"Jennifer!"
I woke up disoriented, my body aching from shivering and not entirely sure where I was.
"Jennifer, listen to me."
I looked up as it slowly dawned on me who was speaking. The Laird. He was alone, standing at the foot of the bench I was sleeping on and looking straight at me. I turned away from him as soon as I had the wherewithal to do so.
"Come back, Jennifer. Why are you out here in the cold?"
Why was I out there in the cold? Because that jerk fired me in the most humiliating way possible, that's why. I ignored him but he didn't go away. When I sat up, he used the space I'd vacated to sit down beside me.
"I can see that you're angry and you have every right to be. Will you just listen to me?"
"Listen to you? What, the way you listened to me when I tried to ask you what I did wrong?" I shot back angrily, still not looking at him.
"Please, Jennifer. I'm trying to apologize to you right now. I know that was an ugly scene and I know it was my fault."
There was something in Darach's voice, a certain weary tone that I recognized from some of my own thoughts and conversations over the past couple of years. He sounded tired and not a little desperate.
"What exactly did I say that was so bad?" I asked, finally looking at him.
"Nothing. You didn't say anything. I used the shooting comments as an excuse - I was angry at myself and what's happened to Cameron since her mother left and I took it out on you."
"But what's so fucking bad about telling a four year old that shooting people is a bad idea?!" I blurted, my voice rising with irritation. Even if he had used the comments as an excuse, I still didn't realize what he could possibly have thought was so misguided about them.
The Laird shrugged his heavy shoulders and shook his head slightly in a gesture that i could tell was aimed at himself, not me.
"I take Cameron shooting with me on the estate - or, I have taken her, twice now. She enjoys it and it's something that needs to be done if the wildlife is to be properly managed."
What? Wildlife? I paused before replying:
"Was she talking about...hunting?"
"Yes. And I understand if that's not something that's part of your life or that you disagree with but-"
"I thought she was talking about wanting to shoot PEOPLE!" I said as the exact cause of the misunderstanding sank in. "I had no idea she was talking about hunting!"
I didn't love the idea of hunting, either, but Cameron's earlier discussion suddenly made a lot more sense. She'd just been talking about spending time with her father doing things that were normal for her.
"You thought...?"
Darach's couldn't finish his sentence because he'd started shaking. For one awful instant I thought he was sobbing but when I looked closer I could see that, actually, he was laughing. He was trying to contain it but he was failing badly. Eventually he just leaned his head back and let it out, guffawing and slapping one hand on his leg.
Within seconds the idea of a small Scottish girl proposing to go on a murder spree with her father also struck me as absurdly hilarious.
"What did you think?!" Darach's eyes were leaking tears of mirth now, "did you think we just go out on jolly little murdering parties with our children in Scotland?"
I was offended by that remark because I hadn't been the only one to make a minor semantic mistake but I couldn't say anything due to laughing so hard I could hardly breathe.
We sat like that, snickering and wiping tears and then, just when it felt like it was over, finding ourselves struck anew by the absurdity of the mistake and falling back into helpless laughter over and over. When it finally was finished we wiped our eyes and caught our breath and I felt like I'd just laughed a year's worth of tension out of my body.
I couldn't stop myself:
"You made a mistake too, you know. You thought I was telling her hunting was wrong and that wasn't what I meant."
"I know, I know Jennifer. None of it was your fault - as I said, it wasn't even those comments that made me fly off the handle, they were just the excuse. None of that was your fault, it wasn't about you at all. I'm so sorry. I didn't even think you were going to leave - I just got back from Edinburgh and Mrs. Clyde told me where you were."
I looked up at the sky and noticed that dawn was just starting to break. It must have been about five in the morning.
"Well..." I started, a little hesitant and still, despite the shared laughter, a little resentful about how I'd been treated, "why were you so angry?"
Our eyes met and the Laird reached up and ran one of his big hands through his sandy hair, sighing heavily.
"Do you really want to know? It would take hours - days, actually - to tell you the whole story but I could give you the short version."