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Angus scoffed. At fifteen, my son was already six feet tall and looked so much like me at that age, it was uncanny. “Like Heather’s been cool about Jodie?”
I tried not to grin and failed. “Son, you snagged yourself an older woman. She’s just teasing because she’s impressed.” Angus had recently started dating a girl in the year above him at his high school on the mainland.
He rolled his eyes, but I saw the slight quirk upward of his mouth. “Whatever. Let’s go … picnic. You didn’t answer me about the doughnuts.”
“What kind of dad would I be if there were no doughnuts?” I trudged forward onto the dunes, my feet sinking into the soft sand with the weight of the basket I carried. Upon a glance toward the white sands, I saw Heather spinning Isla around, their laughter bouncing across the gentle rush of sea against shore.
It was a perfect day on the island weather-wise, like it was turning on the charm to help Heather’s cause.
Taran stood chatting with Heather’s girlfriend, Léonie. They’d met in France that summer Heather spent there between uni terms. She’d gone there with her then-girlfriend Hazel and they’d befriended Léonie and her boyfriend. Heather and Léonie had clicked. Hazel and Heather broke up about six months later and Heather turned into her uncle Forde pre-Cameron, i.e., dating everything that moved. Léonie decided to do a one-year degree in Glasgow and not long later broke up with her boyfriend after admitting she’d moved to Scotland because she was in love with Heather. My daughter had been harboring what she thought was an unrequited crush, so she gave up the casual dating and jumped straight into something serious with her French girl. They’d been dating for a year, and Heather wanted Léonie to spend time with us on Glenvulin to try to convince her to move here permanently.
I knew all this because my daughter told me and Taran every minute detail of her life. Sometimes too many details for a dad to be comfortable with, but I’d take her oversharing over never sharing any day of the week.
Even Kiera, Angus and Heather’s mum, had called me last night to re-emphasize how important it was that we made Léonie feel welcome today.
No pressure.
“Dad!” Heather lifted Isla into her arms, my youngest daughter’s long legs dangling against her big sister’s as she hurried across the sand toward me and Angus. “Come say hi to Léonie.” Her gaze flitted to Angus. “You going to be cool?”
“I don’t know how to be anything else.” He rounded them, sticking his tongue out at Isla who blew a raspberry right back at him. Angus chuckled as he strode over toward Taran and Léonie.
Isla turned her demanding expression on Heather. “Down for Andgos. Now.” She couldn’t pronounce her brother’s name just yet.
“What do we say?” Heather coaxed her.
Isla shrugged like a weary forty-year-old. “Puhlease.”
I bit back a smile because lately her pleases sounded like a disdainful retort.
Heather laughed and lowered her wee sister to the sand.
“Andgos!” Isla raced after her big brother, almost falling over on the beach.
Angus turned and held out a hand to her. “Want to help me spread the blanket?”
“You know he turned out all right, actually.” Heather nudged me with her shoulder. “You did good, Dad.”
Chuckling, I gave her a wry thank-you. “All my kids turned out all right. Now let’s go impress Léonie.”
“She’s still not sure about living on an island permanently. She grew up in Marseille, Dad.”
“Small-town life has its charms, and we’ve got two weeks to prove that to her.”
“We?”
“We’re a team, right?”
My daughter slid her arm around my shoulders as we walked toward our family. “That we are.”
A few minutes later after our greetings were over and we’d started setting up the picnic, Léonie and Heather took Isla by the hand to wade into the water at the shoreline.
Angus was already eating a doughnut and texting someone (probably Jodie), while Taran and I sat on the other side of the blanket, watching our children play in the water. My wife leaned against my chest, and I felt her soft laughter as Isla shrieked happily when a tiny wave rolled over her bare feet.
“Léonie seems enchanted,” Taran murmured. The pretty woman who’d stolen my daughter’s heart laughed, her expression tender as she watched Heather spoil her younger sister with attention.
“Do you think she’ll stay?”
“I hope so.” My wife caressed my arm as it rested around her waist. “I think Heather loves her enough to follow her back to the mainland if it comes to it … so I’m keeping everything crossed we’re enough to make a city girl want to settle on an island.”
