was like boxing with a shadow and trying to knock it out. “I’ll talk to you later.”
She was at the back door when he said, “I’ve got a possible gig.”
Stacey swung around. She knew he practiced with a band, had even heard them rehearse a few times. In her opinion, they had potential, even though they weren’t playing anything she could remotely hum to. “That’s wonderful. Where?”
He gave her a serene smile and offered her back her own words. “We’ll talk later,” he said before disappearing from the kitchen with the last of the French toast.
CHAPTER 3
Stacey glanced at her watch. Okay, so she was going to be a little late. What was more important, getting to the office or having a few more words with her son?
Jim won, hands down.
It was no contest, even if there was a sliver of guilt attached. But then, she was raised Catholic and the blood of both Italians and Jews flowed through her veins. There was always a sliver of guilt attached. To everything.
Crossing to the threshold that led out into the hallway, she called after Jim. “You’re going to miss these long, lengthy talks when you move out.”
Jim had just gotten to the foot of the stairs and he turned to look at her. He knew what she was really saying, no matter how much humor she laced around her tone. She didn’t want him moving out. He’d come home every weekend while attending UCLA. And only gotten more estranged from the rest of the family during those years.
It was time for him to fly the coop for good. Way past time.
“Forget it, Mom.” He grinned as he proclaimed, “I’m not staying. The end of the week, I’m gone.” And then, because at bottom he didn’t like being the source of hurt for her, he added, “There’s always the telephone.”
She looked at him knowingly. “Which you won’t use.”
He shrugged. “You never know, maybe I don’t have any of Dad in me at all.” He stuffed the remainder of the French toast piece into his mouth. Powdered sugar rained from both corners of his lips.
His comment was a not-too-veiled remark about all the times she’d waited in vain for a call from Brad, telling her he was delayed, or had an emergency surgery. All the times dinner got cold and carefully made plans got canceled.
It was all true, but she still didn’t like the stance Jim had taken against his father. Despite all his rhetoric explaining his attitude, she still didn’t understand, still couldn’t reconcile the loving boy she’d known to the cynically combative one she found herself confronting over and over again.
“Jim—”
Jim held up hands that were dusty with sugar, stopping her before she went any further. “I can’t stay here. He hates me.”
“He doesn’t hate you,” she insisted with feeling. “He’s your father, he loves you.”
Standing on the second step of the staircase, he towered over her. And used the image to his advantage as he looked down at her with a masterful sneer. “The two aren’t a set.”
A part of her wanted to take him by the shoulders and shake him. “In this case, they are. He does love you, Jim, he just doesn’t understand you.” And neither do I, she added silently.
The look in Jim’s eyes had a hint of contempt in it. “That makes two of us.”
She jumped at the first thing that struck her. Because she could vividly remember how unsure of herself, of her choices she’d been when she was only a little younger than he was. “You don’t understand do you? That’s only natural at this point in your life.”
Jim was quick to set her straight. “Him, Mom, him. I don’t understand him. Me, I understand.” The affirmation was made so casually and comfortably, Stacey realized that her son actually meant it. “I just want to make music. My music, my way.”
His way.
The words echoed in her head. And how often had she heard that, in one form or another? Silent or implied. Brad’s mantra. “There’s more of your father in you than you think.”
She saw the annoyed frown and knew how much he hated being compared to the man he was trying so hard not to be. The man he so often so closely resembled in looks and in spirit. But there were times she just couldn’t keep quiet, couldn’t refrain from pointing out the obvious. And hope that she could get through to Jim. And he would stop thinking of himself as some sort of an island and realize that he was part of the family.
Stacey glanced at her watch again and winced inwardly. She should have already been behind the wheel of her car, stuck in traffic for the past ten minutes.
“To be continued,” she promised.
Jim spread his hands before him, giving her a little bow like the performer he felt destined to be. “I’ll be here all week, folks. Till Friday. And then I shall be liberated.”
She shook her head. “I have no idea how you managed to survive all this cruelty heaped on your head all these years,” she remarked as she hurried back to the kitchen to get her purse.
Jim raised his voice so that it would follow her into the next room. “Me, neither.”
“Well, you certainly don’t look like a happy camper. The new software giving you trouble?”
Kathy Conners’s new perfume preceded her as she leaned over Stacey’s shoulder to glance at a screen that made absolutely no sense to her. Although she was better at it than the doctors she worked for, the computer was definitely not her best friend.
Stacey was.
Ten pounds heavier and two shades lighter blond than she had been in her wedding pictures, Kathy Conners was just half an inch over five feet. It was a fact that had annoyed her no end until Stacey had convinced her that petite was a far better description for her than “runt of the litter,” which was the way her older brother used to refer to her. She had known Stacey even longer than Brad had and it was Kathy who had gotten this job for her.
Stacey turned away from the screen. Despite her late start, she’d gotten to the office half an hour before everyone else. Early enough to begin installing the new program without having a gaggle of well-meaning but computer-illiterate doctors hovering over her shoulder, asking questions that only impeded her progress. Once patients began showing up for their appointments, the new software was put on hold.
“The software is being software,” Stacey replied. “Resisting having its code cracked at first go-round.” She shrugged. Since she’d become office manager, she’d learned a great deal about computers and software, all out of necessity. Trial by fire, so to speak. “But that’s nothing new. Shouldn’t take long to have everything up and running.”
Kathy shed the sweater she’d thrown over her shoulders and held tightly to her cup of coffee. “So why the frown?” She raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow. “Trouble in paradise?”
Stacey laughed softly to herself. “Today, playing the part of paradise will be hell.” The second the words were out, a faint,
