‘Try me. It might not if you say it out loud.’
She hesitated, but not for long. Something about Nate, perhaps that he didn’t know her all that well, made her want to share. ‘I feel guilty. If I’d moved to Scotland when I planned, if I hadn’t come here to be with Mum, it might have been different, but now I feel guilty for getting excited about a new start away from here, as though I don’t value the things Mum loved, what she wanted.’
‘Grief and death bring out different emotions and reactions in each of us. You need to feel your own way. Give it time and don’t be too hard on yourself.’
His understanding was unexpected and yet at the same time, she could hardly imagine him saying anything different.
‘Did you and your mum get on well?’ he asked.
‘Not when I was a teenager, when I had that anger and resentment it’s easy to harbour. Mum played her part, but she was a single parent; she had it tough. We kind of lost our way but since I’d come back to the village, we’d begun to get on really well. We had a laugh, she was good company.’
‘Time to treasure, right?’
‘It really was.’
‘This may seem an odd – or even insensitive – question, but was there any part of you that was tempted to go to Scotland and carry on with your plans rather than coming back here?’
She shook her head. ‘I didn’t see it as a choice when Mum called me. My sister has a family, works on a farm; it couldn’t be her. And Mum had nobody else. I don’t think I could’ve lived with myself if I’d turned my back.’
‘I felt the same way with my mum. She didn’t ask me to come home, neither did Dad, but I could see they needed the extra help as her Parkinson’s progressed.’
‘And I’ll bet you were glad you did it.’
He smiled at her, holding her gaze for longer than she’d anticipated, his eyes darting between her eyes and her lips.
She wanted to tell him the rest. ‘I feel guilty in a different way.’ And now she couldn’t look at him when she said, ‘I feel bad because I’m relieved.’
‘Relieved you don’t have to be there for your mum any more?’
She swiped a tear from her cheek. It had arrived unbidden.
He pulled a tissue from his pocket and handed it to her. ‘It’s clean,’ he said as though she didn’t already know that.
At least that made her smile. ‘Sorry, I don’t know where that came from.’
‘Don’t apologise.’ He looked around to make sure they were alone and then quietly told her, ‘I know what it’s like to feel guilty for many reasons, not least of all the relief I felt too.’
‘When your mum died?’ They were side by side now, sitting on the table at the back, their forearms touching every now and then. And she knew it wasn’t the breeze that made her shiver.
‘Watching Mum suffer and deteriorate was the worst thing I’ve ever had to do in my life.’ He clasped his hands together on top of his thighs. ‘When she died, I felt glad it was over for her, but I know that I was relieved for me and for Dad too. It’s impossible to imagine until you’re in that situation but seeing someone you love and who has been there your whole life suffer is often worse than when they die.’
She turned and looked at him, taking in his open admission. And she was still staring when a man cleared his throat at the front of the stall and broke the moment. And when Morgan saw Nate stand a little taller as if on alert before he turned to pull out the chessboard from the bag at the back, she felt a little thrill. This was the moment he got to show what he’d created and see his customer’s reaction. And it was a wonderful one; the man was delighted.
As the man walked away after money was exchanged for the beautifully crafted chessboard, Nate and Morgan stood side by side and only when he was out of sight did they turn to face one another, beaming.
‘One satisfied customer,’ Nate concluded.
‘I’ll say.’ She’d heard the man praising the workmanship, the finish, how much pleasure he’d get to give the board as a gift.
Hands in the back pockets of his jeans, Nate looked down at the ground before his gaze came up to meet hers again. ‘Morgan, I… well, I was wondering, are you going to the dinner gathering at Snowdrop Cottage tomorrow?’
‘Yes, you?’
Neither of them had the chance to carry on the conversation before a woman came charging over to the stall. And she didn’t look happy. In fact, she looked furious. ‘Are you the owner here?’ She addressed Morgan, who stood at the stall beneath the vintage sign hanging above.
‘I run the stall, yes.’ She had her best welcoming expression in place to head off whatever confrontation was coming her way.
The woman yanked something from a carrier bag that looked as though it had done the rounds and could no longer claim to be abag for life.
