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Reeling from the storm, and needing some time away from the cabin, later that day I drove us away to the castle to check out the potential damage. Harold was already there tugging his hair at the ends. Morag wouldn’t be far.
The tower was fine, but the other side… worse. The roof had caved in a little more and tiles had been tossed off. Inside, no doubt, more water had got in.
We would have to decide what to do with it—and soon—or else the decision most likely would be taken out of our hands.
“What do you need help with?” Eric asked Harold.
“Weeeel, now you’re askin’.”
I left them to it and went indoors with the car seat. Morag was crying in the kitchen and it really scared me seeing her like that; she’d only ever been stoically together up until that point.
“Och, lass. I wasna expecting ye.” Quickly wiping her face, she tried to plaster on a smile but failed to banish her despair completely. I shoved her into a chair and popped the car seat on the table in front of her. She cooed over Logan, a distraction.
“Let me play mother,” I insisted.
I made the tea and went in the cupboard where she kept the really good shortbread for emergencies such as this. You know, the elderflower flavoured stuff.
After a certain amount of patience, that is, me waiting and munching, she said, “He winna settle. He canna settle. He’s lost wi’out his gillie’ing.”
Ah, the marital tiff. It was more than the storm and any damage out there.
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her about Caelan’s desire to come back, renovate the castle properly, perhaps take some land again—a smaller amount, this time.
I said nothing.
Everything was up in the air.
“It’s bound to be a period of adjustment.”
“It wasna just a job,” she said, sniffing into her sleeve.
“No, it wasn’t. I can imagine.” But it had been a year or more now.
“Most men his age huv been retired fifteen years already.”
“Yes.”
She looked so disconsolately into her teacup, as though answers might arrive… in the tea leaves at the bottom.
They wouldn’t.
“Caelan had to sell that land, Morag. It was not just that it was getting difficult for Harold to cope with alone, Caelan needed a fresh start. To cut ties with the past. Free himself.”
“Aye, aye, ah ken. Ah ken.”
“No, I don’t think you do.”
She looked at me sharply, and slowly, I began to tell her about the attack on my chastity—my life. All those years ago.
Uncle Jimmy.
She nearly fell about hysterical at the thought. The reality… slowly sank in.
“I think Caelan, in his way, sold it all to make a break from the past.”
At least, that’s what I’d told myself in the months since. Not that Caelan had sold because he’d been afraid of Sherry… and had wanted insurance. A reserve in case of… all eventualities.
Whatever may come.
