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“Please,” she pleaded again.
“All right,” he said. “When do you want to leave?”
Jecca didn’t answer or she would have said she was running out the door right then. Instead, she threw her arms around her father’s stout, strong body and bent to kiss his cheek. He was proud that she was an inch taller than his five foot six. He liked to say that she took after her mother’s family, as they were tall and lean.
His oldest child, his son Joey, was pure Layton. He was five foot five and nearly as wide as he was tall, almost all of it muscle, thanks to having worked in the hardware store since he was twelve. Jecca called him “Bulldog.”
She was on a plane early the next morning. She didn’t want to give some contractor the chance to show up saying his tools had been stolen/lost/destroyed and he needed new ones now. Her dad would expect her to stay and help fill the order. He thought nothing of sending his daughter up the side of a mountain in a dual-axle pickup to deliver nails, roofing supplies, and equipment.
When Jecca got off the plane in Richmond she was expecting to see Kim, but she wasn’t there. Instead, Kim’s father was waiting. Jecca’d met him only once but she remembered him well. He was older than her father by several years but he was still handsome.
“Is everything all right?” Jecca asked.
“Yes and no,” Mr. Aldredge said. “We had to rush Kim to the hospital last night for an emergency appendectomy.”
“Is she okay?”
“Yes, but she’s going to be out of it for a few days. I’m sorry we didn’t call and tell you so you could postpone your trip.”
“It took me two months to talk my father into letting me out of the hardware store. If I’d had a delay he never would have let me come.”
“We fathers can be a problem,” he said.
“I didn’t mean—”
“It’s okay, Jecca. I understand completely. Why do you think Kim isn’t visiting you? I couldn’t bear to part with her.”
She smiled at him. Kim had always said he was a pushover. “Sweetest man alive. Now my mother . . .” The three of them had laughed. Sophie and Kim knew about mothers being difficult, but Jecca figured her father was enough of a problem for any three parents.
They got in Mr. Aldredge’s car and started the long drive to Edilean. “Kim will be down for a while, but I can introduce you to some people. My son’s friends are around if you’d like, and there’s her cousin Sara, and—”
“That’s okay. I can paint,” Jecca said. “I brought enough supplies to last me months. Kim said something about Florida Point?” Mr. Aldredge made a noise as though Jecca had sai
d something extremely dirty. “Did I say something wrong?”
“No, uh, I mean, well, it would be better to call the place by its proper name of Stirling Point.”
“Oh. Because . . . ?” She wasn’t sure but it looked like Mr. Aldredge’s face turned red.
“Better ask Kim,” he mumbled.
“Okay,” she said, and they were silent for a while.
“I guess I should tell you about my son, Reede. He and his girlfriend broke up.” Mr. Aldredge sighed. “It’s the first time he’s had his heart broken. I told him it wouldn’t be the last, but that did no good. The poor guy is so despondent that I’m concerned he might drop out of med school.”
“That is serious. I thought he was about to get married.”
“We thought so too. He and Laura Chawnley were a couple since they were kids.”
“Isn’t that—?” Jecca thought it would be better to keep her opinions to herself.
“Limiting?” Mr. Aldredge asked. “Very much so, but Reede is as stubborn as his mother.”
“And Kim,” Jecca said.
“Oh yes. When my children decide something there’s no changing them.”
“It looks like Laura changed Reede.”
