First, though, a breakfast meeting with the Realtor. Over boiled eggs at a blessedly air-conditioned Fiona’s, Linda Marshall led her through a comparative market analysis that gave Caroline a grounding on the latest in recent sales of other MetroWest properties, broken down by the age of a house, its location, and its size. Linda didn’t notice the necklace, but that didn’t mean Caroline forgot it was there. Not for one minute. It’s about us, Dean had said, and the words were never far from her mind. She pressed her fingers to the ring often, as if she were catching her breath or suffering heartburn. In a sense, she was. With each touch, it radiated warm little shocks of pleasure, pride, and comfort, and while a woman who was self-confident enough to dress chic and drive dusty shouldn’t need comfort, she did.
Armed with Linda’s report and a realistic grasp of the kind of homes they could build and sell, she sped to the MacAfee Building to see if Jamie was there.
* * *
As helpful as her sister-in-law was in keeping videos streaming and the boys hydrated, she couldn’t help Jamie with work. And Jamie tried, really she did. Running downstairs and back up every few minutes to check on the boys, she managed to draw the beginnings of a house on one of the acre lots. Then, when her mind skipped around, she worked the upstairs of one of the condos into an odd part of the manor house roof. Desperate to jump-start her productivity, she turned away from the computer and made drawings by hand. That was how she often began a project. But even if caffeine hadn’t been making her hands shake, she knew that sketches wouldn’t impress the Weymouths.
She returned to the computer, but the harder she tried, the more frightened she grew. Mothers didn’t stick their kids in front of the TV when they were sick. They sang to them, played with them, held them. So Jamie was as lousy a mother as she was an architect—with one big difference. Short-term, the boys would survive. This project would not. At tomorrow’s meeting, there might be negotiation over money or timing or the wisdom of showcasing the project on Gut It! But if Jamie couldn’t get her act together and make a stunning presentation, they could kiss the whole thing good-bye.
The weight was on her shoulders. Scores of jobs and priceless publicity were at stake, as well as enough money to keep MacAfee Homes afloat while the company recovered from Roy’s death and Brad’s departure. And Caroline? If she was truly taking over from Theo, and Jamie’s incompetence spoiled this chance for her to shine, how awful would that be?
* * *
Once inside the MacAfee Building, Caroline went looking for Jamie. She wasn’t there, but any number of other people were, all jumping at the opportunity to talk about Jamie’s marriage. Extricating herself as quickly as possible—“Theo’s waiting,” she said more than once—she hurried on down the hall, fully understanding why Jamie hadn’t come here. How to work in a bee’s nest? The buzz would have made it impossible.
She shared Linda’s report with Theo, who then added final instructions for her before she went to the bank. She might have saved time by simply phoning the banker. But Theo was insistent. “The bank is in the center of town, and Fred McDonough has been a solid adviser. He’ll feel he’s valued if you make time for a face-to-face meeting.” The subtext, of course, was Theo wanting Caroline to begin the stroking of locals that he and then Roy had done. She would have had no problem with that if she hadn’t been impatient to get to Jamie, but she figured that a few more minutes wouldn’t hurt.
Besides, Fred McDonough was a convivial guy, who did seem impressed that she’d taken the time to come. He talked about Roy for a while, and asked in depth about Theo. He wanted to know when Jamie and Brad were getting married, and while Caroline was gratified to know that word hadn’t spread so far so soon, what could she say? Much as she didn’t want to spend time talking about this, she couldn’t lie.
So she gave him the bare facts and smiled at his startled expression. “Sudden, huh? They just met. No shotgun wedding, just love at first sight.”
Saying the words made them real. As she touched her own ring for the grounding it brought, she couldn’t help but compare Jamie’s handful of days to her own years and years. So different. Perhaps that was how it should be?
“It’s been a rough month for her,” Caroline said, “but she’s really happy. I’m counting on you to assure people of that. Yes?”
“Yes, yes, of course, I’ve known that girl since she was born,” Fred reminded her, “and, of course, the Kobiks have always been clients here.” She waited for him to remark on Chip’s past, but he did not. Rather, seeming all the more dedicated to MacAfee Homes, he gave her a vote of confidence on the Weymouth project and a promise to study the Realtor’s comps alongside the MacAfee accounts, and let Caroline know by day’s end how high they could bid.
Leaving the bank, Caroline drove to Jamie’s condo, where there would be a fully equipped office and a guarantee of silence. But the place was deserted—no car in the drive, no gooseneck lamp in the office window.
Of course not, Caroline. She doesn’t live here anymore.
Still, she unlocked the door and checked inside, only to be met by a telling heat.
She headed back to the office, needing to study Dean’s cost estimates before he gave them to the banker. Then she drove to Emory Elementary. The street was lined with cars, and the playground was mobbed. Curious, she parked and approached the chain-link fence.
The entire school appeared to be there, with teachers milling around and groups of parents watching from the sidelines. The students were divided into teams. Orange shirts kicked soccer balls at a goal; blue shirts shot baskets. Greens dribbled a kickball around an obstacle course, while reds and whites competed at tetherball. The tallest adult on the field, Chip was with a large group of children who stood body to body holding the edges of a large round parachute. Purple was on the left half, yellow on the right half. Chip held a kickball ball over his head for a moment, pointing around with last-minute instructions before tossing the ball onto the chute and blowing his whistle. Instantly, the children began feverishly waving the parachute up and down in an attempt to get the ball into a hole on their side. Once it fell through, he called out the score, tapped a student to retrieve the ball, then began the game again.
She watched three cycles before he spotted her. He did a double take, eyes widening before he waved over another teacher and trotted to where she stood. His face was sweaty, but his look of fear was worse. “Is everything okay?”
“Yes. No. I need to apologize to you, but this is clearly not the time. More immediately, I need to see Jamie. The silence between us is deafening, but she isn’t at the office.”
“She’s at my house, and she really needs you,” he said, seeming suddenly very young and as frightened as he had been in command with his students seconds before. “The boys were throwing up all night, so Jamie couldn’t sleep or work, and my sister showed up unannounced, which may be good or bad, I don’t know.” He swabbed his forehead with an arm that left his hair sticking up. “I need to be there with them, only this is the last day of school, and field day is my thing, it’s becoming a tradition. I’m texting her, and she says everything’s okay, only I know it isn’t, and I can’t leave here for a couple more hours. Not that there’s a whole lot I could do to help her. I’m just a meathead, she’s the brains. She knows what she wants to draw, but she’s second-guessing it all and looking at the clock and panicking. This is the first time she’s had to deal with illness, so she’s worried about the boys. She may be furious I’m telling you all this—she’s so damn independent when it comes to work, and the whole thing with you is eating at her. I’ll be home by four, but if you could stop off before then, I’d be forever grateful. Do you know the address?”
Of course she did. She had looked it up in the town directory the first time Jamie mentioned Chip. Gently nudging him back to the field, she returned to her truck, called Dana MacAfee Langham to delay their midday meeting—No, Dana, it can’t be helped, I know you don’t like rush hour traffic, but two isn’t
terribly late, yes, that’s fine, if you can’t make it I’ll understand—and headed for 403 Beech.
* * *
Jamie felt sick to her stomach. She did not have, could not have, refused to have what the boys had. There were plenty of other reasons why her insides were jangly, like lack of sleep, lack of food, lack of faith that she was heading anywhere good with the plans she had drawn. Just thinking of that made her sweat, so she lowered the thermostat again.
Tad was napping against her with his thumb in his mouth, his small legs straddling her hips, and Moose’s head sticking up between his arm and his ear. She touched a tiny swell of baby fat that lingered at the crease of his elbow, then uncoiled a long curl from his forehead. He needed a haircut. She kept putting it off, letting the summer air simply tighten the curls. This was all hair that his parents had seen and touched and kissed. Cutting it off would be severing a part of that tie. She knew she would have to do it eventually, but not yet, not yet.
She kissed his forehead; he cuddled deeper. In that instant, she wished she could walk away from the computer and just be a mother for the rest of the day.
But her empty screen haunted, taunted. Desperate to fill it, she kept Tad framed by her arms while her hands worked between keyboard and mouse, constructing the house to which, in her dreams, she would take the boys for quiet soothing the next time they were sick. It would be in a secluded corner of the property, maybe a hilly spot surrounded by hemlock and pine, with thick grass for rolling here, boulders for climbing there. She gave the house vertical interest, with tall windows, gables, and a steep-pitched roof reminiscent of the manor, but then, tired enough to be foggy, she just let go and tossed in features that she loved.
She was horrified when Tad’s stirring woke her from her own stupor and she saw what she had built. It was all wrong—looked more Victorian than French country, which was not at all a style that would work for the Weymouths. Realizing she had just wasted an hour of irretrievable time basically playing with design, she felt her heart begin to pound.
That was when the computer went dead. And the TV. And the AC. After only the briefest winding down of moving parts, the house was completely and utterly silent.
Panicked, she raced down the stairs with Tad in her arms and a hand on the rail. She could not afford to stumble on the stairs, not with Tad, not with a deadline.
The thermostat in the living room was blank.
Convinced that she had just pushed the AC unit too hard, she lowered Tad to the sofa beside Buddy and ran first to the kitchen, then the laundry room in search of a fuse box.
“Not a fuse,” Samantha announced, dressed in a shirt and shorts as she rose from the basement. “It must be something bigger.”
“Oh God,” Jamie breathed, frantic. “I can’t afford to lose power right now. My condo was always okay.” Of course, it hadn’t been on the night Roy and Jessica died, a thought that gave her a chill but did nothing to cool her body heat. “Do you lose it here often?” If so, the power company would immediately know what to do.
Samantha shrugged. “Beats me. I haven’t lived here in almost twenty years. Back then, not as many houses had AC, so the grid wasn’t strained.”
“And Chip has no generator.” If he had, it would have already gone on. A generator was a must. MacAfee Homes never designed a house now without one. She couldn’t believe it. Could. Not. Believe. It.
“What happened to the TV, Mamie?” Buddy asked.
Fighting terror, Jamie pulled him close. “I’m going to try to find out,” she said and, cell phone in hand, searched the kitchen board for the emergency number of the power company. “It’s not even eleven,” she murmured mostly to herself as she tapped in the numbers, “not the heaviest usage time.” An automated voice. “Gah.” A menu. As she worked her way through it, she muttered, “It has to be routine maintenance, though why they had to pick today…” She listened. Not routine maintenance; an outage in the area, a crew was on its way, that was it. “When will the power be back?” Jamie yelled into the phone, though, of course, the recording didn’t hear.
“Mommy,” Tad shrieked in a way that said he wanted his mother, his real one, not Jamie but Jessica.
Racing back to the living room, she found him on all fours facing the sofa back, clearly having dozed and woken with no idea where he was, but stuck, neither here nor there, not knowing which way to go or how to get a foothold and save himself, which was exactly how she felt. And suddenly, as she closed convulsive arms around him, the fact of no power, no computer, no work, no mother was too much.
That was when the doorbell rang.
twenty-nine
Jamie took one look at Caroline on the other side of the door from Samantha and burst into tears, just stood in the living room sobbing above Tad’s head, unable to move or think or speak. There was little relief until she felt her mother’s arms wrap her up in the scent of spring and the earth, and then the comfort was too visceral for words.
“Oh baby,” Caroline murmured against her hair the way she had done since Jamie could remember, “it’s okay now, everything’s okay, you’re going to be fine.”
“I don’t … know … how.”
As broken as Jamie’s voice was, so Caroline’s was whole. “You do. You’ve always known. You were born with an instinct for knowing how things work and what to do when they break. Isn’t that what you did for me when my marriage fell apart?”
“I didn’t fix anything.”
“You did, you fixed me. You gave me a reason to hold my head up. And now, here you are, with a wonderful husband and a beautiful son and another beautiful son who is now clinging to a person I’m guessing is his aunt because she looks like his dad, and he said she was here.”
A faint chuckle came from the door.
“He called you?” Jamie asked, too tired to be angry if he had.
“No, but I think he would have if I hadn’t shown up on my own. This has gone on too long, Jamie. We’re not meant to be on opposite sides of anything, especially not now, when there are so many good things going on. I was wrong about the wedding, baby, not about keeping secrets or wanting a wonderful celebration for you, but about suggesting that your judgment wasn’t good. Only a guy with a big heart can do what Chip is doing right now with a gazillion kids running around and him worried sick about you.” She held Jamie back and grimaced. “Is it hot in here or is it me?”
“It’s hot,” Jamie wailed, because though the temperature hadn’t had a whole lot of time to rise, between Tad’s heat, her own heat, anticipation of heat, and stagnant air, the place felt stifling. In a hysterical burst that included her abysmal designs, she led Caroline right up to the loss of power. “My computer’s gone, the kids are sick, and I am so far behind—”
“Shh. Wait.” She pointed her finger and voice in the direction of the now-closed front door. “I’m Caroline, Jamie’s mom, and I don’t know your name—”
“Samantha.”
“Samantha, I need my phone. It’s right there in my purse. Would you dig it out for me, please?”
When Samantha knelt to forage, the absurdity of the instant hit Jamie. “Purse? Why are you carrying a purse, Mom?”
“Because these CEO clothes have no pockets.” She touched Tad’s cheek and cooed a soft “Hi, baby boy” before taking the phone from Samantha. Several touches to the screen and she said, “Okay, gorgeous, we need you ASAP here at Jamie’s, 403 Beech, and bring Tommy Mello.” She smiled, laughed softly. “No, but I will … Yes, now.” She ended the call.
Gorgeous? It wasn’t so much the word as how Caroline said it. Jamie wasn’t sure she had ever heard that tone from her mother. She sounded almost gleeful, intimate in a deeply affectionate way. “What was that about?”
Caroline continued to smile. “A portable generator and this.” Reaching into the V of her very beautiful navy silk shirt, she pulled out a ring.
Jamie forgot exhaustion, throw up, and flawed designs. This was her mother. A few weeks of crossed signals cou
ldn’t compete against twenty-nine years of adoration. Caroline was also her best friend, and this was exciting! “Oh. My. God. When?”
“Maybe four hours ago. No one else knows but you, me, and Dean. And now Samantha and these boys, not that the boys know a real diamond from a ring in a Cracker Jack box, though they probably don’t even know that, poor things.”
“Can I tell Chip?” Jamie asked. It was the first thing that came to mind, the second being that she wanted him here now to see the cool person that her mother really was.
“Absolutely. But no one else.”
“Engaged?” It was very exciting. Jamie trusted Dean. He had loved Caroline for a long time, which Jamie hadn’t seen then, since there was love and there was LOVE, though looking back, LOVE was a duh thing. Caroline deserved this.
“Not engaged,” her mother warned. “I’m not brave enough to say that word yet, which is why this came on a chain.”
Tad reached for the ring. Jamie opened her mouth to caution him when Caroline stroked his curls and said, “It’s okay, baby. It won’t break.”
Jamie wasn’t sure whether the baby just then was Tad or her, but it didn’t really matter. She was her mother’s child, so so grateful to be back. And that sounded like a betrayal.
“I love Chip,” she said quickly. “I adore Chip. He’s competent, and he just fills me up with hope and happiness and love. But I’m glad you’re here.”
“Well, isn’t that one of truths I’ve come to accept?” Caroline asked. “He and I aren’t in competition. We fill totally different needs. Your family with Chip is your future, Jamie. I never want to stand in the way of that. But if I can’t be here to help with a problem I caused by giving you a deadline that you might have trouble meeting because (A) you just got married and (B) you have two sick little boys and (C) no power, what good am I?”
Jamie was the enumerator in the family. “You’re mocking me.”
Blueprints Page 39