Chapter 79 Deli
Deli
“Well, it’s about fucking time,” Lorraine snarled.
Deli scooped the words her mother hurled at her off the ground and tossed them over the dam in her head where she’d thrown everything else.
“And take off that jacket.”
Aunt Mo said, “It’s my jacket, she can wear it if she wants to.”
“It’s not yours, Maureen.”
Deli walked to the table, heels clicking against the floor, and dropped the worn leather into her mother’s lap without a word. She slid into the last chair beside her grandmother, who sat silently petting Beans.
If Deli MacDonald had known that her great-great-grandfather had built the table they were gathered around as a gift for his only daughter’s wedding, perhaps she would have felt something beautiful.
If she’d been able to go back in time and watch that young woman spend hours by the fireside, cutting and stitching the squares of a quilt for her little boy who was afraid of thunder, maybe Deli could have felt some reverence.
If the world was fair at all, Deli would have known the cottage on the cliffside had seen so many sacred moments it had become hallowed ground.
But all she knew as she joined the last of its daughters was that she felt nothing at all.
Aunt Mo leaned toward her. “Deli, are you alright?”
“Leave it, Maureen!” Lorraine’s anger was deafening. “My daughter is fine!”
Deli watched a spot on the ceiling.
“Laurie, she’s soaking wet and clearly freezing—”
“If Delilah can choose to run away, she can choose to change her clothes. She has made it clear she certainly doesn’t need a mother.”
“Jesus Christ, you’re a monster tonight, Lorraine! What is wrong with you?”
Deli hardly noticed the way they both stood, chairs scraping, and yelled over one another so loudly Beans jumped from her grandmother’s lap and hid under the armchair.
“Grandma?” Deli spoke directly to her. Nobody else noticed. “Are you really dying?”
“Yes, Delilah, I am.” Deli studied the grooves of the table, nodding to herself. “I’m not positive when that will happen, but—”
“It doesn’t matter,” Deli interrupted. “It all ends the same.”
Rosemary took her hand. “Sweetheart, what do you mean?”
Deli shrugged. “We’re going home.”
Her mother and aunt fell suddenly silent. Aunt Mo threw her hands in the air, spinning in a circle, and her mother slapped the table and gestured.
“Thank you! Finally, Delilah—some sense.”
Earlier, when Deli’s mother had torn through Blair’s wedding, Lachlan’s home, and onto the dance floor, Lachlan had tried to protect her, and she’d thought she might love him, too. She’d thought she might be somebody she wasn’t.
But it didn’t matter.
Because as she stepped inside and saw her mother, aunt, and grandmother sitting at the table, she’d known something bigger.
Bigger than how he made her feel real. Bigger than if he’d hurt her, or if he’d leaked some photo of his brother to spite him or chase him off at her expense.
Bigger than if he’d fallen for a phantom Deli who didn’t really exist.
Her past and future were already decided.
It didn’t matter if they loved each other. It didn’t matter if they always would.
None of it mattered, because it all would end the same.
She’d been pretending to be someone deserving of things she hadn’t earned, and he’d fallen for a person who only existed in Fearnhall—not in the real world. Deli couldn’t live in a fantasy forever.
She didn’t know how long they had been yelling.
“Deli has a life here, Lorraine!”
“Please, she barely has a life in Los Angeles.”
“Why do you have to suffocate everything she has? Why can’t you let her be happy?”
“You sound like a lunatic, Maureen.”
Her grandma reached for her hand again. “Delilah, please. Look at me.” Deli tried to look. Her eyes weighed a thousand pounds. “Are you happy here?”
Maybe Trey would just let things go back to the way they were and forget this entire situation happened. Maybe Chloe would accept an apology. It didn’t matter whether she’d been happy, or that when she’d woken up that morning she’d felt like she might be someone new. It was too late.
“It doesn’t matter, Grandma.”
“What about that boy? From today? He seemed . . . well, he seemed to be quite fond of you, darling. Is he someone special?”
Lorraine was listening to them again. “He’s pathetic, Mom. You saw it.”
Aunt Mo’s face turned to stone. “Watch your mouth.”
Deli stood without a word and retrieved a wineglass, a bottle, and the corkscrew before sitting back down and beginning to twist.
Lorraine continued, “What’s she gonna do, Mom?
Throw her life away like Maureen? Marry someone like Dad?
” The wine splashed into the glass, sloshing crimson up the sides.
“Though I am glad I didn’t have to bribe you with Trey, Delilah.
” Her mother sat back into her chair and scooted in.
“I thought I was going to have to keep his engagement covered up long enough to lure you home.”
Deli stilled, wineglass halfway to her lips. “Trey is engaged?”
“Grandma and I ran into his mother the other day. She said he’d asked her for the family ring to propose. That Scarlett just snatched quite a pretty penny out of the Evans family’s pocket.”
Deli took a sip.
Trey, who had never chosen her back.
Chloe, who had vanished without warning after a lifetime.
Lachlan, who deserved better.
And her mother.
Her mother.
Her mom.
She would go home and try to be the daughter her mother had always needed. Maybe her mom would forgive her for the way she’d quit early after only twenty-nine years of trying.
Deli took in the cottage around her—the cold fireplace, the worn chairs, and the old quilt that belonged to someone else.
“I can’t do this anymore.”
“What?” Lorraine snapped.
Deli stood with the full wineglass in one hand and her skirt in the other, pushed through the door, and walked into the stormy night.
Her days in Scotland were numbered.
It was always going to end the same.