Moonlight in the Morning Read online

  “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?”

  “Better,” Joe said. “So what’s he doing giving a job like that to a girl?”

  “Because I’m qualified!” she said in exasperation. “That’s why. Dad, you’re making me crazy.”

  “Just taking care of you, that’s all. You’re turning down a paying job for Kim to work for free on some guy’s playhouse, so I worry, that’s all.”

  Jecca silently shook her head. It was better to change the subject. “Want to hear about my roommates? They’re teaching me to pole dance.”

  “What?! Do they know you’re working for some guy that’s never been married?”

  Jecca threw up her hand. How could her father make never having been married sound bad? “Dad, so help me . . .”

  “Okay, so tell me how you’re going to start a new career of stripping for men who own playhouses.”

  It was a while before she could get off the phone to him and she promised to send him photos and copies of her sketches. “Get Sheila to show you how to retrieve an e-mail,” Jecca said.

  “I know all about e-mails,” he said. “I guess this playhouse means you won’t be coming home any time soon.”

  “Not for a while, but Dad?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I love you too,” she said, smiling.

  “Yeah,” he said in a gruff voice, then hung up.

  As she clicked off, she frowned. He really did sound miserable. She heard Lucy calling from downstairs, and she went down to dinner.

  Eleven

  For the next few days, Jecca didn’t stop working. She wanted to have a proper presentation for Tris and Nell when they returned on Sunday.

  She spent hours in the playhouse, sketching every inch of it, and trying to imagine what different colors would look like. She’d never done any interior decorating before. The two apartments she’d had in New York had been little more than places for her to sleep. Between waitressing and trying to sell her work, and later working in the gallery, she’d never had the time—or the money—to think about her own apartment.

  She painted one playhouse sketch in Easter colors, so authentic that she expected bunnies to jump out of the windows. But then she also experimented with other colors, using Victorian “painted ladies” houses as her models.

  When she had six designs that she was pleased with, she showed them to Lucy.

  Lucy took her time looking at them and paused at the Easter house. “I saw some Beatrix Potter toile that would be perfect for the curtains for this one.”

  “What color?” Jecca asked.

  “Baby blue on winter white.”

  Jecca smiled at the answer. Lucy’s precise naming showed her artistic nature. “That would mean we’d have to have blue slipcovers with yellow piping.”

  “And dark blue piping on the curtains. What color should the walls be?”

  The two women looked at each other and said, “Yellow,” in unison.

  Smiling, Lucy said, “Go wash the paint off your face. We need to go shopping.”

  “But what about your sewing?” Jecca asked. “Don’t you have orders to fill?”

  “Lots of them. How about if tonight I show you how to use the ruffler? And you can cut about twenty yards of bias strips for me for French piping.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Jecca said as she hurried to her bathroom.

  After Lucy called Mrs. Wingate to say there wouldn’t be a 3 P.M. workout, they went to Hancock Fabrics in Williamsburg. Lucy had a wealth of knowledge about sewing. Anything Jecca could imagine, Lucy knew how to make.

  They talked nonstop as they looked at ribbons and trims, patterns and buttons, thread and equipment. They got samples of several fabrics. Jecca laughed at Lucy’s snobbery over m ~roideave to havachines. “There’s Bernina and there’s Baby Lock and that’s it,” she said. “There isn’t anything those two companies don’t do, and they do it the best.” Smiling, Jecca trailed after her.

  After they left the fabric store, they treated themselves to afternoon tea at the Williamsburg Inn. While sitting in the beautiful restaurant, looking out over the gorgeous golf course, Lucy got Jecca to talk about her life. When Jecca said that her mother died when she was a child, Lucy reached across the table and took her hand.

  “It was just me and my dad,” Jecca said.

  “And your brother,” Lucy added.

  Jecca gave a half smile as she ate a tiny cake with three layers of chocolate. “I guess so. But Joey’s always been self-sufficient. He’s more like a shadow of Dad than his own person. And now that Sheila’s in the picture, everything’s changed.”

  “Is Sheila your father’s girlfriend?”

  “Worse. She’s Joey’s wife.” Jecca waved her hand. “All this is boring, just the regular family problems. Nothing different and certainly not interesting.”

  “Jecca, I spend all day sitting at my machines with only a TV for company. The love life of a snail is interesting to me.”

  Jecca laughed. “Okay,” she began, “I call Sheila a confronter because—”

  “She can’t wait to tell people that only her opinion is right and the only one that matters.”

  “You’ve met her!” Jecca said.

  “Someone like her. So what has she done?”

  “She wants my father out of the family business,” Jecca said. “She wants Joey to stop being the shadow and become the man in charge.”

  Jecca went on talking, telling in detail all that had changed in their family since Sheila had entered it. Sometimes Lucy made comments, but mostly she did that thing that is so overlooked in modern society: She listened. She didn’t just listen politely, but gave Jecca her full attention. Lucy listened with her mind and her heart.

  “Your poor father,” Lucy said. “He must feel like his son and daughter-in-law want him to die.”

  Jecca caught her breath because Lucy had put into words what she’d felt but hadn’t wanted to say out loud. “I think you’re right.” Her voice lowered. “I don’t think Sheila hates him, but if Dad died tomorrow I believe she’d feel as though their lives could go forward.”

  Again Lucy put her hand over Jecca’s. “Don’t be so hard on her. She’s a mother looking out for her children and she’s making a place for them in the future. When you have your own children, you’ll understand. You’ll do anything for them.”

  “Like Tristan does for his niece?”

  “It’s even stronger than that,” Lucy said. “Would you like to walk around Colonial Williamsburg for a while?”

  “Sure,” Jecca said.

  As they walked, they talked more. But again it was Jecca talking and Lucy listening. Several times Jecca tried to get Lucy to tell some about herself, but she wouldn’t. Lucy wouldn’t so much as say whether she was married, had been married, or if she had children. Absolutely nothing.

  In other circumstances, Jecca would have been annoyed, even angry, that someone was so secretive, but Lucy had a way of making it seem like she was just being modest.

  As they sauntered down Duke of Gloucester Street, through the perfectly restored ei