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Troy said, “It feels very friendly in your house.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” she said. “I have a hummingbird feeder outside the kitchen window during the spring and summer, and a bird feeder up now for the winter, so I can watch the birds while I do the dishes.”
Janey asked, “Aren’t kitchens supposed to be all white and modern, though?” Which would have been Beckett’s take.
“Most people think so,” Quinn said, “but I’m not most people. OK. Time to show you where you’ll be staying. In the back here are my bedroom and a bathroom—I have a clawfoot tub, you won’t be surprised to hear, but your quarters aren’t hideously antique, so get that expression off your face, Beckett. Let’s go. Up the stairs.”
* * *
He was aconstructionmanager.Of course he wasn’t going to be impressed by her funky old house! Her date last night hadn’t been impressed, either. Joel Leeming might be a whiz as a contractor, but when she’d invited him in, he’d looked around and said, “I could give you a quote on fixing this place up,” so zero points for tact. She’d wanted to end the date right there, but then, she was clearly much too picky.
You’re doing Beckett a favor,she reminded herself, and led the way up the creaky wooden stairs to the second floor.
“These are guest quarters,” she said. “Which is a fancy way of saying I don’t use them much. My nephew loves it up here, though. He always wants to stay with me, not my folks, when my brother and sister-in-law come visit from Massachusetts, so I thought you kids might like it, too.”
Sheliked it, anyway. The bathroom was modern—well, modern-ish—but nothing else up here was. She’d had the original fir floors refinished, so maybe that counted, and the two bedrooms had ceilings that followed the house’s sloping roof lines, which also might not be modern, but she liked it. The half-sized door in the wall of the smaller bedroom led to a cozy storage area that her nephew loved so much, she’d put a little mattress and a lamp in there. He called it his “nest.” The closets were cedar-lined and smelled fresh and resinous. For some reason, they also had tiny windows in them that still charmed her, and the low-to-the-ground, deep-silled windows in both rooms offered views over trees and rooftops.
It might all be creaky, but it felt like home to her, even though the single-story ranch-style home where her parents still lived had been nothing like it.
Janey said, looking at the twin beds, “I can’t share a room with Troy, though. He’s aboy.”
Beckett said, “We talked about this. We’re lucky that Quinn’s offering it, and it’s for two months. You can share with your brother for two months.”
Quinn tried not to let her face fall. She’d honestly thought the kids would love it.Shewould have loved it. She said, “There’s another room, sort of, but …”
“Thankgoodness,”Janey said.
“No,” Beckett said. “Excuse us,” he told Quinn. “Janey and I need to have a talk.”
Troy said, “Please, Dad? It’s so much friendlier and nicer than our apartment, and Bacon will like it, too. He can jump up on this shelf thing and look out the window! He likes to look out and bark at squirrels best.”
“I need myprivacy,”Janey said. “Not to have to share with my brother and a dog!”
“Downstairs,” Beckett told her.
“Wait,” Quinn said. “Just a second. Here’s the other space.” She headed out into the hallway and thought,It was a stupid idea. Nobody else likes your house as much as you do. You already knew that. Beckett thinks it’s a project.Everybodythinks it’s a project. The floors squeak, the basement is creepy, and nothing about it is modern. This is a mismatch all the way.But she opened that door anyway. “Troy and I like my house,” she said, keeping her chin up. “You can come visit me,” she told him.
“I don’t want to come visit you,” he said. “I want tolivehere. Please, Dad? Can we?”
“I—” Beckett began, but Quinn didn’t wait to hear it. She said, “Come on, Troy. Come see my attic.”
* * *
Beckett triedto remember when Janey’d started copping all this attitude. That was because he was trying not to wonder what he was meant to do about it. “Come on,” he told her.
“Wait,” Janey said. “Maybe Troy will—”
Beckett said, “Downstairs,” in his most no-nonsense voice, the one that would’ve had any macho-in-his-own-mind tradie hustling, worried he was about to get the sack.
For a moment, he wasn’t sure she’d come with him. That was how mutinous she looked. Finally, though, she sighed, said,“Fine,”and headed downstairs. Stomping a bit along the way, but he’d pick his battles.
“Right,” he said when they reached the bottom. “Why?” If she’d been a tradie giving him all this backchat, he wouldn’t have cared why, but you couldn’t sack your kids. You were meant to be teaching them, and to do that, you had to know why.
She had her arms crossed. You didn’t have to be a body-language expert to read that. “Nothing,” she said. “Fine, OK? I’ll share with Troy. You don’t care how I feel anyway, so I shouldn’t have said anything.”
He sat down where he was, which was on the steps. “How have I showed you that I don’t care how you feel? Sit down and tell me.” She hesitated, and he said, “Janey. Come sit.” He should probably add “please,” but bugger that. He was a dad, not a mum. Also, Janey may have been right. He was a dad with a temper.
Some more hesitation, but she sat. He felt her warm little body next to his, reminded himself about patience, and temper, and so forth, and said, “No matter what you say, I’m still going to love you. Dads are like that.”
