Secret Garden. Cathryn Parry
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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.
* * *
THE 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,