Secret Garden (5 page)

“No,” Colin said, “I need to talk with Jamie and Jessie. I’ll head over there now. They always were early risers.” Hopefully, they still were.

In the end, Bonnie drove him to his grandparents’ cottage. She went slowly and carefully, weaving her way down a single-lane Scottish country road and playing Fleetwood Mac on the stereo—old stuff Colin hadn’t heard since he was a kid. “You Make Loving Fun.” None of it fit with the fact that he was the estranged grandson returning to Scotland for the funeral of a father he hadn’t heard from in twenty-some years.

Colin pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. The sun was streaking over the horizon. The digital clock on Bonnie’s dash told him it was six o’clock in the morning.

“Jamie always liked to get up while it was still dark,” Colin said, to no one in particular. Snatches of memory were coming back to him. From what little he remembered of his grandfather, he was set in his ways and brooked no nonsense.

“Would you mind turning down the music?” Colin asked as Bonnie pulled up beside the whitewashed cottage. Now that he was here, he felt completely sober. They were out in the middle of nowhere, in the Highlands. Somehow he had to get along with his grandparents for four more days. Then he could leave.

With the music subdued, Bonnie and Mack climbed out and hauled Colin’s two bags to the dewy grass in front of his grandparents’ cottage. The zippered bag holding his golf clubs made muffled clanking noises. Colin glanced at the cottage, studying it. It looked so much smaller than it had in his memories.

He’d never felt more alone than when he stood on the roadside in the silent, cool morning, his belongings dumped on the pavement.

“You gonna be okay?” Mack asked.

“I doubt it,” he said drolly.

Mack laughed. Colin smiled. They hadn’t said a damn serious thing all night anyway—even though his father had died and he was here for his funeral. Why should they start now?

His grandfather stood on the porch with his hands on his hips, watching everything. Fittingly, it had started to rain. There was no more delaying the confrontation, and Colin felt as if he’d reached rock bottom. In his heart, he was ready to consider that maybe it was both their faults that nobody had kept in touch.

Not just his fault. Not just his grandparents’ fault. Just one big, snowballed mess that they might begin to melt together with a face-to-face conversation.

He took off his wet cap and turned to the grandfather he hadn’t seen or heard from since he was an eight-year-old boy. He didn’t know how to begin, except to say, “Granddad?”

“Where the devil have you been?” his grandfather thundered in return.

Colin wiped his hand on his pants. So much for the triumphant celebration of the prodigal grandson returning to the fold. He shrugged in a
what can we do?
pose and gave his grandfather a wayward smile that usually worked for him. “You know how plane travel is.”

“No, I don’t.” His grandfather’s answering scowl sent chills through Colin. “And don’t you have a mobile phone?” he demanded.

“Ah...somewhere. I hope.” Colin patted the side pocket of his cargo pants. Yeah, the hard plastic lump was there. “Sorry. I should’ve called to warn you I was running late last night.”

His grandfather glared harder. Maybe Colin should give him the benefit of the doubt. Colin’s father had been this man’s—Jamie’s—son. Jamie was no doubt grieving his son’s death.

“I should leave you out here in the rain,” Jamie said. “Let it soak some sense into you.”

The illusion of being greeted with open arms was pretty much shattered. The rain spit harder. Colin rubbed his arms, but his grandfather wasn’t inviting him inside. On the contrary, he seemed to be guarding the door.

“Wait here,” Jamie said. He disappeared inside the cottage, shutting the door behind him.

While Colin waited for his grandfather to reappear, he searched his mind to remember something good from his childhood...a common, shared happy memory. But the only night that was coming back with any clarity was the last one. New Year’s Eve. The day his mother had confronted his father with his infidelity and he’d finally snapped, washing his hands of them. There had never even been a formal goodbye, just a general loading up of a small suitcase and then a car roaring away from the side of the dirt driveway.

Colin remembered crying. He remembered feeling powerless. And then he remembered running to the castle across the field, and later, crouching on the staircase beside the only person who had seen through him—who had cared to see through him—who had made him feel that somebody saw his pain and understood it.

Jamie reappeared on the doorstep, quietly closing the front door behind him.

“How’s Rhiannon?” Colin asked, before Jamie could say anything.

“Rhiannon?” His grandfather’s face turned red. “What do you care about her for?” he snapped, stalking toward Colin’s position on the grass like a gnarled, stooped-over boxer.

“She was a good friend when I was a kid,” Colin said. “I’d really like to see her again.”

Maybe it was crazy, but he wanted to know why she hadn’t written him when she’d promised. He’d waited to hear from her, and nothing had come. Maybe if she had, things would have been different.

No, he couldn’t blame any of this on her. “I’ll look her up tomorrow,” he mused. He gave Jamie a smile. “Do you know if she still lives around here?”

His grandfather’s eyes narrowed. “You leave her alone. She’s not interested in seeing the likes of you.”

“How do you know that?”

Jamie seemed to be fighting to keep himself from blowing up. He hadn’t been all that warm and cuddly when Colin knew him, and the years had only seemed to make him crankier. He wagged his finger at Colin. “Because she’s married and has five wee bairns. Her...husband would right kill you. Or at least break your arms. Then how would you play your golf?”

Colin pushed his irritation away because he didn’t want to be angry anymore. He’d liked Rhiannon a lot. He remembered her as a skinny girl with pigtails and a soft, shy voice. What had made her special to him had been her spirit. Her fierce, sweet, independent spirit.

Maybe it was disappointing to hear that she was married, but he could still check in with her. Maybe she would go with him to the funeral. She’d known his father, too.

And then the sadness of it all hit him in a crushing wave. His whole body feeling shaky, he drew a ragged breath. “I’m here because my father is dead.” His voice sounded small and pained, like a boy’s.

Where had
that
come from?

His grandfather got even more furious. “Aye, you should feel bad about it!” he shouted.

Colin felt his mouth dropping open.

“Did you even think once about your grandmother?” Jamie said in a more hushed tone, making a guilty, backward glance at the closed cottage door. “About the pain this brings her? Despite everything, she sat up all night waiting to see you. Waiting, and crying. Now she’s asleep, tired of waiting for you lot.”

His grandfather waved a gnarled hand, and Colin felt ashamed. “Now you can wait for her to wake up and take you in. She asked me to drive her to the store yesterday, because she wants to cook your favorites for breakfast. And she will! But until she’s awake and in her kitchen, you’ll just find a hotel. I’ll not let you in to see her, smelling like a brewery. Sleep it off and get yourself clean. Maybe then you can think to yourself about what you’ve done tonight.”

Think
to himself? That was all Colin had been doing. That was his problem.

But the ancient door to the cottage closed again, and Colin was left alone, in the elements, with a canvas bag containing funeral clothes, fast getting soggy, and his ever-present set of golf clubs.

Colin hadn’t really thought about why he’d brought his clubs. It was more a reflex or a habit. Something he always lugged around with him because he wanted to. He liked golf. He liked the feeling of competence it gave him, especially since he’d gained his tour card. Made him feel valued and accepted.

He tucked the golf clubs into a dry spot under the overhang to the roof. Behind the cottage was a long, rolling field. The Highlands. Paradise of his childhood summers.

The landscape looked the same, held all the promise that he’d remembered. He’d used to range over this land, racing with sticks aloft—pretend swords—in the company of Rhiannon MacDowall.

Shaking his head, smiling again—at last—he grabbed a fairway wood and a handful of practice balls from his golf bag. Traipsing through the squishy grass, he headed for the rolling field beyond. It smelled like rain and heather and fresh, wide-open air.

He remembered this place in his bones. This feeling of peace. The mist rose off the grass even as the rain came down. It was so quiet it seemed holy. Not another soul was awake with him.

He dropped the practice balls and lined up his stance so he was facing a copse in the distance. That way had been Rhiannon’s castle.

Winding up, he hit a ball with a solid whack. It reverberated through him, centering him.

Calming him.

* * *

T
HE FIRST THING
Rhiannon MacDowall did every morning when she awoke was to visit her garden in an effort to center herself and reconnect with a feeling of peace.

Afterward, she climbed the stairs to her art studio with the view over her family’s property. This was the same terrain Rhiannon had been taking comfort from for most of her life. On an easel beside her was her latest landscape painting, done in oils and nearly completed. Her uncle was coming to collect it in a week; one of his wealthy friends had commissioned it.

Art was what she did with her life. She loved it. It calmed her.

She tilted her head and observed the large canvas.

I want to add a cottage to it.

The thought stunned her because it was so different from her usual style. But it felt right.

Her yellow tabby cat hopped off the window ledge. He landed gingerly, shaking his front paws.
Poor Colin.
She picked him up and hugged him. He was twenty-one, old for a cat.

Her whole world seemed to be changing of late.

Mum and Dad had been gone a week now—rare for them—with eight more weeks to go on their vacation. For the first time Rhiannon could remember, she was living alone in the castle. Just Paul, their longtime butler, Colin the aging cat and her.

Even her brother, Malcolm, was newly married, and her cousin Isabel—now her closest female friend her age—had just sent her a “save the date” notice for an autumn wedding invitation. A wedding that Rhiannon would attend by video monitor, of course. Rhiannon wished Isabel well, but if she were honest, the invitation had set off a tinge of dissatisfaction within her. Maybe a wee bit of envy?

Perfectly natural. But, as always, she would control it until she was content again.

Rhiannon found her camera and grabbed a warm raincoat for her walk outside. The weather was misting a bit and alternating with rain, not atypical for Scotland in early June, so she laced up her waterproof boots and tucked the camera inside her front pocket.

She had the perfect picturesque cottage in mind, and it was on the edge of their two-hundred-acre estate. Usually, Rhiannon worked from memory, but the last time she’d seen the cottage was, well, before she’d become agoraphobic. Just the thought of approaching the boundary lines and the public road to see it was making her pulse race. Making this trip was daring for her. But she was ready for a change, however slight and controlled.

She went downstairs, then across the courtyard to the main castle and the breakfast room. Paul stood at the buffet table, arranging breakfast items as he had done every morning for years going back. He smiled to see her, and she relaxed somewhat.

“Good morning, miss. Would you like some coffee?”

“When I return, please, Paul. I’m going for my walk now.” By habit, she reached for the dog leash, but remembered that her mum’s golden retriever, Molly, was gone, too, boarded at the vet’s, recuperating from minor surgery on her leg.

Rhiannon sighed. She would be walking alone today.

“I’ll pick Molly up later in the day,” Paul remarked kindly.

“Thank you.” They’d been together so long that sometimes she thought Paul could read her mind.

He gestured to the window. “The starlings have left the nest.”

“Have they? They’re late this year.”

“Indeed.” Paul smiled mildly and wiped down their coffee machine. He was getting a bit stooped. She hadn’t noticed until now. He must have been about forty when he came to them after she’d returned home from the hospital. Now he would be in his sixties.

We’re all getting older.

And then what? What would Rhiannon do when Paul finally retired? Rhiannon was thirty. A spinster. An agoraphobic spinster, living alone in a modernized castle. Any supplies she needed, she ordered by phone or internet. But for actual contact with people, she relied on Paul. Or her parents. Even Molly.

Paul glanced at her standing there, holding the leash, and stopped tidying up. “Miss, would you like me to accompany you on your walk today?”

“No. That’s quite all right.” She smiled at Paul. She really did appreciate his presence in her life. “Sooner or later we all have to walk alone.”

Paul blinked. “That’s not necessarily true, miss.”

“You don’t think so?”

Paul politely gazed down at his hands. He was the help, after all, their perfect, English-trained butler. He was paid to be agreeable to her. “I wouldn’t presume to know,” he murmured.

“Well, for today at least, I walk alone.” She patted the camera in her pocket. “I’ll be back in a half hour. If I’m not, send out the hounds.”

The corner of Paul’s mouth twitched. They didn’t have any hounds. Just a playful golden retriever, currently injured.

Rhiannon headed outside, walking her customary path past the walled garden and circling the gravel drive. Up the hill was the guard shack, and from there, all along the boundaries, a stone wall, strengthened with concrete. Surveillance cameras were installed at regular intervals, monitored by the guard on duty.