She knocked on the back door to his workshop. If he wasn’t in there, if he was in the main store, he might not hear. It was possible she’d have to traipse around to the front.
But she didn’t. He opened the door and when he saw it was her, he took her into his arms and gave her a walloping kiss. “I’ve missed you,” he said into her hair.
“I missed you too.”
With his arm around her, he brought her into the workshop. “No reason to stand out there in the cold. You have time to kill?”
Often when Jazzi had a meeting, Daisy stopped in to spend time with Jonas. “I wouldn’t say I was killing time. I came to see what you’re working on.”
“How did you know it was something new?”
“You can’t look at a pile of reclaimed wood and not imagine what you’re going to do with it. What did you do with it?”
He laughed and Daisy unzipped her jacket. She laid it on the bench, then she saw exactly what Jonas had been working on—a beautiful island. He’d used the barn wood for the base of the cabinet. Along with that, he’d added barn doors to open and shut the cabinets. The top of the island was glossy gray and white quartz that looked a bit pebbled with mother-of-pearl glimmers. The cabinet itself was a pale distressed green.
She ran her hand over the top. “This is beautiful, Jonas. Do you have a buyer for it?”
“No one knows about it yet. Elijah and I are going to set it in the window tomorrow morning. We’ll leave it there for a week and see if we have any interest. If not, I do have some buyers who want me to call them when I have new pieces. With that combination, we should sell it soon.”
She slid the small barn doors back and forth and noticed the shelves inside. Jonas had made the piece not only elegantly rustic but usable too.
“Elijah thinks we should do some kind of special event,” Jonas said, “with all reclaimed wood pieces. He thinks it would create an awareness of the history of the area, as well as what can be done with reclaimed wood. He has a finish product that will even re-porcelain old sinks. Can you imagine an old farmhouse sink in a cabinet like this?”
“I can. A complete kitchen of reclaimed wood would be gorgeous. When Wyatt Troyer designed my kitchen, we used reclaimed wood on one of the walls because it had come from the barn. He refinished the boards and no one seems to notice it, but I know. I wanted to keep as much of the old barn in play as possible.”
“It makes your kitchen distinctive,” Jonas agreed. “I was thinking of making a library table out of reclaimed wood for Vi and Foster for Christmas. Do you think they’d like that? I could even put shelves under it so they’d have a place for books. I know Foster has a lot of them.”
“That’s a wonderful idea, and I’m certain they’d appreciate it. They could even set their computers there when they aren’t using them. Foster doesn’t always like to go downstairs to the garage office to work because he wants to be close to Vi and the baby. That might change as he knows Vi is feeling better and the baby might not need as much care.”
“Do you think Vi really is better? She’s not faking it?” After a serious consideration, Daisy answered, “No, she’s not faking it. I saw her at her worst, and I know her moods. When she looks at Sammy, there’s love in her eyes. When she looks at me now, sometimes I see the old sparkle back. She’s enthusiastic about the christening and I don’t see how she could fake that either.”
“I just wonder because sometimes depressed people can put on a good front,” Jonas offered.
“I know, but I really think she’s coming out of the depression. Not overnight, and not every day, but it’s happening.”
Jonas nodded. “Is Jazzi going to come along with us to the bonfire tomorrow night?” The bonfire was a holiday tradition for Willow Creek the first week of December.
“No, she says she doesn’t want to get cold. She’ll stay home with the cats or spend the evening with Vi.”
Jonas leaned against a bookcase that appeared ready to be moved into the showroom. He crossed one ankle over the other and his arms across his chest. “Have you made any more progress about Margaret?”
“I don’t know if I have or not. Vanna showed me something and I wanted to show you.” She plucked her phone from her purse, tapped on her photo gallery, and brought up a photo. She’d snapped a pic of Vanna’s photo. “Vanna said that Margaret sent her this photo about a year before she met Rowan. With it, she had said something like her mother and dad would be proud of her now but she still hoped to find an acting job.”
“That means she wasn’t acting.”
“That’s right. But Vanna didn’t know what she was doing.”
With his fingers, Jonas spread the picture so some elements of it came into closer focus.
“You don’t seem to be concentrating on Margaret’s face. What are you looking at?”
“At where the photo was taken. It looks familiar.” He pointed to one aspect of the photo. “See these brick walls and the arch?” He pointed to something else. “Look at these ball lights.”
“Do you think you recognize the place?”
“I’ve only been to New York City a few times on a case, but I have a friend in the police department there who knows it well. I could send it to him and see what he says.”
When Daisy looked into Jonas’s eyes, seeing the lines around them that came from his experience in the PD, when she studied the scar down his face and his expression as he studied her, she knew one thing for sure—he
