Blueprints: A Novel (48 page)

“I could do that,” Samantha said but was suddenly cautious. “Which one of us tells him about the baby?”

Jamie didn’t think it was her job to do that, but she heard a tiny thread of pleading in the question, and the part of her that had never had a sibling wanted to be involved with one now. She actually felt bad for Samantha. Jamie had had Chip with her when she broke the news of their marriage to her mother. Samantha was alone.

*   *   *

Leaving the cook munching Goldfish as she searched the cupboards, Jamie got another armload from the car. She carried it upstairs, where Chip was just finishing the computer hookup.

He took a step back. “Try it.”

She tripped on the carpet as she crossed the room and would have fallen if he hadn’t caught her. “Why do I
do
that?” she cried, glaring at the carpet as he took the box.

“To make the rest of us feel better, since you are otherwise perfect.”

“Hah. I couldn’t hook up these machines if my life depended on it.”

“Do we know anything works? Try it.”

Instead, she put her back to the computer and her palms on his chest. “I need to tell you something first. I don’t want you to say anything until I’m done, and before you speak then, you need to know that I think it’s good.”

His eyes were large and scared. “Ah hell. You want out.”

She nearly laughed. “Excuse me?
Never
. This is about your
sister.
” Quickly, she outlined the facts, watching his expression go from relief to surprise to disbelief.

“Pregnant? Miss High and—”

Jamie put a finger across his lips. “Let me finish.”

He struggled with that. She could see him wanting to insert editorial comments when she described the sperm donor, and when she told him told him why Samantha hadn’t told her parents, she could see he was dying to speak.

Finally, she said, “I like her, Chip. She’s vulnerable—”

“Samantha?”

“Yes. She did something she wanted to do, just like we did, and not everyone will agree with her choice, but I want to. It’s a baby, Chip, a little girl.”

“If it was a boy,” he said with a grunt, “it could play with ours.”

“And a girl can’t do that? Hello?”

“She was wrong, Jamie. When she said I kicked them out of this house?” Clearly this was bothering him. “Mom and Dad were looking to move, so I bought them two houses in exchange for this one, and I never said I didn’t need them. I said that if they weren’t there, I’d have to finally grow up.”

“You have.” Standing on tiptoe, Jamie kissed him.

By the time she lowered herself, his arm was around her waist and his grin was smug. “One thing’s for sure. This’ll give the folks something to think about besides us.”

“Samantha is counting on our marriage helping her the same way. That’s one of the reasons she got here so fast.”

“Her timing couldn’t be worse. You need to work.”

“I will once the boys are asleep. So, do we support Samantha?”

Chip made a no-brainer face. “Of course, we support her. She’s my sister.”

*   *   *

He was right about Samantha being a good cook. In no time, she had whipped up their mother’s chili recipe, baked cornbread, and made a salad. And Chip behaved well. Granted, Jamie was standing guard, but he didn’t give his sister a hard time about the baby. He was actually reassuring about being a single parent, having just gone through three years of it himself, though he described the raw panic he had felt when he opened his front door to a woman he had never thought he’d see again but who was carrying a week-old infant she claimed was his son.

Yes, he said, mostly for Jamie’s benefit, since she was hearing the details for the first time, he’d had a paternity test done, though the timing of the baby’s birth, vis-
à
-vis its conception, made that a formality. For Samantha’s sake, he listed some of his early mistakes taking care of Buddy. They were hilarious.

Of course, he had had his parents to help, even long distance. Samantha didn’t have assurance of that yet.

Nor, right now, did Jamie. She kept thinking about that as she watched Chip and his sister, kept thinking about her father being dead and her mother being alive and the precious time they were wasting being angry at each other. Right now, she might have asked Caroline whether Tad’s clinginess during dinner was a factor of yet another new person in his life or something else. He refused to sit in his own chair, whining for her lap, and while she loved the feel of his warm little body, she imagined it was too warm. He didn’t eat much, just crumbs of cornbread and one or two tiny pieces of chili, and by the time Samantha pulled chocolate chip cookies from the oven, his little eyes were closing.

“I don’t think he feels great,” Jamie said, holding him tight as she stood. Her eyes were on Chip, who knew better than she what to do in this situation. “A quick bath and bed, maybe?”

He started to get up. “I’ll do it. You have to work.”

She pressed his shoulder down. “I’ll work once he’s asleep. Bath, Buddy?”

Buddy pouted. “I want another cookie.”

“You go settle Tad,” Chip told her, running a reassuring hand up her arm. “I’ll bring him along in a few.”

Tad took little settling. She stretched out beside him to read a story, but he was asleep before two pages were done. Worried, Jamie rolled to her side. She knew she should get up and work, but she couldn’t just yet. Breathing in baby-soap sweetness, she watched him for a while, listened to his breathing, monitored the rise and fall of his little chest. She knew he was bound to get sick at some point. No child made it to kindergarten untouched by other kids’ germs, especially not a daycare child, but that wasn’t reason to take him out, was it?

He still felt warm to her. But he slept through the sound of the bath being run and he didn’t stir when, a short time later, Chip deposited Buddy on the top bunk.

“
Now
you work,” he whispered as they crept from the room.

“What about your sister?”

“I’ll handle her.”

*   *   *

It took Jamie time to get organized—putting things where she could reach them, adjusting the height of her chair, connecting to the Web on one computer and the MacAfee network on another, hooking up the monitor to hear if Tad woke—and all the while, distracting tendrils of thought came and went. Some had Tad’s name on them, some Samantha’s. Thoughts of Chip soothed. Not so thoughts of Caroline. The ache remained, along with serious self-doubt, so when she was finally able to pull up her design of the main house, she was surprised to find that it was actually good. If her goal was to make the Weymouths proud of their family home, this was a solid first step.

That said, if the first glance at a presentation mattered, and the estate was to be truly inviting, the entry had to be more imposing than the narrow lane of cracked tar that it was.
Natural speed bumps,
she could hear the ghost of Mildred say, and while that might be true, there were more gracious ways to discourage speed. Widening the drive, she paved it with bricks made of recycled materials that gave it a slightly uneven, almost cobblestone feel. When it reached the house, she swung it into an elegant circle, with a trio of river birch in the middle and ample space for guest parking around the curves.

“How’s it going?” Chip whispered from the door. An hour had passed.

She gave him a thumbs-up. Returning to her screen, though, she realized she couldn’t show guest parking without addressing resident parking. That could be in clones of the existing carriage house, which she would tear down.

No. Not carriage houses. She wanted attached garages.

But that meant a redesign of the back of the house, for which she needed a rear exterior view. Turning to the second computer, she searched earth-view sites in vain. The
Williston News
had photos from long-ago backyard parties, but they showed people with only slices of grass, lawn furniture, or trees. What memories Jamie had herself were too vague to use.

Imagine,
she told herself.
Create
.

But another half hour had just passed with nothing to show.

Frantic to draw something—
anything
—she turned her back on the house and, on a fresh screen, re-created the woods. She set the outline of three carriage houses along its rim. No, freestanding carriage houses weren’t her first choice, but they were charming, certainly practical with storage space above, and if they differed from one another, the visual interest of the presentation would be enhanced.

But three? Or four? With walkways connecting one to the other and the house? Would the Weymouths like seeing a circle out back with a courtyard in the middle?

Not if there was a circle out front.

A landscaped courtyard might work if it had grass, flowers, and benches.

Then came another thought. There had to be access to the pool and tennis court from the main house. But how close should they be? Too close and those owning the condos would hear noise. Too far and they’d need a frigging
golf
cart to get there.

She glanced at her watch. Another hour gone, with too many decisions, too little input, and little progress. She was starting to hyperventilate when Chip appeared.

“Ignore me,” he whispered, pulling a chair up to his own computer. “I need printouts for tomorrow.”

She gasped. “The field day.” She had been so obsessed with her own work that she hadn’t thought about his. “I’m so sorry, Chip. I forgot. And here I left you alone with your sister. Where is she?”

“Sleeping. It’s after ten.” He shushed her with a finger to his mouth and pointed at her screen. “Work.”

She would never have been able to—would have sat watching him do his thing—if she hadn’t been so aware of the time. After ten? The clock was ticking.

Postponing exteriors, Jamie turned her thoughts to the interior of the house. The Weymouths had memories of growing up there. She wanted to tap into memories, but intimate and close didn’t work. She wanted the condos branching off from an impressive foyer that incorporated a grand staircase in the front hall. She had made sketches of this in her dreams.

But, again, how many condos? If four, each unit would be smaller and more reasonably priced. If three, the units could be larger, with luxury elements like his-and-her walk-in closets and a solarium. Which would the Weymouths prefer? Which would potential buyers prefer?

Roy had been the marketing genius. He would have known instinctively which route to take. In his absence, Caroline might have thoughts, since she was taking the lead in this project. But Caroline hadn’t called, and design was Jamie’s thing.

She went with luxury, partly because of what Chip had said about the Weymouths, but even more because three units would take less time to draw than four.

But wait. She had no existing floor plan, no starting point. She told herself that was fine, since the brothers wouldn’t have a floor plan handy either, but she had never worked this way. It was disorganized. It was
messy.

Thinking that she had
no choice,
she was about to start when she heard a gagging sound, then a shrill cry.

In a flash, she ran to the boys’ room. Tad had thrown up and was sitting on his bed in a gross mess, crying pitifully. She snatched him up and cradled him, cooing softly, “It’s okay, monkey, Mommie’s here.” But she wasn’t a vomiter, had never seen Tad do it before, didn’t know
where
to begin to clean up.

“The bathroom,” Chip said with a calm hand at her back. “Put him in a tepid tub while I change the sheets.”

She might have marveled at his composure if she hadn’t been so concerned about Tad, but the bath seemed to work. The water soothed him. Once she had him soaped and rinsed, she refilled the tub so that he could soak in clean bubbles, and all the while, ignoring her fear-filled heart, she played with him as if it were just another night in the bath.

“What now?” she asked Chip when he appeared.

He touched Tad’s forehead. “He’s cooler. That’s good.”

“What
was
it?”

“Who knows. Maybe something he ate. Maybe something going around at school.”

“Do I call the doctor?”

“Nah.”

“Give him Motrin?”

He considered that. “Let’s wait. If his temperature spikes—”

“I don’t even know how to
take
his temperature.”

Chip slid her a tired smile. “Not to worry, wife. I do.”

*   *   *

Tad’s temperature was only mildly elevated, no cause for alarm, Chip assured her. She gave the child water to sip, but he seemed happiest clinging to her, arms and legs. So she brought him back to the office and let him doze against her that way while she tried to work—“tried” being the operative word. She couldn’t settle into it. She was a creature who worked with facts and figures. Without them, she was groping around in the dark.

Thinking she might do better if she set the manor aside and worked on the rest of the acreage, she pulled up her work e-mail and scrolled through a fearsome list until she found the plot map that the Williston town assessor had sent. Unfortunately, it was as crude as every other assessor’s plot plan she had ever seen.

Disconcerted, she bowed her head against Tad’s warm curls. If construction ever became a reality, MacAfee Homes would bring in engineers to determine the location of access roads and the positioning of each house. But she had no engineers now. She had no marketing advice, no Realtor advice. She had no Caroline. She had no Chip, who had finally gone to bed. She had Tad, who woke each time she tried to put him down, and she was exhausted. It was past midnight. Fear alone kept her at her computer. But fear wasn’t conducive to design.

Thinking that an hour or two of sleep might help, she tucked Tad close and climbed in with Chip, who stirred. “I don’t know if this is allowed,” she whispered, “but he starts to cry when I take him to his own bed, and I don’t want to wake Buddy, and I need to feel you here.”

His answering whisper came against her hair as he drew her back into the curve of his body. “It’s good. Sleep.”