“As far as I know.”

“Would you mind helping me paint? I need to go to work and I want these to dry.”

He looked up at the ceiling. “Only if you tell me how you managed to remodel this place. Did Adam help you?”

“He doesn’t know this exists. Nobody in Mason does. I hired two guys from Lawrence to do the work. They said it’ll flood like a swimming pool.”

“I guess you have a suit, don’t you?”

“That’s exactly what I said!”

For a moment they smiled at each other. Vera’s crinkly-curly hair was coming out of its ties and surrounding her narrow face. The shadows on Miguel’s face made him look darker. The slant of his cheekbones was almost a cut.

Vera broke away first. “I think we should use more red.”

“Good idea.”

They got busy painting.

By Friday, Adam was ready for a break from the farm. Or maybe it was that he missed Vera.

They’d spoken on the phone every night, but that wasn’t the same as face-to-face.

He put on nice trousers—no bell-bottoms for him—and a freshly ironed shirt (thanks to Vera’s mom) and drove to the Plaza. He wanted to see Vera, but also wanted to find a way to remind her about her appointment to go with Kelly to choose a wedding dress.

As he drove into Kansas City, he thought of his second reason for going. He needed to go to the apartment his father kept. He thought about how he could give all the contents to charity, then sell the place.

Maybe he’d use the profits to finance a clinic for Kelly. He had a feeling that she wouldn’t agree to his help when she saw him get out his checkbook. But maybe if the money was from an apartment that Adam hated... It was possible that some good could come of it all.

But first he had to go see the place. Walk into it. See the big secret his father had kept for so many years. What would he find? He imagined a red velvet swing. Gold tassels. Black silk bedsheets.

The vision brought him to what he really wanted. He was going to do whatever he could to get Vera to go with him when he first entered that apartment. He’d coax her with lunch, then offer to go with her to meet Kelly. Later, he’d casually suggest that she go with him to Burke Hatten’s love nest.

If he played his cards right, maybe he could get Vera to spend the night there with him. Maybe making it his own “love nest” would take away some of the sting of finding out about his father.