Blueprints: A Novel (53 page)

Taking a dish towel, she began to dry what Caroline rinsed. “Will you take over for him?”

Caroline touched the back of one rubber glove to her chest. Jamie thought she was trying to still a racing heart. But no, she was feeling her ring. It clearly gave her something—
Dean
clearly gave her something. “I fear I may want to,” she finally said. “If you think that doesn’t terrify me, think again.”

“You can do it.” Jamie had no doubt whatsoever. From nowhere came memory of the harsh words she’d had for her father before he died.
She’s just a carpenter,
he had said of Caroline, to which Jamie had replied,
If she’s just a carpenter, then you’re just a salesman.
They were both wrong. Seeing Caroline coordinate every detail of today’s presentation, Jamie had a new respect for the job. “You’ve been doing it since Dad died. And now you come home to Dean.”

“Actually, I come home to my garage before I’m much good to Dean. I’m a carpenter, baby. That’s my first love. I need to make things. I’ll always need that. It clears my mind. It
settles
me.” She rinsed several more dishes before saying, “Your father died too young. When someone tells me I’m getting old, like Claire did—”

“She was wrong.”

“Not entirely. “She rinsed another dish. “I don’t believe I’m too old for
Gut It!,
but I am getting older. We all are. I look at what happened to Roy. There’s a lesson in that.” She handed over the dish, then braced the heels of her gloved hands on the edge of the sink and looked at Jamie. “I have things I want to do besides host. Like this.” She hitched her chin at the counter filled with empty takeout containers. “Like working on Dean’s house, spending time with your family, going to Canyon Ranch with you. And yes, I want to help Theo. The little I’ve done has been satisfying. I didn’t expect that, but it is. I’d like to give heading MacAfee Homes a shot.”

Here it was, Jamie’s moment of truth. If Caroline didn’t have time to host the show, they were in trouble. Jamie couldn’t do it now. “Mom, I … I … I…”

“I know. Not the right time for you.”

“But Claire needs to know now.”

“Yes.” Caroline studied her face. “Your own family has to come first. That’s the way it should be. And it’s one of the reasons why the changes in my life are good. They’ll keep me busy. So. You’re busy. I’m busy. Which of us is less busy right now?”

Jamie bit back the quick
You
that was on the tip of her tongue. Both of their lives had gone from simple to complex in the instant when a tree was hit by lightning and fell on a car. If she respected that Caroline was wearing new hats, too, she had to be truthful. “I don’t know.”

Caroline did. “Me, baby. I don’t have kids. I don’t have a whole new family to get to know. You’ll sort it all out. Things will line up for you. Until then, I’ll stay on as host and ease you in as soon as you’re ready.”

It sounded like a plan, with one possible glitch. “Will Claire agree to that?”

“If we get the Weymouth land, she will.”

epilogue

The rain had let up several hours before, and though the late afternoon sun was more hesitant than Jamie might have liked, she couldn’t be greedy. The western sky, framed by the new window in her new kitchen, showed resilient swathes of orange just over the trees, as a dry June breeze pushed gunmetal clouds east.

How to describe what she felt as she stood at her new counter, which was a sandy granite with very practical, kid-friendly veins of burgundy and gray? Grateful for the weather, yes. But now, still, nervous about the food.

This was their first time having everyone in their new home, which actually was the old country house that Caroline had not wanted Dean to buy but then had helped rebuild. By the time it was done, Dean had already purchased another house, this one right next door to Caroline’s Victorian. With Caroline insisting that her cats shouldn’t have to suffer his dog full-time—and that, BTW, adults needed their own space, too—it was the perfect solution.

It was also the perfect solution for Jamie and Chip. With the prospect of more children in the future and frequent visits from his parents, they needed rooms. The old country house had plenty. And hadn’t Jamie drawn the plans that Dean followed in his gut-and-rebuild? Hadn’t this exact home design, which so captured her dreams, helped win the Weymouth project?

So Jamie and Chip had bought the country place from Dean, giving his parents’ place to Samantha, who was now outside with her eight-month-old daughter Maisie, Caroline and Dean, Chip’s parents Donald and Helene, Theo, and the boys, while Jamie frantically whisked a third attempt at dressing.

When Chip appeared at her shoulder, she raised a spoon to his mouth. “Still too sweet?” She was making homemade cole slaw. Well, not entirely homemade. Just the dressing. The cabbage was out of a bag—
no one
seriously cared who cut the leaves—but she had wanted to make the dressing herself. Hamburgers and hot dogs took no brain power. Dressing for cole slaw did. She had a bottle of store-bought, just in case. But this had become her cause, and, with the smell of sizzling burgers drifting in, she was down to the wire.

He licked the spoon, licked his lips, and smiled in a way that would have distracted her if she weren’t so focused on the task. “It’s
good.
”

“I want it great.”

“It is great.”

“You’re just saying that.”

“No, it really is. Everything you make is great.”

“Is that because I make so little that you’re pleased when I make anything at all?”

He rolled his eyes, pulled her close, and kissed a freckle. “It’s because even a year later I’m madly in love with you, and because you’re a better cook than you give yourself credit for, and because this dressing really is good.”

“Yeah?” she asked softly, losing that focus. Even a year later, she was madly in love with him, too.

“Yeah. Mix it in. But first…”

He gave her a full-on kiss. Even a year later, that was still special. Every. Time.

“Besides,” he said against her lips, “no one eating with us today is as discriminating as you are.”

Jamie drew back to disagree. “Your mom is. Look what she brought—three different dinners for the freezer, plus baked beans, pasta salad, and seven-layer bars for today, all homemade.”

“She loves cooking. It’s her hobby. And she has more time than you do.”

“Mommy!”
Tad cried, racing in, “Bud-man isn’t sharing!”

Buddy was on his heels. “He took Maisie’s toy, and he wouldn’t give it to her.”

“But I didn’t have a turn playing!”

“Maisie
wanted
it!”

“Buddy—” Chip began. Jamie stopped him with a touch. Sibling rivalry was still new and not easy for either adult, and while she adored that Chip looked out for Tad, she couldn’t let him blame Buddy just because he was older. Tad was three and had to learn to share. Besides, if it was Maisie’s toy, Buddy was right.

Bending low, she put an arm around each boy and said as much—and didn’t
that
say something? She was the ideological parent, Chip the blunt one. She was the rainy-day activity expert, he the one who taught them all to laugh when they fell. She was the one who still researched problems ad infinitum, while he solved them with a hug.

Tad pouted. “I didn’t get
my
turn.”

For a minute, Jamie couldn’t speak. The child was so like his father in perseverance that she was alternately horrified and touched. She would tell him stories when he was old enough to ask. For now, she simply kept pictures of Jess and Roy on his dresser. He knew to call the faces Mommy and Daddy. But he seemed perfectly fine calling Jamie and Chip the same.

The reminder was apt. His turn? “With a yard full of other toys? Theodore MacAfee, you are far from deprived. There are a dozen trucks in the sandbox, a water table on the deck, a lawn mower on the grass, and Transformers that Poppy just brought. But what happened to the tee?” She looked questioningly at Buddy. “I thought you guys were batting off it.”

“Poppy got tired of shagging the ball,” Buddy said, and while Jamie was thinking,
Well, yeah, because the two of you hit more than you miss,
Chip was more blunt.

“And one of you two couldn’t do it?”

Buddy looked up at him. “Fido peed on the deck.”

“Oh
no,
” Jamie cried, thinking of the sweeping they had done just an hour before to rid her beautiful deck of rain debris.

Fido was the German shepherd pup that Dean had given them as a housewarming gift. Oh, he had checked with them first, causing one of the few arguments between them. Jamie wanted a pair of quiet, clean, self-sufficient cats. Chip argued that a cat wouldn’t run with boys who clearly needed to run. When she argued that cat shelters were overflowing, he pointed out that the puppy Dean had chosen
was
born in a dog shelter. It was three against one. So Fido had arrived. They tried to rename him, alternately calling him Oliver, Chester, and Remington over the course of a week, before returning to Fido, which fit the dog, just as Dean had originally said. Now they just had to get him house-trained.

“Oh God, Chip. We’re
eating
on that deck.”

“Not to worry,” Caroline said as she entered the kitchen. “Dean hosed it off.” Her eyes were on the boys. “Is anyone here ready for a hot dog?”

“Me!”

“Me! Can I get mine first since I’m older?” Buddy asked.

“Baker.”
From Chip.

“I think,” Caroline said, “that Dean will hand them out at exactly the same time.” The two raced out. “Cole slaw done?” she asked Jamie, who shot Chip a
what-do-I-do
look.

He mimed mixing, which she quickly did and handed the bowl to Caroline. Just as quickly, Caroline passed it back to Chip with an affectionate grin.

“Would you take this to the table, like a good boy?”

Chip winked at Jamie in a way that said he got a kick out of her mother, which meant the world to her. Then he, too, was gone, leaving her with Caroline, who had the same huge heart as always, but today a different facade. For one thing, her nails, fingers and toes, were neon blue. For another, her shorts and blouse were white. The irony, of course, was that Jamie, who had lived in a pristine white world before becoming a mom, didn’t dare wear it now. But Caroline wore it well. Between those blue nails, her auburn hair, and her green eyes, she was as colorful as ever.

So color wasn’t what made her look different.

It wasn’t even the diamond ring that hadn’t once left her neck.

No. There was a richness to her now, an inner beauty, as though she’d come into her own long after she thought she already had.

That said, she smelled the same. Lily of the valley. Or was Jamie smelling the scent as it rose from the edge of the woods, where yards and yards of the real stuff carpeted the ground, green except for those tiny spikes of little white bells? The smell was ageless. It fit her mother perfectly.

“Are you nervous?” Caroline asked softly.

“With Chip’s parents here and Theo—” Distracted, she broke off. “He looks good, Mom. How did his tests go?” Theo had had a minor stroke the winter before, hastening Caroline’s ascension. Though he remained president of the company, he had named her CEO from his hospital bed. In the six months since, she had hired good people to help, including a CFO, a new legal head, and Samantha.

“He’s fine,” Caroline assured her. “Cagey as ever. There are times when I wonder whether he didn’t stage that little TIA just to get me on board.”

“But you and CEO are a fit. Better than me and kitchen. Yes, I’m nervous.” She indicated a Post-it on the wall by the fridge. “I have lists of what all to remember to put out—ketchup, mustard, pickles, olives, and—”

Caroline stoppered Jamie’s mouth. “Everything out there is terrific. The table is
full.
”

Jamie had a sudden thought. “Lemonade.” She started for the fridge, but Caroline caught her arm.

“It’s on the table, and if you’d forgotten, someone would have asked, you’d have come back in for it, and all would have been well. You don’t have to be perfect, baby. We’ve talked about that.”

“I know.”

“But that wasn’t what I meant,” Caroline said. “Are you
nervous
?”

Jamie didn’t follow, until her mother’s conspiratorial tone registered. Then her eyes lit. “You mean about watching the tape?” That was the second purpose for the party today. How could she have forgotten? Hel-lo. She’d had a few other things on her mind, like new sneakers for the boys, finishing touches in the guest room for Helene and Donald, and cole slaw dressing.

“It’s your debut,” Caroline said.

The hosting switch was complete, in part because Theo needed Caroline in the office, and in part because Jamie had taken to it so well. Caroline had hosted the fall project, to which Brian consented once he had a promise of the transition. They had just finished taping the spring project in Maine, with Jamie hosting from start to finish.

“It’s also Gina Anderson’s directorial debut,” Jamie pointed out, pinching back a smile. “Do we miss Claire?” The question was rhetorical. Her absence made things immeasurably more relaxed. And no, the Weymouth property wasn’t on the show. It never would be. The brothers were firm about that, and Jamie and Caroline had come to agree. They didn’t need
Gut It!
publicity to help sell the development; within months of inking the deal, MacAfee Homes had preliminary contracts on nearly every lot. Without the Weymouth property, the Barths hadn’t held much of a lure for Claire Howe, who decided that
Gut It!
didn’t hold much of a lure for her anyway, what with Brian intent on keeping the MacAfees and the MacAfees standing as one on who should host. An interim EP had directed the fall project, allowing Jamie and Gina to start fresh in the spring.

“If you’re nervous,” Caroline said now, “there’s no need. Your own personality emerged, and it worked, so if you’re worried about what the raw cut will show”—she tipped her head toward the great room, where a huge flat-screen awaited the postcookout showing—“do not be.”