Page 61 of Scotlander

‘It was pretty badass.’ He blew a kiss up to the crisp, blue sky above them. ‘I miss you, Concha.’

She closed her eyes and, as clear as if it were real, saw Valentina blowing one back at the pair of them. I miss you too, Val. Forever and a day I will miss you.

‘She’s the gift that keeps on giving.’ Willa tried to control the crack in her voice as she continued. ‘And I’m happy for you. Lachlan seems really nice. And I fully expect to be your bridesmaid at the real handfasting ceremony. What is it?’ She looked at her non-existent wrist watch. ‘A year from now?’

Gabe smiled, tipped his head back and forth. ‘Who knows what will happen? But it’s nice. Having someone who knew me back then. And my family. It’s kind of like completing myself, you know? Coming full circle, but better.’

She nodded a weird bobbly-headed nod because what he’d just said was something she was so hungry for it made her bones ache.

Gabe pointed back towards the barns. ‘I told you I read my letter, right?’

She made a vague noise. She didn’t want to talk about the letters.

‘It was really useful.’

‘Useful?’

He nodded. ‘When I saw Lachlan, I – I was angry instead of happy and that felt wrong. He is the only man I’ve ever let myself fall completely head over heels for and then he disappeared. Well, I disappeared and then he disappeared, and I was angry, you know? I felt abandoned and pissed off that I hadn’t handled it better.’ He balled his hands into fists and fake-punched himself in the head. ‘For years, I’ve been thinking of what I’d say to him if I ever saw him, and what do I do when I get the chance? I storm off. It’s what I did back then, and I did it again yesterday and . . . I need to stop doing that. I need to face stuff head on. Whether or not it turns out well.’

She got that. Big time. Not watching Outlander was her form of protest that Valentina wasn’t fighting harder to beat her cancer. It had been a completely unfair reaction to something Valentina had next to zero control over. You didn’t fight cancer. You endured it. Did the best you could in the face of a malignant invasion. And when her best friend had reached out to her, literally asking her to be by her side as she came face to face with her mortality, what had Willa done? She’d said no. And she would have to carry that burden of guilt forever. There was no way she could make up for it with Val, but she could try here, now, with Gabe.

She ducked her head to catch his eye. ‘You were a teenager when you met. Like . . . Romeo and Juliet’s age. How on earth were you meant to handle something like that with the equilibrium of a seasoned therapist?’

Gabe scrubbed his fingertips through his oil-slick-coloured hair. ‘I know, but being with Lachlan again – realising how much precious time we’d missed – it really brought home to me just how much I’d missed with Valentina.’ His voice thickened as the grief took purchase. ‘I never met her kids. Her husband. I don’t know any of my other siblings’ children. I don’t even know if I’d recognise them if we passed one another on the street. I was their big brother and I walked away. Walked away and didn’t look back.’ His eyes were dark now – pure dilated pupil. ‘I thought I was leaving behind all the pain I’d ever experience in the world, not even considering that what I’d actually done was create a huge black hole where all of that messy family stuff should have been.’ He clawed his hands into his chest as if to prove the black hole’s existence. As abruptly, he threw his hands up. ‘So, my dad doesn’t like that I’m gay. So what? I let my fear of that disapproval take twenty years of family time away from me.’ He clawed at his chest again. ‘I’m the one who did it to myself and I’m the one who’s going to have to live with that.’

His raw, unfettered remorse crashed through her like an earthquake. She still went home to see her family, sent birthday presents for her nieces and nephews, made pumpkin pie with a whipped cream smiley face at Thanksgiving. But she’d always had the sense that they all knew the reason she came back wasn’t because being there, with them, was a choice. It was an obligation. And acknowledging that created the same, terrifying black hole Gabe spoke of.

Willa swirled her toe round in the dirt making one circle, another, and then a third connecting the first two. Was there a way to make her two worlds one?

She could be practical. She was sleeping on straw bales and called in cows and was about to go and build a stone wall. In petticoats and a corset, no less. A honking, stinking one. It was all stuff her family would’ve loved doing. Pragmatic. Down to earth. Real.

And yet . . . proving she could do farm chores wasn’t the link she needed. She didn’t want to be loved for the things she did. She just wanted to be loved.

She’d felt that type of bond with Val. The same one she saw between Jennifer and Jules. So why couldn’t she feel it with her own family?

Maybe if she were to read Val’s letter . . .

She swiped at a couple of tears and blurrily caught Gabe doing the same. ‘Did your letter from Val . . . Was it like . . . Did it spell out . . .’ Oh god. She wanted to know and also she really didn’t.

She looked up at the sky and shouted, ‘What the fuck, Val?’

Gabe laughed as if she had finally gone round the twist, then copied her.

As clearly as if Val had descended from heaven, she heard her friend’s familiar laugh and a very dry, You could just open the envelope, stupid.

Yeah. She could. But then all of this would be over and she’d have to admit to herself that it was time to move on and that would mean deciding whether or not her life in LA had any actual content in it beyond regurgitating stories about celebrities with whom she’d spent five-to-ten minutes of not-very-private time and possibly moving back to Oregon because she couldn’t really think of anything else she wanted to do in LA, but she definitely couldn’t think of anything she wanted to do in Pendleton, all of which would mean she’d be stripped bare of the way she defined herself and would, at the ripe age of twenty-nine, be forced to start over.

Which clearly meant her best bet was to not read Val’s letter.

Gabe reached across, took her hand and said, ‘My letter basically said that the things that terrify us the most are the things that are the most worth doing.’

Willa smiled through another rush of tears. ‘What else?’

‘It wasn’t long.’ Gabe’s voice went scratchy again as he recalled snippets of the letter. How Val had said that their dad had regretted his actions but was too proud and too old-fashioned to know how to start over. That they all loved him. That their lives were richer because of him. He had started out stoically, but both their faces were streaming with tears now. Each of them desperately missing that brave, beautiful, vivacious woman they’d been lucky enough to have in their lives. They hugged and sobbed and made ugly crying noises so awful that they ended up cackling too.

‘Oh, there you are.’

They both looked across and saw Lachlan.