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“I’ve got to run,” she said to the man who was standing by the door. “You can—” She broke off because it was her father, and he was the way she knew him best, wearing a tool belt, a hammer at his hip.
Had anyone askedd aecause i Jecca, she would have said she’d recovered very well from the breakup with Tristan. But the sight of her father showed her that she hadn’t recovered at all. In an instant she went from being a grown woman to a little girl.
She dropped her half-eaten bagel and her briefcase to the floor, put her arms around her dad’s neck, and finally, at last, she started crying.
Her dad, shorter than she was, but broader by half, kicked the door shut, picked his daughter up, and carried her to the couch.
“He didn’t call me at all,” she was saying through her copious tears. “He made no effort to get me to stay.”
Her dad handed her a wad of tissues from a box on the coffee table.
Jecca kept talking. “I know it makes no sense that I wanted him to come after me—not that I did. If he’d shown up at the door I would have slammed it in his face. It was horrible of him to buy a studio for me. He knew I wasn’t staying. I told him that all along. But maybe I could have painted there. In Edilean, I mean. What I did there was the best work I’ve ever done. Maybe I could have kept doing it. Not next to the hardware store of course because you’d get me to run the cash register, but somewhere. You know what I’m doing now? Managing the whole damned gallery, that’s what. I spend days looking at other artists’ work and I haven’t picked up a brush in weeks. I could have done more actual artwork in Edilean, and maybe Tristan and I could have figured that out, but he made me so angry I couldn’t think. And you . . .” She couldn’t think of the betrayal by her father. “Tristan hates me, doesn’t he?”
When her father was silent, she looked at him.
“I think he’s mad about you,” he said. “But your Dr. Tristan left town not long after you did and nobody knows where he went. Livie thought he went up to the cabin, but I went up there and it was only that professor guy.”
It took Jecca a moment to understand what he was saying. “Livie? You’ve seen Mrs. Wingate?”
Joe nodded.
Jecca sat back, blew her nose, wiped her eyes, and looked at her father. “Out with it,” she said. “What have you been up to and don’t skip a word.”
Joe looked around the apartment, at the big glass windows. “Nice place. You got any more bagels? It’s a long drive up here.”
“‘Up’ here? You came up from Edilean?” Jecca went to the kitchen to make breakfast for her father. He’d want bacon and eggs with his bagel, except that she didn’t have any bacon.
He moved to take a seat on a stool on the other side of the counter. “You notice that today is exactly six weeks since you left in one of your huffs?”
“I didn’t—” Jecca waved her hand. “I was very angry at both of you.”
“Well, that boyfriend of yours was more than mad at me. How was I to know you wouldn’t like for me to open a store in that little town?”
Turning, she narrowed her eyes at him.
Joe gave a one-sided grin and a little guffaw. “Okay, so maybe I did know. That boyfriend of yours sure can keep a secret.”
“He’s not my boyfriend. I haven’t seen or heard from him in weeks.”
“If you’re gonna start crying again I better get a roll of toilet paper.”
“I’m not going to cry anymore,” Jecca said. “I want you to tell me what’s been going on. When you say Tristan can keep a secret, what do you mean?”
“Didn’t tell you about buying the hardware store, did he? Did you see that building? When I get through with it, it’ll put Home Depot and Lowe’s out of business.”
Jecca cracked three eggs into a skillet and listened to her father with everything she knew about him. He had a lot to tell her, but there was something else there. He was . . . What? Afraid? Was that the underlying emotion in his words? What in the world could possibly scare Joe Layton? When his wife died and left him with two young kids to raise, one of them a girl who was born with her own opinions, he hadn’t been afraid.
“Dad,” Jecca said slowly, “why don’t you tell me what it is that you’re hiding?”
He waited while she slid the eggs out of the skillet. Runny yolks, just the way he liked them.
“I want to marry Lucy.”
Jecca had expected anything in the world except that. “Lucy? Lucy Cooper? Lives at Mrs. Wingate’s house?”
“That’s the one.”
She sat on the stool next to him. Watching him eat was very familiar and she marveled at how glad she was to see him. “But . . .” She couldn’t think what to say. That her father wanted to remarry was a lot to take in. Lucy—a woman Jecca already loved—was going to be her stepmother.
