Chapter 40 Mo
Mo
Mo stirred her tea and listened to Lachlan pacing outside the cottage.
By the time he knocked, she had a cup of coffee waiting at his normal spot at the table.
She cleared her throat. “Do I need to post a No Loitering sign?”
The door squeaked and Lachlan peered through, scanning the room.
“She’s not here.” Mo watched him feign confusion. “You don’t need to be scared.”
“That’s not—what? I just—”
“Mmhmm.” Mo scooted his coffee toward him. “Could you come in before Beans pulls off a jailbreak?”
Lachlan saw Beans’s head straining upward between his calf and the doorway.
“Christ, Beans. Can you not?”
The cat responded with a disapproving meow and darted underneath a sitting chair by the fire as Lachlan shimmied inside. A shower of dried mud fell from his knees as he shook his feet out of his boots.
“Took a tumble, there?”
The shift in the air was so sudden Mo’s head snapped up from her crossword. Lachlan was so still he might have been made of marble—his autumn eyes wide.
“What did she say? I mean—erm . . .” Mo could actually see his Adam’s apple rise and fall with the gulp he took before he attempted nonchalance. His voice came out far too deep. “Oh, so, you’ve spoken with Deli?”
He tried to lean against the wall and hit a raincoat, slid a few inches, and recovered. A blush rose in his cheeks. It had been so long since Mo had felt like she was in the room with this boy she had to fight off a smile.
“You alright, kid?”
His shoulders dropped in defeat. “Tug-o-war.”
Mo raised her eyebrows, and he pointed to the muddy knees of his trousers.
“Ah.”
He collapsed into his chair and reached for the coffee. “Thank you.”
“Of course. And what of my niece?”
Lachlan spluttered into the mug and recoiled, blowing little droplets of brown out of his nose. “Wh-what?”
“You left with her. You returned without her. Tell me you didn’t leave her to Kevin.”
He ran his sleeve across his face. “Blair invited her for baking this afternoon.”
“You took her to Blair’s?”
He shook his head. “Graham did. Our Kevin was without a ride.”
Mo smiled. “Fell on that sword, did you?”
“Aye.”
“Good lad,” she said, patting his knee as the phone rang.
Lachlan pretended to contemplate his mug while he obviously strained to hear her brief conversation with Blair. “Right, no problem. I’ll swing by in a bit. Has Penny chased her off yet?” Lachlan’s eyes tightened at the sound of Blair’s laugh through the receiver. “That’s my girl. See you soon!”
He fidgeted with a button on his shirt. “All good over there?”
Mo nodded, trying to keep herself from asking the things she was desperate to ask.
He didn’t meet her eyes. “Does she need a ride home?”
“I got it.”
“Okay, right.” He stared at the ceiling for a moment before taking a huge whiff of air. “What are you cooking?”
“Bolognese. You’re welcome to join Deli and me for di—”
“She’s going to leave you, you know.”
Mo stilled. “What?”
“Deli will leave you, Mo. Just like the rest of them.”
She took a deep breath. She had wondered if this conversation would come. “I did the leaving in my family, Lachlan.”
“Did you?”
“I did.”
The room fell quiet, apart from the bubbling sauce and the soft rain that had begun to fall outside.
“If you did the leaving, where will you go this time, Mo? When she brings everything you left behind right back here?” He tapped the kitchen table with two fingers. “Where are you going to go when you realize Deli isn’t . . . that she is one of them?”
If it had been anyone else, Mo might have been angry at the things Lachlan was saying.
But anyone else wouldn’t have been the person who’d witnessed her pain before, or who considered himself her protector, or who had been left behind in Fearnhall himself.
And they wouldn’t have been someone Mo had opened a door to find holding her niece in his arms, lost to a feeling she’d never seen on him before.
Mo leaned forward and put her hand on top of his. Lachlan needed to learn it on his own. “Did you want to wait here while I go get Deli so you can see her again, or—”
Lachlan stood and stomped away. Beans scolded him with a mighty meow for the way the cottage shook as he slammed the door.
“Ugh!” His muffled voice called from outside. “I’m sorry, Beans!”
Beans hissed from the window.
Mo rose and kissed his furry brow. “Give him some grace, my sage little legume.” Beans pressed his head to her chin. “Growing pains are the pits.”