Page 13 of Shake the Habit

“I know,” Marc agreed. “I thought she was going clubbing instead of coming here.”

I turned to glare at him and he looked as ashamed as Sir had after knocking me down. That was not the appropriate way to talk in front of a client, but probably my dress hadn’t been the appropriate thing to wear, either. It was short enough that Caleb’s sweatshirt went past the hem, but that was also due to the size of the sweatshirt. It could have been a fairly cute dress by itself, if I’d had a belt to throw on and maybe some hoop earrings. In our trips to pageants in the minivan, I’d learned a lot about accessorizing.

“Good bones,” my cousin commented as we went back downstairs. “This is a beautiful old place. It could be a great place to live.”

“It could be,” Caleb said. It had sounded more like a question than agreement.

“Would you like Marc to look around more and make a list of ideas? It really would be nice to have an HVAC system,” I pointed out.

We waited in the office while my cousin went to take notes and pictures so he could prepare another estimate. I hurried to thespace heater again, so glad for its presence, and Caleb got a chair so that I could practically huddle against it. “I don’t think you could work in here without this,” I noted. I nudged Sir away so he wouldn’t get burned.

“I also carry it upstairs at night.” He stood next to his desk and moved around some papers. The computer seemed very new and nice, which made it different from everything else in the house. There was another bookshelf in here, too, not quite as big as the one upstairs.

“You must really like to read,” I remarked.

“Out here, there wasn’t much else to do. My mom didn’t believe in cell phones, TVs, or computers, so I did my chores, rode my skateboard, and read.”

“How did you do your schoolwork without a computer, though?”

“I was homeschooled,” he answered. “Everything was pen and paper. My mother had very specific ideas about education.”

“Including that she wanted you to board for high school,” I noted.

“It seemed to bother you when I told you that before.” He sat in his desk chair and Sir leaned against his legs, resting his chin in Caleb’s lap to request scratches.

“It did,” I admitted. “I guess it would have been a pain to get you into Chattanooga every day for school, but I think I would have done it. I know that my parents wouldn’t have let me go away so young.” Not that living at home had prevented me frommisbehaving. “They would have missed me a lot and I really would have missed them, too.”

“I was happy to go,” he said. “I had read about kids my age, but I hadn’t ever been around them.”

“I thought that homeschooled kids had their own sports teams and did activities together.”

“Not me,” Caleb answered. “My mother was busy.”

He’d said that before, too. “How did she teach you, then?”

“When I was little, she sat with me sometimes. When I got bigger and more self-directed, she gave me work and expected me to complete it. I did.”

“If I didn’t have a teacher breathing down my neck, I didn’t do anything,” I admitted. “That’s pretty amazing how you learned on your own.”

“It’s not a good way to learn. If I ever had kids, I would do things very differently.”

He’d sounded almost fierce when he’d said that. “I’m sorry you didn’t like it, and I wouldn’t have, either. I guess it worked for you, though. I looked you up more and it seems like you’re very successful. How do you work, living out here?”

He pointed to his computer. “I can do almost everything from this desk, and as you said, Chattanooga’s not too far if I have to fly somewhere. I’m busy, which doesn’t leave enough time to fix the barn. I don’t know how to do that, anyway,” he acknowledged. Then he switched topics to asking about Marc and the construction business. He had pretty pointed questionsand I supposed that was a good idea. After all, if you were going to write a big check to someone and put your faith in his ability to make safe buildings for you, shouldn’t you have investigated things?

“I’m glad you’re discussing all this,” I told him. “I never did a lot of due diligence about anything in my life and it’s nice to see that others are more careful. You’re a lot less likely to get hurt.” I paused. “Not that Marc McCourt will ever do anything to hurt you. If you hire him, you’ll never regret it.” Sir picked up his head to look at me and I smiled at him.

“I’m a fairly cautious person but you seem to be that way, too. You didn’t jump right into my truck like this guy did.” The dog got more ear scratches. “But you did invite me over for lunch, even though I could have been—”

“I don’t want to hear ‘murderer or worse’ again,” I warned. “I’m really trying to be more careful with my decisions. I spent a lot of years acting like such an idiot and that’s something I’m working on.”

“Uh, it’s a step?”

“Making amends,” I agreed. “I had to look really hard at how my bad behavior affected everyone else, like my friends and family.”

“What did you do that was bad?”

“My Lord, what didn’t I do?” I shook my head. “I don’t think I should tell you. My mama was just warning me against exactly this.”

---