Moonlight in the Morning

  “I take it this is your sister-in-law? The one who wants to take over your dad’s store?” Tris was pretending he wasn’t watching her drive, not scrutinizing her every movement. But she was at ease with the big, old vehicle. Smiling, he relaxed back against the seat.

  “That’s Sheila.” Jecca was pulling onto the road.

  “Looks like she and your dad were fighting. He wrote SUNDAY AT THE LAYTONS.”

  “My dad never loses his sense of humor.” She told him about taking Lucy’s photo and sending it that morning and what she’d written. “It looks like it’s getting worse between them.”

  “You want to pull over and call him?”

  “He would only tell me that everything is fine.”

  “What does your brother say about this?”

  “Joey is as tough as they come, but he won’t take sides between his wife and his father,” Jecca said. “When Dad and Sheila go at it, Joey runs away.”

  “How do you handle an argument?” Tris was looking at her in speculation.

  “Trying to find out what I’d do if you and I got into a fight?”

  “I want to know anything I can find out about you.”

  Jecca glanced in the rearview mirror at Nell.

  “She’s asleep. Put her in a moving car and she passes out. Turn left at the next road. How do you argue?”

  “Fairly,” she said. “My dad said he didn’t mind a fight just so it was fair. He doesn’t believe in below-the-belt punches, physically or verbally.”

  “So if we disagree you won’t bring up something I said three years ago?” Tris had meant it as a joke but it fell flat. In three years Jecca would be living in another state. He tried to recover himself. “Think there’s a solution to the problem with your dad?”

  “Not that I see. He’s stubborn, and Sheila is wildly ambitious.”

  “She’s fighting for her children’s future.”

  “That’s what Lucy said.”

  Tris reached to the back to pull a quilt over his niece and Jecca couldn’t help watching him. He would make a magnificent father.

  He sat back in the seat, his right hand massaging his left arm. The muscles had weakened. He smiled at Jecca’s profile, pleased that she’d noticed.

  “How do you get on with your brother-in-law?” she asked.

  “Perfectly. He laughs at me because I don’t know a piston from a transmission, and I get him back by saving his life now and then.”

  “That seems to be an equal balance. Does he say thanks?”

  “He changes my oil for free, and he lets me have Nell for whole weeks at a time.” He lowered his voice. “This week they’re trying to make a baby.”

  “Did you put on the doctor act and tell him how it’s done?”

  Tris laughed so loud he glanced back to see if Nell woke up. “That’s exactly what I did. How’d you guess?”

  “I grew up in a male household so I know about male rivalry.”

  Reaching across the ng " width="gearshift, Tris squeezed her hand. “Tell me about your art training,” he said. “And what’s this about your boss? Kim said she’s a bad one.”

  “Andrea is rich, spoiled, selfish, vain, and exasperating.”

  “Not your best friend, huh?” Tris tried to hide his smile. He liked hearing that her life in New York wasn’t perfect. He settled back in the seat and listened as Jecca told him about herself, and he asked a lot of questions.

  He was glad to hear that she had many acquaintances in New York but no real friends. She saved her confidences and even her complaints for her frequent calls with Kim.

  By the time they got to Roan’s cabin, Tris was smiling. It looked like only Jecca’s job was in the way of her living somewhere else. That and the proximity to her father. And all those stores that women so loved.

  Not much, he thought as she pulled up in front of the cabin. Just insurmountable obstacles, that’s all.

  Fourteen

  The cabin was just as Jecca had imagined it—and would have been disappointed if it hadn’t been. It was quite wide, with a deep porch across the front. There were chairs and stacks of logs on the porch, plus an old washtub hanging on the wall. The steep roof had a chimney in the middle, and a tendril of gray smoke drifted out.

  “Perfect,” Jecca said, looking out the windshield.

  In the back, Nell woke up, saw where they were, then scrambled between the front seats and over her uncle to get out the door. When her foot hit him in the stomach he grunted in pain.

  “I guess she’s glad to be here,” Jecca said as she watched Nell run toward the porch steps.

  Tris reached across her to give a quick blow of the horn.

  “Inside watching his soaps?” Jecca asked.

  “That would be fun. He’s trying to write his novel.”

  The front door flew open and out came a big, burly man wearing beat-up dungarees and a blue flannel shirt over a dark green T-shirt. His heavy boots clomped on the wooden floor.

  “He looks the part,” Jecca said. When he got to the ground, she saw his face. He was a handsome man, with three-day-old whiskers, and his thick hair had a decided touch of red in it. “Named for his hair?”

  “When he was a kid it was like fire,” Tris said as he opened the car door.

  “And I guess you guys told him that often.”

  “Oh yeah,” Tris said, laughing as he got out. “We called him Burn Boy.”

  “And what did he call you?”

  “Roan was really nasty. He called me Ken,” Tris said as he shut the door.

  For a moment Jecca didn̵ng " >

  Chuckling, Jecca watched Roan pick up Nell and swing her around while she squealed in delight.

  Jecca got out of the big car, but she stood back, watching. She wanted to give them time to say hello. Besides, as far as she knew, Roan didn’t know she was coming.

  The three of them were talking on top of each other. Tris and Roan had exchanged bear hugs and were now pantomiming boxing moves.

  The two men were about the same height, but that’s all the similarity there was. Roan was huskier than Tris. They were both attractive men, but Tristan’s features were refined, elegant even, while Roan looked like someone in an old photo titled Buffalo Hunters.

  All in all, Jecca much preferred Tristan.

  As she watched she thought about how now with Tristan, this part of a new relationship was always interesting, when you got to know each other, when you found out the strengths and weaknesses of the other person. She liked learning what a person liked to eat, read, how he reacted to different situations.

  Later, when she began to see things she didn’t like about the person, she’d realize that everything had been there in those first few days. There was the way one boyfriend had snapped at a waitress, then told Jecca he was sorry but he hadn’t slept well and that made him short-tempered—which he swore he never was. At the time she’d paid no attention to it, but later she saw that he always treated clerks, waitpersons, mechanics, etc., with contempt. She realized that he’d always been rude, but she’d just not wanted to see the truth.

  Maybe she was deluding herself, but so far she’d seen nothing about Tristan that she didn’t like. But then, isn’t that what Kim had warned her about? That Tris made a woman feel like she was a princess, then he . . . What? Dumped her? Maybe Jecca was his favorite date because he knew it could never be permanent between them.

  At the end of the summer, would he kiss her on the forehead and tell her he’d had a good time?

  She reminded herself that she was the one leaving, not him. She retrieved her jacket—one of her boss’s castoffs—from the back, walked around the front of the car, and waited for one of them to notice her.

  “Jecca’s going to paint flowers,” Nell was saying.

  “And your playhouse,” Tris added.

  “She’s going to teach me how to paint,” Nell said.

  “She sounds like a nice new friend,” Roan said. “What is she? The babysitter?”

&
nbsp; “She’s Uncle Tris’s girlfriend,” Nell said.

  “Yeah?” Roan asked.

  Jecca thought he had a voice that could easily reach the back of an auditorium. For all that he didn’t look like anyone’s idea of a college professor, he had the sound and the attitude of one. The way he stood, with his shoulders back, the way he was smiling at Nell, said he was a man who was used to being listened to.

  “Yeah,” Tris said, and there was a bit of challenge in his voice, as though he were daring Roan to say something derogatory.

  It ran through Jecca’s mind that if she didn’t step in there might be an old-fashioned school yard fight. “Hello!” she said loudly. “I’m Jecca Layton.” She went forward with her hand extended.

  Roan turned toward her, smiling, but the smile left his face as soon as he saw her. He looked her up and down, as though he were appraising something he saw at an auction. Then he looked from her to Tristan and back again and his handsome face turned into a glower.

  “Roan!” Tris said sharply, frowning at his cousin.

  “Excuse me,” Roan said. “I wasn’t expecting such beauty.” He took Jecca’s hand in both of his. “Tristan doesn’t usually bring people with him. I just hope our lowly accommodations suit you.”

  Jecca pulled her hand out of his big ones. “I don’t mean to impose but . . .” She wasn’t sure what to say. She didn’t like the way the man was looking at her. It wasn’t as though he had lustful feelings, but she got the idea he didn’t, well, like her. Her first thought was that he didn’t think she was good enough for Tristan. “I, uh—” she began.

  Nell yelled, “I’m hungry.”

  Turning, Jecca looked at Tris who was staring at Roan as he walked around the side of the cabin. Tristan looked ready to fight a duel in Jecca’s honor. “Help me get the food out of the back?” she said to Tris. When he didn’t answer, she slipped her arm through his and pulled.

  Frowning, he went to the back of the car and opened the door.

  “What is going on?” Jecca asked in a low voice. “Look, it’s his house, and if he doesn’t want me here, I’ll leave.”

  “No!” Tris said. “I’ll sort it out, don’t worry. You and Nell get settled and I’ll deal with ol’ Burn Boy.”

  Nell came to the back of the car, and Tris loaded her arms with a lightweight box.

  “Why don’t you take Jecca inside and show her where everything is?” Tris told his niece.

  “Are you mad at Uncle Roan?”

  “Yes!” Tris said as he bent down to his niece. “And I’m going to beat him up. That okay with you?”

  Nell didn’t smile. “Did you bring bandages?”

  “For him or me?” Tris asked.

  “You. He’s bigger than you are,” she said, laughing as she ran away.

  “Tris,” Jecca began, but he handed her a big box, then kissed her over the top of it.

  “I’ll find out what his problem is. You won’t be going home. Now scoot!”

  As Jecca followed Nell into the cabin, her arms loaded, she couldn’t help thinking about what she’d just learned ajus">

  Roan hadn’t done or said anything nearly as bad as the sister had. It had really only been a gesture, an expression, but even that little bit had made Tris defend Jecca.

  Smiling, she went inside the cabin.

  “What the hell was that all about?” Tris demanded of his cousin as soon as they were alone. Roan was chopping wood, swinging the axe so hard that he seemed to be taking his anger out on the wood.

  “I didn’t know you were bringing a date,” Roan said stiffly.

  “If you had a telephone up here I would have called you.” Tris was waiting for an explanation.

  Roan looked Tris in the eyes for a moment. They’d been kids together, climbed the same trees. In the fifth grade they’d been in love with the same girl. They knew each other well. “You think you’re in love with her, don’t you?”

  “Be quiet! She’ll hear you.”

  Roan lowered his voice. “That girl comes from a city. It’s all over her. That jacket she has on cost thousands. She’s not going to stay in little backwoods Edilean. Tristan, that woman is going to break your heart.”

  “Jecca isn’t like what you’re thinking,” Tris said, and he dropped his attitude of hostility. He couldn’t be angry at Roan for looking out for him. On the other hand, Roan thought that since he lived in big bad California, he knew more about life than Tris, who still lived in Edilean. “And yes, she’s going to go back to the city, and yes, I’m going to be devastated.”

  “Why put yourself through that?” Roan asked. “Take it from me, from my experience, don’t stick your neck out there when you know it’s going to be chopped off.”

  “I’m more of the philosophy that it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”

  “Spoken by a man who’s never had his heart ripped out and stomped on,” Roan said.

  Tristan began to pick up firewood. “Don’t you think it’s time you got over your ex-wife and her young boyfriend?”

  “A man never gets over something like that. Wait until it happens to you.”

  “It’s not going to happen to me. Jecca isn’t sneaking around behind my back. She’s been honest with me from the first day. Roan, so help me if you do anything to make Jecca feel unwelcome I’ll make you sorry for it.”

  “Just don’t come crying to me later,” Roan said as he took the wood from Tris and started for the cabin.

  “You can bet I won’t,” Tris called after him. He well knew that he was angry because Roan had said what Tris was thinking. With every day that he spent with Jecca, he knew the parting was going to hurt more. If he had any sense at all, he’d leave Nell with Roan, take Jecca back to Edilean, then he’d return to spend a week . . . What? Fishing? He knew that he’d never be able to stay at the cabin if Jecca was in Edilean. However long they had, he wanted to spend it together.

  He picked up a heavy cooler, winced at the pain in his left arm, but then smiled. Jecca had seen what he thought he’d concealed completely. No, he wasn’t going to be “sensible” and spend even a minute away from her that he didn’t have to. Tonight, sharing a bedroom with Roan, with Jecca right next door, was going to be difficult enough.

  Inside the cabin, Jecca put the box down on the kitchen counter and looked around. It was all one big room, with three doors at the back leading into the two bedrooms, a bathroom between them.

  All the furniture looked like it had been castoffs from different people’s houses. None of it matched, all of it was old and worn out. Two sofas and two giant chairs looked toward a huge stone fireplace that had a foot-deep pile of ashes in the bottom.

  What interested Jecca the most in the room was that the dining table was covered with a thick layer of newspapers, and on it was a chainsaw that was in pieces. Jecca couldn’t help smiling, as machines in pieces was something she’d seen her entire childhood. One of the ways Layton Hardware stayed in business when it had to compete with the megastores was that they repaired equipment.

  Jecca had spent nearly every Saturday of her childhood at the store with her father and brother. That’s when women and weekend handymen came in with a cheap power tool they’d bought for a bargain, plopped it on the counter, and said, “It quit working.”

  Joey had always been a whiz at repair. For years it had irked Jecca that he was better than she was. Since repair didn’t come naturally to her, she’d worked harder at it. When her homework was done, she’d read machine manuals.

  “Give it up,” Joey used to say. “Girls aren’t good with power tools.”

  “All I want is to be good enough to beat you,” Jecca used to say. “That shouldn’t be too difficult.”

  Sometimes their dad had to break up the ensuing argument.

  Jecca never did get as good as Joey, so she left the intricate things for him. But still, she knew enough that her dad often put her in charge of the maintenance desk. When a contractor brought in a malfunct
ioning machine, she would just fill out the ticket and leave the repair to her dad or Joey. But when the homeowners came in with their tools broken, she sometimes fixed them herself. At night she’d entertain her dad and Joey with what they called “Stories of Stupid.”

  “So you were trying to make a hole through quarter-inch-thick steel?” Jecca had learned to say with a straight face. She’d take the power hand drill the person had paid twenty dollars for and gently explain that it was made to drill wood not steel. Many timtee.

  es, the customers went away with a good machine bought from Layton’s.

  One time a woman brought in a good quality drill that had stopped working. “I don’t understand what happened to it,” she said. “I was hanging pictures with it two days ago and today it sounds like this.” The motor could barely turn over. Jecca couldn’t resist having a look inside. The minute she opened it, out came a sticky liquid. The woman’s two-year-old had poured maple syrup inside the drill.

  Jecca had taken apart routers, sanders, and power handsaws. She’d been handed rototillers that people had run through rocky fields and piles of barbed wire. In fact, she nearly always had a tiller on the repair desk. In between customers, she’d used a roofing knife with its inward curved blade and wire cutters to disentangle the blades.

  And then there were the chainsaws. People loved to cut up logs, but they rarely bothered to check if there were nails in the wood. She got good at putting dislodged chains back on, then she’d explained how to properly use a chainsaw.

  What brought out the competitive spirit in her and Joey was when a tool was dropped on the counter in a paper bag, the pieces rattling around inside. Some homeowner had decided he could fix the tool, had taken it apart, then couldn’t get it back together. By the time Jecca was fourteen she’d conceded to Joey on fixing the machines, but she challenged him to see how fast he could do it. She’d just hand the bag of pieces to her brother, then watch the clock to see how long it took him to put it back together.

  Regular customers loved to watch him, so Jecca started making a show of it. When a power tool was bagged in by a do-it-yourselfer, Jecca would blow a whistle. Joey would leave whatever he was doing and go to the repair bench. Jecca held a stopwatch and customers yelled encouragement. He was like a soldier reassembling his rifle. When it was done, he threw up his hands, she blew the whistle, announced the time, and everyone applauded.