty wine glass, she watched him stack the plates and tuck them away inside a cabinet. He’d taken off his sweater and rolled up the sleeves of his pale blue shirt, and his skin looked darker with the contrast, the muscles beneath it lean and hard. Not gym muscles as she’d seen in London. These were the real thing, honed through pure hard work.
She was proud of him. Not because he’d built a house for her, although the thought of that still made it hard to breathe. Because he had somehow come into his own while she’d been gone, figured out who he was so that he now walked comfortably in his skin. Confidence, she decided, could be sold as an aphrodisiac and peddled to the masses. Whoever figured out how to bottle it would make a mint.
“What are you thinking about so intently?” Brice asked, turning back after he’d closed the cabinet door.
Cait took a sip of the wine, a Pinot Noir with a deep, full perfume that made her want to breathe it in. Like Brice himself, it went to her head, made her want to taste, savor, linger.
“I’m wondering where you learned to cook like that,” she asked. “You used to stick to bangers and mash.”
“I followed the recipes,” he said, smiling back at her. “Shock, I know, given that I’ve never liked instructions much. I just told myself it was chemistry.”
“You nearly failed chemistry, if I remember right.”
“Did I really?” He folded the dishcloth and came closer to hang it on the rack beside her hip, watching her the entire time.
“Maybe not all chemistry,” she admitted.
He laughed and split the last of the wine in the bottle between his glass and hers. With a glance at her father, who was still watching the telly by the lighted fireplace, he put a finger over his lips and pointed toward the sliding glass door that led out onto the balcony. She nodded, and he slipped his sweater back on then helped her into her coat. Once they were outside, he slid the door closed behind them.
“Here, keep hold of my hand and sit right there,” he said, motioning to the edge of the decking.
She sat cautiously, legs dangling over the drop, while he settled himself beside her, watching the moon ride high, its reflection nearly round as it reflected on the surface of the loch. The night was as clear as a diamond, cold and crisp. Cait shivered, though not because of the temperature. Between the wine and Brice, she didn’t feel chilled at all.
“This seems to be my day for apologies,” she said. “I owe you one. You were right about there being more to my leaving than seeing Rhona coming out of your cottage. I’ve been over and over it in my mind, and I know that I wasn’t thinking of leaving when I came over. But I jumped at the chance to get away. I jumped to conclusions, and I should have trusted you. At the very least, I should have talked to you about it instead of writing a note and wrapping it around my ring. I was scared.”
“Scared of me?” Brice asked.
“Scared of everything. Scared of myself. Scared the way I hadn’t been since you and Brando dared me to climb up the side of the copper still the first time we broke into the old distillery.”
“We didn’t know Mad Mackenzie was going to come by in the middle of it.”
“I never minded the bruises. It was being startled when he shouted, and then the sense of falling and falling and falling as if I’d never stop. Slow motion falling. I walked into your house after seeing Rhona, and I saw the bottle and the empty glasses in the kitchen, and I saw the sheets all tangled on the bed. You were in the shower, and it was as if I was walking from room to room falling and falling, and I felt like if I hadn’t left, I would have crashed to the ground.”
“I’m sorry. It wasn’t—”
“I believe you. I should have believed in you. That’s what you told me the other day, and you were right.”
“You’re here now, though. Aren’t you?”
Cait couldn’t decide whether he was asking if she was physically real—or whether he wanted to know if she was back, if they were back, the two of them. But a simple “yes” worked fine as an answer either way.
Brice took the glass out of her hand and set it down beside his on the decking, and then he leaned forward and caught her face between his palms. It seemed to take forever for his lips to reach hers, but then they stayed, moving thoroughly and excruciatingly, sweetly, slow. Finally he pulled back.
“Not here,” he said, “glass houses and all that.” He gestured back to where the blue light of the telly her father was watching flickered through the window. “Anyway, you’ll be frozen through soon.”
“It’s probably time to get Dad home anyway. He’ll be due for his dose
of pain medication.”
“I’ll go get the car warmed up.”
Cait got her father’s cane off the floor by the sofa and handed it to him, then tried to hold his coat for him, but he snatched it out of her hands. “I’m not a bloody invalid.”
“You’re a bloody something,” she said. “I won’t say what.”
He shot her a look then chuckled. “Your mother used to call me far worse, though not where you or Rob could hear her.”
It was the first time since Cait had come home that he’d referred to her mum as if the memory brought him pleasure instead of pain. Cait squeezed his hand, and he squeezed hers back and, later, as they were all driving back home the short distance up the hill, her in the rear seat and Brice and her father up front beside each other, she allowed herself a dangerous burst of optimistic anticipation not far removed from the kind she used to feel as a child on Christmas night, as if something wonderful was coming and she had only to be patient and let the time tick slowly past. Her father had been perfectly pleasant over dinner, and he’d even complimented Brice on the house and on the meal.
He would find his way back, she was increasingly certain of it. He’d fight, and he would beat the cancer, and she and Brice would finish the Tea Room and get it open, and she and Brice . . . Well . . . Was it stupid to feel certain that would work out, too? She felt no doubts about it, only a dead calm certainty that brought her a sense of peace.
Peace which lasted only until they reached the drive and saw that it was filled with cars.
“What’s all this?” her father asked.
Cait recognized Elspeth’s car, and Brando’s Land Rover, and the Audi that belonged to Connal MacGregor. And through the window, a half dozen heads were visible bobbing around the sitting room.
Her father thumped the dashboard and turned to look at Cait. “Did you give them permission to be here? In my house! What do they think they’re doing?”
Magic of Winter Page 13