“Too late,” Maisie laughs, linking her arm with mine. “I already tackled Sophie on your front step, Miss Martha.”
Mom rises from her seat at the big farm table, there’s three steaming mugs of tea waiting for us. I lunge for her, hugging her tightly. The relief of being here in this familiar space with the two people I love the most nearly sends me into another sobbing spiral, but Mom needs me to comfort her this time, not the other way around.
Examining her closely, I can see that the dark shadows have receded from under her eyes a bit. The kitchen is clean and sunny and smells good, like warm bread, the reassuring scent of my childhood.
"How are you?" I whisper, keeping my arms wrapped around her a little too long.
"I'm fine," she says gently, kissing my cheek and settling me in a chair as she puts a mug of tea in front of me, pulling out a plate to put the cookies on. "Maisie was just telling me about your disastrous blind date the other day."
They both chuckle and then it awkwardly fades as we recall that I jumped straight from said disastrous blind date to being married to the future head of the MacTavish clan.
"Aye," Maisie muses. "There’s a rapid chain of events that none of us saw coming. Though…” she leans over, looking at Mom, “ye know this lass has been pining after Michael forever.”
“That doesn't seem like a conversation we should be having right now," I interrupt, my hands wrapped around my mug of tea.
"Oh, this is the best time," Mom says gently, squeezing my arm. "Because I suspect your feelings might be returned.
“Michael may think that he married you out of compassion,” Maisie adds. “Being the big,noblealmost Chieftain that he is, but let's be honest, aye? If it were anyone else but ye two, they’d be working for one of our allies up in Siberia or down in South America right now."
Both Mom and I flinch at that. “He said that night that he was going to separate us," I admit.
"Thatarsehole!”Maisie snaps. "I dinnae believe it for a second. You know perfectly well that he was trying to scare ye intomarrying him quickly. Do ye think my parents would've agreed to this if they really believed that ye and Miss Martha here were truly traitors to the clan?"
"Well, I was," Mom says sadly, looking down at the table.
"Ye did it to save your daughter," Maisie says firmly.
Mom excuses herself to go to the bathroom, and Maisie leans closer. “I dinnae want to ask your mum about the details, she looks exhausted. I know my Da’s losing his mind. And I know what happened with Miss Martha is serious. What I dinnae know are the specifics. Talk to me.”
So, I tell her. About the shock of discovering my past, how that murderous prick threatened Mom. How it turned out that she was a much more effective spy than she ever wanted to be.
“Hold up now,” Maisie starts howling with laughter. “You’re telling me that all this time, you’ve been amafia princess?I know this is serious, but I canna get over that.”
“Yeah, more like a mafia scullery maid,”I correct her. “Taylor, that son of a bitch, used me to terrify Mom, to get her to do what he wanted.” I rub my knuckles against my chest, the guilt there is an ache I can’t seem to soothe. “I’d noticed that she’d been so stressed lately, she wasn’t sleeping and was so jumpy. I was going to take her to lunch to cheer her up. God, why didn’t I notice it sooner? I could have stopped her-”
“No, ye dinnae do this,” she interrupts me. “Thinking you’re personally responsible for everyone else. You’ve been doing it for me all through school, apologizing whenIwas the one who got us into trouble. This clan has faced worse than arseface Taylor. We’ll get through this.”
Her clear green eyes are on mine, so sincere. “Remember our conversation the other day?” I force myself to ask, “Before I got the call from Mom?”
Her brow furrows. “Aye?”
“You talked about security breaches, all these little disasters piling up over the last few months. What if they blame those on Mom?” My stomach feels like it’s trying to force the results of our cookie binge back up my throat. “She’s… they already know she’s betrayed the clan once.”
Taking my shaking hands in hers, Maisie squeezes them until I look up and meet her gaze. “Honey, no one believes your mum is a criminal mastermind. Do ye believe that this mess with the Yakuza shipment is the only thing she’s involved in?”
“Without a doubt,” I say instantly. “If there was something else, she would have told me.”
Maisie nods firmly. “Then they’ll find the other bastards responsible. I know Georges and Xenia are working round the clock and Michael has the cousins sent out to all four corners of the globe, tracking down intel. Da’s been calling in favors from allies and they’re spying for us, too. It’ll be a skoosh.”
“A skoosh?” I laugh.
“Aye,” she says. “A skoosh. Now give me another brownie.”
Mom comes back to the table and we talk about other, less dangerous topics for the next hour or two, funny stories about things that happened at university. How Daisy's ex-boyfriend got arrested for a drunk and naked serenade underneath our dorm window one night in late spring. “Aye," Maisie howls. "It was mighty chilly outside and the poor lad's tadger was the size of his pinky."
Mom is giggling uncontrollably, her face pink. Not for the first time, I wonder if she had ever wanted to get married again, to fall in love and maybe have more children after everything disintegrated for us so quickly.
I’d asked her once if she wanted to date. I was sixteen at the time and I noticed one of the guards had a bit of a crush on her. She’d dismissed it, saying she had enough to keep her busy. Looking back, I suspect she was too worried that she’d let our true identities slip.
