Chapter 33 Mo
Mo
Mo McDonnell sat at her kitchen table, staring at an empty page. She had an event coming up, and there were things to plan. Timelines. Rentals. Deliveries. But she was distracted.
Having Deli back was the arrival of a crisp breeze after the relentless heat of summer. She was the relief that comes with seeing the first leaves go orange—like the world was turning once again.
Mo’s dad had felt like the start of autumn, too.
Then, on a Saturday morning, he died.
That day, Beth’s skin was hot as Mo dropped a kiss onto her shoulder and wrapped an arm across her chest while she delivered breakfast to the mosaic tabletop Beth had made while she was in college. Beth always did her morning journaling on the patio with their rescue cat, Riceroni.
“Thank you, love,” Beth murmured, distracted. A thrifted silk scarf that still smelled like the cigarettes of another woman held back her strawberry blonde hair.
“You’re welcome.” Mo spun the plate away a moment before Roni could steal scrambled eggs, eliciting a chastising meow.
Beth looked up with eyes like the oceans on brochures for the Caribbean or Fiji—teal gems that promised rest. She stuck out her bottom lip. “Let kitty have eggs.”
It took all Mo’s willpower to stay firm. “You know what the vet said.”
“Vet, schmet,” Beth grumbled as she buried her face into Roni’s furry head.
Mo smiled. “And yet?”
The house phone rang in the kitchen.
“Come sit with me,” Beth called as Mo went inside.
“Move your plant babies off the shady seat and I will!”
“Deal!”
Mo was still smiling as she reached for the phone.
They’d been debating getting rid of the landline altogether since cell phones were making them sort of obsolete, but Beth was sentimental.
It’s our phone number, she’d said, patting the receiver, and Mo had been quietly relieved.
Beth often found a way to say things Mo couldn’t find words for.
She pinned the phone between her cheek and her shoulder, scooping breakfast onto a plate. “Yaaallow?”
Mo only knew what happened next because Beth told her.
When Beth heard the dish shatter against the kitchen floor, she nearly knocked the screen door from its hinges trying to get to her.
She found Mo lying on her side on the black-and-white-checkered linoleum floor, her cinnamon hair pooling around her pale face with lips parted and eyes open.
The phone lay inches from Mo’s hand while the other was curled in a fist between her chin and chest—and she had her knees pulled into her stomach.
Beth could hear someone calling out in lilted English before the line went dead.
It took Beth ten minutes to coax a word from her. She was a second from calling an ambulance, when Mo whispered, “My . . . my dad?”
Beth lay down on the cool kitchen floor behind Mo and held her. Roni curled up in the crooks of their knees. They lay there for a long time, listening to gentle rustling as the pages in Beth’s notebook turned where it sat forgotten on a breezy patio the day Mo’s world stopped turning.
Mo stared at the red door of her cottage and returned to the empty page of her notebook, thinking of the moment twenty-some years ago when her life had changed forever, and of the moment a week ago when it had changed again.
She was happier than she’d been in so, so long.
And yet, she had a feeling.
So Mo wasn’t surprised when she found the emails from the two of them. She could imagine her mother’s cherry red nails, slick and glistening, slowly clicking out vitriol.
Maureen, they’d both written. Mo wondered if they’d pulled a muscle hauling out and dusting off so many old classics—calling her ungrateful, vicious, hateful, cruel—or if it had been like riding a bike.
She ignored them. A small part of her hoped that would be the end of it, but the rest of her knew that was a child’s wish. She thought of the latest arrival in the garden.
Rhododendron, Deli had said, though she hadn’t touched the pink-and-white petals. They mean beware.
Mo clicked her pen. 1. Pick up rentals from pub.
She pressed the words into the notebook so harshly she nearly tore through the page.
The first week that Deli was in Fearnhall, she’d sought the pub’s Wi-Fi as often as she could to frantically swipe at her phone screen when she thought no one was watching.
If she thought it would have helped at all, Mo might have told her that she was spending a disproportionate amount of energy, time, and brain space on people who didn’t seem to be spending any on her.
But Mo’s job was to love Deli, not make her feel small—even if it hurt to watch.
She had to remind herself of this often.
Once, Blair and Andrew had swung by to present Deli with an orange cake with lemon drizzle to give her “a slice of home.” Deli had reacted like she was being handed a suspicious parcel at an airport.
She’d offered to “help” them in return, naming potential chores that needed doing with a subtle, feverish look only Mo seemed to notice.
By the time Deli was insisting on weeding their garden, Blair threw her hands up, grabbed Deli’s face, and said, Oh, for fuck’s sake, can you just let me be your friend?
That night, Deli went back to the pub and was glued to her phone, rereading text conversations with her friend Chloe. Later, in the wee hours, Mo shot up from a dead sleep and heard Deli crying desperately—the way one does when they are trying with all their might to stop.
Watching such a brilliant girl reject any love that came easy made Mo want to go back in time. She wanted to snatch Deli away before anyone could carve unworthiness into her bones and change Deli’s story about herself.
Still, her niece was not bitter. Instead, Deli cared for everybody.
Mo woke some mornings to find Beans had been fed and Mrs. Peevis had fresh hay and flowers in her fur.
Deli spent hours one day helping Graham set up social media pages for his tour company.
Mo pulled up to see Graham posed beside the ocean with his leg propped on the retaining wall and his emerald kilt hiked to tease his rugby-made thigh, sienna and strong in the sunlight.
Mo thought proudly of Graham’s success, despite the surprise some tourists showed plainly on their faces to find a Black Scottish tour guide, as he rolled a thistle between his fingers and held it in his teeth.
Deli snapped photos and directed. Look over your shoulder at me.
Now look out to sea. Now pretend I just told you the funniest joke you’ve ever heard—now I’ve whispered a secret—it’s scandalous! Good!
One day, Mo arrived at The Wallflower post–ocean dip (which Deli was not keen on doing again, despite Mo’s insistence that it was great for the nerves) and found Lachlan wiping down the bar top as he glared at Douglas and Deli painstakingly bedazzling a mini kilt with rhinestones.
Lachlan slid a small glass of Glenfiddich across the bar as Mo climbed onto a stool.
“They’ve monopolized that table for hours.”
The pub was empty except Graham with a private tour of giggling women.
“How rude.”
He made a face. “Do you know what I caught her doing today?”
“Writing your phone number on the bathroom walls?”
“She was”—he hesitated—“dusting.”
“Dusting?”
“She stole my rag to dust the picture frames.”
Mo gasped. “Not the picture frames!”
“It was invasive.”
“Didn’t she know that dust was archival?”
“When I told her to stop, she said I had ‘walling-myself-into-my-own-crypt energy.’”
Mo spit some of her whisky on the bar top. “That’s very funny.”
“I didn’t think so.”
“Well, crypt keepers aren’t famous for their humor.” Lachlan scowled at her. “You’ve mentioned wanting to dust at least three times since January.”
“I would have gotten to it.”
“And now you don’t have to. If you’d just play nice and tell her how she can help around here, she wouldn’t be stealing your very best dust.”
He huffed. “I don’t like it.”
“Yeah, how dare she see a need and take care of it? What a turd.”
After a moment, Lachlan lowered his voice and asked, “Has she heard from anyone back home?”
Mo glanced over her shoulder at her niece, who was laughing with her head thrown back after Douglas had whispered something cheeky. Her phone was on the table, face up, screen dark. Mo’s foot tapped against the barstool. “I don’t think she’s heard anything good.”
Lachlan thought he was being subtle when he’d brought firewood to the cottage even though she’d been well stocked, or when he’d put a chalkboard with the Wi-Fi password on the bar despite years of refusing to give it unless specifically asked.
But Mo had always seen through him, ever since he was a kid.
Not that it mattered. Lachlan was the sort who needed to learn his mistakes on his own. Mo brought her drink to her lips and swallowed it down with the rest of the things she could see but they couldn’t.
Once, Beth had tried to tell Mo a terrible truth—about where Mo’s pain was really born—but Mo hadn’t listened. She’d needed to learn it on her own.
She hadn’t learned it in time.
Everyone said Deli and Mo were so alike.
Mo prayed they were wrong.