Secret Garden (2 page)

“I’m sorry,” Rhiannon’s mum said mildly. “I haven’t seen Dougie here at all, Daisie Lee, if that helps you.”

“Well, he came here to see
her
, and I knew it. I knew it in my bones. So I packed up Colin and flew
his
son
over to see him. We caught him with her today, just now. That son of a...”

Rhiannon glanced at Colin. He’d gone pale. His hands were trembling against the barrier.

“He doesn’t care about his
own son
,” Daisie Lee said, her voice rising. “He never has, really.”

Colin went rigid beside her. Rhiannon could barely breathe.

“Oh, Daisie Lee, I’m sure that’s not true,” Rhiannon’s mum murmured.

“He said it to his
face
,” Daisie Lee hissed. “I was
there
.”

Colin’s neck and shoulders seemed to droop.

“Colin’s not
enough
for him,” Daisie Lee was saying, “and I told him so, and he agreed as much. He agreed, and now he’s leaving us. How am I going to raise a son alone?”

Whatever Rhiannon’s mum said in return, it was muffled as she led Daisie Lee off, crying now, into the family kitchen.

Rhiannon glanced at Colin, but he just sat there, his forehead against the wooden railing, and not saying anything.

Rhiannon couldn’t imagine how she would feel if her mum had said those things about her and her dad. It made her stomach hurt to think about it. It was too scary.

Hesitantly, she placed her forehead on the latticework beside Colin’s.

“I think my dad is leaving us for good,” Colin mumbled.

Her stomach churned with the thought. She didn’t know what she would do in his place. “What will happen to you, Colin?”

He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “My mom said we’re moving to my grandmother’s ranch. My
other
grandmother,” he clarified. “The one in Texas.”

“You really will be a cowboy,” she remarked. Everybody called him a cowboy anyway, because of living in Texas and his mum’s cowboy boots. Now it would be true.

Colin hung his head lower. Rhiannon was sure that he would rather everything went back to the way it used to be. It was what Rhiannon would have wanted.

She peered through the latticework, but her mum and Daisie Lee hadn’t come back.

She finally dared to ask, “Where will your dad live?”

“I don’t know.” Colin’s voice was a whisper.

Rhiannon thought about that. Colin’s dad had been part of their summer world at the castle for as long as she could remember. He was a funny man. Round-faced and quiet, he’d always been with Daisie Lee and Colin—a unit, even if they did shout and make rows. Daisie Lee, Dougie and Colin. That was their family. They stayed at the cottage on the edge of Rhiannon’s family’s property. Jamie and Jessie were Colin’s grandparents—Dougie Walker’s parents—and they worked for Rhiannon’s family. They always had.

It fit together like a puzzle with the pieces all there, and with Colin’s dad gone, it just wouldn’t feel right anymore. Nothing would be the same again.

“Maybe he’ll move over here and live with Jamie and Jessie in the cottage,” she mused.

Colin didn’t answer.

And then a terrible thought occurred to Rhiannon. “
You’ll
come back, won’t you?” she asked, horrified at the thought of
that
changing.

Colin didn’t answer again. He covered his eyes with the heels of his hands.

A cry tore out of her. She didn’t know where it came from. Rhiannon just remembered their happy times, coming at her in snippets of memory, all at once.

Running over the grounds with Colin. Helping his dad repair a car engine. An outing at Loch Ness, she and Colin searching for Nessie with her dad’s binoculars. Takeaway suppers from the local pizza shop. Swimming at the beaches near Aberdeen. Golfing with Jessie at the public course at Kildrammond.

What if it never happened again? What if they couldn’t be friends anymore?

She put her arms around Colin and laid her cheek on the back of his shoulder. His skin was warm and he smelled the way he always did. She squeezed him tighter, wanting him to stay with her. “I don’t want you to go,” she whispered.

He stiffened at first. She remembered that he was a boy and she was a girl, and even though they were best of mates, they should never touch like this.

She pulled back. “Sorry,” she said. “But I wish it didn’t have to change. I wish nothing ever changed. It’s perfect as it is. I can’t bear it to be any different.”

“Me, too.” He gave her a meaningful look. She and Colin thought so much alike, sometimes she felt they were almost the same person.

“You’re my best friend, Colin.”

He smiled at her. The first smile she’d seen from him today. At that moment, her brother and her dad chose to sing aloud with the music they’d only been playing on the piano until now:

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

And never brought to mind?

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

And auld lang syne!

The words were sad, especially in her dad’s deep singing voice. Rhiannon couldn’t help sighing. She glanced at Colin and saw that he was listening, too.

“That’s what we’ll sing together at midnight,” she whispered.

“We sing it at home, too,” Colin answered.

They both grew quiet, listening to her dad and Malcolm sing. So far away from them that the words were somewhat muffled.

Rhiannon joined in with them, singing the words clearly. Some people didn’t know all the words to the song; they just mumbled on the harder parts. But Rhiannon’s dad had taught her all of it. She knew what that song meant, every phrase.

Colin took her hand. He held it in his, and smiling gently at her, he whispered the words to the song, too. But his voice didn’t sound like hers. His accent was American.

For auld lang syne, my dear,

For auld lang syne,

We’ll take a cup of kindness yet,

For auld lang syne.

This was the ending chorus, the part when they would hold hands and all rush into a big circle. It was brilliant fun. But instead of smiling or acting silly about it, Colin got quiet.

She gazed at him. Now was also the time when everybody was supposed to kiss. She’d never stayed up so late before to get any kisses at midnight.

Colin seemed to read her mind, too. He turned to her and kissed her then, straight on the lips. Fast and firm. With
conviction
, as her dad would say.

Her heart jumped a little, and she looked into his light blue eyes.

“I’ll never forget you, Rhiannon,” he said fiercely.

Her heart seemed ready to burst. August was much too far away.

“If I write to you, will you write back?” she asked him softly. Suddenly, she felt shy with him.

His face flushing again, he nodded. “I will.”

“If you see Colin, tell him I need him, now.” Below them, Daisie Lee had reappeared and was saying her goodbyes to Rhiannon’s mum. Daisie Lee was sniffling and she looked terribly upset. Rhiannon’s mum was doing her best to comfort her, but...

Colin stood. “I have to go now.” But his gaze was still on Rhiannon.

“Do you
promise
to write me back?” she whispered.

“Right away, as soon as I get your letter.”

Then he took her hand and squeezed it. He ran down the staircase toward his mother without looking back.

“Colin! Where have you
been
?” Daisie Lee wailed.

“Looking at swords up in Rhiannon’s room,” he lied neatly. “Her dad has a massive collection.” He gave Daisie Lee a huge grin as if nothing at all was wrong, as if he wasn’t upset about his father, as if he hadn’t just kissed Rhiannon.

Rhiannon touched her lips.

But Daisie Lee smiled at him, happier now, because who wouldn’t smile when they were with Colin? He was special. There would never be anybody else like him.

Rhiannon stood so that she wouldn’t be hidden anymore and watched Colin leave, ushered through the door by her mum.

Colin turned back to Rhiannon as he crossed the threshold, and he gave her a secret smile.

A lump formed in her throat but she forced herself to smile, doing for him what he had just done for his mother. She would not show pain or fear. She lifted her hand in a wave.
I
will
write to you,
she mouthed to him.

* * *

B
UT
R
HIANNON NEVER
did write. Because shortly after that New Year’s Eve, her life changed, too.

Rhiannon lay in a hospital bed, her whole world turned upside down. She hated seeing people, because all they did was ask her questions and make her feel even more frightened. And even though she thought about Colin all the time, she wouldn’t want him to see her like this.

It wasn’t until weeks later that she was finally allowed to return to her castle. And once she was there, she never wanted to leave again. She never left the grounds of the estate, and she rarely saw visitors.

Staying in her own special world made her feel safe and in control. Everybody in Scotland knew that. She supposed Colin knew, too, and she took comfort from the fact that he would understand.

For years afterward, Rhiannon believed that Colin left her alone precisely because he understood her so well.

And she was grateful.

CHAPTER TWO

Present Day
Central Texas

C
OLIN
W
ALKER HAD
a motto in life: take nothing seriously and keep everything light.

On a lazy summer’s Monday afternoon, he was doing just that—strolling the fairways at Sunny Times Golf Academy in Winwood Springs, Texas, sizing up the lay on a chip shot and aiming to enjoy the day with his caddie and best friend, Mack. That was when he became aware of Mack’s cell phone buzzing.

He turned toward Mack, who stood beside Colin’s golf bag. Mack stared at the screen of his phone, a concerned look on his face.

Colin was a tour pro. In his and Mack’s world, there was protocol. A caddie who wasn’t paying attention to the game was not to be tolerated. But Colin just shrugged. He figured that Mack was a grown-up, and if something needed his attention, then Colin wasn’t going to get upset.

Instead, he ambled over and pulled a nine iron from his bag. Normally, this was Mack’s job, but Mack was busy with his text message. A party of four was on the course behind them, so Colin needed to keep playing and stay with the flow of the game.

He approached the ball, knelt and squinted at it where it lay in the rough beside a green that sloped downward in a steep, thirty-degree pitch to the cup, marked with a red flag.

The flag hung limply, no movement, no breeze. Colin wiped the sweat from the back of his neck. It was hot, a humid June afternoon, and it might have been Colin’s imagination, but waves of steam seemed to be coming off the fairway.

Straightening, he strolled back to Mack. “What do you think of the lie?” Colin asked, nodding toward the gopher hole his ball was nestled against. “Nine iron, or should I use a wedge?”

“Seven,” Mack said absently, and Colin had to laugh, because a seven iron was absurd. But his caddie didn’t even smile, busily tapping out a text message, and not paying attention to the game at all.

“And people wonder why I’ve slipped to one hundred in the rankings,” Colin said with a laugh.

“One hundred twenty-four,” Mack muttered.

Colin turned. “Seriously?”

“It was on the Golf Channel this morning.”

Colin took off his glove and stretched his hand, then put the glove back on. He was trying not to think about that. To
keep it light
.

Mack gave him a look. Mack had risen from the college world to the minors tour to the big show—the pro tour—with Colin, and Mack knew exactly what was at stake. If Colin slipped below number 125 on the “money list,” then he would lose his tour card. If he lost his tour card, he lost his ability to play in the tournaments with the big purses and the big attention.

The tour card was the golden ticket. People dreamed of it, prayed for it, gave up everything for it. Every golfer remembered how he felt the day he’d earned it.

A sick feeling settled in Colin’s gut, as if things were spinning out of control. He knew that if he wasn’t careful, then he was somehow going to be abandoned again. Dropped, as if he was nothing. And then everything would change for the worse.

Colin looked away from Mack, toward the red flag flying over the eighteenth hole, trying to clear his head.

“We still have the New York Cup ahead of us,” Mack said quietly. “Everything will come together. That tournament is good luck for you. Remember last year?”

“Yep,” Colin said tightly. He’d
kept it light
and they’d come in second place. It had been his best showing and had confirmed that he was right not to take anything too seriously. Being laid-back about life was how he’d ended up on the pro tour in the first place.

He glanced at Mack, who had turned back to his cell phone. “What are you texting about, anyway?” Colin asked, leaning toward the screen. “Did you meet a girl last night or something?”

“Nope.” Mack shoved his phone in his pocket. He seemed cagey, giving a smile that Colin knew was fake. Colin had roomed with him his first two years at the university, and of all his friends on the golf team, Mack was the only one that Colin had introduced to Daisie Lee. Daisie Lee adored Mack like a second son. “Colin-clone,” she called him. Maybe he was. Mack didn’t take anything too seriously, either.

“Go take your shot,” Mack ribbed him.

“I will when I’m ready.”

“It’s an easy chip shot. You do those in your sleep.”

“Now you’re really making me worry. What’s on your damn phone?” Playfully, Colin reached for it, but Mack swatted his hand away.

“Okay, fine.” Mack sighed, taking off his cap and wiping his brow. “I was going to tell you after you finished the hole, but if you’ve got to know now and ruin your game, great— It was Leonard, letting you know he’s here for a noon meeting.”