His Partner's Wife

His forehead crinkled. “You mean, I can be really rude, just to myself?”

“That’s right.” A tall woman with beautiful bone structure and gray-streaked red hair cut very short, his grandmother headed back to the kitchen. Just before disappearing through the swinging door, she added, “Truly nice people, however, don’t think rude things, either.”

“Oh.” Looking very small, Evan beseeched his father. “Is that true?”

“Here’s a secret, bud.” John lowered his voice. “I can’t imagine a single person so saintly that he or she doesn’t think rude things once in a while. Just so you keep ’em to yourself, you can be a nice person.”

Maddie sat with a very straight back and head held regally high. “But you’re boys. Girls are lots nicer. Aren’t they, Natalie?”

Weary as she was, Natalie had to laugh. “Let’s see, what grade are you in? Third?”

Maddie nodded. “He’s only in kindergarten.”

So much for the illusion of family harmony she had seen like a shimmering mirage before she stepped into the dining room.

“Right. My point is, girls are lots nicer than boys at your age. I’m pretty sure boys reach their peak of awfulness in about fourth grade. But then they do start getting better.”

“Really?” both kids said simultaneously.

“I can be awful?” Evan sounded delighted at the prospect.

“You mean, they get worse?” his sister asked in horror.

“’Fraid so,” Natalie said sympathetically. “Or, at least, that’s my recollection.”

John was laughing as his mother returned with a plate of bacon and another with sausage.

“In case anyone would prefer it to bacon,” she said, slapping down the plate. “If that’s funny.”

The laugh still lingering on his mouth, John said, “Sit down, Mom. This looks fabulous. No, we were talking about the horrors boys are capable of. Fourth grade was definitely my peak of awfulness.”

Mrs. McLean didn’t hesitate. “For all of you. No,” she corrected herself, handing Natalie the bowl of scrambled eggs to dish up. “Hugh was slow maturing. Fifth or sixth grade was his worst. Do you remember that poor girl who had a terrible crush on him and sent him a poem she’d written?”

John paused with the plate of toast in one hand. A grin deepened the creases in his cheeks. “Oh, yeah. He wrote her a poem in return. Rhymed pretty well, too, as I recall. Actually—” he cleared his throat “—I helped. Just with the rhyming. Which, come to think of it, would suggest that I was still awful in…what would I have been?”

“A freshman in high school.” His mother sounded acerbic. “I can’t believe you helped him.”

“What did it say?” Evan demanded.

“Something about her stink and, um, why she had to pad her bra and her laugh sounding like…” He stopped. “Never mind.”

“Awesome,” Evan breathed. “Uncle Hugh?”

“It was not awesome,” his grandmother snapped.

“It was cruel. Hugh was unable to play Little League that year in consequence.”

Evan’s eyes grew big. “Oh.”

“What did you do, Daddy?” Maddie asked. “When you were in fourth grade?”

He layered jam on his toast and waved the bread knife dismissively. “Oh, I was just repulsive. My idea of falling-down-funny was a fart joke or tripping another kid or somebody making a dumb mistake in an oral presentation.”

“That’s what all the boys in my class are like!” Maddie exclaimed. “My own dad was like that?”

“Yup.” He tousled her hair. “I don’t have a single excuse, kiddo.”

“Gol,” she muttered.

“If your father had been here,” Mrs. McLean began, with a sniff.

A shadow crossed John’s face and was gone before Natalie was quite sure she’d seen it. “He was here, Mom. I was in fifth grade when he died.”

“Grandad was shot, right?” Enjoying the gory idea that he had a relative who had died a bloody death, Evan shoveled in a huge mouthful of scrambled eggs and chewed enthusiastically while he waited for the familiar answer.

That same snap in her voice, his grandmother said, “You know perfectly well that he was, young man, and it’s not something we discuss in that tone.”

He immediately seemed to shrink. “I didn’t mean…” he mumbled around his food.

His father laid a big hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay. We know.” The gaze he turned on his mother was cold. “Evan is five years old. Death is very academic to him. And he never knew his grandfather.”

Her nostrils flared, and her stare didn’t back away from his. “Hugh was barely older than Evan when he lost his father.”

Tension fairly crackled between them. “And he had to deal with it. My son doesn’t.” Deliberately he turned his head, dismissing her. “Natalie, once you’ve eaten, we should probably talk.”

Aware out of the corner of her eye that his mother had flushed, Natalie nodded. “Whenever you’re ready.” She looked apologetically at Mrs. McLean. “I’m not very hungry, I’m afraid. Although this is delicious.”

“A decent breakfast will make you feel better.”

“Yes,” she said meekly. “I’m sure. It’s just that I keep thinking…” She had to swallow on a bout of nausea.

Mrs. McLean’s face softened marginally. “Perhaps a cup of tea. With honey?” She stood, surveying everyone’s plates. “Children, please eat. Evan, smaller bites.” She swept out.

“I…” Natalie tried to think of something tactful to say. “She’s being very kind.”

“In her own way,” John said dryly.

John brought a cup of coffee and Natalie her tea when they left the children with their grandmother and retired to his home office.

Family obviously wasn’t checked at the door to this room with warm woodwork, white walls and floor-to-ceiling bookcases. Childish drawings filled a bulletin board, and some action figures lay on the hardwood floor in positions that suggested they had died rather like their grandfather. A one-legged Barbie lay among them.

John nudged at the doll with his foot. “My son is bloodthirsty,” he remarked ruefully.

“Aren’t most little boys? I know my nephew is.”

He sat rather heavily in his leather office chair, his tiredness suddenly visible. “Having known the reality, my mother isn’t very comfortable with that fact.”

“How could she be?” Natalie said with quick sympathy. “It must have been horrible to lose her husband that way, and to have to raise three kids by herself.”