25. Highland Games of the Heart
HIGHLAND GAMES OF THE HEART
KARINA
It’s hard to disappear when you’ve gone viral. At least, disappear completely.
Sunrise creeps across Seattle on a Sunday morning in late August, the light shifting from peach to gold as I pull into my mother's driveway.
The small bungalow with its faded siding and meticulously maintained garden has always been my refuge in times of crisis.
Today, I need it more than ever.
After the brutal confrontation with Callum, I drove aimlessly for hours before inevitably finding my way here.
It's barely 6 AM, yet light already glows from the kitchen window—Mom's always been an early riser.
Some habits don't change, even when your daughter's professional disgrace is likely trending on every social platform.
I haven't checked my phone since leaving Callum's office.
The device sits cold and silent in my purse, a ticking bomb of notifications I'm not ready to face.
Instead, I focus on putting one foot in front of the other, traversing the cracked concrete path to the front door, still wearing last night's party dress like some bizarre walk of shame.
I don't even need to knock.
The door swings open to reveal my mother, dressed in a faded housecoat, her silver-streaked dark hair pulled into a practical bun.
"I knew you would come," she says simply, opening her arms.
I collapse into her embrace, inhaling the familiar scent of cardamom and rosewater that has meant safety since childhood.
For a moment, I'm twelve again, seeking comfort after my father left, rather than forty-one and watching my career implode in real-time on social media.
"You heard?" I manage, voice muffled against her shoulder.
"Susanna called. She saw everything on the internet." Mom pulls back, examining my face with those perceptive eyes that miss nothing. "Come. Inside now. You look terrible."
"Thanks, Mom. Always good for my ego."
"Ego is luxury for people without problems," she replies, leading me toward the kitchen. "You have problems. No time for ego."
The kitchen is exactly as it's always been.
Worn linoleum floor. Ancient appliances.
The wall calendar still showing recipes from Armenia.
But there's an unexpected addition in it this time.
Dr. Seamus Finnegan sits at the table, spectacles perched on his nose, reading a medical journal as casually as if he lives here.
Which, based on the men's slippers by the back door and the Irish breakfast tea steeping on the counter, he might actually be doing.
"Ah, the prodigal daughter returns!" he exclaims, setting down his journal. "Just in time for breakfast and global infamy. Your timing was always impeccable, Karina."
"Seamus," my mother scolds. “Be nice. She is heartbroken."
"I'm not heartbroken.” I swallow. “I’m professionally ruined. There's a difference."
"Professional ruin is temporary," Seamus says, adjusting his glasses. "Heartbreak is the real devil. Especially when it involves a Highland lad with eyes like a stormy sea."
I stare at him. "Have you been reading romance novels?"
"Medical journals.” He holds up his reading material. "But your mother's bedside table is another matter entirely."
Mom swats him with a dishtowel. "Shameless man. Sit, Karina. You need food."
Before I can argue, I'm installed at the kitchen table, a steaming mug of coffee placed before me. The familiar routine is soothing, even as my world collapses elsewhere.
"So," Seamus says conversationally, "you've become a hashtag. Several, actually. Quite impressive for a Sunday morning."
"You're tracking the hashtags?" I ask, chest tightening.
"Of course. Your mother was worried sick when Susanna called. I set up alerts on my phone." He holds up his device proudly. "The internet never sleeps, and neither do grandmothers when their grandbabies are in trouble."
"I'm forty-one, not a baby," I mutter into my coffee.
"To Nadine, you'll always be her baby," Seamus says with surprising gentleness. "Just as my Emily will always be mine, even though she's a surgeon with three children and a mortgage."
Mom bustles around the kitchen, pulling ingredients from cupboards. "I make dolma. You need comfort food."
"Mom, it's six-thirty in the morning. No one needs grape leaves before sunrise."
"Nonsense. Crisis demands proper food." She points a wooden spoon at me. "Now, tell us what happened. Not the internet version. Your version."
The simple request breaks something in me.
I find myself pouring out the whole story.
The fabricated credentials. The growing feelings for Callum.
Then, the attempted confession, Duncan's ambush, and finally, the devastating conversation in Callum's office.
By the time I finish, Mom has assembled the ingredients for dolma on the counter and is methodically washing grape leaves, her arthritic hands moving swiftly in spite of the inflamed joints.
"So," she says when I fall silent, "you lied about paper, not about skills."
"That's...an oversimplification, but essentially, yes."
"And this Scottish man, he cannot forgive this?"
I stare into my now-empty coffee mug. "It’s…not that easy. His brother betrayed him, embezzled from the company. Now I've lied to him. It confirms his worst fears about trusting people."
"Sounds like he's the one with the problem, not you," Seamus comments out of nowhere.
"Excuse me?" I blink at him.
"Well, consider the data." He ticks off points on his fingers.
"You have demonstrable skills that have saved his company's reputation multiple times.
You've worked successfully in your position for months.
You attempted to confess before being exposed.
And your motivations were familial obligation, not malice. "
"I committed fraud," I remind him.
"Aye, you did. But fraud is a spectrum, not a binary. There's a difference between lying to steal money and lying to get past arbitrary gatekeepers."
Mom nods vigorously. "This man, he has never had to fight like you fight. For him, rules are protection. For you, rules are barrier."
"That's...surprisingly insightful, Mom."
"I am old, not stupid," she retorts. "Come. Help with dolma. Cooking heals what talking cannot."
Somehow, I find myself at the counter, rolling grape leaves around spiced rice mixture in the rhythm we've followed since I was tall enough to reach the stove.
The motion is meditative, allowing my thoughts to settle like sediment in still water.
"Did I ever tell you about my credentials scandal?" Seamus asks suddenly.
I look up. "You had a credentials scandal?"
"Indeed I did. When I came to America, the medical board wouldn't recognize my Irish qualifications.
Said my schooling was 'insufficient' despite my having performed more surgeries than most of their graduates combined.
" He chuckles ruefully. "I might have exaggerated certain aspects of my continuing education to get hospital privileges. "
"Seamus!" I'm genuinely shocked. "That's serious."
"So was watching patients suffer because of bureaucratic nonsense," he replies calmly. "Eventually, I took the proper exams, got the proper stamps of approval. But in the meantime, I did what was necessary to practice medicine."
"What happened when people found out?"
"Some colleagues never forgave me," he admits. "Others understood. The ones worth keeping in my life fell into the second category."
"That's different. You were already a doctor."
"And you were already a marketing expert. The principle remains the same."
Mom slides a tray of rolled dolma into the oven, then turns to face me fully.
"Karina, all your life you carry shame for things not your fault.
You think you must be perfect because your father left.
You think you must never fail because I was sick.
You think you must never ask for help because Viktoria and Susanna needed you. "
Her words hit with unexpected force, bringing tears to my eyes.
"You make walls of paper," she continues, gesturing to my professional deception, "because you afraid to be seen as you are. Because when your father left, you learned that people only stay if you are useful, if you are what they need. This is the lie you tell yourself, kheegees. That you must be perfect or you will be abandoned again.” She flashes me a watery smile. “But paper walls burn easily."
"So what am I supposed to do?" I ask, my voice cracking with every syllable. "My career is over. Callum hates me. The internet is having a field day with my humiliation."
"First, you check your phone," Seamus suggests. "Knowledge is power, even when it's unpleasant."
With reluctance, I retrieve my phone from my purse.
The screen lights up with hundreds of notifications—missed calls, texts, emails, social media alerts.
I brace myself and open the most recent one from Viktoria.
"Oh my god," I breathe.
"What is it?" Mom asks, alarmed.
"It's...not what I expected." I scroll through the feed, disbelief growing. "People are defending me. There's a new hashtag—#BeyondYourLabel. People are sharing their own stories about credential gatekeeping and career struggles."
I show them the screen, where testimonials are pouring in:
@TechMomof3: Had to lie about my "gap years" (raising kids) to get interviews. Once hired, consistently outperformed colleagues. System is broken. #BeyondYourLabel
@CodeSwitcher: Changed my "ethnic" name on résumés after 200+ rejections. Same qualifications, different name = immediate callbacks. #BeyondYourLabel
@LateBloomingDev: Started coding at 50 after factory closed. Created fake projects to build portfolio because "real experience" was catch-22. Now lead developer. #BeyondYourLabel
"See?" Seamus says triumphantly. "You're not alone."
"This doesn't fix anything with Callum," I point out.
"No," Mom agrees, wiping her hands on her apron. "But maybe it helps you fix things with yourself first."
She reaches for my hand, her soft fingers wrapping around mine with surprising strength. "All these years, you take care of everyone. Me, your sisters, even Richard. Who takes care of Karina?"
The simple question undoes me.
Tears I've been holding back spill over as Mom pulls me into another embrace.
"I'm so tired," I whisper against her shoulder.
"I know, kheegees," she soothes, using the Armenian endearment from my childhood. "Rest now. Tomorrow, you fight again."
"What if I don't want to fight anymore?"
"Then don't fight," Seamus suggests. "Transform instead."
I pull back, wiping my eyes. "What does that even mean?"
"It means," he says, refilling my coffee cup, "that sometimes the greatest victory comes not from winning the old battle, but from changing the battlefield entirely."
Mom nods. "Good doctor makes good point. Sometimes best way forward is not through wall, but around it. Or by building door."
Despite all the bullshit over the last twenty-four hours, I find myself smiling at their tag-team wisdom. “How in the world did you two get so philosophical?"
"When you get old, you get two choices," Seamus replies. "Become wise or become bitter. We chose wisely."
My phone buzzes with another notification. Susanna has texted a screenshot from Twitter:
The real scandal isn't @KarinaPeters' resume—it's a system where qualified people need to lie to get past gatekeepers. #BeyondYourLabel
"You see?" Mom peers over my shoulder. "People understand."
As the sun fills the kitchen with golden morning light, I feel something shift inside me.
Not resolution, exactly, but possibility.
The same resourcefulness that pushed me to fabricate credentials could perhaps be channeled differently.
"I think," I say slowly, "I might need to tell my story. The real one. All of it."
Mom beams at me. "Yes. Truth is always way forward."
"Not always," Seamus interjects with a wink. "Sometimes an innocent white lie is the way forward. Like when your mother asks if her dolma is the best I've ever tasted."
Mom gasps in outrage and swats him with her dishtowel again.
I laugh, the sound rusty…but real.
The pain of Callum's rejection is still raw, the professional reckoning still looming, but for the first time since the party, I feel something like hope.
My phone buzzes once more—a text from Viktoria.
Luke Sterling called. Said Callum's avoiding everyone. Fiona's on the warpath. You okay?
I hesitate, then type a response:
ME: Not okay yet. But I will be. Working on a plan.
Somehow, surrounded by the imperfect perfection of my mother's kitchen, the comforting scent of dolma in the oven…and the unexpected wisdom of an Irish doctor and an Armenian matriarch, I believe it might actually be true.