Blueprints: A Novel (11 page)

“You don’t want your daughter to move ahead?”

“Whoa,” she cautioned with deadly calm, “I
always
want my daughter to move ahead. I’ve devoted my
life
to having my daughter move ahead. Do not
ever
think that I would do anything to hold my daughter back.”

*   *   *

It was true. But Caroline knew that the issue here wasn’t job advancement. It was caring. It was honesty, or the lack thereof, and the hurt it caused. It might even be betrayal, though she refused to go that far before she spoke with Jamie.

Claire was still backing her BMW out of the driveway when Caroline went inside and, heart pounding, tried Jamie’s cell, but the call went straight to voice mail. Realizing that the plane might not have touched down in Atlanta, she waited another few minutes, then tried again. This time, after the beep, she said, “Call when you land,” and clicked off.

Claire was gone.

Jamie was silent.

Caroline was too old.

Sinking down on the steps in the front hall, feeling deficient in ways she hadn’t in years, she waited for Jamie to call back. Antsy, she wandered out to the front porch, frowning at nothing in particular until her eye fell on the flowers the
Gut It!
cameraman had sent.
Heal well,
his card read.
You’re still our carpenter.
She had thought the wording strange at the time, but it took on new meaning now.

Who else knew? Claire and Brian, Roy and Jamie, the cameraman. Were e-mails making broader rounds even now? Was she the
last
to know? Had they purposely chosen to break the news when they knew she would be at home and out of commission?

Striding angrily down the steps and across the lawn, she paused at the junipers growing in the shade of a curbside oak. They needed pruning. But not now. Totally aside from the heat, her
wrist
wouldn’t work.

Because she’d had to have surgery on it. Because she’d been using it for so long.

Discouraged, she went back to the steps, sat on the lowest one, and hugged her knees. A neighbor returning home slowed and waved. She waved back but was in no mood to talk. Instead, she went back inside and tried Jamie again, wondering if Jamie had forgotten to turn her phone on. She didn’t usually. Whenever Caroline was with her, she turned on the phone the instant the wheels touched down. It was habit, even compulsion perhaps.

Unless she had deliberately not done it now because she didn’t want to be reached. Unless she had actually, horrifyingly
planned
to be away so that Claire would have to break the news.

Trying not to panic, Caroline went through to the kitchen and out the back door. Even as she headed for the garage, though, her mind remained in the kitchen. Jamie wanted to renovate it. She had been increasingly insistent. Out of guilt? That would make sense if she had known about this for a while or, worse, had lobbied for it. Would she seriously have done that?

Roy sure as hell would. Caroline had no doubt about that, as she slipped into the garage. He might not have come up with the idea, but he was probably on the phone with Claire right now, grinning that cocky grin of his as he reveled in Caroline’s demotion.

Inhaling the familiar scent of sawdust, she ousted Roy from her mind. She didn’t want him here. This place was hers.

Up until five years before, she had lived in the house they shared while married, and though it was a dozen years before that when he moved out and signed over the deed, that house had never felt entirely hers. This one did—both the main Victorian and this garage, which had the same facade as the original carriage house but was a totally different beast inside. Oh yes, it had a small office in the second-floor loft, but more important to Caroline was the belly below.

The equivalent of a generous two-car garage, it was outfitted with superb lighting and the latest in ventilation systems to remove sawdust from the air. That said, there was just enough of it gathered at the feet of the worktables to bring her comfort. Add to its smell the fainter ones of glue, wood stain, even a lingering electrical smell from her new belt saw, and she was in her element. Her tools were on shelves and wall hooks, or mounted on tables, with goggles and gloves lying nearby. Mingling among them, though, and just as precious to her were the relics from her father’s workshop. Most were small hand tools. Running her hand now over a palm sander that had been revolutionary in his day, she was taken back to her roots.

She was a carpenter. The scent of sawdust, like comfort food, was an anesthetic. She was okay, she told herself. She didn’t need to host a TV show.

Momentarily soothed, she tried Jamie again, but when she hit voice mail, the soothing leeched away. Jamie knew. Jamie prepped. Jamie plotted.

But knowing Caroline would be hurt?

She thought about asking Roy and quickly vetoed the idea. All he would do was gloat.

Theo, on the other hand, was her champion. He might have insight into what was happening and why. But running to her ex-father-in-law at the first sign of trouble just wasn’t her way.

Unable to work because of her hand and too unsettled to sit still, she left the garage and paced the yard as she waited for Jamie’s call. But the cell in her hand remained silent, and the longer it did that, the more damning things seemed. Jamie was taking her sweet time returning her call, which was so not like Jamie that there had to be more going on.

Plane trouble? Back inside, she checked the airline’s website.
ARRIVED
, it said.

She thought of calling Dean. But he was in the air somewhere in the middle of the country, and besides, his solution to life problems was either to ride on the Harley or to hunt.

Annie would be as angry as Dean. But she was doing a huge installation at a MacAfee project an hour away. And Caroline didn’t want to involve anyone else until she talked with Jamie.

She wanted to convince herself that being upset was petty and that she’d be fine as long as she was still part of the show. She wanted to say she didn’t care if Jamie hosted.

But the silence grew louder with each minute that passed, so that by the time Jamie finally called, Caroline was ready to believe the worst.

seven

Jamie’s heart lurched when she heard Caroline’s message. It was too short and too tense, not like her mother at all. And though Jamie was in a car with her client and needed to maintain a semblance of professionalism, there was no way she wasn’t calling right back.

Picking up, Caroline said her name, just her name.

“What’s wrong?” Jamie asked in the lowest of voices.

“Claire was here.”

Jamie pressed her fingers to her forehead, as much to shield her voice from the driver as to keep herself calm. “She wasn’t supposed to do that.”

“How long have you known?”

“One day.”

“That’s not what she said. She said you’ve known for a while.”

“Not true.”

“She said they’ve been grooming you for this.”

“I had no idea.”

“She said you were all in favor of it.”

“She lied.”

“But you did know about it both times you were here yesterday.”

“Yes. But the time wasn’t right to discuss it.” Nor was this, what with a client sitting three feet away. Voice even lower, she said, “I can’t talk right now. Can I call later?”

She heard what sounded like a frustrated sound, then a click, and the line went dead.

*   *   *

Caroline’s rational self understood why Jamie couldn’t talk. The emotional one did not. Thinking that if Jamie was as innocent as she claimed, she would find a way to call back, she waited anxiously on the porch. She walked through the house. She spent time with the cats.

Again she considered calling Dean. He would get the aging part. Again she considered calling Annie. She would get the betrayal part.

I do not want this change,
Jamie texted an hour later.

Caroline didn’t reply. Texting was a cop-out.

But another came a short time later.
I did not ask for it. They just want it to look that way. I’ve been used.

You’re not the victim here,
Caroline shot back. When she calmed a bit, she typed,
Who used you?

Brian and Claire. Dad.

What did Roy do?

Supported the other two. He should have said NO.

Your father?
Caroline wrote back with sarcasm aplenty.

Jamie didn’t respond as they got into the lunch hour. Caroline’s hopes rose when the phone rang, but it was Brad.

“Jamie is panicking,” he said. “She’s had two minutes in the ladies’ room, no other time alone. She’s worried about you. She’s worried you’re furious. How are you doing?”

“I’ve been better,” Caroline said in what she thought was a commendably benign voice.

“She feels terrible about this.”

“Which part—the switch or her role in it?” she asked and instantly regretted it. She didn’t want to discuss this with Brad. Jamie should have called her during those two minutes in the ladies’ room.

Apparently Brad didn’t want to discuss it with her either. What he said was focused on the narrowest angle. “She doesn’t want you angry at her. She’s agonizing down there.”

“Well, I’m agonizing up here, but that doesn’t help either one of us, does it. Listen, I appreciate your calling, but Jamie and I really need to talk.”

“Can I tell her you’re okay?”

“No. That would be a lie. Hey, Brad, I have to run. Thanks for calling.”

*   *   *

Stuck in a car with her client in thick traffic thanks to an accident, Jamie was late getting back to the airport, and then reached her departure gate only after a fiasco at security during which she spilled the contents of her bag. Frazzled and no small amount exhausted, she corralled runaway print tubes from under the conveyor belt while the security guards watched in amusement. Knowing the plane was boarding, she ran. It wasn’t until her things were in the overhead bin—actually, in a bin farther back, since those over her own seat were full—and she had climbed awkwardly over the legs of a large man who chose not to stand, for some reason, that she was able to call Caroline. Her mother picked up right away, but Jamie spent so long trying to explain why she hadn’t been able to call sooner that she sounded defensive even to herself.

“I’m landing at ten,” she concluded as the flight attendant began the instructions for takeoff. “Can I drive right there?”

Caroline nixed that. When Jamie asked why, she said she needed time, and when Jamie insisted they had to talk, Caroline said, “Not tonight.”

Jamie didn’t mention Brad’s call, though she knew he had made it. He had texted that it went just fine, but she didn’t know what that meant, and she hadn’t had time to call him to find out.

So she didn’t stop at Caroline’s on her way home from the airport. She did talk with Brad, but when she tried to pin him down about his conversation with Caroline, she didn’t learn much. “She’s feeling self-pity,” he suggested.

“Seriously?” Jamie shot back, unimpressed with his analysis and thinking that her mother had a right to feel that and more. To his credit, Brad was contrite. He didn’t offer to drive over to comfort her, though, and for a second night in a row, she was glad. He had meetings with clients Saturday morning, and she planned to sleep in.

*   *   *

In fact, she slept poorly and was glad for an excuse to stop trying as soon as daylight appeared. Though clouds covered the sky, she was able to drive to Caroline’s with the top down, but took no pleasure from it this day. The stifling air reflected her mood, which undermined the comfort she normally felt approaching the Victorian. When she thought of her mother, she ached.

The truck was parked at the garage, but Caroline wasn’t on the porch. When Jamie stuck her head in the front door and called, Master’s meow was the only response. As she scrubbed the back of his neck, she heard a faint noise over his purring.

Ducking back out, she followed that noise to the garage. The shrill buzz of the table saw was as familiar to her as a lullaby. The sheer normalcy of it raised her hopes.

Caroline couldn’t hear her over the noise of the saw. Nor would she catch movement, with her goggles distorting her peripheral vision. She wore a T-shirt so faded that it looked gray and very old, very worn jeans. With her hair in a high knot and protective gloves on her hands, she was carving a piece of wood at one of three worktables. If her wrist hurt, she was ignoring it. The intensity of her forward stance suggested full concentration.

Jamie was wondering how to get her attention without making her jump when it struck her that Caroline knew she was there. Her jaw had grown tighter. Likewise her forearm. And rather than surging and ebbing as she shaped the wood, the whir of the saw was steady, determined, angry.

Not good.

“Mom,” she called, then did it again. Finally, with a sigh, Caroline silenced the saw and straightened. After raising the goggles, she removed her gloves—gingerly when it came to the right one. The bandage on her wrist was gone, replaced by a Velcro support.

“That’s an improvement,” Jamie said in a tentative voice. “Is it okay?”

Caroline brushed at the wood, smoothed it with her hand, and bent to eye it from a different angle. “It’s fine.”

But her mother was not. What little Jamie could see of her face looked pale. Her failure to look at Jamie spoke volumes. “You’re angry at me.”

“I’m angry at the world,” Caroline declared in a resigned burst as she straightened to her full height. Jamie might have appreciated her honesty if those so-like-her-own eyes hadn’t met hers then. They were guarded to the point of being foreign. “
Should
I be angry with you?”

“For not telling you myself? Yes,” Jamie readily confessed. “For Claire’s decision? No. I had no part in that, Mom. Didn’t ask for it. Don’t want it.”

“Have you told that to Claire?”

“No. She won’t return my calls.”

“Did you tell Roy?”

“Yes. He said they’d just hire an outside host and that I’d be jeopardizing the show.”