Secret Garden Read Online Free PDF Page B

that.
    After the pub closed, the party moved to a local house. Even though it was well after midnight, Colin didn’t feel tired at all. His body clock was seven hours behind the local time. Mack took the front seat of Bonnie’s car, and Colin crowded in the back. Colin wasn’t going to end up with either of the women—that would be stupid for someone with his profile, and he wasn’t stupid, he was just prolonging the inevitable pain of meeting his grandparents.
    In the back of his mind, he knew he had to deal with a potential confrontation that he just wasn’t ready to face.
    He also felt sick, and sad, and he didn’t want to be. His father was dead and he was too late to do anything about it. This wasn’t a jam Colin could talk his way out of. A problem he could smooth over with a laugh and a joke. He was here, in Scotland, and he needed to somehow get beyond the anger.
    Because he wasn’t a kid being manipulated or dragged around any longer. Those days were over. It was years ago that he’d overheard his parents arguing on that last trip to Scotland. Overheard his father telling his mother that it just wasn’t worth it. His mother screaming back, “What about your son, isn’t that reason enough?” His father answering, “No, that’s not enough. It’s not enough!”
    All those years, deep down, Colin had spent feeling guilty and ashamed, as if it were his fault. Anger, because rationally, he knew it wasn’t his fault. He’d felt sad, for his mom and for him, too, because their lives had changed so drastically.
    Or maybe he was slowly making up his mind to decide to get over it. To forgive his grandparents for not reaching out earlier—and himself for reaching out only now, when it was too late. Maybe he should just start the weekend with a fresh slate. Colin still wasn’t sure, though. Mack obviously sensed his inner turmoil, and seemed to be steering clear of Colin’s mood, or of any discussion regarding it.
    “Do you want us to drop you off at the hotel?” Mack asked him finally. “Because I’m gonna stay over with Bonnie. She said she’s got a couch you can stay on, too, if you want. When we wake up, I’ll help you call your grandparents. How about if we just arrange a time to meet them before the funeral on Sunday? Will that work?”
    It was the coward’s way out, and it was tempting. Colin could avoid the whole three-day wait this way and then meet them at the funeral.
    But now that he was sobering again, something bothered him. Avoiding his grandparents sounded too much like running away from the problem. Colin wasn’t irresponsible. He didn’t want to be like his father.
    Especially not like his father.
    “No,” Colin said, “I need to talk with Jamie and Jessie. I’ll head over there now. They always were early risers.” Hopefully, they still were.
    In the end, Bonnie drove him to his grandparents’ cottage. She went slowly and carefully, weaving her way down a single-lane Scottish country road and playing Fleetwood Mac on the stereo—old stuff Colin hadn’t heard since he was a kid. “You Make Loving Fun.” None of it fit with the fact that he was the estranged grandson returning to Scotland for the funeral of a father he hadn’t heard from in twenty-some years.
    Colin pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. The sun was streaking over the horizon. The digital clock on Bonnie’s dash told him it was six o’clock in the morning.
    “Jamie always liked to get up while it was still dark,” Colin said, to no one in particular. Snatches of memory were coming back to him. From what little he remembered of his grandfather, he was set in his ways and brooked no nonsense.
    “Would you mind turning down the music?” Colin asked as Bonnie pulled up beside the whitewashed cottage. Now that he was here, he felt completely sober. They were out in the middle of nowhere, in the Highlands. Somehow he had to get along with his grandparents for four more days. Then he could leave.
    With