“Whatever.”
At least the work was getting done. This was the first day all week that felt like substantial progress.
And it was Friday. Jillian would have a welcome breather for the weekend, during which she could pick her father’s brain about what to do with Tisha next week.
Nolan had worked upstairs all morning, only briefly greeting Tisha when he came downstairs to borrow printer paper from Jillian’s office. Then he’d left the house before Tisha did, with a vague, unpersuasive explanation of a commitment that would take him away from his usual Friday routine in his home office. For now Jillian was alone in the house.
She padded in bare feet through the front rooms, down the hall, and into the kitchen in search of lunch. A plate of thinly sliced pot roast and a bag of washed spinach leaves suggested a sandwich, and Jillian assembled it and took it into her office to sit at her desk and sort through unread emails.
To: Jillian
From: Nia
Subject: Have you called Drew yet?
The body of the email was empty. Jillian hit REPLY.
Very funny. No.
Jillian kept scrolling. Raúl, her regular insurance client, wondered about her availability for a quick-turnaround project. She hesitated. Was she available? Being in the room with Tisha all the time might not prove to speed up the work. For now she didn’t answer Raúl.
A couple of genealogist friends had questions about what they might be getting into if they signed on as subcontractors to the St. Louis project once it got into full swing. Tucker Kintzler, who was funding the project, had sent an update on setting up the foundation according to Missouri law, under which most of the work would happen. He’d copied Nolan on the message because it involved legal issues, even though he was working with a Missouri firm Nolan had recommended.
The rest of the emails were blog posts Jillian could read later—or not at all—and junk mail she could delete immediately. She munched the last of her sandwich, brushed the crumbs off her desk into the trash can, and looked at her to-do list for the day, which seemed more aspirational than doable at two o’clock on a Friday afternoon.
One hand moved to her phone, just to be sure she hadn’t missed a text or voice message from Drew.
Nope. Nothing there.
If plans hadn’t changed, she would have been loading her suitcase in the car by now and heading for I-25, hoping to beat the rush-hour traffic through Denver and Colorado Springs and get down to the ranch for a weekend visit. Instead, she’d heard crickets ever since he phoned to cancel.
If he’d known how much it meant to her to receive an invitation to spend her birthday weekend at a place that had been so prominent in his childhood, and where he now lived by choice as an adult, would he have changed his mind about accepting the opportunity that kept them apart now? His great-aunt Min would have been around. Jillian was set to stay up in the big house with Min. It’s not as if she and Drew had planned a secluded romantic getaway. But was he not ready even for her to visit his home the way he’d visited hers a couple of times since they met?
Don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answers to. That’s what everyone always said. And that’s probably why Jillian didn’t just pick up the phone and ask.
The side door outside her office, a vestige from the days when the house had been two mirroring cottages joined by one shared wall, rattled against pounding from the outside. Only one person ever bothered to come around to the small porch on this side of the house, where Jillian sometimes worked outdoors in nice weather.
“Hold your horses, Kristina!” she called.
Jillian brushed her hands against each other to relieve her fingers of the last evidence of her lunch and went to the door to unlatch the locks.
Kris Bryant and Veronica O’Reilly both pushed past her.
“Where does she keep her shoes?” Veronica asked.
“Check the landing at the top of the stairs,” Kris said.
“She’ll need to do something about her hair.”
“I’m on it.”
“Did she drop her lunch on her shirt? Do I need to grab a clean one while I’m upstairs?”
“I beg your pardon.” Jillian resisted Kris’s efforts to steer her toward the mirror in the half bath between her office and the kitchen. “I’m perfectly capable of dressing and grooming myself.”
“You just weren’t expecting to leave the house.” Kris handed Jillian a hairbrush. “So we wanted to be sure.”
“What are you talking about?” Jillian glanced at the mirror. She had to admit her mass of black curly hair could use tending.
“What’s the verdict on the shirt?” Veronica was back with Jillian’s sandals.
“Clean,” Kris said.
“Will somebody please tell me what’s going on?” Jillian tugged the brush through her hair and grabbed a large clip from the edge of the sink to fasten her stubborn tresses away from her face.
“Girls afternoon out,” Veronica said. “Nia’s waiting.”
“But I had breakfast with Nia at the Cage,” Jillian said.
“You didn’t invite us?”
“It was sort of special circumstances.”
“So is this. Let’s go.”
“Resistance is futile, I suppose.” Jillian eyed her to-do list, which she had lost interest in anyway.
“You got it.”
“You know I can only lock this door from the inside.”
“Then do it, and we’ll go out the front,” Veronica said. “Kris is driving.”
Kris’s ice cream parlor, Ore the Mountain, was more or less across the street from the Cage. She parked her car behind the store, and the trio entered through the rear door to walk through the kitchen into the main space. As Jillian expected for an afternoon in July, the parlor, and Carolyn’s adjacent Digger’s Delight candy store, was busy. It took only a few minutes, though, to realize the faces crowding the parlor weren’t tourists or random citizens of Canyon Mines but people who would be there for her.
“Happy birthday!” they shouted in chorus.
“Girls afternoon out, eh?” she said to Kris, grinning. Veronica’s husband, Luke. Nia’s husband, Leo. Leif from Catch Air, the ski shop that was far busier in the winter than it was right now. Marilyn from the Heritage Society. Ben from the bakery. Both Clark and Joanna from the Cage. Lizy, a favorite clerk from Motherlode Books. Rachel from Candles & Cards. People from church who had known her since before she could talk. The head librarian who had suffered Jillian’s incessant questions since she was a child—and still did—and taught her the basics of research. And Nolan, standing to one side with a loopy glow on his face.
“Well, look at you all,” Jillian said, “looking so proud of yourselves. There are so many of you here, I have to wonder who is running most of Canyon Mines.”
Chuckles curled around the room.
“We have the occasional employee,” Luke O’Reilly said.
“Seriously, though,” Jillian said. “You got me. Thank you. You know my birthday is not until Sunday, right?”
“That’s the point of doing it today,” Nia said. “Surprise!”
Joanna motioned people away from a center table to reveal an elaborate cake—it had to have come from Ben’s Bakery—with a stout candle in it, and the gathering began singing “Happy Birthday.”
Kris said anyone who wanted ice cream on their cake could simply go to the counter and ask for a scoop. Clark Addison produced plates from the Cage and handed Jillian a cake knife. She loaded plates for one friend after another, not focused on the other customers in the parlor at the tables on the fringes of the party.
The voices rose to a stinging inflection, until no one could ignore them.
Jillian dragged in breath in dread.
Tisha sat in one corner with her mother, Brittany, and grandmother, Peggy. Given the half-eaten state of their ice cream treats, they must have been there the whole time Jillian was absorbed in the celebration her friends had thrown her.
“It’s a reasonable question!” Tisha slammed the table. “Why won’t you ever answer it?”
Conversations around the parlor hushed.
“I never knew who my father was,” Brittany said, “and I turned out all right.”
“Brittany! Who your father was is not anybody’s business,” Peggy shrieked.
“You two are nuts!” Tisha yelled. “I had a father. It’s who I am and who I came from. It is so my business. As for you, Brittany, if you ask me, you didn’t turn out all that great.” She stood up and tossed her ice cream into a trash can.
“You ungrateful punk,” Brittany hissed.
“Yeah, right. Whatever.”
“You’ve never deserved a single thing you’ve had in your entire life.”
Tisha swiped at the Styrofoam coffee cup beside Brittany’s ice cream, knocking it over, and stomped out of the parlor.
Peggy snatched a handful of napkins and began sopping up brown liquid. She glared at the speechless onlookers. “What are you all gawking at? You never saw a girl learning the truth about men before? Mind your own business. You look like a pack of village idiots.”
Brittany and Peggy whirled out the front door, leaving a parlor of stunned bystanders. Gradually the comments began.
“Whoa.”
“That was wild.”
“I’m not sure who was more out of control.”
“Can you imagine?”
“What in the world?”
“I pity going home to that child.”
Jillian was frozen, cake knife in midair.
“Perhaps we should pity that child,” she said. Perhaps I should pity that child.
“She’s out of control,” Joanna said. “Behaving that way is not going to solve the issues.”
“Jillian, did you get any cake?” Nia asked. “It’s pretty good.”
“Maybe I’ll have some at home,” Jillian mumbled.
Nia nodded. “Looks like there’s plenty. Take the rest of it. Kris will probably give you a quart of ice cream.” The party was over.
“Absolutely,” Kris said. “Chocolate chip cookie dough?”
Clark started cleaning up. “We’d better get back to the Cage, Jo. Patsy has been on her own long enough, and it’s time for her to clock out.”
“I’ll be right there.” Jo held up one finger.
“No, Joanna, not another break. I need you back at the shop.”
“I’ll be right there. Promise.” Jo dashed out the door.
Clark notched a fist into one hip. “This is getting out of hand.”
“I’ll help you, Clark.” Nia started to load leftover supplies into canvas bags.
Nolan rubbed the back of Jillian’s left shoulder. “This isn’t quite how we all had in mind for this to end.”
“I don’t guess it was.” Jillian buzzed her lips. “This thing with Tisha, it’s—”
“Complicated?”
“Yep. And I don’t think it’s just about Tisha and her mom. Or her grandmother. I think it goes back farther than that.”
“Your genealogist’s nose is sniffing something?”
“I’m not sure what, but it’s not exactly perfume.”
“I admit there are layers I was not fully aware of when I signed you up for this. But now that we’ve both witnessed some of what Tisha is up against, as well as what she can dish out, I hope you’ll hang in.”
One of the things Jillian liked most about looking in her father’s face was seeing the green eyes that bound them. She fastened on them now and nodded.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Nolan’s favorite long-handled spoon clanged against the edge of the iron skillet, and he made no effort to diminish the sound. In fact, he knocked it three times with enough force to start a person’s ears ringing if they weren’t already. These days he was having a bit of tinnitus, but it was Jillian’s ears he was trying to annoy with clamorous cooking. The hash browns were approaching golden perfection, and the bacon in the oven would soon be at maximum crispiness without slipping toward burned.
Humming, Nolan sauntered from the stove and into the hall at the base of the rear stairs before he let loose with full voice.
“Che gelida manina, se la lasci riscaldar.”
There. Puccini. That should do it.
Nolan returned to the oven to remove the bacon and began laying it out on paper towels to drain. He reached over and turned off the burner under the just-right potatoes speckled with chopped onions and green peppers. A smaller skillet was warming for eggs. Two place mats framed plates, flatware, and juice glasses.
A hearty Saturday breakfast. One of his favorite habits since the earliest days of his marriage to Jillian’s mother. Even before that, his parents had done the same thing, with a traditional Irish breakfast with their three sons—and usually a cousin or two—most weekends.
He sang again. “Cercar che giova? Al buio non si trova.” Who didn’t love waking to the drama of a good Italian opera?
Finally, Jillian stumbled into the kitchen in a green T-shirt and yellow-and-blue-checked lounge pants she liked to sleep in.
“LaBoheme, Dad? Are you trying to depress me?”
“Eggs?” Nolan held one, ready to crack on the side of the pan.
“I had eggs yesterday. Just potatoes and bacon for me.” Jillian pushed unkempt hair out of her face. “Some people are entirely too cheerful in the morning, especially while singing about tragic stories.”
“It’s not exactly sunrise, my darling daughter.”
“But it is exactly Saturday.”
“Do you think you can find your way on your own to that contraption you claim makes coffee?” The eggs Nolan dropped in the skillet sizzled.
Jillian offered a doleful look and poured beans into a grinder at the top of the machine before pushing a power button.
“I stayed up really late,” she said, “after getting next to nothing done yesterday.”
“Between recovering from entrapping Tisha in the morning and being kidnapped in the afternoon?”
“Something like that. Though entrap is a strong word. I would not have chosen it. Pass me the half-and-half, please.”
“I wouldn’t say you got nothing done, Silly Jilly.” Nolan set the half-and-half where Jillian could reach it and then put a plate of bacon and potatoes at her spot at the breakfast bar. “The piles on the dining room table are quite attractive now. And did you know we had hardwood floors in there under all those papers?”
“Aren’t you the comic today.” Jillian filled a small stainless pitcher and positioned it under a steamer arm.
“Every day, actually.”
“Hmm.” Jillian took her favorite mug out of the cupboard, placed it under the dispenser, and pushed another button on that do-everything-but-mop-the-kitchen-floor coffee machine. Nolan was quite content with the small machine next to it that gave him one cup at a time of real coffee. Jillian slumped into her stool.
“Breakfast looks good, Dad. Thanks.”
“I’m going to build you shelves for your boxes.” Nolan slid his eggs onto his plate and came around the island to sit next to her.
“Shelves?”
“In the big guest room. That’s where you’re going to store your boxes when you get them organized, right?”
“That’s the plan.”
“They should be on shelves. Besides, we’ve been talking about shelves for that room for years.”
“All true. When are you going to build shelves?”
“I promised Leo I’d help him set a new window at the Inn today, so not today.”
“The window Nia has been asking him to work on for five months?”
“That might or might not be the one.” Nolan bit into a slice of bacon. “Tuesday. The shelves will be a Tuesday project.”
“You’re supposed to work on Tuesday.”
“I will take the day off. I’ll be at home anyway, and believe it or not, I have zero phone meetings on the schedule.”
“But you�
��re so busy lately. Can you really take a day off?”
“Jillian Siobhan Parisi-Duffy! Are you trying to discourage my carpentry efforts?”
She laughed. “Not at all. Shelves on Tuesday. Got it.”
“Tisha can help.”
Jillian grabbed her napkin, put it to her mouth, and coughed.
“Don’t choke on the idea,” Nolan said. “Maybe she’d like to stay all day and get hours in.”
“Go for it.” Jillian sipped coffee. “I have to go to Motherlode Books this morning. A book I ordered came in.”
“I’ll go with you. It’s a nice morning. We can walk.”
“I was thinking about getting in a run and just ending up there.”
“Even better.”
“You really think you can keep up with me, old man?”
“We’ll see who gets there first.”
Jillian snorted. “You’re already planning to cheat with some shortcut while I get in an extra five miles.”
“Do you think so little of me?”
“Whatever.” She popped the last of her breakfast in her mouth. “I’m going to get some running clothes on and be back in twenty minutes tops. Be ready.”
They left the house, both in shorts and running shoes, heading away from downtown and toward the mountain vista their house faced at the end of Main Street where the neighborhood petered out as the street curved. In his midfifties, Nolan power walked in Denver when he could get away from the office at lunchtime, and he and Jillian both walked the mile from their home to the downtown Canyon Mines shops frequently, if time allowed and they were not carrying home large loads of purchases. He was in good shape. Nevertheless, he had no delusions of keeping up for long with a daughter who would turn twenty-nine tomorrow, had run track and cross-country in high school, and could still outrun everyone she knew no matter the age. So the point came when he waved, let her pull ahead with the speed he knew she was ready to unleash, and turned on a loop that would take him back toward town at a more manageable rate.
At the water fountain at the back of Motherlode Books, Nolan refilled his water bottle and guzzled the contents straight down as he paced the aisles and caught his breath. The air-conditioning cooled him off enough that, after a few minutes of browsing, he would be able to face the final mile home—at a stroll, not a sprint.
What You Said to Me Page 10