What Lies Between Read online

  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.

  “Eleanor married James in 1895. She was twenty-four and he was twenty-two. They would be your great-great-grandparents.”

  I searched their faces for a shared feature but only saw a general resemblance, enough to conclude that it was possible we were related.

  My glance fell on a grand piano in the corner of the room. I wanted to place my hands on its keys and see if I could remember any tunes. I’d only had one year of lessons before my parents died, but I could probably still peck out a tune or two.

  Before I could sit down and give it a try, my attention was drawn away by the landscape visible through the large windows. The room’s octagonal shape extended beyond the main wall of the house, giving the room an expansive view down the glen. The gardens to the rear were well maintained and tall trees edged the sides of the grounds, with a few close to the house. The builder must not have wanted to cut down those trees and formed the patio around them instead.

  “I’ll get the rest of your bags and bring them in. Your quarters are off to your right from the front receiving hall.”

  “Thank you.” I barely said the words out loud, enraptured with my surroundings. Excited to see my living quarters, I took the doorway leading from the entry into the hall to the right. The hallway was lined with a long bench seat flanked by bookcases. I paused, scanning the carefully arranged shelves—travel books, thrillers, biographies, classics.

  “No porn,” I murmured with a half smile.

  A cough sounded behind me. Calum stood there with my bags in his hands, his brows raised and a smile barely held in check.

  He had heard me . . .

  I didn’t want to tell this man who had worked with my father that Gerard had kept a stash of skin mags piled on top of a grand piano in his Oklahoma house. I didn’t care for the stuff and remembered thinking at the time that the piano, with only its glossy white legs showing underneath its cover, displayed more modesty than the magazine covers.

  But not explaining meant Calum might think I had a thing for porn. No graceful option here. I stared at him, expressionless.

  “This fabric is beautiful,” I said.

  Seeing his face creased in a quizzical expression, I ran my fingers along the window seat’s cloth cushion, upholstered in sun-washed green linen. “I just love linen.” Diversionary and true, but insincere. No clue why my words came out sounding like a bad imitation of a Southern belle, which I definitely wasn’t. “And green is my favorite color.”

  “Aye, this window seat is a wonderful place to catch the sun, when there’s sun to be caught.” Calum’s mouth quivered, again restraining a grin or an outright laugh.

  I stared at him, wondering why I’d lied about my favorite color being green. In a college photography class the question had come up about whether black and white were colors. Citing additive color theory, the professor contended that black is not a color but is the absence of color, and light. Conversely, all the colors are found in light—without light, the eye can’t perceive color. He had taken us outside to show us how light reflected back to its source. Clouds lit by the sun from the side appeared white just as they would if seen above from a plane. A cloud directly blocking the sun appeared gray.

  Two things struck me: Light is a powerful force. And our eyes don’t always see things the way they truly are. I became fascinated with how the world appeared when light was present or absent and how it affected people’s perceptions. And it impressed me that, just like light, white held all the colors in the spectrum. Buy one, get them all. Could there be a more logical choice for my favorite color?

  I shook off the thoughts of the past that ran rampant through my mind since I’d learned of my father’s death. In spite of my excitement to be at Glenbroch, I had to fight to keep my attention in the present. “Not to be impatient, but I’d like to see more of the house.”

  “Of course.”

  Eagerness to see my own space barely restrained me from wandering off as I followed him past more doors, thankfully closed.

  He made a slight turn and paused in front of a door. “Your quarters.” He bowed and pushed open the door with a large measure of drama. “I’ll leave you to yourself and fetch the rest of your bags.”

  “Thank you, kind sir.” I curtsied and stepped over the threshold. My eyes instantly turned upward to the ceiling, at least twelve feet high. A thick, dark beam ran through its center, from which hung a massive candelabrum with a large ring of candle holders and a smaller, lower ring of electric lights—depending on one’s mood, I imagined.

  I made my way around the room, touching everything: the buttery-yellow loveseat nestled in a window-seated bay, the plum mohair chaise cozied in a reading corner, a duo of espresso and cream toile English-style chairs and a tufted leather ottoman settled in front of the fireplace. I loved home decor and had a voracious appetite for decorating magazines. The room could be a cover story.

  Someone had put on a fire in the massive stone fireplace with its rough-hewn mantle; its heat bathed me in a cozy welcome. I warmed my hands, which weren’t cold from the temperature but from the surge and fall of adrenaline in my body over the past several hours.

  Thick cotton wrapped itself around sounds and thoughts; the physical faded as if I were watching someone else’s life through a gauzy curtain. I guess in a way this was true. Gerard had meant these quarters to be his own and obviously hadn’t planned on dying. It was hard to get hold of the fact that I was here in his stead. The sting of a wayward ember jerked me from the strange experiences induced by my dazed and exhausted state and I resumed my exploration.

  French doors beckoned me into a conservatory with a comfy sofa and its own wood-burning stove. The upper walls were windowed on three sides, allowing me to gaze on the Highland hills beyond. I could see this becoming my favorite room.

  A pair of tall, forest green rubber boots tucked under a long bench was visible in an adjacent mudroom. Were they my father’s?

  Rustling from the living room told me Calum had come back with the rest of my bags. Staying my curiosity for the moment, I returned and settled into one of the chairs opposite him.

  “The private quarters take up both floors on this end,” Calum said. “You should feel secluded from the rest of the house and any guests staying here. You shouldn’t feel too cramped. Carolyn Drummond, a local woman, comes in once every two weeks to keep the house tidy.”

  I was a bit dazzled, probably would be for days if not weeks. I hadn’t expected anything this lovely, but a faint melancholy cast a shadow. Grateful, yes, but being here in the MacKinnon family home, in the midst of my father’s renovation, left me with a clearer ache for him. My surroundings reminded me he had been real, and I had never gotten the chance to know him at all.

  “The boots in the mudroom, whose are they?” I asked.

  Calum’s eyes lit up. “Yours.”

  “Mine? Why would I have boots here?”

  “Mr. Epstein asked me to pick up a few supplies for you, the boots and food—things you would need around here straight away.”

  Of course it would have been Stan Epstein, my father’s estate attorney back in Oklahoma, who had called the shots and issue
d instructions for what was to happen here with me.

  “The boots are lovely. I appreciate the thought.” And I did, but a barb of disappointment poked a hole in my gratitude. The idea had flitted through my mind that if they weren’t my father’s, perhaps he had chosen them just for me. A silly thought, but still . . .

  “Is everything all right, then?” Calum asked.

  I shook off the wash of sadness. I needed to accept the situation: the chance to know my father had passed. But the longings that snuck up on me were hard to control. Now I wished I’d made closer friendships with people. I wanted someone to share this experience with. Chelsea, a former colleague, was the person closest to me, but she still only knew what I let her know, which wasn’t much. I needed to try to make friends here, let people in. Not easy.

  “Everything’s perfect.”

  “Great. Feel free to wander about. There is food for your dinner in the fridge. You’ll find basic supplies and towels in the loo. Will you need anything else, do you think?”

  “No, can’t think of anything. Thank you, Calum.”

  “I’ll head back to Inverness. I’m only about two hours away. Don’t hesitate to call—I can be here quickly if needed. You can use the house phone in your kitchen until you get a mobile. I’ve left you a folder with my contact details, the layout of the house, a map, and a history of the property. There’s internet information and instructions on how to use the television in there too, and keys to the Land Rover Gerard kept here. It’s a manual.”

  I returned his smile. “Thanks for picking me up in Edinburgh and organizing all of this.”

  Calum shrugged, shoved his hands into his coat pockets, and looked down at the floor. “No bother. The Land Rover is parked at the steading, out behind the house.”

  Seeing the crinkle of my brow, he continued, “For horses and carriages, but now it’s sheltered parking and a meeting centre. It has a small gym for guests, and for you, of course.” He glanced around as if running through a mental checklist. “Right. I’ll be back out on Monday. Don’t think about business until then. That gives you five days to catch up with your rest and explore. Getting to know the area will set you up best for the work ahead.”