Chapter Thirty
Maeve stared at her phone for a full three minutes before she made the call. Then she stared at it for another thirty seconds, watching it ring, half hoping Ellie wouldn't answer and she could put this off for another day. Or week. Or decade.
Ellie finally answered on what felt like the fiftieth ring. "Maeve."
"Ellie." Maeve's voice came out rusty. She cleared her throat.
"I'm calling to… I wanted to say…" God, she was bad at this.
Fifteen years of isolation hadn't exactly honed her interpersonal skills.
"Okay, let me try that again. I know it doesn’t help, but I wanted to say that I'm sorry.
For how I reacted. When you told us about…
" She couldn't even say it. The word stuck in her throat like a stone.
"The MS," Ellie said, because Ellie had always been the one to say the things no one else would.
"Yes. That." Maeve sat down heavily on the garden wall. "I made it about me. About the lie. And it wasn't. I mean, it kind of was, but it wasn't only that. You're sick. You're dealing with something massive, and I just…"
"Stormed off to Scotland?"
"I was going to say 'handled it badly,' but yes. That too."
There was a pause. Maeve could picture Ellie on the other end, probably sitting very straight in her kitchen, organizing her thoughts into neat little rows before she spoke. That was the thing about Ellie. She never said anything she hadn't already thought through twice.
"I should have told you from the beginning," Ellie said finally. "I know that. I just… I didn't know how. And then it got easier to keep not telling you, and then it was too late to tell you without it being a whole thing, and then…" She trailed off.
"And then it became a whole thing anyway."
"Spectacularly."
Maeve almost smiled. "If you're going to do something, do it properly. Isn't that what you always said?"
"I don't think this is what I meant." But there was something lighter in Ellie's voice now. Not forgiveness, exactly. Not yet. But something adjacent to it. "I'm sorry too, you know. For the manipulation. It wasn't fair to any of you."
"No," Maeve agreed. "It wasn't." She picked at a bit of lichen on the wall. "But I think I understand why you did it. Fear makes people do stupid things."
"Is that your professional opinion?"
"I'm something of an expert in fear-based stupidity, yes."
Another pause. Then Ellie said, "Shepherd's still fighting for the Lakeside slot. It's not dead yet. If we wanted to… if everyone wanted to…"
Maeve's stomach clenched. "I don't know, Ellie. I just… I don't know. I don’t think so. But I don’t know."
"That's fair." Ellie's voice was careful, the way it got when she was trying not to push. "Just think about it. That's all I'm asking."
"I'll think about it."
There was a paused, then, "And the other thing…"
"I don’t want to talk about it," Maeve snapped.
"I know you don’t," said Ellie. "But you should know that it’s complicated."
"You’re telling me that?"
Ellie sighed. "Maeve… Think of it from Iona’s point of view. At least try. What good could she have done to chase you down and tell you?"
Maeve said nothing. At least she supposed that now she knew why Iona had never chased her down.
"Maeve? I'm glad you called. I know it wasn't easy."
Maeve made a noise that was meant to be dismissive and came out embarrassingly close to grateful. "Take care of yourself, Ellie."
"You too."
THE COTTAGE LOOKED smaller than Maeve remembered. Or maybe that was just her mood, shrinking everything down to manageable proportions. She was still sitting on the wall when Glinna's ancient Land Rover came bouncing up the lane, two small ginger heads visible in the back seat.
"Perfect timing," Glinna announced, climbing out and producing a bucket from somewhere in the chaos of the back. "I've got whitewash and brushes. You've got arms. The cottage exterior isn't going to paint itself."
"Good morning to you, too."
"It's half eleven. Morning's over. Put these on." Glinna tossed her a pair of ancient overalls that smelled faintly of sheep and engine oil. "The twins need entertainment, and I need free labor. Everyone wins. Charity’s asleep in the back, I’ll just put her in the kitchen and then we’ll get cracking. "
The twins, Hamish and Isla, tumbled out of the car with the boundless energy of seven-year-olds who had been confined for longer than five minutes. They immediately began investigating the garden with the forensic attention of tiny archaeologists, turning over rocks and exclaiming over woodlice.
Maeve pulled on the overalls. "Shouldn't you be paying someone to do this?"
"Shouldn't you be doing something productive with your wallowing? And so here we are." Glinna shoved a brush into her hand. "Start on that wall. And try not to drip."
They worked in silence for a while, the rhythmic slap of brushes against stone almost meditative.
Eejit had appeared from somewhere, as Eejit always did when there was potential for chaos, and was watching them with an expression of deep suspicion.
The twins had found a colony of ants and were providing live commentary on the ants' activities to each other in excited whispers.
"So," Glinna said eventually, not looking at Maeve. "Are you going to buy the cottage?"
Maeve's brush paused mid-stroke. "I don't know."
"You've been saying that a lot lately."
"It's been an accurate reflection of my mental state."
Glinna snorted and kept painting. "The renovation's done. All shiny and new." She glanced sideways at Maeve. "Back to how things were."
Maeve sighed. "I don't know if I want that either."
"Progress."
Maeve opened her mouth to argue, but a commotion from the garden interrupted her. Eejit, in her infinite wisdom, had decided to investigate the paint supplies. More specifically, she had decided to stick her entire head into a half-empty pot of whitewash.
"Oh, for Christ’s sake."
The sheep backed up, the pot firmly wedged over her nose, and began shaking her head violently. White paint sprayed in all directions. The twins shrieked with delight.
"Eejit, stop. Eejit. EEJIT." Glinna was already moving, but Eejit had panicked now, careening around the garden like a woolly pinball with a bucket for a face. She crashed into the wall, bounced off a garden chair, and narrowly missed trampling Isla, who was laughing so hard she'd fallen over.
It took both of them to corner her. Maeve grabbed the sheep's woolly backside while Glinna worked the pot free with a series of sharp tugs and an impressive amount of swearing.
"There," Glinna said finally, holding the pot aloft like a trophy. Eejit, now sporting a white nose and a deeply offended expression, shook herself and stalked off to the far corner of the garden.
Hamish was still giggling. "She looked like a ghost!"
"She looked like an idiot," Maeve muttered. "Which is appropriate, given her name."
They returned to painting. Maeve's heart rate slowly returned to normal. The twins had moved on to attempting to build a dam in a small muddy puddle.
"I don't know what's going on with my life," Maeve said, surprising herself. The words just came out, like the whitewash had loosened something. "It got… complicated."
Glinna didn't look at her. Just kept painting, steady strokes. "It's only complicated because you make it complicated. You can't go around blaming other people for things all the time."
"They lied to me."
"Can you not understand why?"
Maeve's brush stopped. She stared at the wall, at the wet white paint covering the old stone.
"Maybe," she said finally. Then, quieter: "Yes. I can understand." She of all people could understand wanting to keep something private, wanting to control your own narrative. She couldn’t blame Ellie for that, and couldn’t blame Cam for keeping her secret and doing what needed to be done. It was right, in the end, wasn’t it?
Annoying and slightly hurtful and yet still right.
"So it comes down to Iona, then. Doesn't it?"
And there it was. Maeve gritted her teeth. "Yes."
"And?"
"And what I did is unforgivable." The word tasted like sour lemon, and she hated it and hated herself. "I hit her, Glinna. I actually…" She couldn't finish.
Glinna set down her brush. When she spoke, her voice was gentler than before. "I know you're afraid. Afraid of taking risks, letting people in. But that's what life is, Maeve. A constant risk. You can hide away if you want, but that's not living. That's just waiting."
"I'm not hiding. I'm…"
"You're hiding. You've been hiding for fifteen years.
And you're good at it, I'll give you that.
But good at hiding isn't the same as good at living.
" Glinna turned to face her. "The punch isn't yours to forgive.
You lost that right when you put your hands on another person.
That's for Iona to decide. And pretending otherwise is just another way of hiding. "
Maeve felt the words settle into her bones. She wanted to argue, to deflect, to make a joke and change the subject. But Glinna was looking at her with that expression she had, the one that saw straight through Maeve and her excuses.
A shriek from the garden saved her from having to respond. Isla had somehow gotten onto Eejit's back and was clinging to the sheep's wool with both hands while Eejit bucked and spun in outraged circles.
"Isla Campbell, you get off that sheep this instant!"
Glinna sprinted across the garden. Maeve watched her scoop Isla off mid-buck, check her for injuries, deliver a stern lecture about not riding animals without permission, and then somehow produce a tissue to wipe mud off Hamish's face, all in the space of about thirty seconds.
This was what Glinna had built. A life. A family.
A version of happiness that involved chaos and whitewash and children who tried to ride sheep.
Maeve thought about what she knew of Glinna's past. The wildness of her twenties.
The mother she'd stolen from, the bridges she'd burned.
The slow, painful process of becoming someone different.
If Glinna could do it, with everything she'd done…
From inside the cottage, a thin cry rose. Charity, who had been napping in the kitchen, was awake.
"I've got her," Maeve called, already moving.
The kitchen was warm. Charity was in her portable cot by the window, red-faced and furious about being awake. Maeve picked her up carefully, supporting her head the way Glinna had shown her, and the crying subsided into hiccupping sniffles.
"Alright," Maeve murmured. "Alright. I've got you."
She was so small. So warm. Her tiny hand curled around Maeve's finger with surprising strength, and Maeve felt something shift in her chest. She thought about Glinna, out there in the garden, with her six children and her chaotic life and her willingness to love things that could hurt her.
The risk Glinna took every single day, just by caring.
It would be easier, Maeve thought, to keep all those children inside and safe. To wrap them in cotton wool and never let them climb trees or ride sheep or fall in love. But that wasn't what Glinna did. That wasn't what anyone who was actually living did.
Life was risk. Opening yourself up to be hurt. Letting people in even though they might leave, even though they might lie, even though you might destroy everything with your own stupid hands.
She just didn't know which risks to take.
Charity gurgled and grabbed for Maeve's nose. Outside, she could hear Glinna laughing at something, and the twins' voices, high and bright in the afternoon air.