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Should he remind Richard that they were divorced? Nah, he decided. It was nice to momentarily bask in his approval. Lord knew it probably wouldn’t last. But when he was in a good mood, Richard was a charmer.
“Do you need to get back to your run or do you have time for some coffee?” he asked.
Damn, this was really getting strange. Richard was usually so caught up in his work that he barely noticed when someone stopped by. He certainly didn’t initiate chats.
“I can take a short coffee break.”
“Good.” With an approving nod, he set out an extra mug. Handmade pottery, like every dish in the place. Richard hated anything mass-produced. “Because I want to talk to you.”
Uh oh, that couldn’t be good. He was just an ex-husband. What could Richard possibly have to say to him?
Maybe it was baseball related. The man was a fan, after all.
“If it has to do with the Twins, you should know that I probably won’t be with them much longer. The new manager likes the new guy and my contract is up.”
“This has nothing to do with baseball. It’s Jenna.”
Oh shit. This could be a minefield. “Shouldn’t you talk to her directly?”
“I’d rather communicate with you. She gets upset with me so easily. You know how she is.”
Billy set his jaw. If Jenna got upset with her father, no doubt she had good reason. He didn’t want to pretend otherwise, but he also didn’t want to get on his ex-father-in-law’s bad side. He gave a noncommittal grunt.
“She hasn’t been here since the other day, with you. There’s something I want to show her. She can bring a casserole or two with her too. She used to make sure my freezer was stocked for when I was working on a complicated piece and had no time to cook.”
Had he ever cooked? Jenna told stories of Annika poring over cookbooks trying to learn how to roast a chicken. “You want me to tell Jenna to go back to bringing food over for you?”
“Exactly.” Richard clapped a hand on his shoulder, then swung around to take the espresso pot off the burner before it bubbled over. “I knew I could count on you.”
“Sorry, I’m not going to get in the middle of that.”
Richard turned back around, his thick eyebrows coming together in a bushy frown. “Why not?”
“That’s her business, not mine. I don’t tell her what to do.”
“Because of that ‘divorce’?” Richard used actual air quotes along with that question.
Billy laughed. “I didn’t tell her what to do before the divorce. Besides, didn’t you tell her to keep her distance until you finished your painting?”
Richard tossed his silvering, shaggy hair away from his face. It was streaked with cobalt blue left from his last painting. “It’s finished. That’s what I want to show her. It explains everything. If Jenna would come look at it, she’d understand.”
“Understand what?”
“Everything.”
Were all hermit genius painters so cryptic? “You can’t narrow it down a little?”
Richard waved a hand through the air. Billy noticed that it was more gnarled than it used to be, after more days and years of clutching a paintbrush. “She always had questions. I couldn’t answer ‘em. I’m a painter, not a talker.”
That sounded like a copout to Billy, but he didn’t want to offend his ex-father-in-law by saying so. He took a stab in the dark.
“Are you talking about questions about her mother?”
Richard inclined his head.
Jenna’s mother, Sue Ellen, had been very young, much younger than Richard. When Jenna was little, Sue Ellen fell in love with someone else and ran off to be with him. Richard had been so furious he’d trashed some of his own paintings. That had apparently scared her so much she hadn’t fought for custody—or at least that was the story Jenna had pieced together. Richard never talked about it. Sue Ellen had disappeared into her new life and rarely reached out to Jenna and Annika.
He knew that her choice had made Jenna question her own worth. Why had it been so easy for Sue Ellen to walk away from her daughters? He also knew that she’d been terrified of making the same mistakes her mother had made—marrying too young, marrying the wrong man. Jenna had always sworn she would never disappear on her kids the way Sue Ellen Scarlett had.
