Page 49 of Never Fall Again

Landry wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Not everyone loves Bronwyn the way your family seems to. Maybe you should mention that to your brothers.”

“We know.” Cal was close to most of his cousins, and cordial with all of them, but the Pierce family had a split. One side could be reasonable. The other? Papa Quinn had been known to compare them to mules. Once they made up their minds about somethingbeing a good idea or a bad idea, it was almost impossible to get them to change. And some of them had a very different view from Bronwyn about how The Haven should be run.

“I think Gray suspects it could have been an inside job. But even with the family squabbles, I can’t see any of the Pierces doing this. They’re practical people. Burning down their own building makes no sense.”

“Who else would have done it?”

Landry pursed her lips. “I can’t see the guests doing this. For one thing, our guests are happy here.”

“What’s the other reason?”

“Why go to the trouble when you have the power to create a social media firestorm?”

Cal paused on the path, and Landry stopped with him. “You’ve given this a lot of thought, haven’t you?”

“It feels like it’s all I’ve thought about since it happened.”

“Is that part of why you want the new shop built first? To thwart whatever purpose was behind the arson?”

“Maybe. But given that we’re completely in the dark, I don’t know if we’re slowing them down or playing right into their hands. What I do know is that rebuilding in a better location and with a better layout is the right decision. It needed to happen regardless, so we’ll do the best we can with what we do know and trust that what we don’t know will sort itself out in good time.”

“Sounds like a well-thought-out decision.”

Landry cut her eyes to him. “Does this mean you’ll stop grumping about putting Favors ahead of my house?”

Cal widened his eyes in mock shock. “Me? Grump?” When she laughed, he played up the drama. “I’ll have you know that in high school, I was voted Most Likely to Get Kicked Out of a Funeral for Laughing.”

Landry didn’t miss a beat. “That just tells me you have poor self-control in somber situations.”

“Mean!” Cal bumped her shoulder as they walked. “But seriously, I apologize for the grump routine. I’m excited for the house and for you and Eliza to have your own place.”

“I can’t help but notice that you didn’t say you were excited to have me for a neighbor.” Landry feigned outrage.

“My apologies. That’s the best part. Eliza will be awesome to have as a neighbor. I’ve already talked to Mo and Meredith about fixing the little bridge over the river. Meredith had opinions.” He put opinions in air quotes.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had an opinion about a bridge.”

“Meredith has opinions about everything. The annoying thing is that she’s usually right. She has an eye for color and spatial elements.”

“I noticed that in her house. She used every bit of space and still made it seem open. What does she have in mind for the bridge?”

Cal didn’t try to hide his frustration when he answered. “She wants it to be an arch. Said it would blend into the environment and be more aesthetically pleasing. The fact that it will take longer and cost more? That’s not her problem. According to her, she’s the brains behind the operation. Mo and I are the brawn.”

Landry tried not to laugh at Cal’s consternation. She could tell that it was only partly real. From what she’d seen, he would do just about anything Meredith asked him to do. Before she thought it through, she said, “When you get ready to build, if you’ll let us know, Eliza and I would like to help. I mean, if that’s okay. I’m not any good at building, but I’m a decent gopher. And based on the way Eliza rambled on and on about how you let her shoot a nail gun on Saturday...”

Cal had the decency to appear to be abashed. She didn’t believe it.

She tapped her finger on her bottom lip. “I’m going to go out on a limb and say that you have an experiential childrearing philosophy.”

As soon as the words left her mouth, she regretted them. After what he’d shared? How could she bring up something like childrearing philosophy to a man who’d lost the boys he thought were going to be his?

She scrambled to come up with an apology that wouldn’t make things even more awkward, but Cal didn’t seem upset. “By and large, that’s the Shaw and Quinn philosophy. Once they’re old enough to run around mostly unsupervised, they’re old enough to hold a board, fetch a tool, or”—he winked—“shoot a nail gun. But we don’t give kids sharp objects or power tools without safety briefings and close observation. As for the nail gun, I don’t think you need to worry. She and Abby squealed like, well, like five-year-old girls when they shot in the nails. And neither of them has the arm strength to hold the thing or the right hand size to pull the trigger unassisted.”

“So you’re saying my fears are unwarranted?” She wasn’t mad. In fact, she was pleasantly surprised and relieved.

“Not unwarranted. Nail guns can hurt the people using them or the people around them. But for the girls it was a chance to say they helped with the roof of the well house, the same way they helped crochet stitches on Granny’s blanket.”

Landry didn’t trust herself to speak right away. When she did, her voice wavered more than she would have liked. “Your family is quite welcoming.”

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