“Oh, well, good. Fine. Thanks!”
Lisa tapped off and stood very still, thrilled and a bit frightened at what she’d started happening in her mild, safe life.
* * *
—
Mack Whitney arrived the next day at twelve-thirty.
When Lisa opened the door, she nearly passed out, shocked by the sensual gorgeousness of the man. How had she forgotten his…his…his maleness?
“Hi,” he said. “I’m Mack.” He extended his large rough hand for her to shake and held hers in his.
“I’m Lisa,” she told him, “but of course you know that, you’re here because I asked you to come, and I’m so grateful. This poor old house needs a lot of love.” Oh, no! Could she say anything more embarrassing? It was all she could do not to slam her hand over her mouth and giggle like a tween. Two minutes with the man and she was talking about love and she never did that!
“I think I’m staring at you,” Lisa admitted. “It’s just, um, are you Dutch? You look like you are.” Trying to make some kind of sense, she added, “I was in Amsterdam once.” Could she sound any crazier?
“My mother was Dutch,” Mack explained. “I was born here.” He was still holding her hand.
“Oh, I see.” Gently, she pulled away her hand.
“It’s a beautiful house,” Mack said.
“Oh! Yes, it is.” Lisa stepped back. “Please. Come in. I’ll show you the dining room. The house must have been stunning when it was first built. It’s Greek Revival, you know, built in 1840, which is why the rooms are so small but still have fireplaces and the doors have those small rectangles of glass at the top so you could look in to see if something was on fire, but you probably know that.”
She led him into the dining room. “Every room needed work when we bought the house. We did what we could, but the children were little—” She didn’t say, and my husband left me for another woman.
She was caught in the past and at the same time in the present where Mack, tall and wide-shouldered, extremely alive here and now, stood waiting. She couldn’t think what to do.
“So obviously you’re concerned about the ceiling,” Mack said, pointing to cracks in the plaster and ominous bulges.
“Yes, yes,” she said, snapping back into her sensible self. “The water from that storm last week got in somehow. I don’t understand. With the second floor and the attic above, how could water get to this level?”
Mack walked around, head back, studying the ceiling with its crystal chandelier hanging from the middle of the handsome plaster rosette that each of the downstairs rooms had.
“It hasn’t damaged the rosette,” Mack said. “My men could take down the ceiling—it will be a dusty mess, but if we don’t replace it, it’s all going to come down someday. We’ll work around the rosette, put up fresh plaster and paint. And I’ll need to get up on the roof and check the flashing around the chimney. If some of it’s missing, that will be where the water got in. Water has its ways.”
“Oh. Well, that’s one major problem we need solved. Also, in the dining room, I don’t know why I never got around to it, but part of the chimney is missing a brick or two, so I’ve never had a fire in here, haven’t had the money to repair it—we’ve got four chimneys—and also there’s no damper, so when the wind gusts above fifty-five miles an hour, it blows down the chimney and into the room. I—this is embarrassing, but it does work, kind of—I stuffed a crib mattress up inside there. It doesn’t show and it’s not perfect, but it’s better than nothing.”
“I imagine in a house this size, the heating bills are huge,” Mack said. “I’ll make you a damper.”
“Oh, good. And my bathroom, I guess, we should look at next. It’s old, and the sink was beautiful once, but the porcelain has worn away from the drain hole”—Why, Lisa thought frantically, was hole such an embarrassing word?—“so it’s all black, metal, I suppose, and the faucets drip no matter what I do, so there are stains…”
“ ‘Lay on, MacDuff,’ ” Mack said.
Lisa realized she’d been talking to him and staring at him as if in a trance. As if while she talked she could keep him trapped so she could look at him. She knew he wanted her to take him to the bathroom, but first…
“Wow, you got the quote right,” she said. “Most people say, ‘Lead on, MacDuff,’ but you said it correctly—‘lay on’!” Lisa felt herself blush when she said “lay.”
“Carpenters can read Shakespeare, too,” Mack said, smiling.
“Oh, yes, I mean, no, I mean I didn’t think you didn’t read Shakespeare…”
“Well, I can’t say I’ve read him lately. Mostly I’ve watched baseball but I have seen the streaming plays at the Dreamland. And I bought the DVD of Branagh’s Hamlet.”
Lisa almost clapped her hands in surprise. “Wasn’t that brilliant? The costumes were gorgeous.”
Mack laughed. “Of course you would notice the costumes.” Seeing Lisa hesitate, he added, “Because of your store, I mean. You know all about clothes.”
“Well,” Lisa said mildly, “maybe not all about them.”
“Beth likes to shop there when she wants something special, and she’s never disappointed.”
“Oh, I’m glad. How is Beth?”
“She’s great. Just finished getting her master’s degree in museum studies at BU. She’d like to get a job involved with historic preservation. Eventually, she hopes to work with the Nantucket Historical Association.”
“How wonderful,” Lisa said. “Sounds like she’s a smart girl. And one who knows what she wants to do.”
“She is. You know her mother died when Beth was three—”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Yes, it was terrible. Hard. We went through some rough years, but Beth’s turned out just fine.” Leaning forward, he showed Lisa his phone. “Here’s Beth.”
On the screen was a picture of a lovely young woman with long, lustrous blond hair and green eyes like her father.
“She’s beautiful. She’s got a marvelous smile.”
“Thanks to the orthodontist,” Mack joked. “You have two kids, right?”
“Right,” Lisa said with a light groan. “You know about Theo. He was a darling child, but his teen years were crazy. And Juliet.”