Chapter 62 Deli
Deli
“Well, I have bad news and I have good news, missy.”
Aunt Mo started up the road, and Deli watched the amber glow of The Wallflower’s Crown grow smaller through the rain-streaked window.
“Can we start with the good news?”
Aunt Mo chuckled. “The good news is, I haven’t seen Lachlan that mortified before, and I now have something to dangle over him for the rest of his life.”
Mortified, Deli thought. Ashamed.
“Glad I could help.”
Aunt Mo let the quiet sit for a moment. “Do you want to talk about it?” Deli hadn’t realized it, but she’d been expecting her aunt to be angry. “I know I’m Lachlan’s friend, but I’m your aunt. So if you want to talk about it, I’m safe.”
Deli turned the word safe over in her mind. In the cold, starless Highland night—while she could still feel the touch of Lachlan’s lips on her thigh, her collarbone, her mouth—the realization that she’d been looking for someone to call safe her entire life hit her like a blow to the stomach.
She thought of the tears she’d shed after that night at Trey’s, leaving Technicolor droplets on her screen as her finger hovered over the button to call her mother.
“Fine. Yes, okay? We kissed or whatever.”
“Yes!” Aunt Mo whooped as she drove.
Deli told her aunt the tamer details of the night.
About the shoot, about realizing Lachlan had taken the photo that Aunt Mo had sent.
She felt the flame of embarrassment trying to claw its way up her skin, but as Aunt Mo listened, nodded, and commented along the story, it got easier and easier to douse it.
“Then William is there. When were you going to tell me about that, by the way?”
Aunt Mo’s brow creased with guilt. “It was Lachlan’s to tell.”
“I trusted him the way I never do. He asked me to. Begged me to. Then he hid me, Aunt Mo. As soon as the international-Scottish-heartthrob-weird-tension brother showed up.”
“I know. I know. I don’t think he meant to be hurtful.”
Deli knew her reaction was too big, but it wasn’t about William—not really.
She took a breath. “Regarding what you said about my mother and grandmother, may I just ask . . . What the fuck?”
“Ah. Yes. The bad news.”
“You don’t say?”
“They are”—Aunt Mo checked her watch—“about twenty minutes away.”
“That’s impossible.” Deli shook her head. “They hate it here.”
“And yet.”
She scoffed. “What could possibly make them visit the place they’ve talked about like it was the last circle of hell after twenty years?”
“My mother and sister have never been good at letting go with grace.”
“You’ve been here for two decades.”
“Oh, it’s not me they are interested in retrieving. It’s you.”
Deli’s heartbeat picked up. “I’ve been gone, like, barely a month.”
“Exactly.”
“That’s nothing.”
Aunt Mo pulled in front of the cottage, put the car in park, and took off her seat belt. “A month is enough time to change, Deli. A month is a lifetime.”
“I haven’t changed.”
It came out on instinct—like blocking a ball from getting into a net.
She thought of the time she’d come back from summer camp and told Chloe she didn’t want to always be the bad guy when they played make believe.
The time she’d told her mother she couldn’t come early to cook for Christmas because she had to work.
The time she’d told Trey she’d met a long-haired drummer with chipped black fingernails at a café and given him her number before he skated away on a longboard.
Wow, you’ve really changed, Deli.
“I hate to break it to ya, buddy, but yes, you have. And I’ve been so proud. I know how hard it is to get enough space from our family to grow.”
“That’s not what I’m doing here,” Deli snapped.
Aunt Mo spoke softly. “Isn’t it?”
She hadn’t wanted to pull an Aunt Mo and disappear.
Though . . . she had noticed that her days felt lighter, that her inner voice felt clearer.
She had made fast friends and learned to trust their affection without having earned it.
She had let a man who wasn’t Trey Evans kiss her like the world was ending.
The Deli MacDonald from a month ago couldn’t have done any of it.
“Deli.” Aunt Mo shifted her body to face Deli in the dark car. “Do you know what happened between us? Our family?”
Deli knew this story ended in a little cottage on a cliffside. “Just how it ends.”
Aunt Mo took a deep breath. “From the day I was born, I was difficult for my mother to understand. I would fight her over every bow in my hair, every ruffle sock. I got along too well with my dad.”
“Grandpa Cal?”
“We were peas in a pod, and your grandma punished him for it. I tried to protect him.”
Deli could picture her aunt clearly, small and fierce. But she couldn’t picture her mom.
“Was my mom like the evil stepsister to your Cinderella?”
Aunt Mo laughed, but it died quickly. “No, no—at least, not at first. I tried to protect her, too. But your mom was more fearful, and our mom was . . .” She shook her head. “Fearsome.”
Deli’s throat was getting tight. “What happened when Grandpa died?”
“Your grandpa was the only person in our family who I felt like understood anything about me.
“Then he died. I’d never known firsthand how grief unmoors you. How easily you can be swept away. It was like . . . I suddenly didn’t know myself, even after so many years of having to be so sure of who I was. I was . . . adrift.
“The thing about my mom, Deli—your grandma . . . she held me as I cried. She told me things would be okay. My partner—” Aunt Mo paused. She closed her eyes. “Beth, she tried to warn me. She tried to tell me that my mom hadn’t just changed overnight and was safe now, but I didn’t listen.
“Then we got the will. The lawyer read off that the cottage was mine and only mine, and my mother looked at me like she wished she could make me disappear.”
Deli’s stomach turned sour. “I can’t even imagine what my mother would say to me in that scenario.”
“Mine was not kind.”
“What did Grandma say?”
“She accused me of manipulating my dad to steal what she’d rightfully earned. She said he only loved me because I was a liar.”
Deli recoiled. “That’s awful, Aunt Mo. You didn’t deserve that.”
“She demanded I relinquish my claim to the cottage and give it to her so she could split it between your mom and me when she died. She demanded to know what Lorraine had ever done to deserve my ‘hatred.’ She said, He’s trying to hurt me.
He’s hurting your sister. That cottage belongs to the family. Don’t you want to be a family?”
Deli tried to imagine what it must have been like. Whatever else she was, Aunt Mo was brave. “But you didn’t do it.”
Aunt Mo took a deep breath. “I told her no.”
“And how did that go?”
“First, Mom tried to ice me out, hoping I’d come crawling back. She sent your mom to tell me how badly I’d hurt her. When that didn’t work, they took the offensive. They called constantly, they wrote emails. They even showed up to my apartment. That’s how my mother met Beth.”
Deli had wanted to ask about the pretty strawberry blonde in the Polaroid on Aunt Mo’s fridge, but every time she’d gotten close, she got this feeling—like it would hurt. So she hadn’t. “Did she know about her before?”
“Only Laurie knew, and it was a big enough thing that I didn’t think my sister would tell. I was wrong, of course. She’d told our mom everything.”
Deli was angry. Angry at her grandmother, angry at her mom. “What happened when they met Beth?”
Her aunt smiled. “They regretted it.”
Deli grinned. “Not their biggest fan?”
“Beth . . . was a force. She was fearless and loyal and she loved me. She’d get so angry when people killed spiders, but if someone hurt me?
” Aunt Mo laughed. Ruefully. “Beth wasn’t scared of Rosemary like everyone else.
She told my mother exactly who she was. After that, I don’t know who she hated more—Beth or my dad. ”
“Didn’t you leave California really soon after Grandpa died?” Deli would never forget how it had felt to go from a Scottish funeral to a Scottish vacation, to learning her aunt was moving far away forever.
“I couldn’t see a way out. They wouldn’t give up.
My mother packed up the things my father had left behind and threw them away before I could get to them.
His old writing desk, his notebooks of poems, the photos from his childhood.
Gone. They started harassing Beth, too. Then one day Beth came home in tears.
An anonymous parent had complained that they didn’t feel comfortable with a lesbian teaching their children. She’d been fired.”
“They couldn’t. Right?” Deli didn’t know how to wrap her mind around the thought.
“I drove straight to my mom’s house, and of course my sister was there. I didn’t want to believe it, but I got one look at Laurie—at her face—and I knew. Sisters know. She’d told our mom where Beth taught, and my mother had done it.”
“That’s . . .” Deli searched for the word. It didn’t exist. “That’s fucking horrible.”
“I had to protect her. Unless I fell into line, Beth would always be a target. Because she loved me. I couldn’t . . . It would have never been fair to her. So I went as far away as I could.”
The final pieces of the puzzle clicked into place in Deli’s mind. Aunt Mo had left Beth behind because her family refused to let her be happy. To let her be free.
Deli had never left a call, email, knock, or request from her mom or grandma go unanswered for more than a day.
She’d been in Scotland for a month.
They were coming to drag her home, and she had just learned what lengths they would go to force a black sheep back into the fold. Or, at least, according to Aunt Mo.
What if they had done it? What did that make them?
And what did it make her? What was Deli if there was a part of her—no matter how little—that couldn’t wait to see them? That wanted them to say she belonged?
She had barely managed to get out of Lachlan’s clothes when she heard a car pull up outside.