Long Shot

Chapter 25

There were clouds over London. At least they made for a pretty sunset.

Jen stood in front of one of the three kitchen windows in Tim Bauer’s spacious English apartment. The place was severe, like him, with everything in its place. A year ago—hell, a month ago—she would have been dancing through the halls, ecstatic to be put up here. She would have been taking notes on how he lived, how he organized himself. Mulling over ways to apply his work ethic to her own.

Now, having been here a full two weeks, all she did, every night, was stare at the phone in her hand and wonder whom she should call first.

This evening was no different. Below, the random angles of the narrow London streets made a dramatic triangular corner, and the blue-painted pub situated there was doing marvelous business. People spilled out onto the sidewalk, cigarettes and pints in hand. In the distance, above the silver rooftops, rose the imposing dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral.

She’d been to London before, to work in Bauer’s office here, but she’d never gotten up to Scotland. Odd, that. She’d escaped one life and found another one in a tiny, faux Scotland over in the States, but now that the Borders and Edinburgh and the Highlands were a quick flight or train ride from where she stood right now, she wouldn’t get to see them. She would have loved to find Mr. MacDougall’s childhood home.

Her palm grew sweaty as she clutched the phone. This was it. She was doing this tonight. Simply because she couldn’t go another day without.

She dialed the number she still knew by heart. The phone rang and rang. She didn’t ever remember being this nervous. Ever.

“Yeah?” came the throaty voice on the other end.

Jen swallowed. “Hi, Mom.”

A long drag on a cigarette. “Aim? You sound different. And what kind of number are you calling from? It’s coming through on the caller ID with a bunch of weird zeroes.”

She couldn’t get any moisture in her mouth. “It’s not Aimee. It’s Jen.”

What followed was the longest pause in the world. “Jennifer.” No inflection. No emotion.

“Yes, it’s me.”

How are you? would have been the dumbest thing in the world to ask, considering they hadn’t spoken in ten years, so she didn’t.

Another drag on the cigarette. “Are you still in Gleann?”

“No, I left over two weeks ago. I’m in London now.”

“London.” Mom grunted in the way Jen remembered so vividly—her sitting on the stained couch, a smoke in one hand, reacting to Jen’s excellent report card.

She tried to conjure up this new image of Mom that Aimee had painted for her, but it was impossible. Was she gray-haired now? Had she gained or lost weight? Was she still sitting on that couch watching daytime TV?

“England,” Jen added.

Mom sighed. “Yeah, I figured that. That where your work is taking you these days?”

Jen hadn’t called to talk about London. “Mom, I didn’t . . . I had no idea you and Aimee and Ainsley had been talking.”

“Why would you? So why are you calling me now, after all this time? Did Aimee put you up to it?”

“No, not at all. This is me. Doing something I should have done a long time ago. I, uh, I’m calling because I just . . . well, I need to. I wanted to personally tell you some things. Is now okay?”

“Yeah.” She heard the rattle of a glass ashtray as Mom poked out her smoke. “I don’t have to leave for work for fifteen minutes.”

Work? She had a job? Jen blinked back surprise. She drew a deep breath and said, “First, I wanted to call you and tell you that I did it. That I finally got to where I always wanted to be.”

“You mean London.” Mom didn’t sound so impressed, but what else was new.

“No. I got a promotion. The big one. The one I’ve been wanting since I took the job at Bauer Events after graduation.”

Mom must have had a cold or smoker’s phlegm or something, because she blew her nose. When she finally spoke, her voice was a little muffled. “Good for you, Jennifer. You must think you’re so much better than me.”

Ten years of bitterness made the phone weigh a million pounds. Jen sank into a chair. “Um . . .” Yes, she wanted to say. Yes, I do.

“You are better than me, Jennifer,” she said, so matter-of-factly that Jen was sure she hadn’t heard right. “You always have been.”

That’s when Jen started to cry. They were silent tears, but they were fat and made big wet spots on her pants. “I have to ask. Are you drinking?”

“If you were seventeen I would’ve raked your eyes out for that.” After a pause she added, “Because the guilty are usually the most defensive.”

“So are you?”

“I’m almost two years sober.”

Jen wanted to be angry for not knowing this, until she realized she had no one to be angry at. It wasn’t Aimee’s job to tell her. Mom wouldn’t have called, considering Jen had made it clear she never wanted to talk to her again. And she couldn’t blame Ainsley, who’d only ever wanted a grandma.

Mom said, “I used some of your money for rehab. Well, for a really long time I used it to get really fucking drunk. Gambling. Some other stupid shit. It took me years to know what I had, to come to appreciate it.”

Jen found the strength to stand and moved closer to the window. The lights were coming up over London and she’d never felt so far away from everything. “What changed?”

“Aimee reaching out, despite what I did to her and to you. Ainsley changed me, too. At first it was hard to talk to her, but now I sort of, I don’t know, live for it.” Mom blew her nose again. “And then there’s the fact that your checks never stopped coming, even though I was sure you knew what I was using them for. I felt shame. For the first time in my life. Why’d you send me money, Jennifer?”

It took her a few minutes to answer, because suddenly she was consumed by the memory of Leith’s voice. “Someone once told me I feel like I need to fix everyone, that I think I have all the answers. I guess I thought I could fix you like I tried to do with Aimee. I guess I wanted you to do what you just told me you did, about the rehab. And, yeah, I think part of me wanted to rub my success in your face.”

“Points for honesty. One thing you’ve never lacked.”

“Neither have you.”

Down at the triangular pub, a fight broke out on the sidewalk between groups of guys dressed in different colors meant to represent sports teams she didn’t recognize. “Mom, the other reason I’m calling is to tell you that I won’t be able to send money for a while. I’m going to be a little short on cash, and I don’t know for how long.”

What came out of her mother’s mouth shocked the hell out of her. “Are you in trouble?”

“No, not in trouble.”

“I don’t need it anymore, if that’s what you’re worried about. I have a job. It’s just cleaning offices, but it’s a job. I’ve been saving what you’ve been sending for a surprise trip to see Aimee and the little girl I’ve never met.”

Through the phone, Jen heard the metallic strike of a lighter, the gentle hiss of a newly lit cigarette, and her mom’s deep inhale. “Why are you gonna be short on cash? Thought you just told me you got this big promotion?”

“I did get the promotion.” Jen placed her palm on the glass. “I just didn’t accept it.”

Leith had been right. About so much.

Tim had called from New York that morning to offer Jen the position of running the London office. On one hand she’d been expecting it; on the other she’d been in complete denial. She kept waiting for the relief and triumph to sweep through her, but it never came. After telling Tim she’d think about it and would get back to him, she went for a walk along the Thames. She stood on the Millennium Bridge for a long time, over one of the world’s great rivers, in one of the world’s most majestic cities, and all she could think about was the little creek running through Gleann.

That shouldn’t have made any sense. But it did.

She had thought that making it to this point in her career would heal her, that it would take a needle and thread and stitch up what had been shredded during her childhood.

But it didn’t actually mean anything to her, not inside at least. Not where it mattered most. This promotion was a title and something to tell people, but it was only window dressing.

That true healing she had to find elsewhere. And she already knew where to start looking.

She called Tim back right then and there, plugging one ear with a finger to drown out the sounds of everything she was turning down, and told him, “Thanks, but no.” And then gave him her resignation.

The rest of the afternoon she’d hunched over her computer crunching numbers, researching, formulating business plans, consolidating files . . . and trying not to call Leith.

He’d made it pretty clear that if and when she came back to him, she had a lot of proving to do. She understood; her track record with taking off and leaving him high and dry wasn’t so good. That’s exactly what she intended—to give him proof—but she needed to get a lot of things squared away before she contacted him.

Two weeks away from him felt like an eternity, but she would have to force herself to wait just a little bit longer.

After the sun had gone down, and her eyes burned with computer strain, and her brain hurt from thinking, she’d finally sat back and surveyed what she’d created.

It was her dream, her needle and thread, right there in pixels and paragraphs, and she’d never even realized it until this very moment. She’d been dying to call Leith right then and there, but there’d been two other people she needed to talk to first. That’s when she’d dialed her mom.

One more person to go.

As expected, voice mail picked up. Jen sighed. “Aimee, it’s me. I know you’ve been getting all my messages these past two weeks and I don’t blame you for ignoring them, but please call me back. I just talked to Mom and I want to tell you about it.”

An hour and a half later, at nearly midnight London time with still no sleep in sight, the phone rang. And then Jen told Aimee every word she and their mom had shared, except the part about Mom wanting to visit. That little tidbit she’d let come out on its own; she’d let her mom have that.

“Your messages said you’re in London. How the hell did that happen?”

Jen considered that. “Misguidedly. Anyway, it doesn’t matter now. I’m coming home.”

“Does Leith know that?”

“We, uh, haven’t spoken since the day before I left. I told him I was going to England, he got angry, which made me angry, and then I left. It was stupid and I need to make it up to him. I want to get him back.”

A long, pregnant pause. “I’ll tell you what you should do. You should go surprise him at the Connecticut Highland Games this weekend.”

Her heart started to pound in her ears. “The . . . why?”

“I guess he’s throwing? Last I heard was that Duncan dragged him back into the circuit after how well he did in Gleann.”

Jen pressed a straight arm to the counter edge and leaned in heavily. “He threw? After I left?”

“Yeah. You didn’t know?” Aimee sounded genuinely surprised.

“Oh God. No. He didn’t say anything.”

And why would he have, given how she’d blindsided him with news of her leaving for London? He hadn’t wanted to guilt her into staying, because he didn’t work like that. He’d just wanted to make his points about her goals and her upbringing and her mom, and to keep himself out of it.

Damn selfless man . . . whom she wanted so much it made her chest ache.

She wished she could have seen him throw.

“So you’re coming home?” Aimee cut in.

“I am. I quit my job and I’m going to start my own events company.”

It felt incredible to say, the first poke of the needle through torn flesh and muscle.

“I’d say I’m impressed, but very little of what you do doesn’t impress me.”

Jen smiled into the phone. “You’ll like this, then. I’m going to focus on smaller events put on by smaller clients like Gleann who maybe need overall help with organization. I’m a whiz with budgets and I really, really loved bringing the citizens together. You know, teaching them how to fish instead of casting the line out all by myself.”

Aimee gasped. “You were really good at that. Maybe Bobbie would hire you. Melissa’s underwriting the winter crafts convention, so there’s no lack of money. And they trust you.”

She couldn’t deny it. Going back to teeny tiny Gleann and working on those events gave her a sense of hope, an undeniable exhilaration. “When I get my materials put together, I’ll send them over.” At last she yawned, the crazy, full day suddenly smacking her upside the head.

“I get the hint,” Aimee said. “I’ll tell Ainsley you called. She’s over at Bryan’s now.”

“How is my Flirty McGee?”

“Ah, stop! Too young for flirting!”

Not if she kept hanging around T, she wouldn’t be, but Jen didn’t say that.

“So can I tell Sue what you’re doing with your job and all?”

Jen rolled her eyes. “Sure. But don’t tell me what she says. I don’t want to know if she gives you those tight lips and looks at you over her glasses, and then maybe mentions how I didn’t pick up her dog poop that one day fifteen years ago.”

Aimee laughed. “Okay, but maybe she’ll hire you back for the games next year and, I don’t know, actually pay you.”

“Love you.” She couldn’t remember the last time she’d said that to Aimee. Maybe never.

“Love you, too, sis. I was mad at you for leaving during the games, but I’m not anymore. We all came together after you took off. It turned out great. Well, as great as it could be. Everyone talked about what a wonderful job you did. Despite the cow.”

“Maybe that could be my new tagline. ‘Haverhurst Events. I do a great job. Despite the cow.’”

Jen hung up with her sister and fell into bed with a smile, her hand stretching to the empty pillow beside her.

Three days later, Jen was carrying a backpack filled with her stuff out of the office building where she’d worked under Tim Bauer for six years. It wasn’t much, in the grand scheme of things. She hadn’t brought much of herself in.

But that would change. She was going to put her heart and soul into her new venture, and each and every client would be able to see and feel it.

Her phone rang. It did that decidedly less these days, so when it happened it never failed to make her jump and then rush to answer, wondering who it could be. Hoping against hope that it would be a certain someone.

The number on the screen was unrecognizable, but it was an area code she knew to be upstate New York.

“This is Jen Haverhurst.”

“Jen, hi, my name is Ann Wagner. I’m director of the Finger Lakes Tourism Bureau. I’m looking for assistance in setting up incentive packages in my area. I’m told this is an area of expertise for you?”

Suddenly Jen felt light as air, her sandals barely touching the concrete. “It is, and I’d love to talk to you about it.”

Ann exhaled. “Fantastic!”

“May I ask how you got my name? My business cards aren’t even printed yet.”

“Oh. Sue McCurdy told me about you.”

Jen stopped walking, right there in the middle of the crowded New York sidewalk. Someone crashed into her from the back and glared at her, and she shuffled off to stand in front of the window of a Greek restaurant. “Wait. Sue McCurdy. As in Mayor Sue?”

“I can’t believe she wants people to call her that, but that’s Sue for you.” Ann chuckled. “She and I were roommates at Syracuse way back when. She called me specifically to give me your name.”

Jen slapped a hand over a blue-and-white-striped flag painted on the glass, in order to keep herself upright in the face of shock.

“She said you did a bang-up job up in Gleann for her Highland Games,” Ann went on, “and that I couldn’t go wrong in hiring you.”