Free Blueprints: A Novel by Barbara Delinsky

table.
    “Living room,” she suggested. The screen door slapped behind him. When she heard his flip-flops returning, she called, “Want to play Scrabble?”
    “Nah.” He came through the door. “You always beat me. And I have to leave.” The door slapped shut.
    She had another idea. “Jamie brought over the uncut tape. Want to watch?”
    He shook his head to that, too. “I’m on vacation.” His eyes grew shrewd. “Uh-uh, Caro. Don’t work today. I know you love Facebook, but MacAfee has a paid staffer to monitor that. Marketing isn’t your job.”
    “Right,” she admitted. “It’s Roy’s.”
    “And doing it under his nose is part of the pleasure.”
    She had to laugh. “I like you, Dean. You get it.” She was thinking what a good friend he was when she felt a sudden pang. “Oh boy. I’m so out of it. How did it go in Portland?”
    He had been there yesterday. Given the demands of lead time in construction, planning for the spring Gut It! had to be under way even before the fall season taped. They had decided to renovate and enlarge a coastal cottage in Cape Elizabeth, and while Jamie only had partial designs done, Dean had enough to start interviewing local subs. “I was able to get a few leads, but it’s hard to find women. We could bring up our own, but it’s a trickle-down thing. Get someone local and they have local connections, which is a help when weather puts us behind schedule and we have to scramble. Besides, local people add flavor.”
    “Flavor” meant local accents, and Caroline had to agree. Most of the subs they used talked Boston, but Maine was unique. “It’ll be a fun project,” she said. “Very different from the one we’re doing this fall.” That one involved a small historical home that had been bought by empty nesters wanting to downsize. Jamie had no sooner finished a redesign of the house than two of the couple’s sons decided to return home to live, so the gut-and-rebuild of a carriage house entered the mix. The last-minute change had caused mild panic, not to mention doubling Dean’s work, but it made the project far more interesting.
    Mildly disgruntled, Dean folded his arms. “I’m still not sure why the Millers want their kids in a separate house.”
    “You’re confusing how much you wish you could be near Renny with the fact that most adult parents need a little space from their kids.” Renny was fourteen and increasingly involved in a life far removed from Dean’s. In Maryland for the last three years, the boy had embraced a new family, new friends, new school. Dean knew football; the boy was into lacrosse. Their Lego days together were gone. From what Dean could see, the boy’s free-time pal was now his iPad.
    Caroline felt his frustration, but she also understood this client. “The Millers are at a different place. And I hear what they’re saying. I love Jamie, but I don’t want her living with me, not after those last few years before she finally moved out. Her stuff was everywhere. Books, keys, hair ties, large purses, Sharpies, electronics, half-filled bottles of water—you name it, all in plain sight. Her bedroom was always neat, which is rare for a child, but common space in my house? Fair game. It was like she had to mark her territory each time she came home from school.”
    Dean’s eyes remained dark. “Wouldn’t it just have been easier for the Millers to buy a bigger house?”
    “Then where would that leave us? I like this project.” But she knew what he was thinking. “You wait. When Renny is older, he’ll visit. You’ll see.”
    “Not the same.”
    She understood that. Dean had clung to a bad marriage for the sake of his son. He went to Maryland often, but he was a spectator in his son’s life. So no, it wasn’t the same. And no amount of smooth talk from Caroline about things changing with time could help.
    Again she pushed at the pieces of hair on her neck. They hadn’t stayed put. Her left hand did a lousy job.
    “I