“Yeah, I did,” Tony answered equably as if he didn’t hearall the subtext in the seventeen-year-old’s voice. “I couldhave lost a lot of things, but not those. One was a picture ofthe guys I served with in the CAG unit over in Nam. Theother is of my daughter. After all the trouble she went to toget it taken, she’d kill me if I lost it.”
“Pete,” Claire tried again. “Close the door, honey. I’mgetting moths.”
That seemed to startle both the boys into action. Johnnypulled his attention from the interloper, who was by now fielding fast and furious questions from Jess, and approached Claire, Pete trailing diffidently behind.
“Did you boys have a good dance?” Claire asked, liftinga hand to brush back the unruly lock of hair from her son’sforehead.
Johnny’s grin was fleeting and crooked. “Okay. Pete andI are gonna go up and play flight simulator, okay?”
“Sure, honey. How ya doin’, Pete?”
“I’m great,” he assured her, his flat hazel eyes lightingwith an almost inappropriate enthusiasm. “My dad’s headed over to kick some butt in North Africa. Theyshipped yesterday. Did you see it on CNN? Everybody sayswe’re gonna just wipe up, ya know? Man, I’d like to be thereto see it happen.” Laughing, he gave Johnny a nudge in theribs. “It’ll be our turn soon, though, huh, man?”
Johnny straightened like a shot. Claire thought of thenews footage she’d seen that evening, of the children she’dseen walking up those gangways, climbing into those cockpits, and she fought the terrible urge to scream.
“Upstairs, Pete,” Johnny snapped, already too well acquainted with his mother’s thoughts on the subject of thislittle armed action. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
Pete eased past Johnny without another word. Across theroom Tony was answering Jess’s quick-fire questions abouthis own life, his daughter, work, his life in Atlanta. Claireshould interrupt. She should save the poor man from theattentions of a dramatic thirteen-year-old.
Not yet. Not while she was still recovering from Pete’sinnocent enthusiasm.
“Mom?”
Startled, she looked up at her almost-six-foot-tall son torealize that he was still frowning at her, his chocolate browneyes cautious. He wanted to go. He wanted to be in on thatgreat circus five thousand miles away. He wanted to climbinto those cockpits himself, and Claire couldn’t let him.
Shewouldn’tlet him. She’d die before she’d let him throwhis life away that easily.
“Yes, honey?” she asked, smiling so he didn’t know.
“Is he bothering you?”
Claire caught her breath. Leave it to John to ask the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. Was Tony bothering her?Oh God, she wanted to laugh. She wanted to cry again, andthat wouldn’t get her anywhere. So she smiled, just as she always did. She stroked that cheek that was finally beginning to betray the first hint of dark stubble, and she prayedhe wouldn’t see through her.
“If he did, I never would have let him in the house,” shepromised her son, who had his father’s sad, dark eyes andcurly black hair and lanky frame. Her son who worried toomuch. But that was because Johnny was old enough to remember the father he resembled so closely.
“You sure?”
“Peaches asked me the same thing. I’m fine, honey. I justhad a bad shift at work. Poor Mr. Riordan walked in rightin the middle of one of my diatribes.”
Finally Johnny smiled back, and Claire hoped it would beall right now. “Poor guy. What was it, inept administration or stupid doctors?”
“Both.”
“Well, then, I guess he deserved a beer.”
“Then Peaches stormed in and demanded to know whatwas wrong.”
Johnny laughed. “Two beers.”
Claire nodded, slid an arm around her son’s waist and thought again how she used to hold him in her hands. Herbaby. Her life. Soon he’d be gone, then Jess, and she’d beleft with echoing rooms.
But not yet. For at least a while, he still depended on her. He still needed her stability and her sense and her support.For at least that long, Claire had her babies to keep her going.
“Say yes, Mom,” Jess suddenly called out. “Please, sayyes.”
Claire turned to find an unholy excitement in Jess’s eyesthat portended disaster. Tony still lounged comfortablyagainst the counter, beer in hand. Claire’s heart did a slowroll just at the sight of him.
“Say yes to what?” she asked, just as she always did whenJess looked this impassioned.
