Slightly shorter than her daughter, Anne ran her hand over her daughter’s blond hair, an endless font of love evident in the simple gesture.
“Sure you don’t want me to go over there and have a talk with her?” she offered. “I’m more than willing to do it.”
Lilli laughed, shaking her head. “No thanks, Mom. One battle in court is about all I can handle at a time. There’s no telling what you might do. I saw you get angry once,” she recalled. “Not a pretty sight.”
“Offer’s on the table anytime you want to take me up on it, honey.”
Finished copying, Lilli filed the copies of the documents in a light blue folder. Leaving the folder on her desk, she rounded it and put her arms around her mother.
“Thanks, Mom, I’ll keep that in mind.” Lilli gave the older woman a quick, heartfelt hug. “You’re the best, Mom.”
“Glad you finally noticed that,” Anne said with just the right amount of dryness. “And don’t worry about hurrying back,” she said as Lilli turned toward the desk again and slipped the documents she’d just compiled into the recesses of her large black rectangular purse. The latter could have doubled as a briefcase and not a small one, either. “I was thinking about spending the night here anyway.” Her mother’s light blue eyes seemed to dance as she told her, “I brought some of your old storybooks over to read to Jonathan.”
Lilli smiled warmly and predicted, “He’ll get a big kick out of that.”
“So will I,” Anne confessed. “When I’m not tearing up,” she added. She watched her daughter zip up the purse. “Got everything?” she pressed.
“Everything,” Lilli echoed, taking no offense at her mother double-checking her. She was only acting out of concern. Lilli hefted the purse and slid it onto her right shoulder.
“Then, good luck,” Anne said, following her to the front door.
Passing the family room, Lilli stopped for a moment, peering in. She wondered if it was normal to have her heart swell every time she looked at her son. “I’ve got to go out again, Jonathan. But I’ll be back soon.” She knew he liked her to touch base with him. “Don’t forget your homework.”
Jonathan pretended to hang his head, like a prisoner sentenced to twenty years hard labor. “I won’t forget, Mom.”
Lilli turned toward her mother. “And don’t you do it for him, either,” she warned.
Anne’s nearly unlined face was the picture of innocence. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
A small laugh escaped Lilli’s lips. “I don’t believe you.” Her mother was a pushover and they both knew it. Moreover, Jonathan knew it. But it was time to go. “I love you,” she called out to her son.
“Love you back,” Jonathan answered, his attention already back to the robot on the screen.
Who could ask for more than this? Lilli smiled as she went out the front door. Whatever it took, she would keep that boy in her life.
Rather than terminate early, court had taken longer than Kullen had counted on.
And then, leaving, he’d gotten tangled up in the traffic jam from hell. His temper, usually level, was definitely the worse for wear tonight.
He needed to unwind.
He didn’t have the luxury.
Kullen had been in his house exactly three minutes when the doorbell rang. The kid from the pizzeria had to have made every single light, he thought.
He’d ordered takeout on his way home. The restaurant’s number was one of the first on speed dial on both his cell phone and his landline at home. Convenience was a high priority for him, given his drive-by lifestyle.
Digging money out of his wallet, Kullen crossed back to the foyer. He threw open the front door, holding up two twenties.
“I thought I was supposed to pay you,” Lilli said drily. And then she made the only logical assumption from the look of surprise on his face. “You forgot I was coming by with the papers, didn’t you?”
He hadn’t forgotten. How could he? Lilli had been on his mind all afternoon, creeping, entirely unbidden, into his thoughts. During the court case, images of Lilli, past and present, kept materializing in his mind’s eye. Being on his game had been particularly difficult this afternoon.
“I ordered takeout,” he told her. “I thought the delivery boy would be here before you.”
“More restaurant food?” she asked as she entered. She made it personal before she could think not to. “Don’t you ever have anything healthy to eat?”
“Pizza’s healthy,” he countered, arguing like a true lawyer. “It has all the major food groups,” he said when she looked at him skeptically. “Cheese, tomatoes, meat, bread,” he enumerated.
“And a ton of salt.” And that negated anything good the pizza might have to bring to the table.
“That’s what makes it edible.”
For a moment, she was propelled back into the past. The past when she had finally succeeded in banking down her demons and had thought that maybe, just maybe, she would be able to find a little happiness with Kullen.
Before the roof caved in on her world and she discovered she was pregnant.
The next beat, the moment was gone.
“What do you have in your refrigerator?” she asked. Maybe she could come up with some kind of dinner for him. Almost anything was better than pizza, temptingly aromatic though it was.
“Shelves.”
It was hard not to laugh. “Anything on those shelves?”
He thought for a second, envisioning the inside of the refrigerator the last time he’d looked. “A couple of leftover takeout things that I’m debating donating to science.”
She grinned, oblivious to the fondness that had slipped into her voice. “You never learned how to cook, did you?”
There was nothing wrong with that. He knew lots of people who didn’t cook. That was why God had made restaurants.
“Never saw the purpose,” he told her. “Besides, most days I either order in or go out for lunch. Same applies to dinner.”
She shook her head. “It’s not healthy to live like that.” The doorbell rang and he went to answer it. “The people in Tibet don’t eat takeout and they live a very long life,” she said, refusing to let up, “subsisting on yogurt and vegetables.”
He laughed shortly. “It’s not a long life, it only seems like a long life because they can’t find a decent steak.”
This time, it was the delivery boy with his pizza. Kullen handed him the money, then took possession of the extra-large pizza. He turned around and closed the door with his back.
“I ordered pizza with everything,” he told her, carrying it back to the dining room on the other side of the family room. “You see something you don’t like, just take it off.”
She tried not to think what a loaded phrase that actually was. “What if I don’t like anything on it?” Lilli posed.
Kullen never missed a beat. “More for me.” He set the box down on the dining room table. “But I seem to remember that pizza was your weakness.”
No, you were my weakness, she thought. But that Lilli had to disappear a long time ago.
Kullen opened the box and the aroma, already leaching out of the box by any means possible, now robustly filled the air, arousing her dormant taste buds.
“It