Why was it necessary to go back into that house anyway? Why risk getting mowed down by an absence when he could stay outside and bask in the good memories? So he’d kept the door locked and had remained satisfied in his ability to keep his grief and acceptance at bay.
That is, until Jen had wanted to go inside, and he was reminded of all that he’d shut away. All that he’d never addressed. He’d sat there in his truck in the driveway, and it seemed like the house was ready to burst at its seams from all that he’d shoved inside and let fester over the past three years. No one could see those ghosts but him.
Except now Jen knew they existed. Now she would know that leaving Gleann was a lot more difficult than he’d been letting on, but that staying would be even worse.
He slowed his truck as Route 6 narrowed through the dramatic cut into the mountains, sheer, jagged cliffs rising three stories on both sides. The road curved here like a roller coaster, and when it spit him out into sloping, open land overlooking the valley lake, he knew he was five miles from Gleann. But something felt off. The sky was cloudless, the sun near blinding, and yet the valley looked dull, the water matte when it should have sparkled. To the east, where Gleann’s rooftops and lone stone church steeple poked between the trees, it looked like an extremely localized storm had focused on the town. Then he realized: That was no storm. It was a fire.
Pedal to the floor, he prayed his truck would stay on all four wheels as he sped around the curves toward the thick plumes of black smoke rising from what he guessed to be Hemmertex. The glass walls of the headquarters were obscured; he couldn’t see if that was indeed where the fire was centralized.
He drove until he could physically drive no more. Half the town of Gleann had filled up both lanes of Route 6, people clustered together in tight, murmuring groups, making no room to let him through. The other half of the town was lined up along the shoulder and against Loughlin’s cattle fence, staring across the fields and into the fairgrounds . . . where the barn serving as storage for the Highland Games was little more than a charred skeleton, its rib bones pointing angrily toward the sky.
“Shhhhit,” Leith said, throwing the truck in park and shutting it off. He got out, leaving the thing blocking the right lane. No one was going anywhere for quite a while. He pushed through the crowd, for once no one paying him any mind. He found an open spot on the fence and stared at the destruction.
Fire trucks from the larger community of Westbury, across the lake, had circled the blackened barn. All the water from putting out the fire had turned the fairgrounds into a mud pit, and violent tire tracks cross-hatched the grass. The air stung Leith’s lungs. Around him people coughed and held handkerchiefs and their shirtsleeves over their noses and mouths, but no one went home. Why would they? This was the most exciting thing to happen in Gleann in a hell of a long time, and misery and speculation would be conversation fodder for decades to come.
Though ninety percent of the stuff in that barn had seen its best days years ago, and the other ten percent was cheesy crap and as far from the Highland Games Da had described from back home, it was still Gleann’s, and they’d need it. Jen would need it to do what she’d come here to do.
As though his thinking of Jen had called her into the collective consciousness, he heard two women whispering behind him.
“Do you think she burned it down on purpose?” the first woman said.
“Maybe. Vera told Annabelle who told my Jack that she wants to change everything. And I mean everything.”
The first woman made a sound of disgust. “Don’t know why Sue brought her in. We could’ve just taken over, had it ourselves, the way we like it.”
Leith almost laughed. Jen burn down a barn? And yeah, the town probably could all gather in the middle of the destroyed fairgrounds and play some pipes and stuff, but the Scottish Society would pull support, no one who lived outside Gleann’s borders would attend, and then they’d be just a bunch of people standing around doing watered-down events that once upon a time had actually meant something. Jen wanted something bigger and better and she would work her ass off for that. To her, burning down a barn would be an insult to her prowess. To her, it would be taking the easy way out.
Where was she anyway? The fire was out and the firemen were picking through the smoking wreckage, but no one was dissipating. He had to say, despite his belief she had nothing to do with it, it would definitely look bad for her if she were the only person not here.
He rounded on the gossiping women. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Jen’s here to help.” He got the reaction he was looking for: fish mouths and huge, shocked eyes.
“But . . . but, look at her,” the first woman said, nudging her chin to the south, “sitting down over there, on her computer and phone, not even caring what’s going on.”
“And she’s not even doing anything to stop that trashy sister from coming between Owen and Melissa . . .”
That’s when Leith turned away. Let them say dumb, meaningless things.
There was a shift in the crowd, and then he saw her.
Jen had plopped down in the grass on the very edge of the gapers, her back to a fence post—and also the burned scene—her laptop open over her crossed legs, her phone pressed between ear and shoulder. Talking and typing simultaneously. In her pajamas and mismatched flip-flops. Her hair wound messily around a rubber band, and her glasses framed dark smudges underneath her makeup-less eyes.
He recognized the two lines between the dark arch of her eyebrows; he’d seen them in the barn that no longer existed, when she’d switched into severe work mode and nothing else existed but the task at hand.
Goddamn it. He’d missed her.
He’d felt it as he’d pulled away from Da’s house three days ago, that sickly twist in his stomach as he’d glanced into the rearview mirror and saw her standing in his driveway. He’d sensed something nagging at him as he’d driven south in search of his new life. Something that told him maybe he’d just driven away from a pretty big part of himself that had nothing to do with Da’s house or his business or Mildred’s properties.
He wasn’t supposed to miss her. Not after only a few days. He’d already gone through that need and separation once before, a long time ago, and with Jen both were especially potent. He wasn’t doing that again. Nope.
Yet as he sifted through the people he’d known all his life, drawing closer and closer to where she sat, all he could imagine was kicking aside that laptop and phone, dragging her up by the shoulders, pinning her to that leaning fence post, and kissing the hell out of her. Then, after he caught his breath, he’d apologize for driving off the way he had, and kiss her all over again.
He stopped just beyond her flip-flops. The townspeople had given her a wide berth, though he saw Mayor Sue lingering nearby, the bright orange of today’s Syracuse gear proclaiming her presence.
Jen was typing furiously while saying “Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh,” into the phone. He just stood there watching, wondering what exactly she was doing.
“Oh, that’s great to hear. Thanks so much. I’d say I owe you, but it seems like we’re even now.” Then she laughed, said good-bye, and dropped the phone from her ear.
He cleared his throat. It took her a moment to look up, but when she did, something inside his chest did this uncomfortable flip because those facial lines of concentration and problem solving disappeared. Just vanished.