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“That’s how he struck me,” Morgan agreed as she sat again.
“Nell, a chip off her grandmother’s steely back. Solid as a rock, suffers no fools. Doesn’t flaunt, and makes sure she frequents the local businesses.
“Now, Miles.” Olivia took a thoughtful sip of her wine. “Not as easy to figure, that Miles. He’s got the family home now, all to himself. Lydia and Mick decided the place was too big for them—and it’sbig—and passed it to him. I’m thinking Rory and Drea are happy in their own, so they went down a generation. Where Liam has that cheerful nature and can—as I’ve seen it—talk to anyone about anything, his brother’s more the quiet type. Polite, well-mannered, as I’ve noted, but keeps more to himself. Then again, with Mick and Lydia about half-retired, Rory with his law firm, he’s running the ship, or will be.”
“It’s a layered and detailed ship.”
Olivia nodded. “Lots of decks on it and a proud legacy to keep afloat. Are you happy there, Morgan?”
“I really am. It’s not what I planned, but I feel like I’ve stuck the landing. It’s a good place to work, and I can’t ask for more than that.”
“Of course you can.” Olivia patted her hand before she rose to baste the chicken. “But it’s a start.”
Once a month—three o’clock sharp on Sunday—the Jamesons held a family meeting. Tradition decreed the meeting took place at the rambling Victorian where Miles’s grandparents had lived more than a half century of their married lives.
Though the house had come to him, he still considered them the hosts and the head. As a child, he’d spent the meeting portion of that Sunday in the library with a book, or playing in the backyard, alternately torturing or ignoring his sister when Nell came along, lording over or joining forces with Liam when he arrived.
Good times.
At sixteen, he’d sat proud at his first meeting, and learned the responsibilities and challenges of running a family business that not only sustained family but brought revenue and employment and interest to the community.
Decades of family meetings meant they ran smooth, had structure, even as the dynamics of that family ran through them like a river.
He couldn’t imagine it any other way.
He prepped for the meeting, reviewing spreadsheets, ledgers, reports, and projections in his office on the second floor of the east turret. It overlooked the front yard, the hills, and the little apple orchard wherehe’d once climbed branches and thought the long thoughts of childhood.
The dog Miles never intended to have slept in front of the fireplace—one of the dozen the house boasted.
The dog Miles eventually called Howl, because he did, had laid claim to Miles and the house the winter before as a stray of questionable origin and quirky manners.
Review done, Miles took his laptop, his file of hard copies, and switched off the fireplace his grandparents had converted to gas along the way. Howl opened one eye, grumbled in his throat.
Ignoring him, Miles continued out, took the back stairs down to the kitchen.
The dog, as he always did, followed. He watched, a hulk of bushy gray fur with a sweeping tail and long, floppy ears, as Miles set his laptop and file on the dining room table, switched on the dining room lights, lit the fire.
Miles walked back into the kitchen, opened the French doors, said, “Out.”
Howl plodded out onto the deck, down the steps, and into the yard, where he’d spend some time guarding the property from squirrels, rolling in the patchy snow, and howling with the wind.
Through trial and error, fits and starts, Miles had trained him to come to the mudroom door when he wanted in. And Howl had trained him to keep a supply of old towels in the mudroom or deal with tracks of snow, mulch, mud, depending on the season.
Since his mother would bring a ham, he only had to provide the coffee, soft drinks for the meeting, the wine for the post-meeting meal. They rotated the food contribution, which required another spreadsheet and a calendar, but it worked.
He made the coffee, prizing what he prized most—the silence and solitude. He loved the house, for all its size and quirks. He loved the warren of rooms even while he appreciated his grandparents’ decision to take down the wall between the kitchen and dining room to open the space. Just as he understood the practicality of converting all the fireplaces above the main level from wood-burning to gas.
Since he’d moved in, he’d changed little. Why change somethingwhen it suited you just fine? And change, he knew, rarely meant one thing. The dominoes kept tumbling.
Now he carried the coffee service, the cups into the dining room, set everything on the walnut sideboard. He poured himself a cup and stood at one of the windows watching the dog roll in a patch of snow as if it were a summer meadow.
But he also saw buds forming on the trees, swaths of green—anemic yet, but green—spreading on the ground. Before long, maintenance would switch from snow blowers and shovels to lawn tractors and fresh mulch.
Which the dog would roll in.
The trillium would burst color in the woods and along the hiking trails. The redbud would show its neon blooms before leaves unfurled back where, long before he was born, his father and grandfather had built a tree house.
Jamesons built to last, he thought, then heard the voices and footsteps of his parents—first arrivals—who’d come in while he’d been daydreaming.
