More, he was going to have to have a talk with Jack. He had to know what the boy was thinking, what he was feeling.

Jack first, Brody decided. Could be, could very well be, his son looked at Kate as nothing more than a friend and would be upset at the idea of her being a more permanent, more important part of their lives. It had been the two of them as long as Jack could remember.

He looked over with a little jolt as a movement caught the corner of his eye.

“You turn that noise down,” Bob O’Connell said, “you wouldn’t get taken by surprise.”

“I like music on the job.” But Brody rose, shut off the radio. “Something you need?”

They hadn’t spoken since the scene in the Kimball kitchen. Both men eyed each other warily.

“I got something to say,” Bob stated.

“Then say it.”

“I did my best by you. It ain’t right for you to say different, when I did my best by you. Maybe I was hard on you, but you had a wild streak and you needed hard. I had a family to support, and I did it the only way I knew how. Maybe you think I didn’t spend enough time with you—” Bob broke off, jammed his hands into his pockets. “Maybe I didn’t. I don’t have the knack for it, not the way you do with your boy. Fact is, you weren’t the same pleasure to be around Jack is. He’s a credit to you. Maybe I should’ve said so before, but I’m saying so now.”

Brody said nothing for a long moment, adjusting to the shock even as his father glared at him. “You know, I’m pretty sure that’s about the longest speech you ever aimed in my direction.”

Bob’s face hardened. “I’m done with it,” he said and turned.

“Dad.” Brody set his drill aside. “I appreciate it.”

Bob let out a breath, the way a man might as the trapdoor opened under his feet. “Well.” He turned back, fought with the words in his head. “Might as well finish it off then. Probably I shouldn’t have jumped on you the other day, not in front of your boy and your…the Kimball girl. Your mother lit into me over it.”

Brody could only stare. “Mom?”

“Yeah.” With a look of frustrated disgust, Bob kicked lightly at the doorjamb. “She don’t do it often, but when she does, she can peel the skin off your ass. Hardly speaking to me yet. Says I embarrassed her.”

“I got the same line from Kate—she did some peeling of her own.”

“Didn’t much care having her claw at me the way she did. But I gotta say, she’s got spine. Keep you straight.”

“It’s my job to keep myself straight.”

Bob nodded. The weight that had been pressing on his chest for days eased. “Guess I figure you’ve been doing your job there. You do good work. For a carpenter.”