The two cars kicked up dust as they braked at the end of the drive and turned off toward the village. It was only when they were out of sight that Brice allowed himself to unfold the check and look at it. Just look. Glad he had given the rest of his crew time off for the holiday, he slumped back against the wall, still staring. Oblivious to everything but the numbers until Brando pulled into the drive in Emma’s little Volvo and got out.
“Car didn’t want to turn over this morning. I had to jump it for her,” he said. “Do you have a minute to take a look?”
Brice gave himself a mental shake. “Sure. No problem.”
“Something wrong?” Brando closed the Volvo’s door and came around. “You’re standing here looking like someone shot your feet out from under you.” Peering down, he whistled as he caught sight of the check before Brice had thought to put it away. “You didn’t say that car was worth so much. Hell, I could buy a whole new hotel for that. Or half the glen.”
“Would have been worth more if all the parts were original. I had to put in a few remanufactured pieces, though. Still, it turned out all right.”
The look Brando threw him said he knew Brice better than that. “You mind having to watch it drive out of here with someone else?”
“What would I do with a car like that? I’m not exactly a man of leisure.”
“Shame though,” Brando said. “You could keep the next one. Why not? The house is nearly finished, isn’t it? And you used to talk my ear off about that car when we were growing up.”
Brice thought back to the days when he’d dreamed of racing into the village in a James Bond car. He’d pictured himself screeching to a halt, casually getting out, and ignoring the admiring glances, the way everyone envied him. Respected him. But it had been James Bond he’d dreamed of being back then, not just Brice MacLaren in a fancy car. Thinking of restoring a car like the DB5 for himself, he realized that somewhere along the line, between that first junked clunker he’d bought for fifty pounds and sold for five hundred to the Aston Martin that was his most ambitious to date by far, his priorities had changed. The restoration wasn’t only about making money anymore, or even about the cars. It was the work itself, the process of taking something and watching it transform beneath his hands. It was about the pride.
He wished he could have shown Cait the DB5, not just to show her that he had accomplished something, that—someday—he’d be able to give her the world and anything it took to make her happy, but just to show her that he could plan, and build, and work up to something. He’d briefly considered driving the car up to her house and asking her casually to come with him for a spin, leaving it parked in the drive so that Donald could see as well. It would have felt a bit too much like a cat dropping a dead mouse at her feet, too. Too much like begging for approval.
Same reason he couldn’t see keeping a car like that for himself now, come to think of it.
Or one of them anyway.
“The bank is still due a chunk of this check now that I’ve been paid,” he said, “and another bit has to go toward finishing the house. Then I’ll need the rest to buy the next car and start that restoration.”
“I take it Cait still doesn’t have a clue what you’ve been doing?”
Brice stuffed the check back into his pocket. “Not unless someone else has told her. I wasn’t planning to show her the house yet, either, not until it was completely finished, but I’m thinking I’ll bring her and Donald around for dinner tonight. They haven’t even got a tree of their own put up. Donald insists he doesn’t want her to make a fuss.”
“I thought he’d promised to go down to London to celebrate with her.”
“He had, but I’m not convinced he ever meant it. He’s been worse since she came home than I’ve ever seen him. Trying to drive her away, whether he knows it or not, I expect.”
Brando made a face. “Get Cait a tree then, that’s my advice, or Cait’ll be miserable waking up tomorrow with no sign of Christmas. Her mum always made it an occasion.”
“With or without a tree, it won’t be very festive. The house is still bare as a bairn’s bottom, and I know it pains her to have all of Morag’s things hidden away up in the attic.”
“I’m surprised she’s left them that. That’s not much like Cait at all.” Brando looked thoughtfully at Brice. “They’ll both be down here for dinner tonight? You’re certain of it?”
“Nothing’s certain with Donald, but I mean to try.”
“Then let me have your key to Donald’s house. I’ll get Rory and Angus and Iain Camm around, and the three of us will bring everything back down from the attic. Put the house back as it was. Elspeth Murray can help me figure out where it all should go, and we’ll put a tree up for Cait while we’re at it. She’s had a hard enough time of it lately.”
“Donald would kill the lot of us for that.” Brice rubbed a hand across the back of his neck, but he wasn’t going to get Donald’s approval no matter how he tried. Cait was the one who mattered. “Might do the old mule a world of good to give a thought to his daughter instead of wallowing in his own misery. Aye, it’s a good idea. I’ll get him out of that house tonight if I have to drag him by the ears.”
Apologies
“I am the wisest man alive,
for I know one thing,
and that is that I know nothing.”
Plato
The Republic
Cait dared to bring down only two things from the attic, given her father’s state of mind: a locket of her mother’s containing a photograph of Robbie holding a newborn Cait that her father had promised to give to her when he found it, and the book of her mother’s family recipes. She was in the kitchen baking one of the shortbread variations into the shape of a Christmas tree, or trying to anyway, when Brice came to the door and gave two peremptory knocks before opening it and stepping through.
With a delighted mrrow, Mrs. Bogan wound herself around his legs, insisting as usual that anyone new to her sphere of influence pay her the proper homage. “Don’t mind Mrs. Bogan,” Cait said, since the two had yet to be properly introduced. “She’s a bit of a trollop, but be warned. The moment you pet her, she’ll expect you to be her slave for life.”
“Is that a cat trait or a feminine one?” Brice asked, stooping nevertheless to rub the top of Mrs. Bogan’s head. “No, don’t answer that.”
Cait dusted her hands and turned to face him. “I know I’ve been pushing you hard to help me in the Tea Room—taking up a lot of your time. I want to apologize for that. The fact is, Dad should never have asked you to help him renovate it in the first place, and I feel like I’m taking advantage of you, too.”
“That wasn’t what I meant. And I offered to do the shelves, remember? I’m enjoying the work.” Brice dropped his eyes and took in Cait’s appearance, making her self-conscious suddenly of the flour streaked across her jumper as he grinned in amusement. “You look like whatever you’re making has gotten the better of you,” he said. “I hear tell there’s this thing called an apron a person can wear over their clothes.”
“Maybe I’ll buy myself one for Christmas. All of Mum’s are stored away. Which is a bit ironic actually, since she never seemed to need one. I can’t imagine how she didn’t manage to get dirty while she was baking. Clearly, that’s a talent I didn’t inherit from her.”
“You have other talents. But actually, it’s cooking I came to see you about.” Brice shut the door and leaned back against it. “My cooking, not yours. I have a dinner invitation for you.”
There was an uncertainty about the way he said the words, about the slight waver in his smile, that made Cait suspect the invitation wasn’t as casual as his tone made it sound. “An invitation to what?” she asked. “Something important?”
He slid his hands down into the front pockets of his jeans. “It’s important to me. I’d like to have you and your father come for dinner tonight. And before you think of saying no, I’ve already got the roast in the oven and Brando’s Emma made a Christ
mas cake for you. Think how sad it would be if I had to eat all that myself.”
“Dad won’t come.” Cait went to wash her hands, buying time until she thought she could trust her voice. “He’s determined not to celebrate Christmas this year.”
Brice peeled himself away from the door and straightened. “If I can get him to change his mind, will you come?” He cleared his throat and watched her. “I hate to think of you here on your own—or working in the Tea Room after he’s gone to bed. You used to love it when your mum made a big deal of Christmas Eve.”
Cait tried not to wince. Not to feel the loneliness and loss that had been threatening to squeeze her lungs closed all day at the thought of being in the house tonight with only her memories for company. “I thought I’d work on the photographs tonight. I don’t know what I’m going to do with them yet, but I’m typing up all the stories to go with them. And I’ve got nice fish to fry up with a caper sauce for Dad.”
“Fish would make a fine first course.” Brice gave her his best let-me-lead-you-into-temptation smile. “All I’m asking is that you let me speak to him about it,” he said. “Come on, Caitie. Don’t sell me short. You know I can be persuasive.”
How many things had Brice talked Cait into through the years? Too many. She remembered that smile, the way he whispered in her ear. Kissed the corner of her mouth.
“I warn you, your usual persuasion techniques will be wasted on my father,” she said, taking a self-protective step backwards. “But go ahead. I’ll enjoy watching you try.”
Brice flashed her a triumphant grin and scooped up Mrs. Bogan, rubbing the cat beneath the chin as he strode through the kitchen and out to the sitting room where Cait’s father was watching an old documentary about the Knights Templar, complete with conspiracy theories, hidden treasure, and reenactments of men bashing each other with swords. Rather than lying down on the sofa, however, Donald was sitting up with his leg propped on a cushion Cait had set on the table for him. Which was not much of an improvement, but it was something. Cait counted every hint of progress as a victory these days.
“I’d like to have you and Cait in for dinner tonight,” Brice said. “It would mean a lot if you’d come.”
“I’m not hungry.” Donald glanced at him then returned his focus to the television.
“It’s hours away yet.”
“Won’t be hungry later, either,” Donald said.
Brice crossed the sitting room and mashed the power button on the set. The room grew mercifully quiet. “Cait’s under the impression that you don’t care enough about her to make an effort for Christmas,” he said, “but I told her she had to be wrong. That Donald Fletcher couldn’t possibly be as selfish as that with his own daughter.”
“I never said any of that,” Cait said, outraged.
Her father’s face went red. “Don’t think you can play games with me, Brice MacLaren. You’re not half as clever as you think you are—and you always were insufferable. No better than your father for all you’ve been swanning around here pretending.” He pointed at Brice with a shaky finger. “Don’t think I don’t see through you, trying to worm yourself into my good graces. You stay away from Cait, you hear me? She’s not going to let herself get caught up with the likes of you again.”
He’d said similar things to Brice dozens of times through the years, and worse. The kind of things that had made Brice storm out of the house and made Cait run after him, made Cait run wild with him in the glen, until her mother managed, somehow, to smooth things over. Being compared to his father was the thing Brice had always hated most, the thing that had triggered the worst of his rages and set him off to find a bottle of Mad Mackenzie’s finest. This time, Brice barely reacted, and only a hint of stiffness in his shoulders and the little line at the corner of his mouth revealed that he still felt the barb hit home.
Cait snatched up the television remote from the table where her father was in the process of reaching for it. “Brice isn’t fourteen anymore,” she said. “You can’t bully him to make yourself feel better—especially after all he’s done for you. As kind as he’s been.”
“He didn’t do any of it for me, though, did he?” Her father threw Brice a contemptuous look. “Don’t you think I’ve seen through him all along? Thinking he could win me over to get you back.”
“So you used him?”
Her father snapped his fingers. “Give me that remote. Or turn the telly back on. I’m missing my show.”
“Not until you apologize to Brice.”
“Why should I? How much misery did he cause me through the years? Arguments with you, with your mother. Never a day’s peace in this house since the first time I got called in to pick you up at school with everyone watching. And the shame of it. You’re a Fletcher, Cait. You’ve no cause to be taking up with the likes of him. Not when you’re meant for better things.”
“Enough!” Brice’s voice was loud enough to make Mrs. Bogan flatten her ears and jump out of his arms. “Enough blame and enough sulking,” he said, coming to stand beside Cait. He slipped an arm around her waist. “It’s a tragedy what’s happened to you, we all see that. Cancer’s tragic and painful and hard, but we’ve all spent more than enough time letting you be unreasonable and petty and mean because you’re feeling sorry for yourself. And you see what you’re doing, don’t you? Refusing to celebrate Christmas now is only going to make Cait doubt you ever intended to celebrate in London with her.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Cait’s father folded his arms like a five-year-old and glared at Brice.
Brice shook his head. “Look, I’m not asking you to do anything strenuous. You can lay on the sofa at my house as easily as on this one, and I’ve got a telly same as you. Think of Cait for a change. Don’t make her spend Christmas cooped up here with you—the way you’re going, that’s worse than if she were by herself.”
“No one’s stopping her from leaving.” Leaning forward, Donald grabbed for the television remote Cait was holding.
Cait snatched it out of reach. “I’m not going anywhere without you, and you bloody well know it.”
“It won’t be as simple as dinner,” Donald muttered. “You haven’t learned a thing if that’s what you think. But aye, fine. I’ll go if you’ll stop nagging at me and let me get back to watching my show in peace. I only hope he can manage to make something halfway edible.”
“Why do you have to say things like that?” Cait asked, fed up—beyond fed up. “Brice doesn’t deserve it, and I don’t, either.”
“I’m not apologizing to him.”
Cait went and sat down on the sofa beside him. “All my life, you’ve talked about being a Fletcher,” she said more quietly, “as if that’s supposed to mean something. But who we are isn’t about what some long-ago ancestor has done. It’s about us. About not letting Mum or Robbie down and diminishing how they lived their lives. They were never mean, either of them. They lived their whole lives with courage and kindness. They respected other people.”
“I kept a roof over your head—”
“Aye, you gave me a roof and the food on my table, but Mum would have done that if you hadn’t. When you bring a bairn into the world, that’s the minimum you owe them. But don’t you think you owe them love, too, and pride in their accomplishments?”
Her father pulled his bad leg off the cushion on the table and swiveled to study her. “You think I’m not proud of you? That I don’t love you?”
“I don’t know,” Cait said, her voice unsteady. “Do you?”
“Of course I do. I always have.”
“Then stay with me, try to want to stay with me, the way you’d want to stay with Mum or Robbie.”
“Cait—”
“No. Stop. You’re all I have left. Can’t you see that? So what if you end up with half a leg? Jeff Glasbrenner and Arunima Sinha both climbed Mount Everest with a prosthetic below the knee. And Mark Inglis reached the summit with two prosthetics. Are you really telling me you’re not w
illing to try to climb the stairs in your own house because it would be too hard? I don’t believe that for a minute. I used to think you were the strongest man I knew. I looked up to you. So did Robbie. Either both of us were wrong or—like I said—I’m just not important enough to you.”
She was crying now, hating herself for it. But how was she supposed to get through to him?
He sat staring at her, his big hands splayed on his thighs as if he was bracing himself to stand up. When he didn’t move, didn’t say anything, Brice sat down beside her and pulled her against his chest while she cried, his chin resting against her hair.
“Shh, love. It’s all right,” he said.
“But it isn’t, is it?”
“It will be.”
Cait’s father cleared his throat. “Fine, so dinner, then. Five o’clock, you said? But I won’t wear a tie.”
“Come in your pajamas for all I care.” Brice sounded relieved, then he added with a smile that Cait could hear in his voice, “Come to think of it, I think Cait gave you Christmas pajamas once.”
Cait gave a hiccup of watery laugher. “Aye, and they had moose on them wearing Santa hats. I’d forgotten about those.”
Brice kissed the top of her head and stepped away. “See you tonight, then.”
She stood at the front window while he climbed in the Land Rover. The engine revved, the wheels spun an instant, and he backed out onto the road.
Down the hill below him, Flora Macara was chasing Shame behind the Inn, the yellow dog dropping down to his belly and letting her get to within a few feet before he bounded away again. Throughout the glen, smoke from the chimneys rose in the air, and the snow on the braes made the most of the descending winter sun. It was so beautiful, so familiar and dear and so much a part of herself, that it made Cait want to throw her arms wide and embrace it all.
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