Wintergreen

brushed her hair, then washed her hands again. The repetition of the motion reminded her of Lady Macbeth and she smiled grimly to herself. She did not need all the perfumes of Arabia-or even a fresh dousing of Lily of the Valley-to sweeten her little hands. She was innocent of any wrongdoing, she didn’t care whatever Mr. Whitaker thought. Johnny had gotten along all this time without a grandfather; he didn’t need one now.

She didn’t feel like crying.

Everything was fine. She understood all the subtleties of her conversation with Richard Whitaker, Sr., Master Attorney, Ret. Matthew would never guess that his father harbored any negative feelings for Lorna, because those feelings would never show. In front of Matthew. Mr. Whitaker valued his son too much. And maybe at some level he realized that his elder son had a great deal more strength and character than his younger son had possessed, that Matthew would never allow his wife to stray down the decadent path to other men’s beds.

Stop it, she told her reflection in the mirror furiously. What do you care anymore? Why can’t you just put it behind you?

She returned the makeup items to her purse. Just be very sure you do nothing to hurt my son. She straightened her skirt, smoothed down the front of her blouse, checked her stockings for runs, pasted a brilliant smile on her face and unlocked the bathroom door.

She descended the steep stairs to the basement slowly. Below she could hear the chortle of Johnny’s laughter and the steady hum of the electric train. Pausing at the bottom of the stairs, she leaned back against the white- painted wall and folded her arms. Her head was aching and her heart was still beating in a terrible, painful rhythm that she refused to define, yet she could not help relaxing a little at the sight that greeted her.

Matthew was on his hands and knees, as was Johnny; their rear ends faced her. The train was more than a few decades old; the engine was a good foot long and made all kinds of authentic old-time noises. The tracks led from the huge main storage room of the basement through the laundry rooms and pantries, and pack to the game room where she was standing now. It had to have taken Matthew days to set it up. Tunnels and crisscrossed tracks and flashing lights, makeshift hills and valleys and switchyards… She shook her head, debating who was the happier child of the two.

Matthew moved and caught sight of her. She decided abruptly that she was mistaken to label him a child. His dark eyes seared hers, assessing so perceptively that she felt stripped and laid bare; she saw a flash of anger in those depths, and knew she had to do a better job of covering up her emotions. She would not be responsible for a rift between father and son, nor could she blame Mr. Whitaker for her own desperately unhappy mood.

“Misha.”

She smiled brightly, stepped over the track and crouched between the two of them. “I don’t believe this!” she said enthusiastically, eyes thanking him for the trouble he had gone to for Johnny.

“Mom! This thing can go a zillion miles an hour. Just watch!”

She watched. It seemed to run smoothly at a million miles per hour, but cracked up in a terrible pile at a zillion. Johnny burst into chuckles, and crawled along the floor on his knees to fix it. “On the curves, you have to go a little slower,” he explained.

“I don’t suppose you’d let a female run it,” Lorna wondered idly.

Johnny’s head was down. “Some females, yes. You, no.”

“Johnny!”

Johnny’s eyes darted up at Matthew’s stern admonition. “You just don’t know her that well. You can’t let Mom near things like this,” he explained. “I wasn’t being fresh, Matthew.”

“I do believe we can allow her one turn at the controls, even if she isn’t particularly mechanical,” Matthew said dryly.

Johnny shook his head and shrugged. “It’s your train.” He brought the controls over to his mother and explained in nauseatingly exact detail what to do. If Matthew hadn’t been biting his lip to keep from laughing, Lorna might have been tempted to rearrange her adorable son’s nose. She started the train by pulling the lever, and watched it zoom and curve until it was out of sight. It was chugging along perfectly, tooting and smoking at interesting intervals, switching and backing up…until her heel caught on one of the electric wires and all the lights went out.

When they went on again, she saw that Matthew had put his head in his hands. Johnny looked only at Matthew. “I’m not going to say I told you so because you’re a grown-up,” Johnny informed Matthew. “I have better manners than that.”

“Let’s take her home,” Matthew suggested.

“Couldn’t you just send her back upstairs again? She can talk to Mr. Whitaker.”

Matthew stole another glance at Lorna. She thought she’d had him fooled, because she knew her own laughter had been real in those few short minutes. There had been honest pleasure just in being with both of them. Yet Matthew continued to stare intently at her, and seemed to see beyond her smile and the banter with her son. “It’s getting late,” he insisted quietly to Johnny. “I guarantee you can come back and see this another day.”

By the time they got home, Johnny and Matthew were hungry again. It was dark, and Lorna put out some of the feast she’d intended to serve for Christmas dinner for herself and her son. Lopsided Christmas cookies, gaily decorated; a green molded salad with cherries and tiny candies inside; dips with crackers and fresh vegetables… It was not exactly a nutritious snack. Certainly not served with sparkling Burgundy and Johnny’s Boston Cooler.

Her towheaded urchin, never one to let a subject die a natural death, brought the two Zoids to the kitchen table. His own lurched and threatened in terrible menace from its four-inch height, while hers fell over with every third step. Matthew just looked at her.

“There are many, many men who aren’t in the least mechanical,” she informed both of them.

“He’s only nine years old,” Matthew reminded her.

Johnny had a few more choice bits of information to impart before Lorna finally got him to bed, kissed him seven times, hugged him for a while and left him to his almost-ten male-chauvinist solitude.

By the time she returned to the living room, Matthew had lit a fire in the fireplace, pushed most of the debris behind a chair and removed his sweater; he was reclining, shoes off, on the couch. “Come over here,” he suggested, patting the inch and a half of empty space next to him.

She smiled, curling at the bottom of the couch instead with her feet tucked up under her. “For some unknown reason, I’m so tired I can hardly move,” she admitted.

He nudged her calf with his foot, and when she failed to respond simply sat up and took her back down with him, not content until her head was tucked into the crook of his shoulder and her legs were captured beneath one of his. She couldn’t move. She had the feeling that was exactly what Matthew had intended, that he had watched her exhibition of restless energy since they had come back from his father’s and correctly interpreted all of it.

With his hand on her hip, he kissed the crown of her chestnut hair. “I think you’re wine-tired,” he whispered teasingly. “Two glasses, Misha. You’re quite a drinker.”

“Don’t you start.”

“Johnny tells me that you can swear in several languages. Can you?”

“I have never sworn in front of that child in my entire life.”

“Except in German. And Russian.”

Lorna sighed, curling closer to him, rubbing her cheek against the soft white shirt fabric near his shoulder. “What else did the little monster tell you?” she murmured dryly.

“We don’t much like men who touch our mother, now, do we? And we’re more than capable of taking care of you all on our own. We like friends to take us both out on outings. For example, hockey games. Seeing toy trains. Maybe tobogganing…” Matthew sighed. “I didn’t touch you throughout dinner, did I? Not even when we were downstairs together. I can’t imagine why I like the little imp. I know darn well he’s waging war.” A wry smile touched Matthew’s features, but his eyes told her he was serious. “It is a war, Misha, but not to worry. It will just take some time to convince him he can’t lose for winning. I’ll be patient.”

She thought fleetingly how typical that was of Matthew, to let her know he understood Johnny’s possessive instincts, and by treating the subject lightly to also let her know that she could trust his handling of it.