tied together like the heather on the hillsides back home. And Edie had come along willingly as if she couldn’t deny it either.
Margery coughed, bringing me back to the office at the distillery and away from the woman I loved. Back to the cold that had taken my grandmother far too long to get over and was one of the reasons I’d left my pregnant wife behind. My grandmother had needed me in a way she rarely needed anyone.
“I’m here. I’m here for a while,” I said, watching her carefully as she put a hand to her chest.
“And when the baby is born?”
I couldn’t answer that yet. The part of me who’d asked Edie to marry me, the part who had promised to be there for her in sickness and in health, was screaming at me to get on the goddamn plane and go back to her. To not spend Christmas without her. But the part of me that hadn’t wanted kids—who hadn’t wanted that kind of family—needed to be exactly where I was, doing the thing I loved. That part of me wanted to stay right where I was at.
It was fucked up. It was a disaster. And I didn’t have an answer.
Edie
I’LL BE HOME FOR CHRISTMAS
“I'll be home for Christmas
If only in my dreams.”
Performed by Aly & AJ
Written by Gannon / Kent / Ram
When I pulled up to Marina’s house, the driveway was already populated with a couple of cars, and I groaned. I’d hoped to be the first one here, because Marina was good at listening to me as I talked through my problems. She didn’t even need to say anything half the time. I’d simply find the answer as I told my story. All of us kids had found that in her—a person to listen and keep our secrets until we were ready to spill them.
As I got out of the car, my purse vibrated as my phone buzzed again.
GARRETT: I miss you.
GARRETT: Please pick up when I call tonight. We need to talk.
His insistence was something I’d loved about him when we’d first met at a black-tie fundraiser to support the public library system in the United States. His shiny, caramel hair slicked back, his blue eyes, and the way he’d filled out his tuxedo like a Bond hero had made my heart stop and start. And then he’d spoken… His Scottish accent filling the air had made my body burst into goosebumps. Goosebumps that had turned into full-on shivers every time he’d found me whenever I’d drifted away that night. He’d made me laugh, asked a million questions about me, and left only after securing my phone number and a date. A date that had started a whirlwind romance I hadn’t known I wanted but had ripped apart my soul and put me back together.
Now, I was just being pulled apart with no promises of healing.
I threw my phone back into the depths of my purse. Garrett hadn’t asked about the baby once since he’d left on Sunday. It was now Wednesday. What kind of father didn’t even ask about his baby, regardless of the fact he hadn’t wanted one?
I hadn’t wanted one either. I hadn’t wanted to risk bringing more mental illness into the world with my mixed-up DNA. It was one of the things we’d both agreed upon when he’d proposed. No kids. It was a broken promise. But it wasn’t one that had been exclusively mine or even an intentional break. It had surprised me as much as him.
Whereas his promise to run the company from a subsidiary office in Knoxville had been exclusively his to make and break. He’d believed it could be done, and I’d wanted to believe it, too. But I thought we’d both known the truth: his grandmother, his business, and his soul were in Scotland. He belonged with the two-hundred-year-old buildings on land that had been in his family for even longer. It was somehow twined into the very makeup of his being.
I walked up Marina’s porch steps, knocked, and let myself in. I heard her voice before I saw her in the kitchen. “You’ll have to tell them at some point.”
When I rounded the corner, Khiley and Stephen were sitting at the golden marble bar, heads close together, bodies twined, Khiley’s blonde hair standing out against Stephen’s strawberry-blond. They’d been this way their whole life. Twined. Inseparable.
“Tell who what?” I asked, setting my purse down on the counter.
The silence that followed my question was charged,