Cherry Girl (Neil & Elaina #1)(18)
Author: Raine Miller

Elaina lay back on my chest in a little green and white rowboat upon Lake Leticia, a scenic meandering pond situated on the Hallborough estate. I was again reminded of the many BBC miniseries my gran had enjoyed on TV when I was a boy—lovers from times past with nothing better to do than float on a garden lake, stealing kisses in their fine clothes and flattering their dates with fancy words.

I had to say it wasn’t at all bad. I was loving it.

“My mum would love it here,” she said, trailing a hand over the side and into the water. “She’s always been captivated by historic homes and gardens.”

“My gran would have too.” I surprised myself for mentioning her at all. Gran was a topic I kept close and pretty much closed. Elaina was different, of course, I could share with her, but it wasn’t something I sought out to do. Thinking of my gran, I only wished I could have brought her to a place like this for a holiday. She would have loved the gardens and the ocean views, and the stately house very much. I never got the chance to take her anywhere nice or do anything special for—

“You lived with your grandmother before you came to England when you were seventeen?” she asked from the side of the boat, cutting off my retreat into past regrets I couldn’t do anything to change.

“Yeah. In Glasgow.”

“I knew that you were a Scot because Ian used to call you Scotty when you were younger.”

“He changed his mind about it once I grew bigger than him, now didn’t he?”

She laughed. “I remember that too. Ian was so disappointed when you topped him in height.”

“By like an inch, maybe. Your brother can be an idiot sometimes.”

“Very true about Ian. But what happened to your mum?” She asked it softly, as if she were being gentle with me in case her question brought out sad feelings.

I rubbed up and down her arm to reassure her. “She had me when she was very young…just sixteen. My father was a student at the University of Glasgow when he met my mum and impregnated her. He abandoned us when she told him I was on the way. McManus was her family name, not his.”

“So, you lived in Scotland with your mother and your grandmother?” She turned away from the water and asked me directly.

“Right. Her mother, my gran, took care of us, and then me, when Mum died. Yeah…it was pretty awful.” Elaina pulled her hand from the water and leaned back against me again. She was waiting for me to talk about my past and I figured there was no time like the present. Hiding it certainly wouldn’t help anything, and I might as well get on with throwing it all out there with her. I’d want to know if it was the other way ’round.

“When I was ten, my mother and her boyfriend got themselves killed in a car crash driving home drunk from the pub. They ran themselves off the road in a rain storm and into a flooded ditch.”

“Oh, that’s horrible.”

“Mum never really settled down like a typical mother. She had me far too young, and she didn’t really grow up or get over the fact that my father didn’t love her or want anything to do with us. She was only twenty-six when she died. And she had dreadful taste in men, apparently…” I trailed off with my sad story and hoped I didn’t have to talk about it much more. I wanted to enjoy our time here, and not waste it on the uselessness of regret over things I had absolutely no control. Strolls down memory lane didn’t do a bloody thing for me. I had learned to live in the present and for the future. It was the only way.

Elaina rolled over to face me and rested on my chest, looking up. “I didn’t know all that about your family. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what?”

“For you, for how scary it must have been for you as a little boy losing your mother and then later on, your grandmother. I knew it was bad for you, but I didn’t know the story. I’m so sorry for your losses.”

I shared more with her because she was so gentle and kind with her feelings, and I could tell she wanted to know about me. For the first time, I actually felt like talking a little about my life because I knew I could trust her.

“Gran was lovely…and if we’re being completely honest, she’s the one who really raised me. My mum was not ready to have a child and although my memories of her are sweet, we weren’t ever like a typical mother and son. It was my gran’s dying of cancer, when I was seventeen that dealt the worst blow. It devastated me…and there was so little time to settle things before she passed away.”

“You had to leave Scotland, then?” She found my hand and entwined our fingers together, caressing back and forth with her thumb.

“Yeah. And it was clear I’d have to go with my father as soon as Gran’s condition was pronounced terminal. There was nobody else to take me.”

She brought my hand to her lips and held it there.

I kept talking. “Everyone was unhappy about it. I didn’t want to leave my home, or for my gran to die, or to go live with a father I’d never met, and who didn’t want me any more than I wanted him.”

She gripped my hand tighter.

“He had a wife who really didn’t want me around—messing up their perfect little family life in England, bringing up questions, destroying the façade of respectability they’d earned. They had a three-year-old son already. Sam—their real son.”

"So, you came to live with your father and that’s when we met you?" she asked softly.

"Yeah, but I didn’t make it easy for any of us. As soon as I was delivered to my father’s house and got a good feeling for how things were going to be with my new family, I ran away, sneaking off almost immediately, hitching rides all the way back to Scotland. It took a while, but they found me trying to live in the back of my gran’s garage. My dad sent me off directly to school in London after that mess so I didn’t have to live with them, and since our last names were different, nobody connected us as father and son. I was just a kid dumped at school by people who liked to pretend I didn’t exist.”

Elaina was quiet for a bit, just holding my hand to her lips and absorbing everything I’d told her. When she finally spoke, her voice had a detached ring to it as if she were making a confession. “I always hated your family. I never met them but I hated them just the same for how uncaring they were of you.”

God, I loved her. “I always sort of sensed that from you, Cherry. Just made me love you more though.”

She wasn’t done. “But then I probably shouldn’t hate them, because if they hadn’t been so awful we might never have met you. Ian wouldn’t have befriended you and dragged you home to us.” She leaned up to find my lips for a kiss.