“Pop,please. I can do that.Let me do that.” Short of climbing up there and muscling his far-too-frail parent to and down the ladder, Jake was helpless to stop him, and he barely controlled the terror in his voice.
“Now look here, sonny, I’ve been doing this— Whoa.” Pop lurched a little when his hand missed the gutter and flailed in midair for a sec. It wasn’t enough that he lost his balance, but it was close enough that Jake nearly fainted.
“That’s it. I’m coming up to get you right now,” he said, starting up the ladder. If he had to drag his dad back down he would, dammit, because there wasno wayhe was going to watch Pop fall off the goddamned roof.
“All right, all right, put a sock in it, Elwood,” grumped Pop. “I was about to take a break anyway. It’s almost lunchtime.”
Jake didn’t take a full breath until his father’s feet were on the third rung from the bottom—except when he nearly fainted (again) as Pop’s foot missed the second rung as he was lowering himself back down onto the ladder from the edge of the roof. Theroof!
By the time Pop stepped onto the grass, Jake had himself under control. While he wanted to lambaste the idiot for doing such a crazy thing—why else had he moved to freaking Wicks Hollow if not to help his parent with this kind of stuff?—he knew that was not the way to handle his hotheaded Italian father.
Because he was sort of the same way.
At least Jake saw reason once in a while—unlike Fabrizio. His mother always said the two of them were as identical as two cannellini beans. But Jake was a little more grounded—at least, he liked to think he was. Medical school and residency did that to a guy.
Not that he’d felt all that grounded when he ran intoVivien Leigh Savageof all people yesterday.
What were the damned chances?
Damn. She’d lookedgood. Different—her whisky-blond hair was much longer than it had been back then, brushing past her shoulders now, and there was a little more definition to her features than before, and she was clearly upset about something—not just seeing him, he figured…
Vivien Leigh Savage. Here in town, presumably permanently, since she was the owner of the theater.
What was he going to do about that? Nothing…or everything?
He shook his head and followed Pop into the house, where, ostensibly, his dad was going to eat lunch. But Jake was almost certain his father’s hand was trembling a little. Maybe his rock-headed pop had learned a lesson, nearly taking a header off the top of the damned house.
Maybe not.
Probably not.
“I got tuna salad,” said Pop, rummaging in the fridge. “You want some?”
“Sure.” Jake was about to sit down at the table to eat when his father turned around holding jars of mayo, capers, and pickles, along with a small container of chopped onion.
“Well, get the tuna out of the pantry, will you,” snarled Fabrizio. “Ain’t gonna make it itself, Elwood.”
“Right.”
No one called him Elwood anymore, thank God. In middle school, he’d loathed his parents for giving him such a horrific name (in Jake’s opinion, horrific first names ran wildly in the DeRiccio family—Fabrizio being case in point, and his grandfather had been Aldobrandino). It didn’t help that until he hit sixteen, he looked like a short, dark-skinned Italian frog.
Thus, Jake had heard every ugly twist on that name in fifth and sixth grades—Frogwood, Smellwood, Tinywood, Elweird, and more—and it wasn’t until the older sister of one of his loyal friends called him Jake over the summer between sixth and seventh grade that he got past the name-calling.
The fact that she’d watchedThe Blues Brothersand given him the coolest nickname ever—along with the fact that she was tall, blond, andseventeen—made Ashley Grifton his goddess forever.
He still thought about her fondly, even though the one time he’d worked up the courage to ask her out—when he was sixteen—she’d turned him down flat.
“Don’t splash the juice every-damned-where,” grumbled Pop when Jake came over to drain the tuna at the sink. “Makes it stink. Rinse it down the sink, too.”
“I will,” Jake said calmly. Since when had his father become such a nitpicky micromanager?
He knew the answer to that, unfortunately: since Mom died.
Ten minutes later, they were sitting at the small kitchen table eating tuna on whole grain—a shocker in itself, because throughout his entire life, Jake had lived through the ongoing battle between his parents about bread. It was always Mom wanting her husband and children to eat more whole-grain breads, and Dad insisting that the crusty white Italian breadhismom used to make was the only bread worth eating.
Which was probably why Jake had developed a hobby, he supposed you’d call it, of making all kinds of bread. Crusty Italian bread. Sourdough. Whole-wheat, onion rye, olive bread. Ciabatta. Focaccia. He’d even tried his hand at pumpernickel.
So he couldn’t help needle his pop. “Guess you’ve developed a taste for whole-grain bread, huh?” Jake said with a sly smile. “After all those years. Look at all the sunflower seeds in this one slice. Yum!”
