Page 100 of Scotlander

‘It’s okay, Mom. You’re here now.’ She pulled her into a hug and by her mother’s initial stiffness, knew she hadn’t been expecting it. But when her mom’s arms finally wrapped around her, squeezing her tight, she knew Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson had been right. Ripping yourself open and making yourself vulnerable was the scariest form of bravery out there. But when that openness was returned, it only made you stronger.

She spent a week at home in the end. The longest she’d stayed in years without breaking out in hives. Knowing the years of separation meant they wouldn’t become overnight BFFs, they began the healing process by handing out teeny tiny olive branches that grew in strength as the days sped by.

She volunteered down at the school to help her mom. Went skinny dipping in the river with some old debate club friends who now ran a local co-op. She ate at her favourite cafe where you could get the world’s best blueberry pancakes from 6 a.m. then come back at night to eat peanuts and drink beer until two. She bought a canary yellow wheelbarrow from the hardware store when her dad complained there was nothing to put the leaves in. (It looked like Finn’s favourite wheelbarrow and it was nice to think of him each time she charged it with a mountain of leaves.) She stepped up and into the all-county bowling tournament after her sister-in-law broke a finger playing ice hockey. She helped unload the moving van (1-800-WEMOVEU) that contained the startlingly meagre number of belongings a team of ex-convicts packed at her LA apartment. She and her brothers stacked them in a shed behind the auto shop with a proviso that they could donate everything to Goodwill if she wasn’t back in a year.

She went to the drive-in. Ate way too much cheese. Bought a pair of second-hand shit-kickers that looked brand new after a two-hour polish (during which she watched Outlander).

When she grew misty-eyed over the Rainbow Cafe’s tuna melt, she realised what she was really doing. She was saying goodbye. No. Not that. It was more . . . until we meet again. Taking a snapshot tour of a place she’d never believed she’d miss for more than a New York second. But this time she saw her family’s community through a different lens. She would miss it. The people and places that were ingrained in her like her own family’s DNA.

DNA she willed to be strong enough to get her on a plane and fly several thousand miles to tell a man she’d only just met that she loved him.

Willa’s nerves properly kicked in when the captain announced it was time to disembark from the plane.

After a very awkward out-loud conversation with herself about what The Rock would do, she forced herself to unbuckle her seatbelt and walk down the aisle towards the exit.

She’d decided not to tell Finn she was coming. He hadn’t reached out to her. Nor had anyone from his family. Spying on their socials had seemed wrong, so for all she knew, he’d taken up with one of the scores of women who’d been batting their eyelashes at him at the ceilidh. Not that she could blame him. She had cut and run when things had got just a tiny bit tough. Not even that. Things had been golden. So good she couldn’t get herself to believe any of it was meant to include her. Not exactly the trait a man yearns for in a life partner.

Well, if everything went to pot, there had been a ‘Help Wanted’ sign up at the Rainbow Cafe so she could always go back, rent a double wide, become a waitress and eat tuna melts until she exploded. Heartache came in many forms.

As she walked out of the plane, she was surprised to see that, instead of going down the usual tunnel-type affair international travellers navigated to get to customs, they were disembarking through a glassed-off area just on the other side of the waiting area where travellers were already gathering for the return flight to Portland.

There were enough men in Mighty Duck sweatshirts and women with salt-and-pepper-hair to indicate the plane was mostly full of Americans returning home.

There was also a guy in a flat cap. Little twist of straw blond hair sticking out in tufts. Shoulders that looked as if they’d have no problem having a girl like Willa flipped over one of them to keep her safe from a herd of black and white striped cows.

And then, as if he’d heard her thinking about him, Finn looked up and straight into her eyes.

Chapter Forty-One

Finn had never moved through a crowd of people so fast in his life.

‘Willa!’ he shouted through the glass.

‘Finn!’ she shouted back.

They laughed. Mouthed what the . . . at each other. Laughed again. Pressed their hands against the glass, playing a weird game of mime. Then, suddenly, Finn became painfully aware that Willa was heading one direction while he was holding a boarding pass to head to another.

She looked beautiful. She wasn’t wearing Jacobean gear. Surprise, surprise. She had on a huge duffel coat with a fluffy lining round the hood that tickled the edges of her face. God he’d missed that face.

Desperation swept through him. ‘I’ve got feelings!’ he shouted through the glass. ‘Lots of them!’

Well done, Shakespeare.

Willa beamed. Matching dimples appeared deep in her cheeks. He scrubbed his fingers against the glass, desperate to pull her close to him.

‘That’s great!’ she shouted back. ‘McFeelings are good.’

‘That’s the thing,’ he yelled back. ‘I don’t think they’re Scottish!’

She pulled a face. ‘How do you know?’

‘They feel foreign.’ It was true. He’d thought he was fairly familiar with the full gamut of human emotions, but this moment – being so close to Willa and a thousand miles away – was confirmation that he didn’t have a clue.

‘Can you identify them?’ she asked.

‘I feel . . .’ He bounced up and down on his heels to try to get the right word to come to him. ‘. . . joyful. Something well beyond a feeling of general happiness, you know?’

Poet laureate stuff here. A born Cyrano.