The fact that she hadn’t returned to this island since our breakup was proof she wasn’t over it. The fury she felt overlosing her mother had just found its target. I saw it happen in her eyes.
Not only could I not help her through this … I didn’t know how the two of us could possibly co-exist on this tiny island.
2.Taran
June, This Year
It had been three hundred and fifty-one days.
It didn’t seem possible that almost a year had passed since I lost Mum. Sincewelost Mum. Sometimes I had to remind myself that I wasn’t the only one who’d lost her. In fact, my brother Laird and his family had spent more time with her than I ever had.
But even remaining in Glasgow (stupidly, stubbornly refusing to return to Glenvulin for all those years) while Mum was on the island didn’t mean she wasn’t my best friend. I called her every day. We talked every day.
She was my person.
When she died, she took the woman I used to be with her.
After a year of just getting through one day at a time with this unbearable pain lodged in my chest and the nausea of dread in my gut, I finally allowed myself to acknowledge that she wouldn’t want this to be my life, merely existing in a constantstate of loss. So, I was trying to figure out who I was now. Without her.
Laird had been gently pushing me to do something about Mum’s slight hoarding issue. My roommate, London, never complained about the clutter in my mum’s bungalow. But it was time I sorted through all her things. It had to be worth a fair bit, and I knew Mum would want it to go to a good cause.
When she’d told me she had stage four metastatic breast cancer, I left a job I adored. I’d worked as the operational director for a Scottish food charity based in Glasgow. It made me feel useful and like I did my part to make a positive impact on my country. However, the devastating news brought everything into sharp perspective. Mum was my priority.
Now I worked at the coffeehouse and bookstore she’d owned and loved—Macbeth’s Pages & Perks. It had been Mum’s baby, so I couldn’t let anything happen to it. Yet I missed feeling like I was making an impact. I felt adrift from the person I was before. Maybe selling off some of Mum’s belongings and donating the proceeds to worthy causes would help.
My stomach roiled as I spotted the unfamiliar car pulling up outside the house.
It was one thing to talk about doing this, but it was quite another to think of parting with her beloved antiquities. As much as I knew it needed to happen, being surrounded by her clutter made me feel like she was still here in a way.
Tears stung my nose, but I gritted my teeth against them.
I’d cried enough tears to fill a loch this past year, and I refused to cry anymore. It had taken this entire year to stop feeling the physical pain of loss, the ache in my bones, even in my gums and jaw, and in the heavy weight of my limbs. Part of me was terrified that if I didn’t stop myself from crying now, the worst of that pain would come back.
After Laird and his wife, Finella, had gone through Mum’s stuff and chosen items they wanted to keep for themselves and my two nephews, Aird and Finn, I’d selected a few pieces of Mum’s favorite jewelry. The rest was an accumulation of family antiques, from crockery to homeware, from jewelry to furniture pieces, all passed down over the generations. Mum had an inability to get rid of anything that held a hint of sentimental value, which was why her home was bursting at the seams.
I was happy to sell it online. It would be a big undertaking, but we’d agreed we’d donate the funds to the volunteer Leth Sholas Lifeboat Service and the volunteer ambulance service.
Mrs. Gilchrist, our local antiques shop owner, had popped by the house, taken one look around, and announced she had a contact in Glasgow who would be better suited to appraising my mum’s collection. I tried to tell her all I wanted was a rough idea of what everything was worth before I listed them, but she insisted this bloke was coming to collect an item from her shop and he owed her, so she might as well send him my way.
The tall, reedy gentleman unfolded himself from his dark green MINI Cooper and smoothed back oily brown hair as he sneered at the facade of Mum’s bungalow.
I was already in a weird mood about doing this, and his clear distaste sent my hackles rising.
I shared the bungalow with London, my roommate. She was the American best friend of Tierney Silver, our new B and B owner, and she’d come over to Scotland to work as Tierney’s chef. In truth, she’d fled New York, and I’d offered her my home as a sanctuary. In return, London had proven herself to be the fiercest friend throughout my grief journey. She’d offered to keep me company while the antiques guy visited, but I knew Tierney needed her at the B and B, so I’d insisted I was fine on my own.
Throwing my shoulders back, I settled on trying to find that blank numbness I’d often shrouded myself with over the past year to help get me through interacting with other human beings. I opened the door just as the man raised his hand toward the doorbell.
His eyebrows rose at the sight of me. His earlier distaste melted into an appreciative smile as his dark eyes roamed over my face. “Ms. Macbeth?”
“Mr. White?”
“Please …” He held out a long-fingered hand for me to shake. “Call me Edward.”
Edward White was younger than he first appeared. There was something about his brown suit and slicked-back hair that gave an air of being older, but I reckoned on closer inspection he was around my age.
I quickly shook his hand and stepped aside. “Please come in.”
He gave me a snaggle-toothed smile as he stepped with a pronounced bounce into the foyer. “Your house is very quaint.”
