Mac stood in the parking lot while I climbed in the back of the half-ton and took a closer look at the piece of furniture. “Tell me you’re not going to buy that,” he said.
“It’s solid wood,” I said.
“Good,” he countered. “We can burn it for heat if it gets any colder.”
I made a face at him.
He just shook his head. “You’re on your own with this one, Sarah,” he said, heading back to the shop.
“Fine with me,” I called after him. I was feeling restless. It had been a while since I’d had a big project to work on. And maybe it would take my mind off what had happened to Lily.
Cleveland and his cousin carried the hutch into the work area, and I paid him twenty dollars for it.
“Did you see the look on his face?” Mac asked after the two men had left. “He thinks he put one over on you.”
“Oh, ye of little faith,” I said, circling the big piece of furniture. It had three shelves, scrollwork at the top and two louvered doors on the bottom. It stood about five and a half feet high. I was already thinking about possible ways to refinish it.
Mac held up both hands. “I’m not going to say another word.”
“You can tell me what a genius I am when this is done,” I said.
I took some photos of the hutch so I could study them over the weekend and decide what exactly I wanted to do.
I ended up spending most of the weekend working on the apartment kitchen with Mac. We got the upper cupboard boxes hung and all the doors attached on Saturday. Then, while Mac installed the sink, I painted the living room ceiling. By late Sunday afternoon I was wiping out the insides of the cupboards while Mac screwed on the hardware.
“I never would have gotten so much done without you,” I said to him. He was kneeling on the floor, using the cordless drill, and I was halfway up the small stepladder. We both had dust on our jeans and bits of sawdust in our hair—me more so than Mac since he kept his dark hair cropped close to his head.
“I don’t mind,” he said. “I didn’t like the idea of Rose living somewhere she might not be safe.” He grinned. “Or if she moved in with Liz, where Liz might not be safe.” He fastened the last doorknob and stood up, stretching one arm up over his head and then the other. “Can I help you?” he asked.
I shook my head. For a moment I’d gotten sidetracked watching his muscles move under his black T-shirt. “Thanks, but this is the last one.” I wiped the bottom cupboard shelf and dropped my cloth back into the bucket. Then I climbed down, wiping my damp hands on my jeans.
“It looks like a kitchen now,” I said with satisfaction, turning slowly to take in the whole space.
“That it does,” he agreed.
“Am I crazy, Mac?” I asked, reaching for the bucket that had been balanced on the ladder’s paint shelf.
“Are you talking in a general, existential sense, or do you have something specific in mind?” he said, a teasing edge to his voice.
“Both.” I set the bucket on the floor and leaned against the counter. “What if Rose drives me crazy? What if I drive her crazy?”
He picked up the drill and began to unscrew the bit. “You’ll work it out. You can talk to Rose. She’s reasonable.”
I shot him a look.
“Most of the time,” he amended. He put the bit back in a small plastic case and set the drill itself in the bottom of his toolbox. “Have you always been close the way you all are?” he asked. “If that’s not too personal a question.”
“It’s not,” I said. “And yes, we pretty much have. When my father died, Rose, Liz and Charlotte kept my mom and Gram and me going. They didn’t just wrap their arms around us. They wrapped their lives around us. They’d always been part of my life, but they became family. Then, when Mom met Peter, my stepfather, they made him and Liam family as well. Do you remember the fairy godmother in Cinderella?”
He nodded.
“That’s what they’ve always been like, more opinionated and no magical powers, but otherwise that’s pretty much it.”
“It sounds nice,” he said, setting the toolbox over by the door.
I shrugged. “It was, although I didn’t always think so when I was a teenager.” I started to laugh.
Mac narrowed his eyes. “What?” he asked.
“When we were thirteen, Michelle and I wanted to go see Aerosmith in concert down in Portland.”
“Michelle. You mean the detective.”
I nodded. I couldn’t stop laughing. “They took us. Gram, Liz, Rose and Charlotte. All four of them, plus Michelle and me in Liz’s big ol’ Lincoln Continental. They all had Aerosmith T-shirts and jeans. They had every single CD, which they played all the way there and all the way back, and they sang along with every song. Loudly.”
“Liz in an Aerosmith T-shirt?” Mac asked. “No. You’re kidding me, right?”
I shook my head, but I couldn’t stop grinning at the memory. “Oh, it gets better. We had great seats—some contact Liz had through the foundation. During ‘Walk This Way,’ Steven Tyler came down off the stage. He was maybe four feet away from us. Remember, Michelle and I were thirteen.” I laid a hand on my chest. “We could barely breathe, we were so excited.”
“I sense there’s more,” Mac said, the hint of a smile pulling at his mouth.
“He started dancing with Rose.”
“Rose?” His eyes darted from one side to the other.
“Uh-huh. With a whole lot of hip action.”
Mac started to laugh as he stretched an arm up over his head. “You’re telling me that Rose Jackson was dirty dancing with Steven Tyler at an Aerosmith concert?”
“There are photos,” I said. “And the band was filming the concert for some reason, so somewhere there’s video of Rose, as she put it, ‘getting down with Steven Tyler.’”
Mac was shaking with laughter now, one arm wrapped across his chest.
I held up a hand. “There’s more. You’ve seen that purple scarf she wears sometimes, with the silver Aztec design?”
He nodded.
“Tyler gave it to her. He slid it off his own neck and wrapped it—there’s no other word to use—seductively around her neck.”
Mac grinned at me. “Let me guess. You were scarred for life.”
I wrinkled my nose at him. “No. That happened when he kissed her. And I don’t mean a peck on the cheek.”
Mac pulled a hand over his neck. “Don’t tell me Steven Tyler slipped Rose the—”
I held up a hand and shook my head. “No, no, no!”
“Well, that’s not so bad,” he said with a shrug. “Tyler was probably just trying to be nice to a fan.”
“Who frenched him,” I said, raising an eyebrow for emphasis.
Mac’s mouth opened and then closed once more without making a sound. He started laughing again.
I couldn’t help laughing again myself. “I can still see Steven Tyler’s expression,” I said.
“Hey, for all you know, maybe he liked it,” Mac said, his dark eyes gleaming with humor.
“Yeah, that’s the thing,” I said, making a face. “I’m pretty sure he did.”
“Oh, now I’m never going to listen to ‘Walk This Way’ quite the same way ever again.” He pushed away from the counter and straightened up.
“Do you have any grandparents-slash-crazy-senior-citizens in your family?” I asked, bending down for the bucket.
“I think Rose and Liz and Charlotte—and your grandmother—are pretty much one of a kind,” Mac said. The broom was leaning in the corner by the door to the hall, and he reached for it.
“I can do that,” I said.
“So can I,” he said.
I took the bucket of dirty water into the bathroom to dump it, realizing that he hadn’t actually answered my question. I wasn’t surprised. Mac was a master at deflecting personal questions, and I’d never pushed it.
My cell phone rang as I stepped back into the kitchen. It was Jess.