Chapter 15
15
P atience is a virtue. If you don’t have it, you have to fake it.
“What do we do?” Carlisle asked Jane. She needed something to do.
“Mostly, we wait.” There was a shrug in Jane’s voice, but Carlisle hated waiting.
She hated waiting on test results in the ER, knowing that her patient was suffering and she couldn't do anything because it might be the wrong thing. She hated waiting for each design of the prototype to come back so they could make a decision if they were done, or if it needed more tweaks and changes. She hated waiting because Simon had asked her out, but they wouldn't be going out until the weekend. He didn't want it to be a work night, he’d said.
She’d never handled waiting well. And, since the accident, waiting was just a gray area for the black edges to start creeping in. She needed something to do . Something she could motivate herself to do. Building the fence wasn’t happening. Finishing the guest room didn’t get her out of bed or even off the couch and away from a good romance novel.
At least she and Simon were still having about half of their dinners together, something she found she liked. She cooked for the two of them, better than she did for just herself. It was a task, it was company, it was better nutrition. Win-win-win. And he’d asked her out.
But he wasn’t around all the time, and in between, she needed something to do. She sighed. She and Jane would just have to wait for the damn prototypes to show up.
Carlisle had brought home design magazines over to Simon’s, showing him different styles of design and asking him what he liked. He didn't like Tuscan furniture. He didn't like cottage core. He preferred dark colors and just a few bold ones. He had some paintings up full of those same deep colors.
Carlisle had filled her time by taking the info to Emma Kate and begging her cousin for help. Em had immediately swooned over the art and asked what his budget was. Carlisle had to answer that she had no idea because the man could afford the house and the fancy sports car and his sister's medical bills, but what was leftover?
Emma Kate had emailed her back a series of images with options for different budgets. She’d sent several trending and several classic color palettes and a list of local stores where they could find those pieces. Carlisle had been grateful, but it still hadn't begun to fill anywhere near all the time.
“Three more weeks until the pre orders arrive, and that's if they arrive on time,” she grumbled to her friend, listening to the squeals and laughter of small kids in the background.
She could hear Dylan and Tyler, the two oldest, hollering about something. They pounded through the room, somewhere beyond Jane and her phone, followed by the pitter patter of tiny chubby feet as Claire tried to keep up.
Given Simon's unfurnished state, Carlisle now found herself thinking about other people's homes for ideas other than just things she herself liked. Jane had a dark oak dining room table with eight upholstered chairs around it—able to seat her own brood plus the husband who wasn't there anymore, and two extras. A chair rail and a china cabinet that now displayed her mother’s silver, a handful of photos, and more.
Though Carlisle had never said anything, she’d noticed the high end whiskey was gone from the shelves—the stuff Joe had liked to have on display for when people came over. The bottles had been replaced with four little pairs of baby booties. There were two karate white belts, and a tiny pair of ballet slippers.
Now Jane usually kept a bottle of watermelon vodka and another of spiced rum—Jane's favorites, not Joe's. That the kids were happy and well-adjusted was a testament to their mother, Carlisle knew.
The divorce had been long and ugly. Despite being Jane’s best friend, she still didn't know all the things that Jane had found out, though the ones she'd heard had been beyond devastating. For what had looked like a happy marriage from the outside—even from her closer vantage point over the years—Carlisle had been surprised by the depth of the betrayal.
“I don't want to wait for the prototypes to arrive,” she told Jane. Then she confessed, “I don't know that I can . I need to do something useful. You have work, but I don't. I'm not going to earn money, so I need to do something that doesn't spend money.” She was rambling, letting all the frustration out, knowing Jane would understand and help if she could.
“Furnishing Simon's house isn't enough?” Jane asked before quickly adding, “I told you they weren't red flags.” Jane, with no love life of her own, was living vicariously through Carlisle. Carlisle didn't think she was the one anyone should try to live vicariously through.
“He's at work all day, too. And we aren’t like that, not yet, and maybe never. I need something for me . ”
“Well, if you want, just go ahead. We've got three weeks until the prototypes arrive. Why don't you set us up to sell pre orders? That'll give us a good idea of where the business is. Allow us to tweak the advertising and get it right before it really counts.”
“How?” Carlisle understood the task, but not the execution.
“Set the site up to take credit card orders.”
“But we don't know that the prototypes will arrive on time,” Carlisle countered. “What if they're late? What if the orders I set up are late?”
Jane’s voice shrugged. “I don't know that it matters. I would make sure the website says we expect to ship them by a certain date, but let's give an extra week for them to arrive and another for us to pack up our first orders. Maybe even another week to get the shipping all done on them. We don't promise to ship for another month. If we get it done earlier, we ship earlier and make everyone happy.”
Carlisle was nodding along except, “I don't know anything about how to set the website up to take orders.”
“You’ll figure it out. You just told me you've got all this time on your hands. Go online, watch a video, take a class.”
Carlisle had to stop and wonder why she hadn't thought of that herself. She had sat in her house, read her books, laid in her hammock more hours than she could count, and stared at the walls wishing they would paint themselves. She’d never quite found the energy to get up and do it herself. Which made her ask a necessary question. “What if I start and I don't finish?”
“Then people can’t make orders until you have set everything up. Don’t turn it all on until you've got it ready to go. It will go at whatever pace you need.”
Carlisle worked the math out loud. “If we open preorders with two weeks to spare, then . . . No, that would be too fast.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Jane’s voice had the same shrug, the same calm demeanor that soothed patients in near death conditions. Jane never lied, but she could easily make you believe it would all be okay. “It doesn’t matter if the pre-orders go up tomorrow or two days early. It will get us a set-up and a trial run for when we have orders coming through.”
“What if it's too much? What if we get too many orders?” Carlisle pushed back, trying to troubleshoot before she started.
“That would be the best problem in the world,” Jane reminded her.
They paused their conversation as the oldest came through the room again, this time showing his mother something that he built with his Legos, then immediately he was chased off by his younger sister Stella. Once again, Carlisle could hear Claire bringing up the rear.
She couldn't help but smile. It was a vision of a life that she'd once considered for herself, and she'd still thought it was possibly in her future. Unlike Bailey Ann or Harper Rose, she hadn't had a timeline on it, or even a perfect image of what it would look like. But it occurred to her now, she'd been more settled in her thinking than she'd known. She hadn't discovered that until her life had almost been snatched away from her.
“If you don't get it done, you don't get it done,” Jane offered.
The website had been Carlisle’s doing in the first place and it was pretty basic. But it wasn’t flashy. The idea was that the information about them would sell them, not the design of the site. It just had to be functional. If it was too crappy, they could upgrade and get a designer later.
Besides, Jane had work. Jane had kids to feed and a functioning frontal lobe that didn’t pierce her with anxiety and the feeling of drowning when she saw certain patients. And Carlisle needed something to do. She could still learn new things. She’d already proved that.
Maybe she couldn't paint the walls in her living room because it was for her . But maybe she could build the website because it was for Jane. “I'll give it a try. ”
“Good. I'm glad we have that settled. Because I need to know if you have kissed that man yet?”
“Sadly, no.” Carlisle shook her head. They had dinner every night and he'd asked her out.
“That’s a shame,” Jane commented, making Carlisle laugh. But then she issued an edict. “Then I'm tasking you with finding out just how good he is.”