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Mum had apologized and promptly left, leaving me and my sister-in-law bewildered.

Now she was here without being invited.

It wasn’t like Mum was a bad mum. Not at all. But it was hard to explain why I felt so disconnected from her and why it was suddenly bothering me more than ever. Call it the turmoil of the last few months, but I felt this thing building in me. While Mum had offered her sympathy and had publicly supported me through the Greig Wallace horror, she’d never asked me to tell her the details of what happened. She never told me she was proud of me for coming forward to the police. I guessed I was part of the problem because I never opened up to her.

When Quinn was trying to figure out how to get through to Taran when she returned to the island, he and I had a candid conversation about how closed off he could be. That he rarely told anyone what was going on in his head, and I remembered saying that part of it had to do with Mum not ever telling us she loved us. It’s not how she was raised. You didn’t talk about feelings like that. You could express it in other ways, but she’d never told us she loved us. She’d never told us how she’d felt when Dad left her.

I didn’t really know my mum that well.

And I was starting to worry that while I was more openly affectionate and loving that I’d inherited the instinct to bottle everything up.

Maybe that’s why when she handed me a cup of tea and a plate of biscuits and sat down next to me on the sofa to launch into a retelling of what happened at the Highland Games ceilidh that I’d missed, I cut her off abruptly.

“Why don’t we talk like other mums and daughters?”

Mum’s lips parted in surprise and then clamped tightly together in displeasure.

Heart racing, I attempted to explain. “I … I just … I’ve always felt like you don’t know how to talk to me. Even when I was wee. Like, you were always more comfortable around men. Closer to Quinn for that reason.”

She glared, her hurt obvious. “Are you saying I made a difference between you?”

“Aye, I think you did.”

“I think that’s incredibly unfair and typical of you, Cameron, to make a drama out of nothing. I’m here, aren’t I?”

Indignant, I spluttered, “W-when have I ever made a drama?”

“Everything is always a drama with you. You were always trying to stir up something out of nothing. Accusing me of making a difference between my children is just hurtful. You never think before you speak, and maybe if you did, you wouldn’t be in the situation you are right now.”

My head jerked back like she’d slapped me. “Meaning?”

Mum abruptly stood, her hands shaking, her mouth trembling. “You couldn’t just leave the Greig Wallace thing alone. Now you’ve made yourself a target.” She gestured to my foot. “And it doesn’t end here. Our whole family is going to be dragged through this when it goes to trial, and Quinn and Taran have been through enough.”

I gaped up at her, horrified. “So I should have shut my mouth and let him keep raping and murdering women?”

“It wasn’t your job to stop him, that’s my point. I need to go.” She stormed out, her eyes glassy with tears as she rushed from the house.

I don’t know how long I sat there in stunned silence, but it must have been longer than I thought because there was a banging on my door and my brother strode in, looking furious.

“What? What’s happened?” I didn’t think I could take much more.

Quinn’s scowl was fierce. “Cammie, I love you … but what the actual fuck? I just had Mum on the phone sobbing her heart out because she says you started on her about being a terrible mother. I know you’re having a hard time, but you don’t take it out on other people.”

I gaped at him, stunned.

Quinn … Quinn was scolding me after what my mother just said to me. “Get the fuck out of my house.”

Something shifted in his expression. “Cam⁠—”

My front door pushed all the way open, and my heart leapt with relief at the sight of Forde. He was carrying a brown paper bag I suspected held lunch from the deli. His expression was wary as it moved between me and Quinn. “Why do you want him to get the fuck out? What’s going on?”

Though he searched my face in confusion, Quinn relayed that Mum had called him sobbing because I’d told her she was a bad mum.

Forde, to my shock, scoffed, “Well, Quinn, what’s your definition of a good mum? Because I had to tell your mum to go visit Cameron the day after she was attacked in her own home because she had no intention of doing it and this is a direct quote: ‘She said she’s fine.’”

Well, that news was another slap in the face.

Quinn’s brow furrowed. “She wasn’t going to come see her?”