Blueprints: A Novel (19 page)

The funeral began. Hymns, readings, even the minister’s words were as uplifting as they could be; still, the weight of tragedy was oppressive, all the more so when Jamie rose to speak. At no point did she blow Roy up into something he had not been, but there was good to be acknowledged—Caroline could admit that—and Jamie spoke from the heart. From time to time, her eyes touched Caroline’s for reassurance, but the reassurance was as much Caroline’s. Being Jamie’s mainstay had been far more a part of her identity than hosting a TV show, which was precisely why she was so bothered by the rift between them.

She was losing Jamie—and not only to Brad, though his arm was the one that circled her when she returned to her seat, while Caroline’s fingers remained locked in her lap.

A large hand suddenly covered them, gave a gentle squeeze, and was gone.

Caroline didn’t react. To look at Dean would have been to give the gesture undue meaning. He had sensed her loss and was trying to help, as simple as that. And he did make her feel less alone. With the warmth of his touch fading, though, it struck her that she hadn’t been actually physically held by a man in anything but a perfunctory way in a long, long time. She shared hugs and linked arms often with Jamie and female friends. But with men? No. With men it was all about being professional. For Caroline, who had to work with them daily, it was about being asexual.

She might have dwelt on the necessity of that if the church service hadn’t drawn to a close and the trip to the cemetery begun. She drove alone and, dreading what was to come, climbed the knoll to the graveside. This was the part that always bothered her most, the finality of lowering a body into the ground and then leaving it to the cold and dark, and turning away. And what had the minister said, that the focus of death had to be on living? Caroline wasn’t able to do that as she stood in the crowd with Annie Ahl and her husband. She didn’t see Dean again until she started down the hill, at which point she was too disheartened to do more than glance his way. She had to do more, though, when she reached the road and Brian and Claire approached.

There were the obligatory cheek brushes and words of sympathy. Then Brian said, “Caroline, about what Claire told you…” He paused.

Not the best time to discuss this,
Caroline wanted to say. But she needed to hear what he had to say. “Go on.”

“I don’t want hard feelings.”

She considered that … considered everything she wanted to say in response … considered the time and place … and held her tongue.

Not so Dean. She hadn’t seen him approach, but there he was, a solid presence by her shoulder. “You could rescind the change.”

Brian spared him a glance. “It wasn’t a random decision. The reasons behind it are very real. We’ve already started spreading the word.”

“You could say you changed your mind. This is a dumb move, Brian. Caroline is the show.”

“Are you saying Jamie can’t do the job?” Claire asked, putting him on the spot with Caroline right there.

He smiled. “Nope. Not saying that at all. She can easily do the job. What I’m saying is that viewers will be expecting Caroline. When they don’t get her, they may be upset.”

“We’ll ease Jamie in gradually. Caroline will still be there.”

“What if I’m not?” Caroline asked. She hadn’t planned to, but with Dean’s warmth at her shoulder and his antagonism toward Claire on display, she felt bold.

“Are you saying that if you’re not the host, you’re gone?”

“I don’t know.”

“We could always cancel the show.”

“Do that,” Dean warned, “and we’ll take it to another station. We’re the show, Claire. The players are all MacAfee people. If we leave, they do.”

“Well, aren’t you full of yourself,” she remarked.

Caroline was thinking that he had a right, that he looked authoritative as hell with his dark blazer and tie, shadowed jaw, and combed-back hair, when Brian said nervously, “This is not productive.” He addressed Caroline. “Feelings are raw right now. Once you get past Roy’s death, we’ll meet and hash this out. Agreed?”

“Absolutely,” Caroline affirmed, but she wasn’t thinking of any meeting when Dean walked her to her truck a short time later. She was thinking of Dean’s hand at her back, guiding her with just the lightest touch. She was thinking that he hadn’t ever done that before, that she should speed up her pace to shrug off his hand, that it didn’t mean anything.

But it had been really nice to have him on her side against Brian and Claire.

Not that that meant anything either. These were extenuating circumstances.

Still. Given the hollowness she felt about so much of her life, a little protectiveness was nice.

twelve

The funeral should have been the end of it, but Jamie’s phone didn’t stop ringing with Willistonians wanting to remember Roy. She couldn’t cut them off; she wanted to remember him, too. But between talking with them, keeping Tad clean, fed, and busy, and trying to squeeze in little bits of work, she was exhausted—which was likely why she didn’t see the potential for trouble before it hit Friday morning. She was making breakfast at the kitchen island, alternately dicing pears, stirring oatmeal, and watching Tad play. He was on the floor with Legos, and while the blocks were large enough for him to be able to snap together, his great joy just then—hands clapping, squeals of “Look, Mamie, Taddy do it”—was loading them in a box and dumping them out, again and again. After a particularly enthusiastic dumping, several blocks tumbled behind the sofa. She saw him run there and felt a silent alarm even before her beautiful tulip floor lamp began to totter. Dropping the paring knife, she whipped around the island and lunged to catch it, but it crashed to the wood floor, missing the area rug that might have protected it and shattering all four glass shades.

Tad’s eyes shot to hers. They were huge. She was feeling a stab of desperation thinking of her lamp, her home, her neat life that was wrecked, when the little boy’s eyes filled with tears.

“Don’t move,” she warned him and, advancing only enough to grab him, stepped gingerly away from the shards. She didn’t breathe until he was safely on a stool at the island, but his eyes remained large enough to destroy her. Roy would have yelled at him; he had certainly yelled enough at her when she’d been a child. Roy didn’t like accidents.

How ironic was it that his life had ended in one?

But thanks to that Tad was hers now, and Roy had challenged her to be
the most responsible person
in his life. She had to deal.

Framing the child’s warm little head with her hands, she lowered her face to his. “It’s okay, monkey. It’s only a thing.” So Caroline had always said. She hugged him close, humming to Pandora’s rendition of “Old MacDonald” streaming from her iPad.

“I want Mommy,” he whimpered against her middle. He was saying it more and more, clearly not satisfied with the nonanswers she gave. She would have to offer more one day, but what to say?

She was spared it now when he asked for the moose. Retrieving it from the sofa, she included it in a group hug.

Most. Responsible. Person.

With a steadying breath, she ignored the fact that her pristine white condo was in shambles and said, “Accidents happen, Taddy. You didn’t mean to do it. But those little pieces of glass need to be picked up or these bare little feet”—she squeezed one—“will be cut.” She was looking around, wondering where to start, when Brad came in from the garage.

“Oh look, sweetie. Here’s Brad,” to whom she called, “Careful,” though unnecessarily. The dismay on his face said he had seen the damage.

“You loved that lamp,” he said.

She didn’t need the reminder. The lamp sprouted from a wrought-iron base into four stems of different heights, each topped with a tulip-shaped globe. For all the small items she had put away in the name of childproofing, she hadn’t thought to remove this—likely because, yes, she had loved it.

It’s only a thing.
Same with her favorite glass vase, broken yesterday. It wasn’t that Tad was destructive. He was two years old, active and curious, both good in the overall scheme—but that thought raised others. Was he developing normally? Was there a line between active and ADHD? Did he have learning disabilities or food allergies? How would he be socialized?

As an aunt, she hadn’t had to worry about these things. As a parent, she did. Today was her sixth day in that role. Having no experience with other two-year-olds, she knew nothing. She had ordered a slew of books and had read site after site about what two-year-olds typically did, but no two articles were exactly the same, and none were as good as getting advice from her mother. But Caroline was busy with Theo and MacAfee Homes. And they hadn’t resolved the host change, which hung like a sword over her head.

So she went with her new favorite mantra. “It can be replaced.” Then, “Give me a hand here, Brad. Broom and dust pan first?” Holding Tad on her hip, she took the oatmeal off the stove and put the knife out of reach before setting him up at the lacquered dining table with a coloring book and crayons. His strokes were wild, and he held the crayon wrong, but she wasn’t about to correct him. Instinct said that his self-esteem was more important than perfect form.

Or was this the kind of thing she had to correct before his muscles formed memory?
She didn’t know the answer to that either. Caroline would. She would ask.

Worried about when they would talk and whether, totally aside from their current rift, she could seriously ask Caroline’s advice on caring for Roy MacAfee’s child, she busied herself vacuuming while Brad swept. The exertion was good, though when she knelt to run her hand over the floor and peer at it from a different angle to make sure every last shard was gone, she found a tiny piece of that earlier vase.
Not
good. She was a novice at parenthood to begin with, and mistakes didn’t make her more confident. Always before, when she set out to do something big, she had a game plan. She had lessons, courses, mentors, coaches, and practiced until she got it right. This, here, now, was walking a high wire without a net.

She
desperately
needed Caroline.

“You look frazzled,” Brad said.

She closed her eyes and massaged tension from her forehead, but, hell, she
felt
frazzled. It didn’t help that Brad was rested, freshly showered, and neatly dressed for work while she wore yesterday’s tee and shorts, a slapdash ponytail, zero makeup, and an expression that had to be strained. Beside him, she must look like something the cat had dragged in.

“I’m not sleeping well,” she told Brad, which, of course, he couldn’t know, since he hadn’t slept over since the accident.

“I thought Tad slept through the night.”

“He does. The problem is me. I wake up stressing and can’t fall back to sleep.”

“Maybe you need to be at Roy’s house.”

The suggestion alone made her stomach clench. “What difference would that make?”

“There’s more room. You could spread out.”

Half a dozen family friends had said similar things at Roy’s after the funeral.
This house is gorgeous … You’re lucky to have it … Easy enough to sell the condo … The yard here is perfect for Tad.
But totally aside from her own distaste for Roy’s, being there meant that Tad would be waiting for his parents to come home. He would be expecting things to return to normal, without understanding that normal had changed. Her gut told her he was better off at her condo for now, and as for the tightness of the layout here, she didn’t want to be more than a single wall away from him at night.

She doubted Brad would understand. He was clearly disheartened as he looked beyond the broken lamp, and oh yes, she knew what he saw. All sense of urban chic was gone, replaced by scattered toys, one empty sippy cup, clean diapers and wipes, one
half-filled
sippy cup, a mound of clothes newly removed from the dryer, and, on the floor, the pajamas she had just taken off Tad—all now with Raffi singing “Baby Beluga” in the background.

Her sanctuary was decimated. There were times when she looked around and couldn’t breathe, other times when she couldn’t see through panicky tears. It wasn’t like she didn’t clean and neaten, but as soon as she did, there was another stained shirt, another dirty sippy cup, another disgusting diaper. And toys? She was
constantly
picking up toys. But here they were again, so why bother?

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Brad asked very, very quietly.

Her eyes flew to his. “What do you mean?” But she knew, oh yeah, she knew, and was shaking her head before he could utter the name
Maureen
. “No. Absolutely not.”

“She’s his grandmother,” he said in the same low voice. “She’s an experienced mother—”

“—whose kids are grown and whose husband doesn’t want Tad and who didn’t even have a good relationship with Jessica. She can’t take him, Brad. I wouldn’t let her. She doesn’t love Tad like I do,” Jamie whispered with force, horrified as much by Brad’s insensitivity as by the idea of giving up her half brother.

But Brad wasn’t done. He didn’t raise his voice, never raised his voice. She almost wished he would, if only so that she could yell back. The need was building in her.

“You don’t owe this to your father,” he said.

“Excuse me? I absolutely do! I owe it to him, and to Tad, and to
me
. I
want
him, Brad.” Staring at him in fury, she tugged the elastic off her hair and finger-combed the long strands into a fresh ponytail. “And anyway,” she said, still glaring, “Desideria’s coming Monday to clean.”

Looking unsettled—she had never before spoken this harshly, but was tired of coddling him—he pushed up his glasses. “Okay.” He was buying time. She could see him trying to think. And he had two choices, he realized. He could be positive, as in
We’ll make this work. What do I need to do to help?
Or he could be negative.

Her heart fell with his opening “
but
.”

“But it’s only a stopgap, Jamie. You can’t stay here long-run. It’s way too small, and you can’t do with only Desideria. You need a nanny. It helps that MacAfee is closed this week, so you haven’t had to work—”