Yep. I run around the world while she lives in the town we were born in and pretends not to ignore the nasty looks and the notoriety of our name.
The Harper girls? Why, they’re no better than their mother was. The older one went out to a fancy college and didn’t come back with a degree but with a baby in her belly. And the younger one? Her fiancé left her a week before their wedding. You can guess what for.
But guess is all they do.
Meanwhile, I’ve been offered a job running the education centre of a historic castle in the Highlands of Scotland running programmes for kids visiting from local schools as well as devising fun stuff for little tourists. Horrible histories and murderous mayhem made fun. The castle and grounds are a historical visitor attraction, plus they’re also hired out for movie shoots. I’m told this is another tourism big draw card, given parts of some of the most popular kids movies were filmed there.
I stare out of the café’s rain-slicked window. It is a unique opportunity, but something is holding me back. I mean, I love London and I’m not sure that I’m ready to leave and while it’s not like some innate sixth sense that’s warning me forebodingly, I feel a reluctance just the same. Maybe it’s just that I don’t want to owe either Alexander or Griffin—whatever their surname is—anything. Not that I think they’d ask me to pay, in kind or otherwise, because it’s not like any of us left a forwarding address. Besides, this job doesn’t seem to have anything to do with either of them. Maybe I’m worrying about nothing.
“So? What are you waiting for?” My sister demands. “You’re over there because you want to travel and experience new things.”
“I know.” I really wish I knew why I was feeling so resistant. The pay is good, accommodation is included, and Scotland is on my list of places I want to visit. I should already be packing my bags, not staring out into the wet street, feeling stuck.
“And Scotland has kilts. And men who look like Sam Heughan. Do it for the Outlander fantasy, if nothing else!”
“Well, I guess there is that.”
“Find you a man who’ll call you sassenach,” she adds excitedly, warming to her theme, though her Jamie Fraser impersonation is pretty lame. “The way I see it, you have three options. Stay where you are and hope something else comes along—”
“Which won’t happen until at least the summer.” When other professional American families begin to relocate to London, or their current nanny ends their contract, usually at the end of the school year.
“Or you can take this new job, this new opportunity, with the added bonus of men in kilts.”
“I don’t think they all look like Sam Heughan.”
“Or,” she says, ignoring me, “you can come back home and content yourself staring at men in baggy assed jeans and New Balance sneakers.”
My stomach twists at the thought of moving back Mookatill, home of the cheese and men with low fashion standards. Moving back to snickers behind hands and sly, calculating looks. To small town assumptions and whispers behind my back.
I’d rather share a bathroom and twin bed an ogre than deal with that.
“I saw Denise Thomas at the market on Sunday.” My sister’s airy delivery does not fool me.
“Yeah? How was she?” I answer, imitating her tone. “God, she was such a bitch in high school.” I count my blessings she didn’t have school aged kids while I was teaching at the local elementary. She would’ve had a field day with the fall out. “What’s she doing now?”
“You mean, apart from watching your Instagram stories?”
“Ah, you know how to cheer a girl up,” I reply with a cackle. “I can’t believe she’d even admit to it.”
“Oh, she didn’t, but she knew you were in London, so . . .”
“Like I said, she was such a bitch.”
“I really don’t know why you give a rat’s ass about what any of those people think.”
“Who said I did?”
“That would be in your reluctance to come visit.”
“Hey, if you want to blame anyone, blame Wilder. I asked him if he wanted me to stay with you or if we should go to Disneyland.”
“What kind of question is that to ask a kid?” she splutters. “You know what? I don’t even know why I’m having this conversation with you. It might’ve been a trip to the sewage plant you were offering, and he still would’ve said yes. You could convince nuns a take a trip to a strip club.”
“I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“And if I’m going to blame anyone for you not coming home, I’m going to blame that ass of an ex.”
But he was more than just my ex. Not for the first time I find myself wishing that grandma was alive. She would’ve seen right through him, I’m sure.
“I don’t know, Deeds. Maybe I should thank him. I always wanted to travel. Maybe his bullshit was just the push I needed.”
“I’d like to push him. From a great height. Pity the school is all on one level,” she adds in an undertone.
“Shoot him instead?”
“Too messy. And orange doesn’t suit me, especially not in jump suits. Listen, I’ve got to go. It’s time to open up and feed that coffee hungry horde.”
“Someone’s got to power them through their workday.”
“And I am their friendly local dealer. Listen, let me know when you’ve made your decision. You know you’re always welcome home. For what it’s worth, my vote is that you stop worrying about being some man’s puppet, when this is clearly some cosmic coincidence. Go to Scotland, find you a fine-looking kilt-wearing specimen of a man. Then—”
“Put him on Instagram?”
“Nope, bring him back and make all the bitches jealous.”
“I heard you say a bad word, Mom!” I hear the rugrat named Wilder shout.
“What have I told you about listening to other people’s conversations?” Kennedy’s words are directed somewhere other than her phone handset.
“That if I’m gonna do it, I need to be smart enough not to let people know.”
“That is not what I said, Wilder James!”
“But I’ll bet it was the gist of it,” I offer with a cackling laugh.
“I can’t wait until you have kids,” she mutters ominously.
“Don’t hold your breath. I can barely look after a houseplant.”
“Holly, for the love of God, just take the job—say yes to the opportunity. What have you got to lose?”
I’m still pondering the answer to this question hours after we end our call.
12
Holly
Despite my reservation and the feeling that I should be heading in the opposite direction, a week later, I find myself on the first leg of a long train ride. I arrive in Edinburgh first and a train station that, but for the inclusion of a Burger King, looks like it was plucked from the set of a Harry Potter movie. Here, in this monument to Victorian architecture, I change trains and travel for another three and a half hours to Inverness in the Highlands of Scotland.