“Better,” Joe said. “So what’s he doing giving a job like that to a girl?”
“Because I’m qualified!” she said in exasperation. “That’s why. Dad, you’re making me crazy.”
“Just taking care of you, that’s all. You’re turning down a paying job for Kim to work for free on some guy’s playhouse, so I worry, that’s all.”
Jecca silently shook her head. It was better to change the subject. “Want to hear about my roommates? They’re teaching me to pole dance.”
“What?! Do they know you’re working for some guy that’s never been married?”
Jecca threw up her hand. How could her father make never having been married sound bad? “Dad, so help me . . .”
“Okay, so tell me how you’re going to start a new career of stripping for men who own playhouses.”
It was a while before she could get off the phone to him and she promised to send him photos and copies of her sketches. “Get Sheila to show you how to retrieve an e-mail,” Jecca said.
“I know all about e-mails,” he said. “I guess this playhouse means you won’t be coming home any time soon.”
“Not for a while, but Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“I love you too,” she said, smiling.
“Yeah,” he said in a gruff voice, then hung up.
As she clicked off, she frowned. He really did sound miserable. She heard Lucy calling from downstairs, and she went down to dinner.
Eleven
For the next few days, Jecca didn’t stop working. She wanted to have a proper presentation for Tris and Nell when they returned on Sunday.
She spent hours in the playhouse, sketching every inch of it, and trying to imagine what different colors would look like. She’d never done any interior decorating before. The two apartments she’d had in New York had been little more than places for her to sleep. Between waitressing and trying to sell her work, and later working in the gallery, she’d never had the time—or the money—to think about her own apartment.
She painted one playhouse sketch in Easter colors, so authentic that she expected bunnies to jump out of the windows. But then she also experimented with other colors, using Victorian “painted ladies” houses as her models.
When she had six designs that she was pleased with, she showed them to Lucy.
Lucy took her time looking at them and paused at the Easter house. “I saw some Beatrix Potter toile that would be perfect for the curtains for this one.”
“What color?” Jecca asked.
“Baby blue on winter white.”
Jecca smiled at the answer. Lucy’s precise naming showed her artistic nature. “That would mean we’d have to have blue slipcovers with yellow piping.”
“And dark blue piping on the curtains. What color should the walls be?”
The two women looked at each other and said, “Yellow,” in unison.
Smiling, Lucy said, “Go wash the paint off your face. We need to go shopping.”
“But what about your sewing?” Jecca asked. “Don’t you have orders to fill?”
“Lots of them. How about if tonight I show you how to use the ruffler? And you can cut about twenty yards of bias strips for me for French piping.”
“Sounds good to me,” Jecca said as she hurried to her bathroom.
After Lucy called Mrs. Wingate to say there wouldn’t be a 3 P.M. workout, they went to Hancock Fabrics in Williamsburg. Lucy had a wealth of knowledge about sewing. Anything Jecca could imagine, Lucy knew how to make.