have any. Then it becomes a rather glaring priority.” Gayle took a breath. “You think I’m boring, don’t you? That my focus is in the wrong place. That all I think about is work and self-improvement. But love doesn’t provide any of the practical things you need in life. And it can blind you to reality. Tempt you to make yourself vulnerable.”
Was there any point in confessing that love was the only thing she truly needed in her life?
No. Her mother’s comment was so obviously driven by personal pain, and Ella was trying to learn more about her, not alienate her. “It must have been very hard for you when Dad died. We were so young. And you were on your own. I can’t even imagine.”
“I don’t suppose you can. And that’s my fault because I always tried to protect you from it.”
Protect them from what? The pain of grief? The struggle of lone parenting?
Her mother started walking again, heading to the warmth of the lodge.
Ella hurried to catch up. How had she ever thought that spending Christmas with her mother might heal their relationship? They weren’t a family. They weren’t a unit. Ella felt defeated, her earlier optimism punctured by sharp reality.
“We’re freezing to death out here.” Gayle opened the front door and tugged off her boots. “I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for breakfast.”
That was it? That was all she was going to say?
Ella considered herself to be pretty good with people, but she had no idea how to connect with her mother. If anything, her attempts to get closer seemed to have driven them further apart.
How could you have a proper relationship with someone when you didn’t really know anything about them?
Gayle
Had she made a mistake returning to Scotland?
She’d come here to build a relationship with her granddaughter and rebuild her relationship with her daughters. She badly wanted to bridge the gap, but how? It seemed that in order to achieve that closeness that Ella clearly wanted, and which she also wanted, she was going to have to think about things she didn’t want to think about and talk about things she didn’t want to talk about. Why did Ella want to know about her father when he’d been gone from her life before she was even born?
Gayle had been six months pregnant, and Samantha had been just seven months old.
She’d trained herself not to think about that time. It was all too upsetting, and she’d learned that emotion clouded the brain and stopped you focusing on the important things like surviving. Talking just wasted time that was precious when you were raising two children alone.
She’d never been the gossipy type. Instead she preferred to examine her problems and either solve them or learn to live with them.
And as for talking about their father—
Maybe it had been a mistake coming back here. If she wasn’t careful, she was going to make her relationship with her daughters worse, not better.
Why had she mentioned that she’d visited Scotland on her honeymoon? That was a detail that had inevitably attracted the attention of romantic Ella.
Truthfully, she hadn’t expected it to be this difficult. She’d thought she’d be able to handle it, the way she handled everything in her life. Nothing defeated her.
And yet here she was with shaking hands and a sick feeling in her stomach simply because her daughter had asked about her honeymoon and wanted details of her father.
The years had fallen away, along with all the layers of defenses she’d carefully constructed over time.
Did she remember her honeymoon? Oh yes, she remembered it. Every moment. She’d been flying high, and still at the point in her life where she hadn’t realized that flying high simply made the fall harder when it came.
She’d paid a price for naivety, and optimism.
Feeling fragile, she removed her scarf, and then her coat and handed them to Kirstie, who was hovering near the entrance. The young woman was trying hard to compose her features into a pattern that looked friendly and welcoming, and instead she looked like someone with severe toothache. Gayle wondered what was making her so miserable and opened her mouth to talk to her about finding her power and using it, but her heart wasn’t in it. Right now she wasn’t sure she could access her own power, let alone help anyone else find theirs.
She needed to sit down. She needed a moment on her own to pull herself together and rediscover her own strength.