What Lies Between Read Free

scratchy moss growing through the rocks. I sank down against the wall as the past caught up with me once again.
    Hyped up on unrealistic hope, I’d gone looking for my birth parents as soon as I’d turned eighteen. My mother never returned any of my calls but Gerard had wanted to meet.
    I didn’t want to have expectations, but of course I did. Bare minimum. Like I’d expected he would have taken a shower, worn a shirt without holes—he practiced law and must have owned at least one decent shirt—maybe have put away the porn or offered me a glass of water, even asked me how my life had been. He hadn’t needed to belabor his indifference toward me. I could see that for myself.
    And listening to him repeat (as if I didn’t understand English) that he was not my father, made one thing clear: some dreams should only be chased, never caught. Learning that lesson cost me a second chance with the father I needed; I never contacted him again. But second chances cut both ways—my father didn’t contact me either. Even terminal cancer hadn’t moved him to pick up the phone.
    I think meeting him then had likely played a part in why he had left this place to me, and why I had chosen to claim it. The stones pressing into my back, the ground beneath my feet, this inheritance—it all felt like part of a “post-midnight confession” of sorts. The hour had tolled upon Gerard’s death and the opportunity for what could have been had escaped. It was too late to ask questions or to say all the things I’d meant to say, to hear all the things I’d wanted to hear.
    This inheritance, even with the massive debt, acknowledged the truth: I was Gerard’s daughter and he was my father. 
    Feeling MacKinnon ground under my feet meant more than I’d imagined, leaving my heart pulsing with a mix of pain and happiness. This was the concrete type of confession that changes everything; it was already turning me inside out.
    I pushed myself up, away from the stone wall, away from regrets and worries; I wanted so badly to learn how to take moments as they came, let go of yesterday, and not live tomorrow until it arrived. Why was this so hard?
    Keep moving—this is what I know how to do.  
    Crossing the road, I squatted at the edge of the loch, cupped its water in my hands, and sucked a taste into my mouth. Salty. Washing the loch’s bracing water over my face, as if it could wash away lingering thoughts of the past, I turned and headed back toward the car.
    Calum started the engine and pulled back onto the road. “The renovation your father started is nearly finished. He had planned to move back permanently later this year and prepare for opening next season.” I caught his sideways glance but kept my eyes on the scenery. “I’m sorry that it is all happening like this for you, with his passing. It isn’t an ideal situation, but Glenbroch is an excellent opportunity.”
    “I didn’t get much information about the estate. Why is that?”
    Calum shifted in the driver’s seat and cleared his throat. “Glenbroch is quite isolated. The nearest town is Portree on Skye, more than an hour away. Kilmoran, the wee village we passed through, is where mail is posted but for a shop you’ll have to go to Kyle or even farther. Highland life wouldn’t be for most people, and Gerard wasn’t convinced a city girl would be able to make a go of it here . . . that you would even come over if you knew how hard it would be. He couldn’t wait to get away himself and head to the States for university. It took all these years and the death of his parents to draw him home for more than a visit.”
    My mind whirred backward to that meeting with Gerard so long ago, back to the photos on the wall of his dining room—the man in the kilt and the lovely woman in the beautiful dress—his parents, my grandparents, Angus and Helen MacKinnon. Having grandparents would have changed everything for me. Without a family, I had long ago learned to be on my own,