“I’m trying, Leanne,” I whisper to her smile. “I’ve made mistakes, but God knows I’m trying.”
The photo doesn’t answer. But looking at her there surrounded by our boy’s artwork, I think maybe—just maybe—she’d understand.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
BLAIR
I cut across the backyard from the granny flat, my stomach tight with dread. I’m later today, deliberately so. I’ve tried to time it so there’s no chance of any small talk before Lachlan has to leave for the ferry. Two mornings in a row I’ve walked to this house feeling like I’m heading into battle instead of work. This is not what I came to Scotland for. I didn’t fly four thousand miles just to get steamrolled by some brooding Highlander with a chip on his shoulder.
If Lachlan gives me any more grief this morning, I’m done. Simple as that. I’ll pack up Gerald and my dignity—what’s left of it—and find somewhere else to figure out my life. Edinburgh, maybe. Or back to New York, tail between my legs.
The back door is unlocked, as always. Gus is first to greet me, nails scrabbling across the floorboards, tail wagging like we haven’t seen each other in weeks. Lachlan stands at the counter in his ferry captain uniform, gulping coffee like it’s medicine.
“Morning,” I say, my voice flat and professional. No smile. Just the bare minimum of politeness.
His eyes flick to mine, and for a second something passes across his face—regret, maybe, or uncertainty. But then he’s checking his watch and grabbing his keys from the counter.
“Blair, I?—”
“Da, Da, Da!” Finn bounces into the kitchen in his pyjamas. “Tell Blair about the picture!”
Lachlan hesitates, caught between whatever he was going to say to me and his son’s enthusiasm. The ferry schedule wins. “I’ve got to go. We’ll talk later, aye?” He ruffles Finn’s hair then gives me a brief look—one I can’t quite read—then he’s gone.
“What picture, buddy?” I ask, my voice softening. Last night’s anger belongs to his father, not to him.
“Right there!” Finn points to the cork board where his artwork usually explodes in chaotic, colourful glory. Only right now, in the centre of it all, is a photo of a baby Finn and his mother. She’s looking down at him with such pure, radiant love it makes my chest ache.
“Da put it up last night,” Finn says proudly. “And he said it’s just a first step. We can get a frame to display it properly and put up more pictures too!”
Tension drains from me like air slowly leaking from a balloon. Lachlan heard me. Despite his anger, despite storming out of the granny flat, he actually listened.
“It’s beautiful, Finn. She looks so happy.”
“Da told me a story about her,” Finn continues, settling at the kitchen table. “About how she loved reading books. Just like us!”
I pop a couple of slices of bread in the toaster. “Oh?”
“Yes!” Finn goes on, telling me how she’d cry even at happy endings and stay up way too late to finish stories. And he doesn’t stop, repeating things I can only assume Lachlan told him last night after he argued with me in the granny flat.
With each detail, Leanne becomes more real to me. Not just the beautiful woman in the photographs, but a person with quirks and habits and passions. Someone who would have understood my love of stories, who might have become a friend if circumstances had been different.
“She really does sound amazing,” I tell Finn when he finishes.
“Aye, she was,” he says confidently.
Yesterday I’d accused Lachlan of protecting himself instead of Finn, and maybe I was right. But Lachlan took those hard words and did something with them. He didn’t just put up a photo. He gave Finn back a little piece of his mom.
The kitchen table is a mess of newspaper, paint pots, and Finn’s beach treasures: smooth pebbles, tiny periwinkle shells, even a bit of sea glass glinting in the light. His tongue pokes out in concentration as he carefully daubs glue along the edge of a plain wooden photo frame.
We stopped at the little craft shop in town earlier, and of course he spotted the frame. I’d hesitated before buying it—yesterday’s fight with Lachlan still too fresh—but Finn’s hopeful grin had undone me. So we came home with the frame and the promise of an afternoon project. Technically, Lachlan’s schedule says “colouring in”, but this is close enough, right? Besides, this week I’ve been treating the schedule as more of a guideline than gospel anyway.
“Here, Blair, you do this one.” Finn nudges a shell toward me. His fingers are already sticky with glue but he couldn’t care less.
I pick it up.It’s just a frame, I remind myself. What goes in it, that’s Lachlan’s decision.
Twenty minutes later, Finn sits back to admire our handiwork. “It’s perfect!” he declares.
And itisbeautiful. A little chaotic, sure, but beautiful all the same.
