“You saw that, didn’t you, Megan?” Christian yelled across the yard.
She proclaimed her ignorance gladly. Mary wasn’t shy about making the call. “You clobbered him, Seth. Ten yards to Chris and Eric,” she shouted.
The game resumed after a fist pump of camaraderie between Christian and his nephew and grumbling from Seth and Steve. Megan glanced up on the terrace and saw Caroline standing in James Lasher’s arms. They stood silently and watched the people they loved most in the world. Megan was touched by the sense of happiness and contentment that seemed to radiate from the couple.
Katie noticed where Megan was looking. “They’re still crazy about each other,” she said, referring to her parents.
“It’s wonderful,” Megan said before she began sketching again.
“Are your own parents close?”
“My father passed away ten years ago.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
For a few seconds neither woman spoke.
“They weren’t that close, though, when my dad was alive. My sister says that they used to be, once. A long time ago,” Megan said after a pause.
Katie sighed. “Alienation between parents is always difficult on the children. Did you…blame yourself?” When Megan glanced up at her sharply, Katie added. “I only ask because I’ve heard it’s a fairly common phenomenon. For the child to internalize a vague feeling of guilt about their parents’ relational discord.”
“I suppose I did a little.”
Megan resumed sketching thoughtfully. She realized for the first time in her life that she hadn’t felt a vague guilt about her parents’ strained relationship. She felt solely responsible for it. Even as the emotional impact of the realization hit her, so did its rational counterpart.
How could she—a small child not much older than the toddler sleeping in Katie’s lap—have been the cause of her parents’ unhappiness? There had been reasons enough, but Megan herself wasn’t one of them.
Twenty minut
es later, as the football game was breaking up, Megan revealed the completed sketch. Katie gasped in amazement and pleasure. “Oh, it’s beautiful. And you put me in it, too. I didn’t know you were doing that.”
Megan smiled. “That was what was so beautiful—your symbiosis together, mother and child. You and Nicholas were wonderful subjects.” Katie continued to study the pencil sketch with so much concentration that she didn’t notice a lone tear fall down her cheek.
Megan felt like she’d been given a sixth sense when it came to her awareness of Christian, so she wasn’t surprised to see him leaning over his sister’s shoulder and examining the sketch a moment later.
When he looked at Megan, his eyes seemed to glow with unspoken emotion. Without saying a word he came over to her and softly kissed her cheek, his lips lingering against her skin, before he walked toward the house.
Later that evening, Caroline Lasher pulled Megan aside. “Christian tells me that you’d like to learn how to play the piano. Why don’t you let me teach you?”
Megan’s mouth fell open in surprise at the unexpected, generous offer. “He told you that? I can’t believe…that is, thank you. Thank you so much for the thought. It was just something I told him in passing, really.”
Caroline’s blue eyes widened. “You mean you don’t want to learn?”
“I’d love to,” Megan gushed. “I like to work with my hands. To think, that it’s possible to make such beautiful music with them—“
“Then it’s settled. Do you have time to devote a few hours a week to it?”
Megan shook her head and laughed. “I don’t know, Caroline. It’s an awful lot to ask of you.”
Caroline patted her hand and took it in her own. “I want to do it. I want to repay you for that beautiful drawing you did of Katie and Nicholas. It’s was very kind, and don’t think I don’t know how good it is.”
“It was nothing, Caroline, really—“
Caroline stilled Megan’s protest with a shake of her head. “I already teach a student at The Harold Washington Library, right downtown, on Sunday mornings. They have pianos there, and private classrooms for instruction. Do you think you could come then?”
“I don’t know what to say…”
“Say yes,” Caroline encouraged with a warm twinkle in her eye. “I have my selfish reasons for wanting to do it. Christian hasn’t brought home a woman in a long time, not since Cecilia. It does my heart good to see him so happy. I tell you, there were times after she…suffice it to say that I wondered sometimes, as a mother, if Christian would ever pull out of it okay. But enough of that; what about the lessons? I’d value the opportunity to get to know you better.”