in a teenager’s self-centered way, maybe she just resented living in a shabby house when she could have a gorgeous, remodeled showplace to bring her friends home to.
If she had any friends. People didn’t just become anorexic without other problems, did they? Assuming that’s what was wrong with her.
Ryan abruptly shoved back his chair, lines carved deep in his forehead. “Well, since I’m not any use here, I think I’ll get home and let you women decide which room you’re going to paint first.”
Kathleen started to stand, too. “Ryan…”
“It’s okay.” His grin was resigned. “I wish you’d get it through your head that I can afford to take a hit for you and Emma, and I’d feel happier if you’d let me. But I guess stubbornness runs in this family.” He ruffled his niece’s hair. “See? It’s not your fault, kiddo. You inherited it.”
She smiled uncertainly up at him. Ryan kissed Emma’s forehead, gave his sister a passing hug, and let his gaze linger on Jo with a certain deliberation as he said, “Good night, all. Kathleen’s right. I’m always here, butting my nose in. Call me on it if I’m a nuisance.” With a last nod, he left. A moment later, they heard the sound of the front door opening and closing.
Kathleen laughed, the sound wry. “That’s my brother.”
And wouldn’t he make life here more interesting, Jo thought, more conscious in his absence than she’d been in his presence of the way he’d seemed to charge the room with energy. Oh, hell, be honest, she told herself: with the way she had responded to him.
What’s more—miracle of miracles—she had a feeling he’d been attracted to her, too.
Maybe she wouldn’t regret moving in here after all.
She cleared her throat. “I have a proposal. What do you say we show that brother of yours what we’re made of? Let’s tackle a job next weekend. Maybe the upstairs bathroom? Isn’t that one of the projects you had in mind, Kathleen?”
“But…plumbing…” Helen protested, in her soft, uncertain voice.
“We’re smart women.” Jo looked from one to the other. “I’ll find a how-to book. How hard can it be?”
Kathleen’s smile was the most genuine Jo had seen from her. “Those sound like famous last words. But you’re right. We can learn. I’m game. Helen, what do you say?”
“It might be fun,” Helen agreed tentatively.
“Emma?” Jo asked, when her mother didn’t.
The teenager shrugged with a hint of sullenness. “I don’t know how to do anything.”
“You can learn,” Jo said.
Her mother gave a decisive nod. “Then let’s go shopping tomorrow night. We can pick out a new vanity and sink and what-have-you together. Home Depot, here we come!”
CHAPTER TWO
“UH-OH,” JO WAS the first to say.
She knelt with one strip of the ancient, cracked linoleum in her gloved hands. Beside her, Kathleen gaped in horror at the rotting floorboards beneath where the toilet had been pulled up.
“What’s ‘uh-oh’?” Helen asked from the hall behind them. Ginny peered around her.
Hovering outside the bathroom door, Emma asked eagerly, “Did you do something bad?”
“Great. Wonderful,” Kathleen muttered.
“It’s okay.” Jo was already envisioning the work to be done. Way more than she’d signed up for, considering this wasn’t her house, but she wasn’t the quitting type. Besides, she wanted to take a shower again someday. With false confidence, she said, “We’ll tear the boards up and lay down plywood.”
“What if the beams underneath are rotting?”
Brutality was sometimes necessary. “We call your brother.”
Kathleen’s jaw hardened. “Then let’s pray,” she said, and began yanking up the linoleum again.
Jo couldn’t quite figure out why Kathleen was so determined not to accept Ryan’s help. Pride—sure. She’d been a dependent wife, now she wanted to show the world she could manage very nicely on her own, thank you. But her determination also struck Jo as a sort of competition—I can do it better than you can. A childish game. When you got right down to it, wasn’t it a little silly that three women who knew nothing about construction were refusing to let a willing contractor help gut the bathroom, just so they could prove…what? That they could do it, too? Could do it better?
Yeah, right, Jo thought with humorous derision. Do it? Maybe. Make a dozen mistakes? That, too.
“Well,” she decided, while Helen was carrying the tattered roll of linoleum out, “we’ll definitely need the circular saw. But let’s pry a few boards up and see how bad it is.”
The first board splintered—well, disintegrated was probably closer to the truth. Squished into pieces. But under it, the thick, rough-hewn beam looked solid. Jo pulled out nails and moved on to the next board. Somehow, as the only one with any know-how whatsoever, she was ending up doing most of the work. But she’d always enjoyed doing simple projects like building a floor-to-ceiling bookcase in her last condo. She’d been proud of the results. This was more than she’d bargained for when she had shrugged and said, “Sure, I don’t mind helping,” during that interview/visit this summer. But, heck, it wasn’t as if she had any friends with whom to spend a sunny Saturday, and she liked a challenge.
“It looks okay,” she announced, after the second board shattered with a soggy sound. “These boards weren’t rotted quite through.”
Kathleen sank back on her heels and sighed. “Thank God for small favors. Okay. Tell me what to buy, and I’ll go back to the lumberyard while you and Helen pull up the floor.”
Jo measured the dimensions of the bathroom floor. “Ask somebody what kind of plywood you should buy. Tell them we’re tiling on top of it. Oh, and what kind of nails. Get a circular saw…”
“But we already bought a saw,” Helen protested.
“That was a jigsaw. We can’t cut big pieces of plywood with it, not and make straight lines.”
“Oh.”
Kathleen was busy writing notes. “We’ll probably need the tools when we work on other projects anyway. We should have bought one in the first place.”
“The thing is,” Jo paused, the hammer suspended in her hand, “we really need to get a plumber.”
Kathleen looked dismayed. “A plumber? Why?”
Jo put it in simple language. “Something was leaking. I don’t know what.”
“But you know we’ll never get anyone out here on Saturday or Sunday. And that’ll leave us without a bathtub or shower, never mind a toilet upstairs, until next weekend at least, when we have time to tile.”
