“And if I’m the one who messes up?” she asked quietly. “You’ll tell me too?”
“I will,” he said without hesitation.
From the moment the car dropped them at Charles and Aileen’s house, they had exactly twenty-two minutes to droptheir bags, for Mags to hug and cry over her parents, and load back into Charles’ old Land Rover and head to MacGregor’s.
Jonathan cursed himself yet again for insisting that her family needed to know of his arrival. Surprise might have been the better option.
Charles met his eyes in the rearview mirror and grinned. Aileen looked at her husband and sighed dramatically. “Really, Charles. Do you have to find everything so damn amusing?”
“I can’t help it,” he shrugged before chuckling. “Coll and Thomas are going to be pissed at us?—”
“Me,” Aileen interrupted. “They’ll be pissed at me. I was the one who didn’t want to tell anyone.”
“Oh, they’ll include me, my love.” Charles patted his wife’s leg to let her know he didn’t mind, and it was clear he really didn’t. “Like I was saying, they’ll be pissed as bears woken from hibernation. Cat and Jo will be hurt. That’s up to you to fix. What’s got me tickled is that Mags and Jonathan have offered us a perfect diversion.
“If things get too heated because of your months of lying?—”
“You’re pushing your luck, Charles.”
Mags snorted, quickly covering her nose and mouth before she interrupted her parents’ extremely amusing conversation.
Ignoring his wife, Charles continued. “When things look to be taking a turn for the worse, Jonathan, here,” he pointed his thumb over his shoulder in Jonathan’s direction, “will kiss Margaret and voila, we’ll be forgotten.”
Mags did laugh then. “Brilliant, Dad, but I prefer Jon’s face blood-free.”
Charles’ fist hadn’t even made contact with MacGregor’s front door before it was pulled open, and Catriona and Josephine were outside on the wraparound porch, pulling Aileen into a group hug.
The women were all smiles and laughter until they noticed Aileen’s headscarf. It was like witnessing a toy’s battery die. One moment animation, the next absolute stillness.
“Aileen,” Josephine whispered. Gray’s mother reached out and rubbed Aileen’s scarf between her fingers. “I don’t understand.”
A single tear rolled down Catriona’s cheek. “Oh, Aileen. Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Let’s go inside,” Aileen urged, “and I’ll explain.”
Emotions, of course, were running high, and it took Aileen half an hour to explain when she’d found out about the cancer, her treatments, and why she chose to leave her family in the dark.
The first thing Mags’ uncle Coll said was, “You fucking bastard,” to Charles. “You let my sister go through that alone. Without me.”
Charles had some sort of superpower. He never reacted to aggression like most people would, more Zen than a Buddhist monk.
“She was never alone, Coll. Ever. I’m sure you would rather hug your sister and tell her you love her instead of cussing me out,” Charles said evenly.
Coll actually flinched before rushing his sister and wrapping her in a giant hug, clutching her to his chest and sniffling in her hair. Aileen, for her part, hugged him just as tight, patting his back like a parent would a child’s.
When he finally set her back on her feet, Thomas took his place and received a similar treatment. The women were next,while Aileen explained the last few months, the doctors, the treatments, and finally told them that she was cancer-free.
At one point, Aileen explained that “Charles didn’t have a choice to know and to worry, but I did have a choice to keep that from you. Had things not gone my way, I would have told you.”
“That wasn’t your call to make,” Coll said stubbornly.
“Actually, it was, brother,” Aileen said serenely, quite used to her sibling.
MacGregor stood next to his best friend, frowning. “Coll, you’ll need to put trackers in everything Aileen owns, car, phone, tablet—maybe even herself. If we can’t trust her to tell us things, we’ll find them out on our own,” he added stubbornly.
When Aileen gasped in outrage, Mags stifled a giggle.
“Charles,” Aileen demanded, “Tell these overgrown baboons that they have no right to track me.” To which her husband only shrugged.
