Billy coolly stared at his father. "What will we do with you?"

"You'll come live in my house, of course. I've made arrangements for you to have tennis and swim lessons at the club."

"I guess that would be okay," Billy said. "It's just for two weeks, isn't it?"

Jason bit into his lower lip. "Can I bring my bear?"

Paul looked to Lizabeth. "His bear?".

"You remember, the fuzzy brown teddy bear he takes to bed. Woobie."

"You won't be needing Woobie," Paul said to Jason. "You'll have better things to occupy your mind."

Jason pressed his lips together and scowled. "I'm not going without Woobie."

Paul shot Lizabeth a look that said his suspicions had been confirmed. She was a total failure as a mother.

"Of course you can take Woobie," Elsie said. "And I'll take care of him for you when you go off to them fancy tennis lessons."

Kane raised his eyebrows. "Excuse me?"

"Don't worry about it," Elsie said. "I'm not charging Lizabeth anything for being nursemaid and I won't charge you neither."

"I don't need a nursemaid…"

"Of course you need a nursemaid. An eight-year-old needs constant supervision. You gonna watch him twenty-four hours a day so he don't nail your shoes to the floor? And more than that, you're not taking these kids out of the house without me. I agreed to take care of them for the summer and that's what I aim to do."

"Suppose I refuse to take you."

Elsie narrowed her eyes. "Then I get in my Caddy, and I drive to that ritzy house you got in Virginia, and I sit on the lawn until the police come to take me away. I imagine that'll be pretty newsworthy. If I sit on that lawn long enough I might make Good Morning America."

Kane considered it for a moment. "I suppose a live-in baby-sitter wouldn't be a bad idea."

Elsie plunked a fresh-baked apple pie on the table. "You help yourself to some pie, and I'll get us all packed up."

Lizabeth sat on her front porch and watched the sun set behind Noogie Newsome's house. She cast a disparaging glance at the tent caterpillars in the Newsomes' crab-apple tree and clucked her tongue at the rusted antenna that halfheartedly clung to the Newsomes' chimney. "Sunsets aren't what they used to be," she said with a sigh.

Matt cocked an eyebrow. "What did they used to be?"

"Pretty. They used to be pretty." She hunched forward, elbows on knees, chin resting on her hands. "Who wants to see the sun setting behind the Newsomes' ugly old TV antenna?"

"Honey, the sun always sets behind the Newsomes' TV antenna."

"Yes, but I never had time to watch it set before. I never realized how ugly it was."

Matt patted her on the knee and continued to scratch the top of Ferguson's head.

"And it's boring In this neighborhood. People grow grass as an intellectual pursuit," Lizabeth said.

"It's not such a bad neighborhood."

"Sure, it's fine if you have kids and they keep you busy. Then you don't have time to be grossed out by lawn fungus."

"Lizabeth, the kids have only been gone for a half hour. "

"You think they'll be okay?"

It was the four hundredth time she'd asked that since Paul had left with Jason and Billy. Matt answered it just as he always did. "They'll be fine. Elsie's with them."

"I suppose you're right," she said morosely. She stared at the Newsomes' chimney, and a tear squeezed out of her eye and trickled down her cheek. "I hate that damn TV antenna."

Matt wiped the tear away and gathered her to him. "We need to take your mind off this antenna stuff. We need recreation."

"I don't want to leave the house," Lizabeth said softly. "Elsie said she'd call when they got to Richmond."

"Your answering machine will take the message."

"I don't have an answering machine."

"Oh. Well then, how about if we rent a movie for the VCR?"

"I don't have a VCR."

Ferguson sunk his teeth into Matt's shirtsleeve and gave it a yank. Matt stuck his finger through the hole Ferguson had made and scowled. "Forget it. I'm not scratching your head anymore."

"It's my fault," Lizabeth said. "He always gets grumpy when I get grumpy. He's very sensitive."

Matt thought Ferguson was about as sensitive as a brick. "All right, you and Ferguson stay here, and I'll see what I can do about the evening's entertainment."

"No mud wrestlers, please."

He left on the motorcycle, but he returned in the truck. Lizabeth looked at the boxes and quilted bundles in the back of the pickup. "What is all this? It looks like laundry."

"It's stuff from my house. I figure it'll get more use over here."

She grabbed a box and trailed after him. He'd brought a VCR. a telephone answering machine, his popcorn popper, two boxes of movies, a box full of junk food, a Monopoly game that looked like it had been run over by a semi, a huge jug of red wine, and a small paper bag that Lizabeth discovered contained three packages of condoms- thirty-six in all.

Matt looked at his cache of goodies. "This should keep us busy."

Lizabeth held the little bag between thumb and forefinger. "Thirty-six?"

"You think I overestimated?"

"You weren't planning on using them all tonight, were you?"

"I must look like Super Stud. The check-out lady asked me the same thing." He carried the VCR into the living room and hooked it up to Lizabeth's television, "I brought some movies I had at home. One box is blood and guts, and the other is general entertainment."

Lizabeth noticed the general-entertainment box was much smaller than the blood-and-guts box. She hated violence, and, as a mother, felt a strong obligation to discourage its glorification. She didn't want murder and mayhem to seem like everyday events to her children. "Matt, suppose we eventually got married, and Jason wanted to watch something from the blood-and-guts box?"

"I'd say no. Then he'd probably whine and cry and say Noogie Newsome got to watch blood-and-guts movies, and if blood-and-guts movies were so bad then why did I have a whole big box of them?"

"Would that change your mind about letting him watch blood and guts?"

"No, but I'd feel like a real crumb."

"Suppose Jason wanted a tattoo?"

"No tattoos. Tattoos are dumb. I don't want my son having pierced ears either." He carted the popcorn maker into the kitchen and took a bag of popcorn out of the junk-food box.

Lizabeth smiled to herself. She'd been worried about nothing. He had answered all the questions correctly. "And motorcycles! What if your son wanted a motorcycle?"

"Man, that would be great! We could go biking together."

She dropped a chunk of butter into a saucepan and put the pan on the stove. There were lots worse things than motorcycles, she told herself. Drugs, rabid bats, cholera. And it wasn't as if she and Matt were getting married tomorrow. They were merely lovers, and lovers were allowed some eccentricities. She rolled her eyes. What a bunch of baloney. Her feelings for Matt were strong and deep. The thought of having a brief romance with him held absolutely no appeal. They weren't merely lovers. They were In love, and they were tiptoeing around marriage. At least she was tiptoeing, Lizabeth thought. Matt was stomping straight ahead. Matt could afford to stomp straight ahead. He didn't have two children to consider.

A lump suddenly formed in her throat and her vision blurred. She missed Jason and Billy. They'd been the focal point of her life for ten years and she felt bereft without them. Boy, is this ever dumb, she thought. I'm really being a dope. The lump got larger.

Matt recognized the look of utter despair and guessed at its origin. He wrapped her in his arms and kissed her forehead. 'They're going to be fine," he murmured, praying she didn't burst into tears, because he'd probably cry right along with her. He didn't completely understand this business of motherhood, but he was beginning to feel the power of it. And he was relieved to discover his own capacity for love. There had been a lot of years when he wondered if he had the emotional makeup to be a father and husband. There'd been a lot of years when he'd worried about duplicating his own childhood. He now knew it had been nonsense. He was his own person. Different from his parents. His mistakes would be different, he thought ruefully. "Motherhood is hell, isn't it?"