Margot Dalton - The Newcomer

She’d looked around at his town with such intent, concentrated interest. And when she turned away, her profile was as finely sculpted as Waterford crystal.

“No,” he told the child, falling into a soft brogue as he remembered. “I didna imagine her, my lassie.”

“And she’ll make everything better?”

“Ah, yes,” Doug said with a hearty optimism he didn’t feel. “One day soon our princess will reveal her plan, and we will all be verra, verra glad to hear it.”

“You’re crazy, Uncle Doug.” Moira scrambled from his embrace and picked up her brush again. But she seemed a little reassured, and her face wasn’t quite as tense.

Doug grinned and followed her down the steps to replace the lid on his bucket of stain.

“Let’s go back for our scones and tea,” he said. “You bring the paint cans and brush, and I’ll carry that lumping great sister of yours.”

While Moira collected the supplies, Doug lifted the sleeping Robin into his arms, still warmly wrapped in the denim jacket. They started up the street toward the Crystal Creek Hotel, a bright little procession in the silent winter afternoon, Doug making a conscious effort to slow his long strides so Moira could keep up.

“Do you like it better here than in Scotland?” she asked, trotting along at his side.

“Much better,” Doug said briefly, glancing down at the child. “And how about you?”

“It rains all the time in Scotland. And the cities aren’t clean like this.”

“Exactly right, my pet.” Doug grinned at his niece. “The weather is generally a lot better in Texas, even if it does get far too hot in the summer for any sane man to enjoy.”

“But do you ever get homesick for Scotland?” Moira asked.

He thought it over. “Sometimes, but not for long. And you know what? As soon as I go back for a visit, I remember why I’m so fond of Texas.”

“Mummy and Robin and I have never gone back there for a visit,” Moira said.

“You girls and your mother only arrived a year ago,” Doug said. “And Mummy’s afraid that if you went home—” He fell abruptly silent, but Moira picked up on what he’d been about to say.

“She’s afraid they wouldn’t let us come back,” the child said. “That’s why Mummy cries at night, isn’t it? Because we might have to leave Texas.”

“Citizenship issues are too big a problem for a wee girl like you to worry about,” Doug said. “You mustn’t let it bother you, Moira.”

“But why won’t they let us stay?”

“The immigration laws are very strict,” he said. “Even more strict than when I moved here six years ago. Your mother brought you over to visit me, and then decided she wanted to stay. But the government still thinks you’re all just visiting.”

Moira’s small face grew pale. “So Mummy and Robin and I will have to leave here and go back to Scotland?”

“Not if we can help it,” Doug said. “I’m still trying to get things fixed up.”

“I don’t want to go back there,” Moira said gloomily.

Doug gave her a thoughtful glance. “But in Scotland you lived in a fine big house, and here your Mummy just has a little cottage.”

“I hated that big house,” Moira said with passion. “Every one of us hated it. The bedrooms were cold all the time.”

“I suppose they were.” Doug thought about the stately old home that his sister, Rose, had inherited from their mother. “A lovely place, that house, but not exactly cozy.”

“So what do you like the best about Texas?” Moira asked.

He thought it over. “The fact that Rory McLeod’s not here.” he said at last.

“Do you hate him, Uncle Doug?”

Doug shook his head, thinking about his mother’s second husband.

Stephen Evans, his father, had been a cultured, soft-spoken man, and much loved. But Stephen had died when Doug was nine and Rose was little more than a baby, leaving their mother a valuable whiskey distillery in the Scottish Lowlands.

A few years later she’d married McLeod, a hulking, overbearing foreman at the plant who’d soon insinuated himself into his wife’s inheritance. After college Doug had also gone to work in the family business, mostly to protect his mother’s property.

But his stepfather had always been a hard man to endure…

“No,” he said at last. “I don’t hate anybody, Pumpkin. But I’m just as happy to have an ocean between me and Rory McLeod.”

In fact, Doug had come to Texas six years earlier to set up a distributorship in the Hill Country for the family business. But his heart had no longer been in the work. The spring before his trip to America, their gentle mother had succumbed to breast cancer, and except for Rose and the girls, Doug had nothing holding him to Scotland anymore.

Something about the town of Crystal Creek had drawn him with passionate, irresistible force. Doug stayed a whole month longer than necessary, and afterward he went home only long enough to sell his share of the business, pack his belongings and begin the long battle to obtain a green card.

Now Doug owned the Crystal Creek Hotel, was mayor of the town, ran the real estate office and served as a stockbroker for local investors. Sometimes he felt as if his roots had already grown deeper into Texas soil than they’d ever been in the home of his ancestors.

“But why do you like it here so much?” Moira persisted with characteristic doggedness.

“Texas is almost ten times bigger than Scotland.” Doug shifted the burden of the sleeping child in his arms. “But it has only twice the population. And the sunshine warms me clear to the bones, Moira. I love this place.”

He gazed off at the rolling hills with their scattering of trees and rimrock outcroppings that sometimes reminded him of his homeland, especially on these blue, misty winter days.

“You know Mr. Wall, in the drugstore?” Moira gave her uncle a worried glance. “Mr. Wall says Crystal Creek is dying.”

“Does he now?” Doug said grimly.

“Yesterday Robin and I were in the store buying Gummi Bears, and he said I should tell you that half the people in the town will pack up and leave this year if they can’t get their taxes lowered.”

Doug, who was normally an easygoing man, felt a surge of real anger when he thought about the fat, gossipy druggist using children to carry his messages.

“Well, if Mr. Wall says something like that to you in future,” he told the girl, trying to keep his voice casual, “maybe you could suggest, my darling, that he might want to bring his concerns to me instead of telling them to a nine-year-old child.”

“I don’t like him.” Moira grimaced and scuffed her toe on the sidewalk. “Mr. Wall smiles all the time, but I think he’s mean.”

“Never trust a man who smiles too much,” Doug said. “Often they’re—”

He stopped abruptly, clutching Robin tightly in his arms.

“What’s the matter?” Moira asked, squinting up at her uncle.

Doug stared at the sandstone bulk of the Crystal Creek Hotel, a building on which he’d lavished a great deal of money and hard work since his arrival. The hotel’s facade glistened in the afternoon sunlight, its windows flaring gold against the darkening sky to the east. The freshly painted sign above the lobby entrance was as bright as a new coin, and all the windows shone.

A sleek yellow Mercedes was parked on the street in front of the hotel.

“Is it her?” Moira breathed, standing tensely at his side and staring along with him. “Do you think it’s the magic lady?”

“I believe it is.” Doug knew the reaction was absurd, but he felt his heart beginning to pound with excitement against his rib cage. “You know, sweetie, I do believe it is.”

“What does she want?”