“I don’t know.”
“We could always cancel the show.”
“Do that,” Dean warned, “and we’ll take it to another station. We’re the show, Claire. The players are all MacAfee people. If we leave, they do.”
“Well, aren’t you full of yourself,” she remarked.
Caroline was thinking that he had a right, that he looked authoritative as hell with his dark blazer and tie, shadowed jaw, and combed-back hair, when Brian said nervously, “This is not productive.” He addressed Caroline. “Feelings are raw right now. Once you get past Roy’s death, we’ll meet and hash this out. Agreed?”
“Absolutely,” Caroline affirmed, but she wasn’t thinking of any meeting when Dean walked her to her truck a short time later. She was thinking of Dean’s hand at her back, guiding her with just the lightest touch. She was thinking that he hadn’t ever done that before, that she should speed up her pace to shrug off his hand, that it didn’t mean anything.
But it had been really nice to have him on her side against Brian and Claire.
Not that that meant anything either. These were extenuating circumstances.
Still. Given the hollowness she felt about so much of her life, a little protectiveness was nice.
twelve
The funeral should have been the end of it, but Jamie’s phone didn’t stop ringing with Willistonians wanting to remember Roy. She couldn’t cut them off; she wanted to remember him, too. But between talking with them, keeping Tad clean, fed, and busy, and trying to squeeze in little bits of work, she was exhausted—which was likely why she didn’t see the potential for trouble before it hit Friday morning. She was making breakfast at the kitchen island, alternately dicing pears, stirring oatmeal, and watching Tad play. He was on the floor with Legos, and while the blocks were large enough for him to be able to snap together, his great joy just then—hands clapping, squeals of “Look, Mamie, Taddy do it”—was loading them in a box and dumping them out, again and again. After a particularly enthusiastic dumping, several blocks tumbled behind the sofa. She saw him run there and felt a silent alarm even before her beautiful tulip floor lamp began to totter. Dropping the paring knife, she whipped around the island and lunged to catch it, but it crashed to the wood floor, missing the area rug that might have protected it and shattering all four glass shades.
Tad’s eyes shot to hers. They were huge. She was feeling a stab of desperation thinking of her lamp, her home, her neat life that was wrecked, when the little boy’s eyes filled with tears.
“Don’t move,” she warned him and, advancing only enough to grab him, stepped gingerly away from the shards. She didn’t breathe until he was safely on a stool at the island, but his eyes remained large enough to destroy her. Roy would have yelled at him; he had certainly yelled enough at her when she’d been a child. Roy didn’t like accidents.
How ironic was it that his life had ended in one?
But thanks to that Tad was hers now, and Roy had challenged her to be the most responsible person in his life. She had to deal.
Framing the child’s warm little head with her hands, she lowered her face to his. “It’s okay, monkey. It’s only a thing.” So Caroline had always said. She hugged him close, humming to Pandora’s rendition of “Old MacDonald” streaming from her iPad.
“I want Mommy,” he whimpered against her middle. He was saying it more and more, clearly not satisfied with the nonanswers she gave. She would have to offer more one day, but what to say?
She was spared it now when he asked for the moose. Retrieving it from the sofa, she included it in a group hug.
Most. Responsible. Person.
With a steadying breath, she ignored the fact that her pristine white condo was in shambles and said, “Accidents happen, Taddy. You didn’t mean to do it. But those little pieces of glass need to be picked up or these bare little feet”—she squeezed one—“will be cut.” She was looking around, wondering where to start, when Brad came in from the garage.
“Oh look, sweetie. Here’s Brad,” to whom she called, “Careful,” though unnecessarily. The dismay on his face said he had seen the damage.
“You loved that lamp,” he said.
She didn’t need the reminder. The lamp sprouted from a wrought-iron base into four stems of different heights, each topped with a tulip-shaped globe. For all the small items she had put away in the name of childproofing, she hadn’t thought to remove this—likely because, yes, she had loved it.
It’s only a thing. Same with her favorite glass vase, broken yesterday. It wasn’t that Tad was destructive. He was two years old, active and curious, both good in the overall scheme—but that thought raised others. Was he developing normally? Was there a line between active and ADHD? Did he have learning disabilities or food allergies? How would he be socialized?
As an aunt, she hadn’t had to worry about these things. As a parent, she did. Today was her sixth day in that role. Having no experience with other two-year-olds, she knew nothing. She had ordered a slew of books and had read site after site about what two-year-olds typically did, but no two articles were exactly the same, and none were as good as getting advice from her mother. But Caroline was busy with Theo and MacAfee Homes. And they hadn’t resolved the host change, which hung like a sword over her head.
So she went with her new favorite mantra. “It can be replaced.” Then, “Give me a hand here, Brad. Broom and dust pan first?” Holding Tad on her hip, she took the oatmeal off the stove and put the knife out of reach before setting him up at the lacquered dining table with a coloring book and crayons. His strokes were wild, and he held the crayon wrong, but she wasn’t about to correct him. Instinct said that his self-esteem was more important than perfect form.
Or was this the kind of thing she had to correct before his muscles formed memory? She didn’t know the answer to that either. Caroline would. She would ask.
Worried about when they would talk and whether, totally aside from their current rift, she could seriously ask Caroline’s advice on caring for Roy MacAfee’s child, she busied herself vacuuming while Brad swept. The exertion was good, though when she knelt to run her hand over the floor and peer at it from a different angle to make sure every last shard was gone, she found a tiny piece of that earlier vase. Not good. She was a novice at parenthood to begin with, and mistakes didn’t make her more confident. Always before, when she set out to do something big, she had a game plan. She had lessons, courses, mentors, coaches, and practiced until she got it right. This, here, now, was walking a high wire without a net.
She desperately needed Caroline.
“You look frazzled,” Brad said.
She closed her eyes and massaged tension from her forehead, but, hell, she felt frazzled. It didn’t help that Brad was rested, freshly showered, and neatly dressed for work while she wore yesterday’s tee and shorts, a slapdash ponytail, zero makeup, and an expression that had to be strained. Beside him, she must look like something the cat had dragged in.
“I’m not sleeping well,” she told Brad, which, of course, he couldn’t know, since he hadn’t slept over since the accident.
“I thought Tad slept through the night.”
“He does. The problem is me. I wake up stressing and can’t fall back to sleep.”
“Maybe you need to be at Roy’s house.”
The suggestion alone made her stomach clench. “What difference would that make?”
“There’s more room. You could spread out.”
Half a dozen family friends had said similar things at Roy’s after the funeral. This house is gorgeous … You’re lucky to have it … Easy enough to sell the condo … The yard here is perfect for Tad. But totally aside from her own distaste for Roy’s, being there meant that Tad would be waiting for his parents to come home. He would be expecting things to return to normal, without understanding that normal had changed. Her gut told her he was better off at her condo for now, and as for the tightness of the layout here, she didn’t want to be more t
han a single wall away from him at night.
She doubted Brad would understand. He was clearly disheartened as he looked beyond the broken lamp, and oh yes, she knew what he saw. All sense of urban chic was gone, replaced by scattered toys, one empty sippy cup, clean diapers and wipes, one half-filled sippy cup, a mound of clothes newly removed from the dryer, and, on the floor, the pajamas she had just taken off Tad—all now with Raffi singing “Baby Beluga” in the background.
Her sanctuary was decimated. There were times when she looked around and couldn’t breathe, other times when she couldn’t see through panicky tears. It wasn’t like she didn’t clean and neaten, but as soon as she did, there was another stained shirt, another dirty sippy cup, another disgusting diaper. And toys? She was constantly picking up toys. But here they were again, so why bother?
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Brad asked very, very quietly.
Her eyes flew to his. “What do you mean?” But she knew, oh yeah, she knew, and was shaking her head before he could utter the name Maureen. “No. Absolutely not.”
“She’s his grandmother,” he said in the same low voice. “She’s an experienced mother—”
“—whose kids are grown and whose husband doesn’t want Tad and who didn’t even have a good relationship with Jessica. She can’t take him, Brad. I wouldn’t let her. She doesn’t love Tad like I do,” Jamie whispered with force, horrified as much by Brad’s insensitivity as by the idea of giving up her half brother.
But Brad wasn’t done. He didn’t raise his voice, never raised his voice. She almost wished he would, if only so that she could yell back. The need was building in her.
“You don’t owe this to your father,” he said.
“Excuse me? I absolutely do! I owe it to him, and to Tad, and to me. I want him, Brad.” Staring at him in fury, she tugged the elastic off her hair and finger-combed the long strands into a fresh ponytail. “And anyway,” she said, still glaring, “Desideria’s coming Monday to clean.”
Looking unsettled—she had never before spoken this harshly, but was tired of coddling him—he pushed up his glasses. “Okay.” He was buying time. She could see him trying to think. And he had two choices, he realized. He could be positive, as in We’ll make this work. What do I need to do to help? Or he could be negative.
Her heart fell with his opening “but.”
“But it’s only a stopgap, Jamie. You can’t stay here long-run. It’s way too small, and you can’t do with only Desideria. You need a nanny. It helps that MacAfee is closed this week, so you haven’t had to work—”
“Oh, I’ve worked,” she cut in, annoyed that he would suggest she was slipping. “Our clients need jobs done. That’s what I do when I wake up in the middle of the night.”
“Where?” he asked—a valid question, since her office was now Tad’s bedroom.
She eye-pointed to the table where Tad was happily coloring—and gasped. “Oh no.” She rushed over. “No, no, monkey, keep it on the paper.” She showed him how, then scrubbed at one of several crayon marks that marred the white lacquer, but a bare fingertip wasn’t much of an eraser. A cleaning spray would work—or hurt?
Taylor. Taylor had chosen the table. Taylor would know.
Brad stood nearby with his hands in his pockets, shoulders slumped. “You need a dedicated office, especially if you’ll be working more at home. You can have that at Roy’s.”
“Not happening,” Jamie insisted.
“Why not?”
“(A) That house is too big, (B) it gives me a headache, and (C) it’s my father, not me.”
“Redecorate, and make it you.”
“Why spend the money? We’re planning to build our own house anyway. I’ll sell Roy’s house, and we’ll build something that’s plenty big enough for us and kids.” Not that she had drawn up any plans. She had kicked ideas around, both in her head and with Brad, but time hadn’t allowed for more. And that was before Roy’s death.
Brad looked troubled. He might want a house, but he didn’t want Tad. He was so not ready for this. She was about to scream that he needed to be a responsible person, too, when the phone rang. She was upset enough to answer without checking the screen first.
“Jamie, it’s Claire.”
She grimaced. Claire had been calling daily, and though the messages she left never asked for callbacks, their regularity pointed to a motive beyond saying hello.
“Hey, Claire.”
“How are you?”
Jamie looked around the wreck of her condo and said, “Hanging in there.” She watched Brad lean over Tad and point at the lines of a clown’s hat to show the child where to color. “Things are a little weird, if you know what I mean.”
Fisting a green crayon, Tad scribbled over the clown’s feet.
“I do. I wouldn’t be bothering you if I wasn’t getting pressure on my end. We need a final decision here. Publicity wants to put together preliminary pieces before the Fourth. Are you ready to commit?”
“Oh, wow. I’m sorry, Claire. I haven’t been able to really think about it,” which was a bald-faced lie. Jamie had thought about it for hours. She knew that if Claire could get a commitment from her, Caroline would back down—and Jamie’s relationship with her mother would be permanently screwed.
Claire was using her again.
She might have said something to that effect if Brad hadn’t been trying to reposition the crayon in Tad’s hand. She was rounding the island when Claire said, “It’s been a hard week for you. When you’re ready to talk, will you give me a call?”
Jamie was about to remove Brad’s arm when Brad did it himself in response to a cool stare from Tad. “Sure,” she told Claire. “Thanks for understanding.” She ended the call.
“I don’t think he likes me,” Brad murmured.
Well, duh, said the little voice in her head. You don’t like him. He feels that.
With a defeated breath, she slipped an arm through his. “He doesn’t know you. You have to play with him.” Brightening on an idea, she said, “Stay home with us today, Brad? A few hours, and Tad will love you. You said it yourself. The office is officially closed.”
His gray eyes ruled it out even before she finished. “There’s still a skeleton crew, and a family member should be there. But I miss you. We haven’t been alone together at all. How about dinner out tonight, just us two? Can you get a sitter?”
Trying to weigh his needs against Tad’s, she said a sad “How can I? Right now, he needs me with him. It hasn’t even been a week.”
Sweet children’s voices sang, If you’re happy and you know it wear a smile …
She pegged a stare at the iPad. Seriously?
Brad shared her dismay, likely for a different reason. “What station is that?”
“Toddler Pandora.”
… tee hee …
He wasn’t amused. She saw disappointment, concern, maybe even annoyance—and she tried to understand. He didn’t know where he stood now that she had Tad. He was feeling left out, feeling unloved. He needed reassurance.
But so do I!
Which basically put her between a rock and a hard place.
“Okay,” she said as much to herself as to him, “maybe this weekend? If a sitter comes after he’s asleep, he won’t know I’m gone.”
“What happens with work next week?” Brad asked.
She hadn’t thought that far—actually, she had and had pushed the thought aside. That probably wasn’t the smartest thing. Once the weekend was done, she would be down to the wire. “How do I find a nanny? How do I know who’s good?”
Brad shot her a bewildered look. Then he glanced at his watch. “I have to run.”
She might have begged him to stay if she felt it would help. But really? His being there was only one more messy thing.
“Say good-bye,” she mouthed, hitching a glance toward Tad.
Brad ruffled the boy’s hair. “Have a good day, sport.”
Jamie walked him to the door, where he ga
ve her a kiss that was sweet, gentle, and totally devoid of passion. For the first time, that bothered her—angered her, even. She needed something stronger, something that said he was on board with this change to her life, something with promise.
* * *
“About what you told Brian and Claire at the funeral,” Caroline began, leaning forward to see past Champ, who rose from the backseat like a sentinel. They were in Dean’s truck on the way to a new project for which he wanted her to build custom cabinetry. She had plenty of work of her own, but it was a small house—and the truth was, a new project was always a distraction, and she needed one of those. She ached when she thought of Jamie, ached when she thought of Gut It! She also ached when she thought of Theo, who seemed to be aging by the day, which she would do one day, too, and then what?
Dean seemed to know her frame of mind. Since the funeral, he had rarely let a few hours pass without checking on her. He hadn’t said anything about sex. She wondered if he regretted mentioning it in the first place. That would probably be best, she told herself, though the part of her that was feeling old and unwanted was sorry. Whether she wanted sex or not, being pursued was a good thing.
“The possibility of taking Gut It! to another station?” she reminded him. “I’ve been thinking about it. It’s not a bad idea.”
“I’ve been thinking about it, too,” he said in a voice that rumbled over a cracked road. Nudging Champ back, he shot her a look. “It sucks.” No rumble there, just a deep voice disagreeing in a familiar way.
“Why?”
“Because the risk is too great. We’re already with the strongest local station. No other one will do the show as well or be able to match the syndication schedule. Switching stations would have been easier if Roy was here to work a deal—”
“We don’t need Roy.”
“I can understand your being angry at Claire—”
“Anger doesn’t begin to describe it, and I’m angry at Brian, too. It’s fine to say Claire is into the power of it, but Brian is old enough to know better.”
Blueprints Page 15
