Blueprints: A Novel (25 page)

His voice was kind. “Think I didn’t lose it at the beginning? Think I still don’t?”

“Yeah, I think that. You seem totally on top of things.”

“At the playground, sure. Sports are what I do.”

“Do you miss hockey?”

“I teach it summers.”

“I mean playing professionally.”

“No. That became lethal for me. Do you still play tennis?”

“I call my old pro once in a while, but then I get out on the court with him and it isn’t fun like it was. I’m totally out of shape.”

“I can’t believe that.”

“I’m so bad now there’s no way I’d ever win a match.”

“But you’re not playing matches.”

“Tell that to my competitive self. It thinks I need to win and gets really, really upset when I serve into the net or hit one out. ’Course, I won’t have time to do even that now that I have Tad. Tell me the parental panic gets better.”

“It gets better.”

“Are you just saying that because it’s what I want to hear?”

“No. It does get better.”

“I hope so.” She took a deep, steadying breath and glanced in surprise at the clock. They had been going back and forth for an hour, and though only the last had been voice to voice, it had calmed her. “I should let you go. But thank you. I’m totally grateful for June’s name.”

“Any other questions, just text.”

She gave a self-deprecating laugh. “You may come to regret that.”

“Only if you tell the other moms. I try to keep this number to myself.”

It was a warning. She held up a hand he couldn’t see. “It’s safe with me. No friends here, remember? But actually I do have another question. Toddler bed or twin?”

“Twin. Tad’s tall. He’ll outgrow a toddler bed in a year, and then you’re stuck buying another. I suppose you can afford that.”

“Maybe in terms of money, but not time. Twin it is. Thanks, Chip.”

“Charlie,” he corrected.

“I really like Chip.”

“I don’t.”

“Okay. Charlie.” She had to give him this, since he’d given her so much. “Thank you. Have a good Monday.”

*   *   *

As the new week approached, Caroline was frustrated on three counts.

The first involved Jamie, who hadn’t returned with Tad. No, Caroline hadn’t called to invite them, but, having agonized over pros and cons until she was a tangle of nerves, she believed that Jamie had to be the one to reach out. Since she was the one laying the groundwork for a core family of her own, she needed to show Caroline her place in it. The idea that showing involved not calling or coming over sent Caroline into a tailspin.

The second involved Theo, who called often enough that Caroline was becoming unsure of her role. He seemed to want her in on discussions that went well beyond holding his hand. He was asking her opinion, as if she were in management, and, bottom line there, she didn’t know what she was doing.

The third involved Dean,
Gut It!,
and work that perhaps, just perhaps, she shouldn’t be doing. Over the years, she had made a practice of spending time with the homeowners well in advance of a taping, her belief being that for an unscripted show to flow, the major players had to be fully comfortable with each other. She had set a date with the Millers weeks before and might have canceled if Dean hadn’t offered to go with her. They agreed not to mention a host change. But if the change went forward and Caroline’s on-screen time was reduced, Dean would be able to fill in. Well beyond that rationalization, though, his presence was a comfort. Seeming to understand that she was feeling fragile, he kept his hands to himself when they were with the Millers and limited himself to a brief touch now and again when they were not. For the Caroline who was starting to look at his hands as sensual tools, starting to realize that he smelled like a river banked with pines, starting to wonder, still and again, whether he had lost interest, and if not when he would make his move, it was frustrating as hell.

So by the time Monday morning arrived, she was looking forward to doing her own work in her own garage with her own tools.

But the day started badly. When she went to the MacAfee shop to pick up the dowels that had finally arrived, she found herself disconcertingly aware of the men. Five were there. She had worked with each at one time or another. They were physical guys in a physical trade, which meant that on a virility scale of one to ten, all were seven or above.

Irrelevant,
she told herself, but that didn’t stop her from noticing things she didn’t usually notice, like shoulders and chests. She even darted covert glances at a fly or two while she reviewed a stack of invoices relating to her work.

It was unsettling. Maddening, actually. She wasn’t about to jump any of them, but after spending a lifetime of blending in with the guys, what she saw now made her feel very different from them.

Angry that Dean had awakened her to this, she grabbed her dowels, strode back to the truck, and was heading home to the sanctity of her garage, where she could work with no one to ogle, when Theo called.

“Can you come to the office?” he asked. He didn’t sound imperious—Roy’s death had scraped away that rough outer layer—but he remained firm.

Caroline released a disappointed breath. “Now?”

“Please. We have a Barth problem.”

Oh dear. “Another one?” The first was the all-too-visible Dutch Colonial on the corner of South Main and Grove.

“Actually, a second and third.”

“Where?”

“One is a small frame near the town line. They can do what they want with that one, but the other is the Italianate in the center of town.”

A large house with a belvedere tower and arched windows, the Italianate was in as prominent a spot as the Dutch Colonial. “The Ellwells’ house? Why did we not know it was on the market?”

“That’s what we have to discuss,” came the rasping reply, and she agreed. Totally aside from whether she should be in on those discussions, her competitive edge went on alert.

Pulling into the first driveway she came to, she turned around and headed back into town. She arrived at Theo’s office to find Brad and Dean already there. Dean shot her a quick look to say that he was as puzzled by his presence as she was.

“Where’s Jamie?” Theo asked Brad.

“She’s not in yet. She had a new nanny coming. I’m sure she wanted to get Tad settled before she left. Her assistant knows to send her up as soon as she arrives.”

Theo grunted. He looked from face to face. “I don’t know what happened. We should have known about those other two houses.”

“Roy would have picked up on them,” Caroline said gently. “That’s why we need to hire someone to fill his spot.”

“No. This goes beyond marketing. It’s about being part of Williston.” He glowered at Dean. “That’s why you’re here.”

“I was wondering,” Dean rolled it right back. “I’m not family.”

“But you know Williston as well as anyone here,” Theo argued gruffly. “Have you not heard the rumors about Barth projects—framers defecting, plasterers stolen?”

“From us? Nope. Our guys are loyal. I’d guess the Barths are smart enough to use their own people. They start poaching our guys and they’ll be in trouble.”

“You can make that happen?”

“Oh yeah. Anyone who defects can kiss good-bye any hope of ever working with us again. Besides, the lumberyard knows me. One word, and Barths’ll find their stuff on backorder. I’m guessing they’ll use their own resources there, too, but I can spread the word. Once our guys know to look, they’ll report back anything fishy.”

Theo grinned. “And that, my man, is why you’re here. You’re the central clearinghouse when it comes to local subs.”

Caroline chuckled, thinking the term was apt.

Dean tossed a chin her way and asked Theo, “What’s she?”

“She’s family.”

“So is Dana,” Caroline said, referring to MacAfee’s in-house Realtor, “but she isn’t here.”

“She doesn’t deserve to be,” Theo groused. “She does fine when clients come to us, but she knows nothing about reaching out, and she doesn’t know Williston. She doesn’t live here. She doesn’t even
like
the town. Send her over to Fiona’s to schmooze and she sits alone in a booth eying her salad like it’s crawling with bugs. She does more harm than good.”

Caroline might have disagreed out of family loyalty; Dana MacAfee Langham was the daughter of Theo’s long-dead brother. But Theo was right. Dana was off-putting. “Have the Barths affiliated with a Realtor here?”

“Don’t know.”

“We’d better find out,” Caroline reasoned. “It’s all well and good for Dean to sabotage the Barths while they’re trying to build, but it’d be better if they had nothing to build in the first place. There are a couple of terrific Realtors in town who have an ear to the ground.”

“If that’s so, why didn’t we know about the Italianate?”

“Because those Realtors aren’t beholden to us. One of the best is a friend of mine.” From the nail shop, but Theo didn’t need to know that. “Would you consider putting a nonfamily Realtor on the payroll?”

Before he could answer, Jamie rushed in. Closing the door behind her, she slipped into the only free seat. “Sorry,” she told Theo. “I just got the message. What’s up?”

*   *   *

Jamie tried to focus while Brad filled her in, and again when Theo argued the pros and cons of
Family Builds,
but her pulse was racing from the dash to work and refused to settle down. The morning had been a nightmare from the get-go. Tad threw a tantrum when she put him in his SpongeBob T-shirt instead of the Handy Manny one he had worn the day before. “Hannymanny want Hannymanny,” he kept crying, but Handy Manny was in the hamper with chocolate pudding streaks on the front. She pulled off SpongeBob, pulled on Bob the Builder, pulled off Bob the Builder, pulled on Diego. “Not dis not dis,” he yelled until he saw Jake and the Never Land Pirates, but then he wanted her to read him the board book while she was trying to shower and dress. “June will read any book you want,” she promised him through the mirror as she tried to cover her freckles, a hopeless task what with sweat from nerves. Tad either picked up on her nerves or wanted his mommy and not a nanny, because he took one look at the woman who walked in the door and, in a burst of tears, clung fiercely to Jamie, which meant that when she finally pried him off, she had to change her skirt—because she had tripped carrying his cereal bowl to the sink and forgotten to clean up the puddle, which Tad must have played in while she showered.

He was still crying when she left. She felt like the meanest mother in the world.

And now this meeting. Again she told herself to focus, but her specialty was design, not management, and, being so far behind in her own work, she didn’t know why she was there. Brad must have seen that she was upset, but he didn’t so much as squeeze her hand.

Caroline saw. Caroline knew. Jamie sensed both, but she was still startled when Caroline suggested that they needed to hire not only an experienced marketer and a Williston-based Realtor but another architect.

“Why?” she asked, feeling a chill as she faced her mother across a terrifying chasm.

“Because one-third of your team is retiring, which means you’ll be the senior architect in your pod, and you could use the help.”

“I’m fine,” Jamie insisted and told herself it was true. But by the time she finally got back to her desk, she was alone with a lineup of folders that had her approaching panic.

When a hand touched her shoulder, she jumped.

“Are you really fine?” Caroline asked quietly, hunkering down beside her chair to keep their conversation private. As empty as Jamie’s pod was just then, the two other pods were filled.

“I will be once I get some work done. Believe it or not, Mom, my clients want me, not someone else.”

“You were offended.”

Jamie hadn’t called it, but yes, she was offended. Trust Caroline to home in on that. She had always been attuned to Jamie’s feelings. Add a negative overlay, though, and you had Caroline seeing a Jamie who couldn’t do her design work, or plan a wedding, or be a good mother without losing it over a dirty T-shirt, and therefore couldn’t
possibly
take over as the host of
Gut It!

Feeling a wave of anger, she was trying to think how to respond without provoking an all-out confrontation when Caroline said, “You’ve been telling me for a while that once Malcolm retires, you’d need to hire someone else. Why not now?”

“Because Malcolm hasn’t retired yet.”

“He’s not even working half time, and most of what he does do is from his retirement place in Vermont. He’s rarely in the office. He’d probably be relieved to have an excuse to clean out his desk.”

That desk was perfectly neat, proof that the man wasn’t around. Jamie’s intern’s desk was messier, though the woman was currently at a site rechecking specs.

“Yes, I know your clients want you,” Caroline said. “I don’t blame them. But why can’t you be the name designer and the brain power behind a project while a new hire does the follow-up work?”

“Because,” Jamie said as she swiveled to face her mother, “that isn’t how it works. A good architect won’t want to play second fiddle to me. (A) she’ll want to work with her own designs so that she can build her own name, (B) if she’s fully licensed, she’s probably older than me, and (C), given (A) and (B), if she isn’t a MacAfee, she’ll feel threatened.”

Caroline made a dismissive sound and stood. “The family thing has to change. We need a real estate agent, we need a marketer, we may well need a CEO if something happens to Theo, so what’s one more architect? Okay, if you don’t want to bring in a new person, what about shifting work around? We have two other design teams already on staff. Let them help.”

Jamie told herself that her mother cared. But if she did—if she had a
clue
what Jamie was facing with Brad, with Tad, with her own insecurities—she wouldn’t be harping on this.

“You think I can’t do my job,” she said.

“Which job are you talking about?” Caroline asked. “Seems to me you’re working three right now.” Her eyes softened along with her voice. “You don’t have to do this all on your own, Jamie. When you were a singles star, it was just you out there on the court facing an opponent, and it had to be that way. But this doesn’t. No one expects you to do everything yourself. There is nothing wrong with delegating.”