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“Get upset at the mention of that man?”
The two women looked at each other.
“I’ll ask Tristan,” Jecca said, “then I’ll tell you.”
“Right,” Lucy said. “And I’ll tell you what I find out.” They went up the stairs and back to work.
By dinner, Jecca had four possible paint schemes for the playhouse done, and there were three more in her head. Lucy said she would make the evening meal, so Jecca went back to her drawing board. But then she remembered that she hadn’t talked to her father in days, so she called him. Besides, he was the person she most wanted to tell about being given a job to renovate a building.
As soon as she heard his voice, she knew he was down in the dumps—and she knew the cause: the Sheila War. “She’s driving me crazy,” Joe Layton said. “Sheila wants to start selling curtains. In my store! She has an aunt that makes them i
n her basement, and they know where to order more of the things.”
He made it sound as though Sheila wanted to sell narcotics along with the screwdrivers. Truthfully, Jecca thought that diversifying the inventory sounded like a great idea, but she wasn’t about to tell her father so. He’d only listen to new ideas when he was relaxed and in a good mood—which wasn’t now. Sheila was a “confronter.” If someone said something she didn’t like, she confronted them. Jecca had seen Sheila stand up to men twice her size without any fear. Jecca liked that characteristic in her sister-in-law except when the man was her father. “So maybe—” Jecca began with caution.
“So help me, if you say I should sell curtains in my hardware store, I’ll put your cell number on your high school’s Web site. You’ll get calls from that Lawrence kid that used to follow you around.”
“Dad, you can be really cruel,” she said, but she was glad he was coming down from his anger. “Want to hear about what I’ve been doing?”
“Sure. Anything to take my mind off your brother’s wife. If she weren’t the mother of my grandkids I’d tell Joey to get rid of her.”
“It wouldn’t work. Joey’s mad about her,” Jecca said.
“You’re probably right. So tell me how many paintings you’ve done. You get those ads completed for Kim?”
“Actually,” Jecca began, “I haven’t painted any of them.”
“Why not? You decide to become one of those kids that don’t finish projects?”
“Dad, I’m not a kid and right now I’m thinking about what to do. I have a lot of choices. Are you going to quit taking your Sheila anger out on me and listen or not?”
“Okay, I’ll quit. What are you doing?”
Jecca paused for drama, then spoke slowly. “I have been given the job of renovating a playhouse built in the 1920s.” As she’d hoped, her father was speechless for a moment.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” she said, then told him about the little building and how it was next door to Mrs. Wingate’s house, and that the owner had asked her to oversee the project, especially the painting.
“How much will they pay you?”
“Nothing! Is money all you can think about? I’m doing this for a friend.”
“I thought your only friend in that little nowhere town was Kim. Is it her playhouse?”
“No, but it belongs to her cousin.”
“So charge her money. Don’t give your talent away.”
“Him. A him owns the playhouse.”
“Oh,” Joe said. “So now we’re getting to the bottom of this. It’s a him. And he’s got kids?”
Jecca put her head back and closed her eyes for a moment. She didn’t know how he’d done it, but her father had yet again found out what she didn’t want him to know. “Dad . . .” she said, then shook her head.
“What? A father can’t ask questions? Who is this man? He’s married with kids and he’s asking you to run around in a pair of shorts in the woods and paint his playhouse? Sounds fishy to me.”
Once again her father was making her defend her actions. “He’s the town doctor, he’s thirty-four years old, never been married, and the child is his niece. Happy now?”
