What Lies Between (2 page)

“How long have I been asleep?”

“Nearly four hours. We’ll be at the estate soon. I stopped to pick up some sandwiches. Yours is in there.” He flipped his thumb at a paper bag sitting in the console between us.

Four hours!
My heart sank with disappointment at missing the sights then rose with the anticipation of being nearly at the estate—Calum had mentioned it was less than a five-hour drive.

“I slept all this way?” I asked, surprised he hadn’t wakened me.

“Jet lag can be pretty rough coming from the States. You’ll have time to see more of Scotland later,” he said, a smile lighting his face. “It’s a wee country.”

Across the country in under five hours? Things here were on a completely different scale.

Twenty minutes later, Calum turned off the main road and navigated along a single lane nestled tightly against the edge of Loch Moran. He pulled into a bulge to let an approaching car drive by. Farther on, a car did the same for us. Calum and the other drivers waved. The etiquette of the road here reminded me of the way people waved back and forth in rural Oklahoma. Although I’d only lived in the country for two years, those years held some of my best memories. I rolled down the window to smell the air. It was cool and big and refreshing and slipped into my lungs clear and easy.

“Glenbroch is a few miles up the road. Its name has to do with the Iron Age broch still standing near the west end of Loch Moran.” Calum gave me a sideways glance. “Ancient people built these dwellings with stones from the area—dry stacked, no mortar—often up on a cliff or a brae, like the one on your land. These brochs are more than two thousand years old.”

Before I could respond, a bright orange flash caught my attention. The vibrant color belonged to the needle-point beak of a bird flying inches above the water’s surface, its voice loud and fervent. A sailboat bobbed farther out on the loch’s soft crests—a postcard-perfect scene with five mountain peaks rising behind. I wanted to savor every single one of my first impressions.

“Your property has a lot of shoreline, and the estate holds fishing rights for several square miles of the loch as well.”

I registered Calum’s words, but my eyes and ears were gorging on sensory overload: white puffs on the distant hillside bleating a welcome, purple heather clothing the mottled hills, ripples pulsating against the rock-strewn shore, tangles of bluebells brightening the edges of the gravel road, stone walls overgrown with moss and ivy beards that would make ZZ Top proud.

“You’re officially on MacKinnon land now, from the loch back up the hill there and for several miles ahead.”

“Can we stop?” I asked. “I want to get out and take it all in for a moment.”

Calum pulled into another bulge in the road and remained in the car as I stepped out.

Thin trees swayed in the wind, rubbing against one another. Each seemed to have found its own distinct sound. One had the voice of a violin, horsehair drawn slowly across strings. Another snapped and groaned with every surge of the breeze, its joints old and achy.

“The trees are stronger than they look,” Calum said through the open window. “These old pines have weathered decades of snow, hail, gale-force winds, floods, sometimes even baking sun, all manner of creatures . . . and humans. They know how to survive up here.”

Old, noisy trees, tell me your secrets.

I strolled a short distance up the road and around a bend, out of sight of the car. I knelt to scoop up a handful of needle-covered dirt, breathing in its scent—pine, a faint trace of smoke, a hint of moldy bread—the smell of my new home.

The old stone wall edging the road held the sweat and memories of people who had come before me—my family. Scarcely believing I was here, I ran my hands over its cold, rough surface, my fingers twisting the scratchy moss growing through the rocks. I sank down against the wall as the past caught up with me once again.

Hyped up on unrealistic hope, I’d gone looking for my birth parents as soon as I’d turned eighteen. My mother never returned any of my calls but Gerard had wanted to meet.

I didn’t want to have expectations, but of course I did. Bare minimum. Like I’d expected he would have taken a shower, worn a shirt without holes—he practiced law and must have owned at least one decent shirt—maybe have put away the porn or offered me a glass of water, even asked me how my life had been. He hadn’t needed to belabor his indifference toward me. I could see that for myself.

And listening to him repeat (as if I didn’t understand English) that he was not my father, made one thing clear: some dreams should only be chased, never caught. Learning that lesson cost me a second chance with the father I needed; I never contacted him again. But second chances cut both ways—my father didn’t contact me either. Even terminal cancer hadn’t moved him to pick up the phone.

I think meeting him then had likely played a part in why he had left this place to me, and why I had chosen to claim it. The stones pressing into my back, the ground beneath my feet, this inheritance—it all felt like part of a “post-midnight confession” of sorts. The hour had tolled upon Gerard’s death and the opportunity for what could have been had escaped. It was too late to ask questions or to say all the things I’d meant to say, to hear all the things I’d wanted to hear.

This inheritance, even with the massive debt, acknowledged the truth: I was Gerard’s daughter and he was my father. 

Feeling MacKinnon ground under my feet meant more than I’d imagined, leaving my heart pulsing with a mix of pain and happiness. This was the concrete type of confession that changes everything; it was already turning me inside out.

I pushed myself up, away from the stone wall, away from regrets and worries; I wanted so badly to learn how to take moments as they came, let go of yesterday, and not live tomorrow until it arrived. Why was this so hard?

Keep moving—this is what I know how to do.
 

Crossing the road, I squatted at the edge of the loch, cupped its water in my hands, and sucked a taste into my mouth. Salty. Washing the loch’s bracing water over my face, as if it could wash away lingering thoughts of the past, I turned and headed back toward the car.

Calum started the engine and pulled back onto the road. “The renovation your father started is nearly finished. He had planned to move back permanently later this year and prepare for opening next season.” I caught his sideways glance but kept my eyes on the scenery. “I’m sorry that it is all happening like this for you, with his passing. It isn’t an ideal situation, but Glenbroch is an excellent opportunity.”

“I didn’t get much information about the estate. Why is that?”

Calum shifted in the driver’s seat and cleared his throat. “Glenbroch is quite isolated. The nearest town is Portree on Skye, more than an hour away. Kilmoran, the wee village we passed through, is where mail is posted but for a shop you’ll have to go to Kyle or even farther. Highland life wouldn’t be for most people, and Gerard wasn’t convinced a city girl would be able to make a go of it here . . . that you would even come over if you knew how hard it would be. He couldn’t wait to get away himself and head to the States for university. It took all these years and the death of his parents to draw him home for more than a visit.”

My mind whirred backward to that meeting with Gerard so long ago, back to the photos on the wall of his dining room—the man in the kilt and the lovely woman in the beautiful dress—his parents, my grandparents, Angus and Helen MacKinnon. Having grandparents would have changed everything for me. Without a family, I had long ago learned to be on my own, and most of the time I preferred it this way.

Not this time.

“It’s a bit daunting to come here, with no MacKinnons left, and to have to make the estate work—or worse, to be the one who loses it after it’s been in the family all these years.”

I turned my face to the window hoping Calum wouldn’t notice the tears threatening my composure. Jet lag added to my strung out emotions.

“From what you said it’s obvious Gerard didn’t believe I would stick around or that I could handle it. Doomed to fail before I started.” My jaw clenched to stave off the swirling rush of sadness, fear, and frustration threatening to pull me under. I had plenty of insecurities about the decision to come here and try to run this estate; I had wanted to turn around, tell Leland it had all been a prank, go to dinner with him and Jason Marks like a good girl, and celebrate my assignment to Jason’s account. Would that have been the smart decision? Probably. But not the decision I could live with.

All these years I had clung to a thin slip of a dream, of hope, that I would once again be part of a family, would belong somewhere, would know where I had come from and who made up the blood that ran through my veins. If I couldn’t will myself to be brave and give that small bit of hope every chance, the outcome here would be my fault and no one else’s.

Being brave didn’t come easy. Before my adoptive parents were killed, as young as I was, I had known they believed in me. That stuck with me when I was put in foster care, where no one thought I would make anything of my life—just another lost kid.

No one is just another kid.

I was five when I’d declared I would build a birdhouse and sketched it out. My dad, Patrick, took me to the store and helped me pick out the materials. With my simple drawing as a blueprint, he supervised the construction and gently guided me until I created something that looked like what I had drawn. Watching the birds light on my little house became one of my favorite pastimes.

Three months later, Patrick and Alberta Jameson were dead, and I was alone in the world. From then on, I’d learned to survive no matter what life threw at me. 

“Gerard didn’t know me at all,” I said, staring at the side of Calum’s face, my eyes narrowed in defiance. It didn’t matter what Gerard had thought; he hadn’t taken the time to know what I was made of.

Calum kept his eyes on the road, and I turned back to the window. My anger softened as my eyes rested on MacKinnon land. Gerard had left me all he had in the world, no matter what his thoughts about it. The reasons didn’t matter.

It frustrated me to feel this exposed and at the edge of my emotional control, to be up and down from one moment to the next. I shuddered at the thought that this phase of loss or grief, or whatever it was, might last any longer than it had already. Simply being here drove my thoughts and emotions in all directions. If I could just rest and get myself together . . .

But each rotation of the tires poured another cup of anxiety over the top of my excitement. My hands ached from winding themselves around each other. The grandparents I wanted to meet and to know were long gone. They couldn’t help me do what I needed to do. Neither could Gerard or my parents. Once again, I had only myself.

Breathe.

I stuck my head out of the window, perched my chin on folded arms, and let the crisp air clear my head. Watching the sun play hide-and-seek through the branches of oak and birch hovering over the road calmed me even as the brisk breeze raised goose bumps on my skin. The winds here, contending with hills and trees and twisty, narrow glens sounded nothing like the uninhibited winds that blew across the Oklahoma plains.

Calum interrupted my silent musing. “Those hills behind the house are used partly for sheep grazing but also for deer stalking, and grouse and pheasant shooting. Gerard’s man, Jim MacDougall, manages estate operations. He’s away but will be back next week. Couldn’t be helped, I’m afraid. His sister took ill. You’ll meet him soon enough. For now, it’s safe to wander about in the hills. Stalkers won’t be out.”

Stalkers.
Hunters.
Growing up in Oklahoma I had known several people who hunted. I ate meat, though not much, but I was a soft, modern person not sold on the idea of killing my own food. I fished occasionally and was fairly hypocritical about it all, but the image of a dead fish just didn’t have the same effect on me as the image of a dead Bambi.

The car followed an arched stone bridge over a narrow river. As the road curved I caught a glimpse of a large stone house through the trees edging the long drive. I recognized it even though I hadn’t seen any pictures.

Glenbroch. Home. Bigger than I thought it would be from Calum’s “small by Highland standards” description. Old. Not run-down but stately, been-here-forever old. Rooted. The two ends of the house jutted forward, thick ivy clinging to the upper façade of an impressive two-story stone house with a large octagonal center. Glenbroch might be a small country house in Scotland, but it looked like a mansion to me.

My fatigue swirled off into the wind blowing through the open window and I jumped out of the car before the tires crunched to a full stop.

“Welcome to Glenbroch,” Calum called after me, the roll of his Scottish brogue marking the moment with an emphatic reminder that I was in another world.

“Glenbroch,” I mimicked his accent. Pushing open the massive front door, I stepped into the closest thing to the fairytales I’d read about in books . . . but this was better. This was real.

2

My impression from the outside led me to assume the entry would be grand and sweeping. The entry
was
large with a fireplace and sitting area, but more intimate than the impressively styled foyer I’d expected. Doorways led off in five directions; the center one offered a clean line of sight through the house to the glen beyond. With the ceiling’s painted beams and the rustic wood floor, the space was homey, lived-in. Caught up in the moment, I think I floated through the arched doorway straight ahead and found myself in a room shaped by the back half of the octagon.

“That ceiling is eighteen feet high,” Calum said, coming up behind me.

I slowly made my way around the massive room, touching everything and running my hand across the black marble of the fireplace, which looked to be original. Paintings hung on the wall; one was a portrait of a boy in a kilt, formally dressed like the photo in Gerard’s house of my grandfather. I moved close enough to read the inscription: James Gerard Philip MacKinnon, dated 1884. A woman’s portrait hung on the opposite side of the fireplace. Eleanor Isabella MacKinnon, 1902. The woman wore a yellow dress with a plaid scarf draped over the shoulder.