by Kim Law
She set the box down, leaving the lid open, and with both hands, she moved along the shelving that held the smaller items he’d built.
“I hear you messed up yesterday.” His grandmother’s back remained toward him, her hands moving nonstop.
“How do you figure that? I told you we won.”
She shook her head. “You didn’t win. You let her get away again.”
“Granny.” She’d already asked about Jill twice on the drive over. “I didn’t let her do anything. She chose her own path.”
“Please. Everyone knows you turned that girl down.” The tone was one he’d heard plenty of times as a kid. He’d also heard it when he’d come back from his honeymoon without a wife.
“She wanted too much,” he explained. He really didn’t want to talk about Jill. “I’ve worked hard to build the company to what it is. I couldn’t give her what she wanted.”
“And what about the job offer?”
He stared at her. He had no clue how she knew about the offer of hosting a show.
She turned to him, her hands gripping the shelf behind her to steady herself, then she waited patiently for his reply, her pale face pointed in his direction.
“I’ve already got a job, and you’re over there trying to talk me into selling custom furniture and gifts,” he pointed out. “Why would I want a third one?”
“Why, indeed?” She asked the question as if only she held some mysterious answer.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know exactly what I’m talking about. I was married for thirty-eight years.” She pursed her lips. “Oh, I know all right.”
He ignored her. She knew nothing about him and Jill. He led her to where he kept some of the larger tools, making sure the safety was on everything so she wouldn’t hurt herself, and when they reached a wrought iron settee that had once been on her back porch, he helped her to sit in it.
“I wanted to talk to you about a couple of things today, Granny.”
She nodded and clasped her hands in her lap as if sitting proper on a church pew. “I suspected as much.”
He groaned. She’d suspected nothing, but she always had been a stubborn one.
The thought brought a tiny smile to his lips as he realized that her stubbornness was something she and Jill had in common. He wondered if that’s part of what had attracted him to Jill in the first place.
“Ever swung a sledgehammer, Granny?”
“What?” Her face scrunched up, and he shook off the thought.
“Never mind.” What a moron. He had to quit thinking about Jill. “That wasn’t what I meant to say. I wanted to talk to you about Rodney.”
He’d decided he should have told her about her son a long time ago. Just as he’d done Rodney no favors by overlooking the drinking, he’d done his grandmother none by pretending it wasn’t happening.
“How’s he doing?” she asked. “He hasn’t been to see me in months. Still busy?”
“He’s . . . busier than usual right now,” Cal told her. “He’s actually in a rehab clinic. He’s a drunk, Granny. And I’m sorry about that.”
“What are you sorry about, Cal? You didn’t make him a drunk.”
“I know.” He took her hand when she held it out, and squatted in front of her. “But I guess I’m sorry that I kept it from you. I’m sorry I haven’t done more to help him over the years.”
She patted his cheek. “But I already knew. Rodney’s had a problem since his first marriage.”
Cal blinked at his grandmother. All this time, and she’d known? Rodney’s first marriage had been over twenty years ago. Cal hadn’t even figured out his uncle’s problem until years after that. “Then why didn’t you do something back then?” he asked her.
“Sweetheart. Your papaw and I tried. We wore that boy out trying to straighten him up. But a person can’t change until he’s ready. Not long-term. So, tell me, is he ready now?”
Cal could see the hope written on her face. He nodded, then realized her hand wasn’t on his cheek any longer, so she wouldn’t have felt the movement. He grabbed her fingers and pressed her palm to his cheek. “I do think he’s ready. I haven’t visited him yet, but I get to go next month.”
“How long’s he been there?”
“Just a couple of weeks. I’ve talked to his counselors, though. They say he’s focused. He’s trying.”
She patted his cheek again, bringing up her other hand to hold his face in front of her. “I’ll write you a check to help cover his expenses.”
“No, Granny.” He covered her smaller, more feeble hands with his. “You keep your checks. I’ve got this. It’s the least I can do.”
“Then I’ll have one of the girls knit him a sweater.”
By “one of the girls,” Cal knew she meant someone at least in the same decade as his granny.
“You have her knit it, but you tell her you’ll have to come back and get it, okay?” He stood, pulling her up with him. He wanted to show her his house. “That’s the other thing I wanted to talk to you about. I have a room for you here. I want you to come live with me.”
She quit walking. “You want me to what?”
“I’ve messed up for too long. Dad put you away, and I shouldn’t have allowed it to happen.”
“You were fourteen, Calhoun. What could you have done?”
He urged her toward his truck. “I could have brought you home with me years ago, for starters. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it, but I want to do that now. The house is ready. Let me show you. There’s a place for Rodney, too. He’ll be out in a couple of months, and then he can live here, too.”
She stopped walking again. “Rodney is a grown man. It’s about time he acts like one, don’t you think?” She shook her head, her intention to not be ignored clear. “Plus, I gave him a house when Neil moved me out. You let him live in it when he gets out. It’s time you took care of your own life. And that means quit giving your uncle a salary for doing nothing, too. He needs to find his own way now. He needs to have a purpose.”
Before he could argue—or even ask how she’d known he gave Rodney money—she continued.
“And I can’t move in with you, are you crazy? I’m fine where I am. Plus, if you have any sense in that head of yours”—she shook a finger toward him—“you’ll beg the woman you love to come live in your new home.”
“But you’re who I love, Granny. And I’ve not done right by you.”
“I am not your responsibility, Calhoun Reynolds.” Her strength in refusing to budge surprised him. “And don’t you dare lay any guilt about me at your feet. That’s hogwash. All you need to worry about now is the fact that I’m not the only one you love. And you need to deal with it.” She’d taken on the tone again, and it did the trick. He felt about five years old.
“I never said I love her,” he argued, his tone belligerent. At least, he hadn’t this time.
She shook her finger at him again. “You messed up with her before, are you really going to do it again?”
“I didn’t—”
“You should have supported her. Whatever she wanted. She was your wife.” Her voice filled with a strength he hadn’t heard in ages. “I thought your grandfather and I taught you better than that.”
“Why are you lecturing me?” He threw his hands in the air. “I couldn’t move off to Hollywood. I couldn’t leave you.”
“Honey. You’ve let the woman you love slip through your fingers twice now. You could have visited me a few times a year. I love your visits, but I’m not alone there. I have friends. I would have been fine. But when are you going to live? When does somebody get to take care of you?”
He didn’t want to be taken care of.
“Don’t use me as an excuse anymore.”
“I haven’t been.”
“Sure you have. Because you’re afraid of what you feel for Jill. Because you’re afraid she can’t love you back. I get it. You grew up without a momma, and your daddy had issu
es.” She stepped closer and reached up, patting him on the lips. “Your daddy blames himself for Richie,” she whispered. “Did anyone ever tell you that?”
Cal shook his head, confused. His other uncle had been killed before Cal had been born.
“What did Dad have to do with it?”
“Richie only had his license for a month when your daddy took him to a party. Then there was this girl.” Sadness pulled at the lines on her face, and Cal quickly helped her into the truck so she could sit. “Neil wanted to stay late. Stick around after the party. He liked that girl a little too much. But he knew Richie had been drinking. Those boys of mine”—she let out a weary sigh—“always had a taste for liquor. Your daddy had been drinking, too, but not as much as Richie. But he wanted to be alone with the girl. You know what I mean by alone, right?”
Cal hid a chuckle. “I know what you mean.”
“So he made Richie go home without him.” A tear slipped out of her eye and traced along the line of a wrinkle, and Cal’s heart broke. “Richie never made it home that night,” she whispered. “And your daddy hasn’t been right since. I lost two boys in one.”
Cal found himself unable to move. He’d had no idea.
He both wanted to hug his granny to him, and wanted to find his father and ask if Richie’s death had played into his disinterest in his own son. Had his father’s rejection been about more than just him?
“I’m still not going to forgive him,” Cal blurted out. “The man should have cared about me.”
But forgive or not, something warm tried to seep into his heart.
“And I’m not saying you should.” His granny brought her face to his, and she pressed a cool kiss to his cheek. “He should have done better. Absolutely. But stop punishing yourself because of him,” she urged. “Go love Jill. I know she loves you. I saw it in her eyes the first time you brought her to meet me.”
The first time he’d taken Jill to meet her, Jill had been sixteen.
“She has that forever kind of love for you. Like your grandfather and I had for each other. And I think you might have it for her, too.”
Cal shook his head. “You’re wrong, Granny. We’re not those forever kind of people.”
At least, he wasn’t.
“I am not wrong. In fact, I’m seldom wrong.” She pulled her feet into the truck after that, and once again, she sat as she had on the bench. Hands clasped in her lap, face pointing forward. “Now show me this house of yours so I can make sure you didn’t mess anything up. And when you get tired of having your head up your rear, you make sure to bring me to the wedding.”
He slammed the truck door without comment. There wasn’t going to be a wedding, and he wouldn’t give his granny the satisfaction of replying.
But as he circled the front of the truck, the music box across the room started playing.
He stopped, and slowly turned. The lid stood open as his grandmother had left it, and the tiny dancer had one hand up, twirling in place in her little pink dress. Only, the music coming out of it was no longer the tune he’d once picked out.
It now played a lonely piano tune. One he’d last heard on Pear Street.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Live enough for two lifetimes.”
—Blu Johnson, life lesson #100
Jill’s thirtieth birthday had come and gone, Bluebonnet Construction’s schedule was filled to the gills, and Jill had spent countless hours interviewing new hires. Additionally, everyone in town finally seemed to see Jill as more than “that little Sadler girl” who’d always been on the cusp of blowing a gasket if anyone so much as looked at her wrong.
And all of this had taken place in one week.
Another surprise to come out of going on the show was that Bluebonnet now took calls daily from people asking for new builds. That had been the dream from day one. However, after much discussion, they’d put it to a vote. And it had been unanimous.
All new builds would only be she-sheds. They liked their reputation these days.
As such, Jill was on-site for day one of erecting a new retreat. Only, she was the only one on-site.
She pulled out her phone and tried Trenton again.
“Where are you?” she muttered when Trenton’s phone once again went to voice mail.
She tried Heather next. Same deal. Even the owner of the retreat they were due to start on wasn’t home.
“We don’t have time for this,” she mumbled to herself.
She checked her watch as she headed back around front. They were going on twenty minutes late at that point, and with so many jobs lined up, none of them had time to be dillydallying. As she took the corner around the back of the house, she pulled up short at the sight of a black four-wheel-drive truck turning in at the end of the two-hundred-foot drive.
It was Cal’s truck.
Jill’s pulse temporarily blocked sound to her ears as she tried to decide whether to turn and run, or meet the man head-on. She hadn’t laid eyes on him since walking away over a week ago, and she didn’t want to see him now, either. Only . . . she’d apparently forgotten to tell her heart that.
But as the truck made its way closer, her heart went into a different rhythm. That of flatlining. Because it wasn’t Cal in the truck.
She waited where she’d stopped, and when the driver emerged, she forced a smile. “Morning, Pete.” Pete Logan came toward her. “What can I do for you?”
“The better question is, what can I do for you?” Pete held a legal-sized folder stuffed full of papers, which he held out to her. “Seems you’re the boss now.”
Jill didn’t take the folder. “What are you talking about? Are you looking for a job?” She couldn’t imagine this man wanting to be known as a Bluebonnet. “And why do you have Cal’s truck? Where is Cal?”
“Don’t need a job, and I have no idea where Cal is. Probably in his shop.”
Confusion reigned. “What shop?” This was why she liked working with women. They might sometimes talk too much—and flirt when they thought it might get them on TV—but at least they talked. “Why do you have his truck, Pete?”
“Oh, yeah.” Pete reached into his jeans pocket and came out with the keys. “The truck’s yours, too. Cal said to tell you he just had it tuned up for you. He—”
Jill took a giant step back, palms going up, and Pete stopped talking.
“What the—” Jill pressed her mouth closed before she could say more. She didn’t get angry for no reason anymore. This was the new Jill. Except apparently where it involved her ex.
Because what the hell was Cal Reynolds up to now?
“Let’s take a moment and start at the beginning,” she suggested. She held up one finger. “Why are you here?”
“To see where you want me.”
“I didn’t hire you, Pete.”
“Right.” He pulled the first piece of paper out of the folder and held it out to her. This time he presented a smile with the paper. “But I still work for you. You’re also now responsible for all of these jobs.”
She finally took the sheet of paper, and when she looked down at the list, she recognized several projects that she knew for a fact We Nail It had bid on and won. She was a fairly intelligent person, so she was starting to get an idea of what was going on there, but surely her stupid ex hadn’t gone off and done something this drastic without bothering to have a single conversation with her first.
Pete looked at her with a drop of sympathy then, and he leaned in a little closer. “He knows he can be an ass,” Pete told her, as if sharing a secret. “But he’s trying. And he does feel bad about his assiness.”
How dare he?
And then he sends Pete?
“Oh, hell no,” Jill muttered. She tossed the piece of paper to the ground, wanting no part of it, and stomped to her truck. “You’d better move that piece of crap out of my way, Pete Logan,” she yelled at him, “or I’m about to ram into it.”
“But it’s your truck,” Pete yelled back, and Jill whirled on
him.
“What the hell has he done?” she screamed.
And then she saw why no one had been on-site that morning. Because they all now stood in the front yard of the house next door, smiles from ear to ear. There were Heather, Trenton, the workers who were supposed to have arrived with Trenton, Aunt Blu, a full camera crew—including Len—and stepping out from behind Len was Cal.
“I changed my mind,” Cal called out, and Jill noticed that he was smart enough to keep his distance.
“No one asked you to,” she yelled back. They were only about fifty feet from each other, so yelling wasn’t really necessary. But it sure felt good.
The man had thrown her love back in her face, so he didn’t get to show up playing hero now.
“That’s not actually accurate,” Cal told her. He made a face, as if he were a kid being chastised, and added, “My granny asked me to.”
And then Irene Reynolds made her way to the front of the crowd, her arm hooked through Aunt Blu’s, and she waved toward Jill. “Hi, Jill. It’s good to see you again. And I actually told him to get his head out of his rear.”
Jill pressed a hand to her mouth. “Hello, Mrs. Reynolds. It’s good to see you again, too.” She wished she’d gone up for visits over the years. “Your grandson does have a habit of putting his head there, doesn’t he?”
Laughter rippled through the group, but no one moved from where they were. Jill and Pete stood in one yard, with everyone else in the other. And cameras and boom mics caught all of it.
“Been working on that one with him for years,” Irene told her, and then Cal took a handful of steps forward, separating him from the group.
“What are you doing, Cal?” Jill asked, this time keeping her voice at a reasonable level. She was too mentally beat up to deal with something like this. She’d missed him terribly over the last week, and she’d fully expected to never speak to him again. And not because of anger this time, but because they were finally over.
And it had decimated her.
Cal lifted his hands out in front of him as if ready to ward off an attack. “I messed up,” he told her.
“You did,” she agreed. “You lost a good thing.”