Long Shot

Chapter 9

“Yeah, sorry I can’t go in with you,” Leith told her as she sat next to him in his truck. He jabbed up the air conditioner, even though the cab was already Frigidaire cold. “I gotta get on the road if I want to make it to Stamford by tonight and find a motel.”

When he’d gone inside 740 Maple to grab the key to his father’s house, he’d also come out with a packed bag.

“It’s okay,” Jen said, while wondering who the hell this pale, fidgety guy was sitting next to her. “Tell me where the photo albums are again?”

He squinted through the windshield at the brick two-bedroom, one-car ranch house plunked at the foot of a steep hill. “Da kept all the stuff like that in the den. In the big hutch along the wall. Bottom shelves. Here.” He flipped open the glove compartment and took out a huge flashlight, slapping it in her palm. “You might need this.”

“Why?”

“No power.”

She opened her door and gracelessly finagled her way to the ground. One hand on the door handle, she peered back inside the truck. But Leith wasn’t looking at her. The house had him entranced.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Sure.” A stiff nod of the head.

“When will you be back?” As if she had any right to know, or any claim on him.

“Not sure.”

Alrighty then.

His thigh twitched and flexed, preparing to lift off the brake. She took the signal and shut the door. It was barely latched before he pulled away, tires grinding in the gravel driveway. When he hit the asphalt, he gunned it back up the hill, on his way out of Gleann. She watched him go until the truck was no more than an obnoxious lumbering sound filtering through the trees. When silence fell, she turned to the only house in this quiet, lovely part of the valley.

The house she had once thought of as heaven now seemed dark and sad. It looked almost exactly the same—the same row of wind chimes dangling from the eaves, whose sound was a glorious, calming memory; the same patio furniture sitting on the giant slab of concrete serving as a front porch—but the melancholy surrounding it was ghostly.

Upon closer look, the furniture she’d sat on for so many summer nights, holding a glass of lemonade—and later a sneaked beer poured into a coffee mug—was terribly weathered. She wondered why Leith even bothered to keep it out. The concrete slab was cracked and uneven, and several sets of wind chimes were missing pieces and hung crookedly.

But the yard . . . the yard and the front flower gardens and the raised vegetable boxes were lush and lovely. Tended with care. Like a grave.

The grass had been mown in perfect diagonals, the bushes neatly trimmed. The produce was magazine perfect. She remembered that when Mr. MacDougall was alive, he’d spent hours in his yard, tinkering and digging and planting and pruning, Leith always by his side.

It made sense to her then that Leith had become what he had: a landscape architect to honor his upbringing and to satisfy his own soul. He’d kept up his old house as a memorial. But . . . why, if he didn’t live here? There was no For Sale sign anywhere, and this place hadn’t been listed on potential rentals when she’d looked through them at Sue’s just the other day.

Jen negotiated the slim flagstone walk, noting the way the flowers and shrubs perfectly draped over the edges, beautiful and artistic. They gave atmosphere to the wonderful memories made here, the ones outside of the evenings looking through photo albums or playing Scrabble at the kitchen table.

This house was where she’d first learned what a true family should be like.

Aunt Bev had brought Jen and Aimee to Gleann with the sole purpose of giving them time away from their mom, Bev’s own sister, but it had taken a few awkward years for Jen to warm up to the aunt who was essentially a stranger. She was, after all, related to her mother. But Leith and his dad had lived outside of Jen’s wicked experiences, and she’d clung to that. She’d clung to them.

A real family, she discovered, had nothing to do with the number of people involved, or the titles of the family members, or even if they were blood related. It was about interaction. Support. Jokes. Generosity. Teaching. Respect. Everything Mr. MacDougall had passed on to his son.

She couldn’t help it; she smiled as she pushed the key into the front door lock. It took a good effort to slam it home, and turning it to the left required even more power. She pushed open the door with a wobbly jerk, as it finally came free from the ill-fitting frame.

That emptiness she’d sensed outside instantly transformed into a heaviness that settled on her shoulders and dug into her soul.

Daylight spilled from the front door into the tiny, cramped den, but even that was quickly swallowed up and she could barely see. The heavy curtains in the front window were drawn, but the shadows and silhouettes told her that every piece of MacDougall furniture was placed exactly where she remembered. The couch beneath the window, the hutch against the wall to the right, the TV in the corner, the pass-through window to the kitchen straight ahead.

A musty scent assaulted her nose and made it tickle. She went to the window and yanked back the curtain. A cloud of dust rained down and she waved it back, peering through the particle-riddled air into the lightened room. As the air cleared some, she could see where her footsteps had left prints on the dusty, matted carpet. No others accompanied it; no one had walked through this room in a really long time. The layer of dust covering every surface was so thick it would take twenty vacuums to suck it all up. The air-conditioning hadn’t been turned on in ages; the smell could attest to that.

All of the knickknacks she remembered in foggy images were still there, sitting and waiting for use or attention. She passed through the den and into the tiny kitchen that had never been able to fit more than one MacDougall male at a time. The yellow plastic clock still hung next to the refrigerator, stuck on 7:56, and the waffle maker still leaned against the microwave, all coated with a gray film.

The floor groaned as she left the kitchen, walked past the hutch, and went down the hall toward the bedrooms. Mr. MacDougall’s bedroom faced the backyard that sloped severely up toward town. She recalled him saying once that he liked how dark and cool it got in there in the evenings. Leith’s was the room facing front, which had made it convenient for him to sneak in through the window when she and he had been out past curfew.

She went first into Mr. MacDougall’s room, cracking the door and flinching at the awful, dry squeal of the hinges. The room was darker than midnight. By habit she flicked the light switch, but nothing came on. She remembered the flashlight hanging loose in her hand and shot the powerful beam into the room.

The bed was made, the dresser neat. Mr. MacDougall’s gray wool cap sat on the corner edge, waiting for him to come in and put it on. Jen had rarely seen him without it.

A lovely cane with a brass tip tilted against the wall near the door. When she’d watched the games with him, he’d held that cane between his legs with both hairy-knuckled hands.

Shaking a little, she closed the door and turned to the opposite side of the hallway. The sight of Leith’s bedroom door—just the door—made her smile. Whenever she and Leith had been in his room, they’d been required to leave the door open. Mr. MacDougall would then sit on the couch, less than thirty feet away, and pretend not to be listening.

That’s because the one time they’d closed the door, they’d gotten caught with Leith on top of her, making out like they would die the next day. His dad had put a quick and embarrassing end to any more of that kind of private time in his household.

Now she opened Leith’s bedroom door, prepared to see the room inside just like all the others: left exactly as her memory recalled. And it was, with the queen bed against the far wall, its dark green comforter now pilled and completely dusted over, the big dresser close to the door, its legs making huge divots in the old carpet. In high school, Leith had kept his discus and shot put trophies and medals lined perfectly on a set of shelves next to the closet. They were still there, arranged biggest to smallest, their luster now dulled.

The one thing different was the walls. She vaguely remembered plaid wallpaper, but it was no longer visible. Framed photos covered the walls from ceiling to baseboard, and she stepped deeper into the room for a closer look.

Almost every single one of them was of Leith and his “da,” arms slung around each other’s shoulders, identical grins facing the camera. At the Highland Games, at high school football games, camping at the state park, gardening . . . at all stages of Leith’s life. Just the two of them, inseparable.

This place was a fraction of the size of that great, obnoxious billboard out on Route 6, and not as odd as a displayed caber and a plaque, but this small, crowded room held a world more heart. She knew that once Leith had moved out, Mr. MacDougall had hung this visual display of pride and joy.

She let the flashlight fall on the largest picture near the door. An 8x10, it showed Mr. MacDougall in his gray cap, big arm clamped around Leith’s neck, pulling in tight his only child, a gigantic smile on his wrinkled face. Leith wore a kilt, his face and T-shirt damp from his having recently thrown. Jen recognized the old games grounds in Gleann. It was the only photo in the room in which Leith’s grin looked strained. A date had been scrawled in ballpoint in the bottom corner—the year after Leith had last been all-around champion.

Jen suddenly felt guilty for being in there. She backed out, closing the door against the very personal nature of the place, and leaned against the wall. Leith had let her into the house to get the photo albums, nothing more. Yet . . . he had to have known she’d take a look around—that she’d see what she’d just seen—and realize the extent of his grief. The grief he’d been hiding so well for three years. He had to have known she’d realize he’d been lying about getting over losing his dad. That he still felt lost.

He trusted her enough to show her this, trusted her with his pain. Hell, maybe he wanted to show her. Maybe this was his way of asking for help.

Or maybe, to him, this had been a necessary casualty. Maybe his only intention had been to help her do her job with the games—like he had back in the Kafe with the townspeople—and he’d cut himself open to do it. He’d taken an invisible knife, carved out his despair and heartbreak, and displayed it. For her.

Muscles didn’t have anything to do with strength. If she could, she would absorb his pain and relieve him of all that pressure of putting on a good, healed face for everyone.

She pushed off the wall and went back to the hutch in the den. Sunlight streamed in the front window now, the air clear of dust, so she easily found the latch and opened the hutch doors. Inside, the shelves were stacked with disorganized photo albums that might have made Bobbie “Roberts” twitch.

Jen ran her fingers down the spines of the thick, relatively new albums, the ones from the last thirty years, the ones dedicated to Leith’s life. Placed on its own shelf was one labeled “Margaux MacDougall,” and if ever a single, earthly item gave off a saintly vibe, it was that. Though Jen had never seen a picture of Leith’s mom, who’d died when he was just a baby, cracking open that album seemed far too personal, far too invasive.

She touched the albums near the bottom, where Leith had said the ones she was looking for would be. No, no, no, no. Ah, there.

The documentation of the elder MacDougall’s life in Scotland was in big, thick treasuries made of actual leather. The two burgundy covers had cracked and dried at the edges, their spines brittle. They didn’t have labels and they didn’t need them.

Because the concrete porch was where Mr. MacDougall had showed her and Leith these books long ago, that was where she took them now. Blinking hard in the bright sunlight, she gingerly sat on the rickety wood bench, hoping it wouldn’t splinter and crack under her weight. It held, and she flipped open the first album.

Pages and pages of mustard-yellow photos and paper, of blurred, black-and-white children running around Highland meadows, dark skies billowing overhead. She could have stayed there all day, flipping through the past of a man she dearly missed, but there was a purpose to this, and unfortunately it wasn’t nostalgia.

The second album was almost entirely dedicated to Mr. MacDougall’s teens and early twenties, namely, his throwing days in the old country. Nibbled-edge fliers for the Fort William and Dufftown and Aberdeen Highland Games, their words typed on, yes, a typewriter. Line drawings of heavily muscled athletes wielding competition stones and cabers and hammers. Competitors’ listings, with MacDougall’s name circled in pencil. Ribbons of all places stuffed into the cracks, their adhesive long since gone. Swatches of tartans, their clans unknown to her. A single pressed flower.

Photos upon photos of a young MacDougall: throwing, smiling, posing with other men in kilts, standing at attention as the massed bands strolled past.

Jen studied each photo with an eagle eye, calling back to mind Mr. MacDougall’s accented voice as he’d told each scene’s story—and even more stories from off-camera. She paid attention to the backgrounds, to the setting and atmosphere. She picked out details and let her mind trail off to brainstorm possibilities. Setting the album to the side, she took out her laptop and let her fingers fly, recording all her random, scattered ideas. She’d make sense of the lists later.

A million new pieces clicked into place. Her brain buzzed with the possibilities.

Gleann had been trying to compete with the bigger, more well-known games across the state, going for showy but ending up cartoonish and laughable. She lifted her face to the sun and pictured the beautiful town of Gleann, built by Scottish hands and inhabited by people with deep roots. That’s what their games had lost: that link to their history. The fearless Scottishness of the event.

She was going to get that back, and she held the key to success in her hands.