“Ah, good!” Joe said loudly. “Our food is here. If you two’d rather fight than eat, let me know so I can sell tickets.”
“There will be no argument,” Kim said. “Russell and I are going out Saturday night.”
“On Saturday you’re going to be in a B&B with your almost fiancé,” Travis said grimly.
“That’s right,” Kim said, smiling at Mr. Layton. “I can’t keep all my men straight.”
“You ought to take young Travis here with you.”
“With me where?” Kim asked.
“Over the weekend,” Joe said.
“Take Travis on my weekend with my boyfriend?” Kim asked. Truthfully, she liked the idea but she wasn’t going to say so. If Dave did propose, Travis’s presence would give her time to think about an answer. And if Dave got too . . . insistent, too whatever, Travis would be there. But she’d eat one of Al’s ’57 burgers and have an immediate coronary before she told him so.
“Yeah,” Joe said as he bit into a pound of meat that dripped juice—a.k.a. grease—down to his wrists. “Travis here said you were going to do some work. How can you do that if you’re fooling around with your boyfriend? Take Travis and he can do all the work.”
Travis gave Joe a look that was half thanks, half murder.
“That’s not a bad idea,” Kim said as she used her fork to move around what was Al’s idea of a salad. Lots of fried chicken, not much lettuce. “I’ll think about it,” she said and didn’t dare look at Travis. She had an idea he was smiling much too broadly.
As the morning sunlight came through the windows, Travis was sitting in Kim’s living room and trying to concentrate on the newspaper, but he couldn’t. She’d left for work an hour ago, and since then he’d been waiting for Penny’s son to show up.
Yesterday after lunch at Al’s with Kim and Joe, Travis had gone to see his mother. As he entered Mrs. Wingate’s house, the hum of his mother’s sewing machine reached him, and the familiarity of the sound felt good. When he got upstairs, it was easy for him to fall into place with her and begin cutting out a pattern. Sewing was something they’d done together when he was a child. They never talked about it, but it reminded them of their time in Edilean, a time of peace for both of them. Those two weeks had changed both their lives.
Travis had been a bit concerned about what his mother knew about him and Joe, but she soon made him relax. They’d always been close and nearly always in agreement. At first he’d been afraid she’d again lecture him about Kim, but the anger she’d displayed on their first meeting was no longer there.
Instead they easily fell into talking about Joe. Travis told her everything—except that Joe knew Travis was Lucy’s son. But all the rest of it, from unpacking to being told sawponies were sawhorses, to having to attach steel shelves to a brick wall, was there.
When Lucy began laughing at Travis’s stories, he got her away from the machines—she worked too much—and down to the kitchen. As they’d done when he was growing up, Travis made tea while she made the sandwiches. When they were ready, Lucy led him into the conservatory. For a while he walked around, admiring the orchids that filled the room. When he sat down, Lucy asked him about Kim.
Travis hesitated.
“You can tell me,” she said softly. “Are you still in love with her?”
“Yes,” he said, then looked at his mother with eyes that showed the depth of his feeling. “More than ever. More than I thought possible.”
For a moment tears gathered in Lucy’s eyes. She was a mother who hoped her child would find love.
“She’s funny and perceptive,” Travis said as he picked up a sandwich wedge. When he was little his mother had cut off the crusts and sliced the bread diagonally into four pieces. As he grew up, she’d continued. “And very smart. And you should see the jewelry in her store. It’s all beautiful!”
“I have seen it,” Lucy said. “Whenever I heard that Kim was out of town, I visited her shop. I like the olive leaves.”
“So do I,” Travis said. He stood up and fiddled with a long orchid leaf for a moment before turning back. “I feel comfortable with her. I don’t feel like I have to impress her. Although I do work at that.”
“Joe said you drove down the back road and he couldn’t see how you’d done it.”
Travis shrugged. “Stunt work. It wasn’t difficult.”
“And something about a balloon?” Lucy asked.
“I couldn’t stand to hear the kid cry, so I climbed up a tree and got it down for him.”
“You always have had a soft heart.”
“No one in New York would say that,” Travis said.
“No, I guess not. You have both your father and me inside you. What are you going to do now?”