Lucy took a chair across from her. “I am so ready to get out of that freight yard!” she exclaimed as she casually examined a nail. “You know Albert? He’s about to get a swift kick in the balls if he doesn’t keep his hands to himself. And it’s so friggin’ hot out there! They leave those bay doors open all the time, and it’s like standing in an oven.”
Robin scarcely heard her—the file Evan had sent over had several documents, covering both Peerless and Wirt. What she found a little puzzling about it was that it looked as if Evan had done much of the same work she had done, running through the same calculations. In short, duplicating everything she’d done. That he knew she was doing.
She was startled by the sound of a dropped hammer. Zaney had dropped it by Lucy’s foot—well, kicked it, actually—and hurried over to retrieve it. He bent over, grabbed the hammer, then smiled up at Lucy. “Girl, you’re a hottie, you know it?”
“Yes. I know,” she sighed, barely sparing him a glance.
“You must be like, you know, a speeding ticket or something, ‘cuz you got fine written all over you.
“Oh my God, is that the best you can do?” Lucy asked, smiling at her nail, her foot swinging carelessly.
“Well . . .” He paused to think about it, then nodded slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s about it.”
Why would Evan have gone to the trouble to duplicate her work? Robin wondered. She had told him what she was doing at each step, had discussed it with him. She would have thought nothing of it, but this was several documents, several different cuts at the same problem, just as she had done.
“So anyway, I’m going back to the yard,” Lucy announced, nudging the file Robin was poring over. “Evan’s around today and tomorrow, and he said to tell you he’d probably stop by. Okay, call me!” she said and popped up out of her chair, strutting past Zaney with a very self-satisfied smile as he gave her his best wolf whistle, which really sounded more like a wheeze.
Robin put Evan’s file aside, returned to the work she was doing on Wirt, but she couldn’t concentrate. The more she thought of the papers in that file, the more it bothered her. Did he not trust her? What about all the encouragement he was giving her? Just lip service? It sort of felt that way, and Robin was trying very hard to give him the benefit of the doubt. She really had no reason to distrust him . . . did she?
Even if she had wanted to think about it, she couldn’t when Grandma and Grandpa showed up. Grandma had made sandwiches for the work crews— “My famous egg salad,” she announced proudly—and Grandpa had on his overalls. “Jake and me are gonna take down the last part of that wall,” he informed her as he went shuffling by.
Grandpa and Jake did indeed try and take down a wall, making such a racket that Robin could hardly hear herself think. She finally gave up and joined Grandma on the terrace, where they sipped iced tea and watched Raymond cut the lawn by making lazy circles with his riding mower.
They discussed Dad and his last round of chemo for a while. But during a lull in the conversation, Grandma casually said, “That Jake’s a nice boy, isn’t he?”
Robin stole a look at her from the corner of her eye; Grandma adjusted her cola-bottle glasses. “He’s all right,” she said slowly.
“I think he’s a dish. When I was a girl, he was exactly the kind of man we all dreamed about. Handsome, strong—clever enough to work with his hands and know how to build or fix things—and smart, too. I guess I should consider myself lucky that your grandpa had at least two of the three,” she said, sighing.
Robin didn’t dare ask which two.
“I stopped at the grocery store this morning to get some peas for my pea salad. You know that pea salad I make? With the eggs and celery? Elmer loves that pea salad and he’s been after me to make it again. I swear, he could eat his weight in it. Anyway, the last time I made pea salad was the day before your office burned down, and it got me to thinking how far you’ve come since your . . . you know, getting arrested and all that—”
Robin groaned—her grandmother could not come to her house without mentioning that singularly spectacular event.
“—and I was saying to Elmer that it seems to me you are much happier than we’ve seen you in some time.”
“What? Happier?”
“Um-hm. Without all the stress of that terrible job and a nice young man to keep you occupied—”
“Grandma, I am not seeing Evan.”
“Well, I wasn’t talking about him,” she said slyly. “I was talking about Jake.”
“Jake,” Robin repeated.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Grandma said with an impatient wave of her hand. “Your grandpa saw you holding hands, didn’t he?”
“No, not exactly, he—”
“Well, it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure it out. I can tell just by the way you look at him.”
Robin was about to put an end to this budding rumor, but paused. “Wait—how do I look at him?”
Grandma laughed. “Oh, Robbie, you know . . . like you’re in love, honey!”