Chapter 10
Ten
“ I remember when you were a kid. You loved doing stuff like that.” Don looked at the piece of wood Trevor had been working on for the last hour.
He’d made it into a decorative birdhouse.
Not one that an actual bird would use. At least he hadn’t been thinking along those lines, but he supposed it could.
But one that could be decorated with little wisps of fabric, some twine or whatever it was called, and hung up either inside or outside of the house.
“I’ve always loved doing stuff like this.
I can’t remember a time when ideas weren’t coming together in my head.
” He got a business degree in college and a good job in the suburbs of Chicago.
He hadn’t hated his work, but it didn’t fill his soul and give him total peace the way this kind of work did.
Trevor held the birdhouse up. “If I’m not careful, I’ll fill up your garage with all kinds of knickknacks and stuff I make.”
“Don’t let that happen. Give it away as fast as you make it.”
“People will see me coming down the street and start running in the other direction.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that. Who wouldn’t want to have something cute and decorative to hang in their house? Maybe not fifteen of them, but one would be welcome, I’m sure. Or they could give it away as a Christmas gift.”
That was true. Maybe people really would appreciate being given the stuff that he made.
He enjoyed making it, but that was as far as it went for him.
He couldn’t imagine what to do with it and didn’t have any desire to try to figure out where he could put it in his house, or since he was living with his dad, he wouldn’t even consider trying to find a place to hang it in here.
“You know, it’s Mrs. Donegan’s birthday tomorrow. She might really appreciate someone remembering. I bet it’s been years since she got a gift.”
Trevor stilled for a moment, his hands freezing. Mrs. Donegan was Claire’s grandmother. Claire, the girl who had accused Grace of stealing Trevor from her.
He and Claire had dated once or twice, but he’d never felt anything for her and hadn’t wanted to lead her on. She did ask him out, and he’d said a reluctant yes the first time and then tried to make up an excuse every time after that, but she was not easily dissuaded.
Maybe she fancied herself in love with him, or maybe she knew her friend liked him and was trying to stake a claim.
Trevor didn’t really know how the female mind worked, but he did know that he’d never been overly interested in Claire, so for her to say that Grace had stolen him was an absolute exaggeration.
“Are you upset about me seeing Gita?” his father said, lifting the mug of coffee that had been sitting on the workbench beside him, and had probably long grown cold, and taking a small sip. It looked perfunctory, since the coffee had to have been ice cold and gross.
So his dad was trying to be casual. Interesting.
Trevor continued to rub the fine-grained sandpaper along the edge of the birdhouse.
He didn’t want to give an off-the-cuff remark.
He actually did have some reservations, but they didn’t concern the fact that his dad was seeing a woman.
It had more to do with the fact that it just didn’t feel quite right.
He’d wanted to be able to talk to Grace about it, but he’d left without getting a moment alone with her, and he hadn’t heard from her yesterday at all or at all this morning yet .
She was taking care of her mother, who had just had hip replacement surgery, even though she seemed to be doing really well.
He didn’t want to bother her, and maybe he had misread her expressions. But he had gotten the impression that she had just as many reservations as he did, if not more.
“I’m happy for you. I truly am. And I think Mrs. Honea is a really wonderful woman. If you two end up together, it will make me very happy.”
“But?” his dad prompted, as though he knew there was more to the story. His dad seemed like he was a little bit hazy and bubbly, but sometimes he could be very astute. This would seem to be one of those times, since Trevor had a hard time hiding the fact that there were issues on his mind.
“It just seems like there’s something off. Not in a bad way, necessarily, and not in a way that I don’t want you two to be together.”
“You think there’s a problem with Gita Baby?” his dad asked.
Trevor tried not to flinch. What a nickname. If he called Grace “Gracie Baby,” would she slap him across the face as hard as she could or just really, really want to?
Anyway, Gita had more patience than any other woman he knew, but that really wasn’t any of his business.
Except… Maybe that was part of the problem. No woman in their right mind would put up with a nickname like that.
Of course, a woman in love wasn’t necessarily in her right mind.
“No. I think Mrs. Honea is a superb woman. I think that the two of you will be very happy together.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“I’m not sure. It just feels a little off. Like there’s something that isn’t quite right. And I can’t explain exactly what it is.” And he was probably just going to make his dad upset and concerned if he continued along these lines. He wasn’t trying to break them up.
“So you want us to stop seeing each other?” His dad seemed to be grasping at straws, truly trying to find out what the problem was.
“No. Not at all. I think that the two of you will be very good for each other. And since I can’t really put a finger on what the issue is, I hate to even say anything.
I don’t want you to get the idea that I’m against it.
Because I’m not. I could possibly be your biggest cheerleader, although I think Grace would give me a run for my money there.
” An idea occurred to him, one that he hadn’t thought about before.
“Do my siblings know about this?” he asked, wondering if he had been the last to know, even though he was the one who was here.
“No. I hadn’t told anyone. We… It was like we said last night. We didn’t want to tell people until we knew for sure that we were moving ahead.”
There was just something in his dad’s answer that felt a little…not right. But he couldn’t figure out what it was. He didn’t want to say he thought his dad was lying, because that wasn’t true.
“Are you upset?” his dad asked again.
He knew he shouldn’t have said anything. Now his dad was afraid that he wasn’t all on board. And that wasn’t it at all.
“Maybe it’s just the idea of seeing you with someone other than my mom.
It just feels…weird.” He really didn’t think that was what the problem was, but it was the only thing he could think of that his dad would accept, since he couldn’t really say for sure what the issue was, and being vague and unhelpful just upset his dad.
“I think I’ll get used to it eventually. ”
“Maybe you need to see us together some more. How about we invite them over tonight?”
“Is she able to come this far already?”
“Oh. I forgot about her hip. Maybe we can see if we can go over. We’ll make a meal and take it to them. Yeah. People do that when people are sick.”
“All right.” It seemed like his dad was desperate to be able to go see Gita.
“You know you don’t need to have me along in order for you to go visit, right?”
“We told you last night, we want to make sure that we do everything aboveboard. We want to set a good example. So we need a chaperone.”
Trevor nodded his head and blew the fine sawdust off the birdhouse, lifting it up and holding it away so he could look at it. It was almost perfect .
“All right. You set it up, and we’ll figure out something to cook. Let me know if I need to make a trip to the grocery store.”
“Do you have more of that cauliflower? It was really good.”
Trevor grinned. “If we’re having that, we probably ought to get started. It cooks in the crockpot. And I don’t have any, so I will need to make a trip to town.”
“Someone should really start a grocery store here.”
“I hardly think they’d make enough money to make it worthwhile. The days of a mom-and-pop grocery store being able to support a family are long gone, if they ever existed at all.”
“I think they did. Used to be that people went to town once a month and then got whatever they couldn’t get at the little store in their hometown. Now, it’s nothing to jump in the car and drive to the big box store every day, or every other day, definitely once a week.”
Trevor nodded. He knew that to be true. People didn’t frequent the mom-and-pop stores like they did the bigger grocery stores.
There wasn’t as much variety, for one, and the prices were higher for another, and it was cheaper to drive to town to get cheaper groceries than it was to walk to the store and pay twice as much.
They talked a bit about what they could make, and then Don said that he probably ought to call and see if it suited the ladies to have them bring a meal anyway. After all, there was no point in going through the work if they had other plans for dinner.
While he did that, Trevor cleaned up his workspace, using a brush to brush off the sawdust into a container and setting the birdhouse on the work shelf, admiring it a little.
He loved putting it together, but there was something about looking at something that he had made and admiring it that made his heart happy.
Whatever it was with his dad and Mrs. Honea would work itself out. Maybe he was just imagining things. But it wouldn’t hurt to talk to Grace. Maybe they could get some time alone this evening, if they ended up having dinner together.