Free Blueprints: A Novel by Barbara Delinsky Page B

it, the more excited I get.”
    It went downhill from there. She rebutted his arguments; he counter-rebutted hers. And when she finally asked, “What about Mom?” he said, “She had her turn, now it’s yours.”
    His confidence in her was as sweet as his loyalty. But there was a larger picture here, a more personal one, a picture of Caroline heartbroken at being ousted on account of age, by her daughter, no less, and he was so not understanding of that that she was beside herself.
    He wouldn’t help her with Roy, or he would have done it at the get-go.
    And Roy had already made his feelings clear, which meant that they would only argue, which she did not, did not, did not want to do.
    Her grandfather was her last best hope.
    *   *   *
    Theo MacAfee was eighty-two but as sharp mentally as a man half his age. The problem was his body. Bad knees, bad hips, bad back, bad cough. Fine to say he had brought the last on himself, but as he told Jamie whenever his cough alarmed her, “We were young and stupid. What did we know?” By some miracle of fate, whatever was there hadn’t evolved into lung cancer, though there had been a melanoma scare a few years back—and it was fine to say he had invited that, too. But he first learned the trade by working construction himself, and how could he have possibly built a business in that field without spending time in the sun? Add foolhardiness to the mix, and he had been known until recently to climb a ladder in a snit and show a framer the proper way to mount plywood sheathing to the outside wall of a house.
    He was a perfectionist, which was probably how Jamie came by the trait. He could be short-tempered when things weren’t done right, and he could be painfully blunt. Beneath his impatience, though, was a kind heart. He treated his family well.
    Jamie was counting on that now.
    “Got a minute?” she asked, poking her head into his office and feeling a catch inside at the sight of him. When she was a child, she had always thought him tall and imposing. She had gained perspective on that as she had grown herself, but hunched over now, he seemed frail. He didn’t smile when he saw her, but those blue eyes lit.
    Theo was an older, more leathery version of Roy. He had a head of white hair that was only beginning to thin, and though his blue eyes were rheumy, they remained riveting. In his later years, finally accepting that he couldn’t be harassing electricians at a job site, he had taken to wearing a jacket and tie, and his manners had grown courtly to match. He started to rise now. Slowly.
    Hoping to spare his arthritic spine, Jamie scooted around his desk and eased him back down with her hug, then leaned against the mahogany not far from his trouser leg.
    His eyes were keen, his voice gravelly. “I’d congratulate you, little girl, but you look like you lost your best friend.”
    “It might come to that,” Jamie said with a little huff. “So you know about the Gut It! switch?”
    “Your father told me. He said you were on board.”
    “That is not true.”
    “He said you asked for the change.”
    “To replace Mom? Why would I do that? Mom loves the job, and she’s great at it. This isn’t a good move, Granddad. You know it’s not.”
    “No, I don’t know it’s not,” he said as he calmly put his elbows on the arms of his chair and cupped his gnarled hands, one in the other. “It sounds logical. The producers want a younger face, and yours is a winner.”
    “What about age before beauty? Who always said that?”
    “Your grandmother, rest her soul, but she didn’t know the television business. Neither do I, which is why I defer to your father on this. Beauty before age seems to be the way of the world today.”
    Jamie was dismayed. “Is that why I’m working my tail off now, so that by the time I hit my stride, I can be laid off because I have wrinkles?” She searched her grandfather’s face, finding wrinkles in abundance. “Is anyone saying your face