Read Online Lauchlin of the Bad Heart by D. R. Macdonald - Free Book Online Page B

well enough, the nights you spent there. And you didn’t know yourself she was gone?”
    Lauchlin opened the till, slammed it shut. “It happens I didn’t.”
    “Morag or Peg or whatever her name is now should have let you know, I don’t think much of that.”
    “She has a busy life in Boston, she works hard. We haven’t been in touch anyway.” His mother used to talk Morag down if he let her, but in this case she was right. “I passed a good many nights up there, Ma, it’s true. She liked having me visit, Auntie Nell did. Sometimes she let Morag and me sleep in the same bed. Maybe she even liked the idea of us up there nice and cozy, I don’t know.”
    He had never told his mother this, these were details he had spared her years ago. But she was complacent about him now, about his fixed place in her life. Why should she think he would never leave? He did not want photos of him stuck in a drawer somewhere, like those of his Uncle Ranny and the woman he went with for so many years and never married. Over at Granny’s place, years of Sunday visits and then suddenly it’s a snapshot just of Ranny alone with his mother under a big tree by the brook, in a baggy suit, his long, handsome unsmiling face, the woman finally gone, fed up with waiting for what she knew would never come.
    “What’s the matter with you lately? She wasn’t Morag’s mother anyway. A mother wouldn’t let that go by in her own house.”
    “If Morag was happy, so was her auntie,” he said.
    His mother turned toward a plant in the window, plucked away its dried leaves. “She wants you to call her. I suppose you’ll be running off to see her, leaving your supper cold.”
    “I don’t know as I’m running off anywhere. My supper I’ll eat.”
    “Haddock up there and potatoes.” She slipped into the white apron she always wore at the store, tied it behind her. “I got the fish from Clement MacTavish.”
    “He must’ve been up there half an hour. He sell you a barrel?”
    “He likes to talk, we talked a while. He gets things off his chest with me he wouldn’t with others, I think.”
    “About his wife? About Tena?”
    “Well now, I wouldn’t tell you, would I? He’s having trouble with that partner of his, I’ll tell you that.”
    “No secret there. He’s not a charmer, Ged Cooper. Shane sold him some bad gas before we knew. He was the only one to come back about it.”
    “What did you do?”
    “I can’t say I sent him off happy. We might see him again.”
    “Be sure you’re back in the morning. I don’t want to deal with angry men.”
    “Don’t worry yourself about the mornings.” All the damn mornings he’d woken and knew that’s all he had to go to, not even light yet and he no merchant of any kind, yes, the dark early mornings he’d hated most, facing the store. When he was boxing, he had come to love the early hours, trotting along the road before dawn, just the engine of his breathing, any kind of air was good, cold or foggy or hit with sun, even saffron with steel-mill fumes when he lived in Sydney, rain never bothered him, slush or snow.
    “When Morag’s home, you get unpredictable,” his mother said, moving past him behind the counter.
    “Do I? Good.”
    “Now go on, I’ve got things to tend to here.”
    “We’re out of brown sugar, Ma. Any up at the house?”
    NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES Morag and Lauchlin had mutally agreed, at the end of her summer stays, they wouldn’t see each other anymore, pointless to keep this up, foolish to kill chances they might have with other men or women, she still would call when she came back, later than sooner now, she’d hold out for two or three days, long enough for the word to trickle back to him from Inverness, waiting for him to make the move he never made, and finally she’d be on the phone, cool and indifferent, as if they hadn’t seen each other for a decade, were nearly strangers anyway, and Lauchlin would hide behind courteous inquiries, distant but