Chapter 32 Deli
Deli
“Cairn Campbell.”
The old man didn’t extend a hand.
He looked like he’d fallen out of a storybook.
Cairn was tall and wiry, with deep, permanent wrinkles.
His corduroy trousers hung off his bony hips like a coat hanger.
The only things about him that didn’t look worn down, worn thin, or weather-beaten were his blue eyes winking under thick white brows.
Cairn looked Deli up and down. “What sort of name is Deli?”
He said her name like he’d very much enjoy spitting it into a napkin and feeding it to a dog under the table.
“It’s a nickname.”
He blinked slowly. “For what? Delicatessen?”
Lachlan laughed behind her. Deli’s face fell flat. “Something like that, sure, Cairn.”
She emphasized Cairn just so he might have the chance to reflect on his own name, which she decided sounded like someone started saying one word but accidentally mashed it up with another in their head, creating an embarrassing syllable of shame.
Cairn continued to stare.
She couldn’t believe Cairn was Douglas’s brother. Douglas, who was practically glitter in a bottle mixed with the charm of an elf king.
There was a small utility buggy behind him with two seats and a minuscule truck bed, like a golf cart with a real, blue-collar job.
A furry bundle in the bed lifted its head.
“EEE!” Deli squealed. “A Dog! Can I pet him?”
Cairn nodded, and Deli jumped at the chance to talk to a border collie, whose silence felt a little less personal. She scritched the dog under both ears.
“You’re not a vegetarian, are you, Deli?” Cairn asked.
It had to be a trap. “Um, no. Not a vegetarian.”
“That’s good,” Cairn said.
His accent made good sound like güd. Deli’s head throbbed. “Why is that good?”
“Well.” Cairn paused to spit something into the grass far too close to where Deli was standing. “I don’t want to point to a cute wee lamb and say, ‘That’s a fine lookin’ Sunday roast,’ only to have you faint in horror.”
Deli’s stomach gave an involuntary lurch, and she had to cover her mouth with her hand. He grinned like one of those Krampus elves that run around the streets of small German towns terrorizing children and tourists.
“But you’re not a vegetarian,” he continued, “so no one’s losing consciousness today.” He tapped the truck bed with his staff, and the dog hopped out. “Except the Sunday roast. Come on then, hen. Those bonnie bastards won’t find themselves!”
So, Lachlan had given Cairn plenty of details. She glared at him until he looked up from under his brow with a smirk. She felt a wet nose nudge into her palm.
“He’s nuts, isn’t he?” Deli whispered as she looked into the dog’s mismatched eyes. He offered one rumbly rrrruf in response. Deli sighed. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
“Angus!” Cairn called as he got in the buggy. “Leave young Delicatessen alone, you’re standing in the way of true love, ye silly dug!”
Angus barked and ran off as Deli hauled herself in. She was a little sore, body and heart, and she wasn’t 100 percent sure she wouldn’t puke on Cairn’s shoes.
“Don’t listen to a word Angus said. He’s notorious for talking shite.” Cairn flipped switches and pressed buttons. The cab shook as Lachlan hopped into the bed of the buggy.
Then Cairn floored it.
As they climbed over the hills of the farm in a way that felt like flirting with death, Cairn told her about his family’s long history on that plot of land. She wondered what it must be like to feel so tied to somewhere—like the earth and your blood were old friends.
They came over a hill to a landscape dotted with puffballs. Deli squealed and clapped.
“Sheep!”
Cairn replied like she’d just awoken from a forty-year coma. “Yes, very good, Deli. Sheep.” She rolled her eyes against her will. Cairn chuckled as he stopped the buggy and got out.
“Well?” he called through the glass. “Are you going to leave the poor beasts to starve?”
He tossed handfuls of greenish brown pellets from a heavy bag in Lachlan’s hands toward a group of sheep standing in a tight circle. Deli got out and filled her hand without looking at Lachlan. She squatted.
“Here you go, buddy,” she cooed at the nearest sheep, holding out a pellet.
Cairn stared. “What are you doin’?”
“Feeding the sheep?”
“Out of your hand?”
She looked up at him, confused. “Of course.”
“They’re livestock, not pets. They’re wild animals.”
Cairn couldn’t ruin sheep for her. She outright refused to let anyone ruin sheep for her.
“They need love and nuggets, too.”
He huffed a half laugh. “They’re not the only ones needin’ love, from what I hear.”
Wooowww, she thought as the sheep took a single step forward and let out a low baaaa.
“Already got love, thanks,” she whispered.
“Yet you’re looking for a strapping Scottish lad to sweep you off your feet?” He sucked his teeth. “At least, that’s what I hear.”
“I’m here,” she whispered for the fluff thing’s benefit, “because he just needs a little push.”
Cairn replied easily, “A man who needs pushin’ in love is no man in love.”
Deli’s incredulous sound was enough to make the sheep bleat in annoyance and run back to the herd. Cairn and Lachlan both gave a low chuckle at her nugget-filled hand held out to nothing.
“You don’t know Trey,” she snapped as she stood. “Neither of you do.”
“No,” Cairn said as he tossed another handful of pellets, “but I know I proposed to my Marjorie the night I met her.”
Deli had been prepared to engage in a battle of snark with Cairn, but the softness in his voice stopped her short. “Marjorie?”
“Aye. Marjorie.”
“Is she . . . ?”
“About ten years ago now. It was pneumonia that took her.”
Sometimes, Deli felt like other people’s pain was hot and bright and sharp-edged, dangerous and fresh. Cairn’s felt like sea glass—worn smooth and familiar with time. It was a grief you slipped into your pocket and turned in your palm. A companion. An old friend.
“I’m sorry you lost her,” Deli said softly.
“As am I.” Cairn squinted at the sky, watching the sun break through a shifting cloud. “That woman gave love away like her heart was a bottomless well.”
Over Cairn’s shoulder, Deli watched Lachlan crouch with a handful of pellets as a single sheep got brave and walked toward him. He looked away and held perfectly still until he felt its soft nose in his palm, and he smiled.
A breeze blew through Deli’s hair. “It sounds like Marjorie made the world a better place.”
Cairn closed his eyes and smiled as the sunbeam warmed his skin. “She made me a better place, Deli.”
She watched him, transfixed. A moment before, Cairn Campbell had been a classic curmudgeon she couldn’t wait to get away from. Now he was a heart laid bare, breaking open his pain like an offering in his palm to her—for all intents and purposes, a wild animal.
She felt the sting of shame for her closed-mindedness.
“That’s what love does.” He patted his chest over his heart twice. “Love makes us into a better place. Understand?”
A second and third sheep approached Lachlan where he knelt, still as a statue. Deli looked away, searching for anything that didn’t make her want to cry. “Where are all the babies?”
“The wee lambs? Off with your mysterious man who walks these hills, I’m sure.” Cairn whistled and slipped back into the buggy as Lachlan tied up the food bag. Deli took one last look at the cluster of sheep and got in.
They drove quietly for a few minutes until Cairn veered off the path without warning and climbed toward a peak through patches of knotted ground cover flecked with dusty purple. Lachlan whooped from the bed as the buggy squealed in protest.
“Can I tell you a secret, Deli?” Cairn didn’t wait for her to respond. “I’ve got no idea what I’m doin’ or where I’m goin’!”
That makes two of us, she thought.
She was still quiet after Lachlan and Cairn had repaired a small fence and she and Lachlan were deposited back at the Land Rover without seeing a single hot shepherd.
Lachlan stayed silent. She didn’t notice that he drove gently the whole way home.