Across the hall stood his old bedroom door, and he looked at it only for a moment before opening it and stepping inside. Jen had come in here. He could see a fresh set of footprints in the dust coating the carpet. She’d already known that Leith and his father were more brothers than father and son, and that Da had been Leith’s hero, but her seeing this, finally realizing all that Leith had shut away, she would know how bad he’d been hurting in order to do that.

He needed to stop ignoring the hurt.

There was a laundry basket still sitting at the bottom of his old, empty closet. Dragging it out, he took down all the photos of him and Da and placed them carefully in the bottom. He laid the cane and hat and kilt on top, then went to the living room and took the afghan of his mother’s. Then he carried it all out into the bright sunshine.

“Now?” Duncan asked.

Leith slid the basket onto the truck bed. “Leave the hutch in the living room, I still have to go through it. But everything else can go.”

Chris slapped a pair of work gloves into Leith’s hand. As he pulled them on, Duncan walked into the open garage and flipped on the old boom box Da had kept there to listen to baseball games, and that Leith had used when he worked out. How about that? The damn batteries still worked, as though Da had changed them yesterday. The blare of guitar-heavy rock filled the once silent house and yard. Duncan cracked some joke Leith couldn’t hear and Chris laughed, and the whole place was washed in a light atmosphere Leith hadn’t expected to feel here again.

Leith reached into his truck and pulled down the cooler. Snatching three beers from the pile of ice inside, he snapped off the caps and handed them to the other guys. They clinked bottle necks.

“Thanks,” he told them.

“To old man MacDougall,” said Duncan.

As the cold beer slid down his throat, Leith turned to look again at the house, its doors and windows thrown open, all saying good-bye.

To old man MacDougall indeed.

Eight hours later, the shitty furniture and worthless household goods mounded over the lip of the Dumpster. The garage was stacked with other things to be donated. The men lounged on lawn chairs in the gravel drive as the sun finally disappeared, the last of the beers in their hands.

Leith glanced up at Da’s kilt peeking out of the laundry basket. He realized that none of this would have happened without Jen, if she hadn’t come here, if she hadn’t unknowingly given him this final push.

“Hey, Duncan?” he asked.

“Yeah?”

“You, ah, need an announcer for Saturday?”

Duncan finished his beer with a smack of his lips and grinned, showing a missing tooth on one side. “Fuck yeah, man.”

Leith still wasn’t sure he could throw—out of practice and still some lingering ghosts—but he could still participate in the games. Still honor Da’s memory in that way and give one final good-bye to Gleann.

Leith whipped out his phone and dialed. She answered on the second ring. “Jen? I have some news I think you’re going to like.” 

Chapter

19

Jen stood in the middle of heaven. The sun speared the last of its gold light through the trees on the western hills, a warm breeze blew across what used to be Hemmertex’s side lawn, and everywhere mingled smiling, laughing people, come to enjoy Gleann’s opening party before tomorrow’s Highland Games.

The parking lot was already half-full, and couples and families were making their way up the Hemmertex drive from town, pulling their kids in wagons decorated with Scottish flags. The locals wore all kinds of tartans in all sorts of manners: full kilts, T-shirts declaring their clans, hats. Jen even saw a scarf, though it was pushing eighty degrees.

She had enhanced the long entrance from Route 6 by draping flags along the Highland cattle fence. The hairy beasts had eyed her and she’d tried to talk to them as she did it, assuring them the things would be gone in twenty-four hours and they could have their unobstructed view back. But they still didn’t look too pleased over having so many people this close to their domain. Loughlin, the old farmer and landowner, had stood in the center of his field with his border collies, watching her the whole time in that hard, wordless way, looking like he shared his cattle’s feelings.

None of them were used to crowds, after all.

From inside the giant music tent streamed the first low, sexy draws of Chris’s fiddle. The rest of his band had yet to show up for sound check, but he’d arrived early and was going through his own practice with an admirable enthusiasm. His hair brushed and pulled back in a low, loose ponytail, he made the kind of music that no recording could capture. She guessed he’d be getting his pick of the girls that night.

A short bus rattled its way up the drive and into the staging area, the product of Jen’s marketing the bus service in Westbury last week. Jen held her breath, watching to see how many people would get off. The tinted windows showed nothing. The doors opened. An older couple staggered to the ground, then no one else. Crap.

Wait. Another couple—this one in their midforties—got off, then another. The four were laughing together, looking around, and then the man with salt-and-pepper hair pointed at the warm, white tent decorated with the Amber Lounge logo. They’d come for Shea and they’d found her. Perfect.

More and more people streamed off the Westbury bus. The beautiful thing had been full. Some trailed the first four to the Amber tent, some families wandered toward the Highland dance exhibition set up in the Hemmertex amphitheater. Others trickled off toward the tug-of-war competition already underway.

Raised voices shot out from the music tent and Jen hurried over, in tune with the sound of panic and impending event trouble. Three more guys had joined Chris on stage, one shouldering a guitar, another with a set of bagpipes under his arm, and the last lazily twirling a drumstick. Chris was laying into the drummer, and as Jen drew closer, she noticed that the drummer didn’t give a shit as he rolled his head in every direction but at the guy yelling at him.

She walked right up to them and tapped the stage with authority, silencing the fight. “Everything okay, guys?”

The drummer swung his head toward her, his eyes bloodshot, his body swaying. Chris stepped between her and the drummer and pushed a wan smile onto his face. “Everything’s great, Jen. We’re still on at nine, right?”

She laid a long, long stare on the drummer. “You better be. Pay depends on it.”

Chris picked up his fiddle and said, “No worries. No worries at all.” But as she turned away, she heard Chris hiss, “For fuck’s sake, Scotty. Get it together.”

As she exited the music tent, a chorus of sound erupted from the tug-of-war competition. She’d gotten the idea to organize one after looking at Mr. MacDougall’s scrapbooks. Though other American Highland games had adopted the concept, she really wanted to make it into an event, a true competition with the prize of some pretty serious Scotch.

She’d pounded the pavement to recruit local businesses to field tugging teams, and when the response had been less than expected, she’d appealed to the rugby teams who would be competing in the tournament tomorrow. Another level of competition seemed to entice the baser instincts of the bruiser males who liked to shove each other around a field, and they’d jumped at the chance.

From what she heard, her idea was delivering.

An enthusiastic crowd had gathered in a long line down the rope. They cheered their friends or husbands or coworkers. Jen didn’t care, as long as they were cheering. As she drew closer she could glimpse the teams through spaces in the crowd. They synchronized their grips and tugs, planted their boots hard into the dirt, and leaned back, almost horizontal to the ground. Their timed shouts and grunts rose and rose as one team made their move, giving the rope all they had, making their opponents fight for it. Finally the judge’s whistle blew, and one half of the crowd whooped. The victors of this round, wearing purple rugby jerseys, jumped up, red-faced and beaming, clapping each other on their backs.