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He kissed her in thanks and hurried off.
It was a joy to Jecca to unpack their bags, to spread out the blanket, and get the food out. On the bottom were the art supplies.
“Food or art first?” Jecca asked Nell.
“Art!” she said.
“We are kindred souls.” Jecca looked around, found a patch of wildflowers, and motioned for Nell to follow her.
As with nearly all children, Nell neither needed nor wanted any instruction. She let Jecca set everything up—which involved only putting a little glob of each watercolor in a circle on Roan’s white plate and filling a little plastic beach bucket with water—then the two of them went to work.
Nell learned by watcharn widthing what Jecca did. When Jecca made a quick pencil sketch of the landscape, then filled it in with color, Nell did the same thing. When Jecca stretched out on her stomach to better see a little flower, Nell was sprawled less than a foot away. Jecca used colored pencils and watercolors on the same drawing, and so did Nell.
“Hey!” Tris said softly from behind them. He was smiling down at them as they were stretched out on the grass like wood nymphs. Surrounding them were a dozen sheets of paper, each with a scene rich in color, drying in the sun.
“I don’t mean to break this up, but I’m starving.” He held up a string of four fat fish. “The hunter has come home.”
Jecca rolled onto her back and looked up at him. The sun was behind his head and he looked so good she thought he was the only thing she wanted for lunch.
Tris dropped the fish to the ground and lay down between the two of them. He stretched out his arms, and they both put their heads on his shoulders. “I am a happy man,” he said.
It was a perfect moment—until Tris’s stomach gave a loud growl.
“Chyme,” Nell said.
“Chime? Like a bell? That’s a nice way to put it,” Jecca said as she put her hand on Tris’s stomach.
“Chyme is the mix of food and digestive juices,” Tris said. “How about if I clean the fish while you guys build a fire?” He looked at Jecca.
“Can do,” Jecca said.
“I think,” Nell said solemnly, “that Jecca can do anything.”
Tris laughed. “You’re more right than you know.” His stomach gave another rumble. “Up! The hunter is hungry.”
“Come on, Nell,” Jecca said. “Let’s build a fire for our caveman.”
It didn’t take her long to put a pile of dry twigs together. They’d brought a grill lighter, so the fire started easily. Within minutes two fish were sizzling in a skillet and the blanket was covered with the containers they’d brought.
“He laughs a lot around you,” Nell said while Tris was gathering more wood.
“Does he?”
“Mom says Uncle Tris worries too much about work. Grandpa won’t let him even see the files at the office. He says that it’s too hard to be just one doctor in Edilean and that Uncle Tris needs a partner.”
Jecca started to say that maybe Tris should work somewhere else, like in a New York office, but she didn’t. All she had to do was look at Nell and she knew he couldn’t possibly leave.
“What’s that grim expression for?” Tris asked Jecca as he piled the wood by the fire.
“Just thinking,” she said. “Those fish look like they’re done.”
“So they are.”
Nell kept up a steady stream of chatter through lunch. “We need to 20;m" help Uncle Roan,” she said. “He’s not happy.”
“We can’t very well write his book for him,” Tris said.
“I think,” Nell said as she took a bite of fish, “that he’s not very good at writing.”
