Secret Garden

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.