Molly gazed back at the herb garden. "Tell me what you see."
She expected a rebuff, but, again, Lilly's good manners won out. "I was drawn to the lavender first. It's one of my favorite plants. And I love the silver of that sage behind it." Lilly's enthusiasm for her project began to overcome her personal dislike. "The spearmint needs to be weeded out. It's greedy, and it'll take over. That little tuft of thyme is fighting to survive against it."
"Which one is the thyme?"
"Those tiny leaves. It's vulnerable now, but it can be as aggressive as spearmint. It just goes about it more subtly." Lilly lifted her eyes, and her gaze held Molly's for a moment.
Molly got the message. "You think the thyme and I have something in common?"
"Do you?" she asked coolly.
"I have a lot of faults, but subtlety isn't one of them."
"I suppose that remains to be seen."
Molly wandered to the edge of the garden. "I'm trying hard to dislike you as much as you seem to dislike me, but it's tough. You were my heroine when I was a little girl."
"How nice." Icicles dripped.
"Besides, you like my dog. And I have a feeling that your attitude has less to do with my personality than it has to do with your concerns about my marriage."
Lilly stiffened.
Molly decided she had nothing to lose by being blunt. "I know about your real relationship with Kevin."
Lilly's fingers stalled on her needle. "I'm surprised he told you. Maida said he never spoke about it."
"He didn't. I guessed."
"You're very astute."
"You've taken a long time to come see him."
"After abandoning him, you mean?" Her voice had a bitter edge.
"I didn't say that."
"You were thinking it. What kind of woman abandons her child then tries to worm her way back into his life?"
Molly spoke carefully. "I doubt that you abandoned him. You seem to have found him a good home."
She gazed at the garden, but Molly suspected the peace she'd felt here earlier had vanished. "Maida and John had always wanted a child, and they loved him from the day he was born. But as torturous as it was to make my decision, I still gave him up too easily."
"Hey, Molly!"
Lilly tensed as Kevin came around the corner with Marmie lolling fat and happy in his arms. He stopped abruptly when he saw Lilly, and, as Molly watched, the charmer gave way to a hard-eyed man with a grudge.
He approached Molly as if she were alone in the garden. "Somebody let her out."
"I did," Lilly said. "She was with me until a few minutes ago. She must have heard you coming."
"This is your cat?"
"Yes."
He put her on the ground, almost as if she'd gone radioactive, then turned to walk away.
Lilly came up off the bench. Molly saw something both desperate and touching in her expression. "Do you want to know about your father?" Lilly blurted out.
Kevin stiffened. Molly's heart went out to him as she thought of all the questions she'd had over the years about her own mother. Slowly he turned.
Lilly clutched her hands. She sounded breathless, as if she'd just run a long distance. "His name was Dooley Price. I don't think that was his real first name, but it was all I knew. He was eighteen, a tall, skinny farm kid from Oklahoma. We met at the bus station the day we arrived in L.A." She drank in Kevin's face. "His hair was as light as yours, but his features were broader. You look more like me." She dipped her head. "I'm sure you don't want to hear that. Dooley was athletic. He'd ridden in rodeos-earned some prize money, I think-and he was convinced he could get rich doing stunts in the movies. I don't remember any more about him-another black mark you can chalk up against me. I think he smoked Marlboros and loved candy bars, but it was a long time ago, and that could have been someone else. We'd broken up by the time I discovered I was pregnant, and I didn't know how to find him." She paused and seemed to brace herself. "A few years later I read in the paper that he'd been killed doing some kind of stunt with a car."
Kevin's expression remained stony. He wouldn't let anyone see that this meant anything to him. Oh, Molly understood all about that.
Roo was sensitive to people's distress. He got up and rubbed against Kevin's ankles.
"Do you have a picture of him?" Molly asked because she knew Kevin wouldn't. The only photograph she had of her mother was her most treasured possession.
Lilly made a helpless gesture and shook her head. "We were only kids-two screwed-up teenagers. Kevin, I'm sorry."
He regarded her coldly. "There's no place for you in my life. I don't know how I can make that any clearer. I want you to leave."
"I know you do."
Both animals got up and followed him as he walked away.
Lilly's eyes glistened with fierce tears as she spun on Molly. "I'm not leaving!"
"I don't think you should," Molly replied.
Their eyes locked, and Molly thought she saw a faint crack forming in the wall between them.
Half an hour later, as Molly slipped the last of her apricot scones into a wicker basket, Amy appeared to announce that she and Troy would be staying in the upstairs bedroom Kevin had abandoned when he'd moved into Molly's cottage. "Somebody has to sleep here at night," Amy explained, "and Kevin said he'd pay us extra to do it. Isn't that cool?"
"That's great."
"I mean, we won't be able to make noise, but-"
"Get the jam, will you?" Molly couldn't bear hearing any more details of Amy and Troy's Super Bowl sex life.
But Amy wouldn't give up, and the buttery late-afternoon sunlight splashed her love-bitten neck as she regarded Molly earnestly. "It looks like things with you and Kevin could still work out if you just, maybe, tried a little harder. I'm serious about the perfume. Sex is real important to men, and if you'd just use a little-"
Molly shoved the scones at her and made a dash for the sitting room.
Later, when she got back to the cottage, Kevin was already there. He sat on the droopy old couch in the front room with Roo lolling on the cushion next to him. His feet were propped up, and a book lay open in his lap. Although he looked as if he didn't have a care in the world, Molly knew better.
He glanced up at her. "I like this Benny guy."
Her heart sank as she realized he was reading Daphne Says Hello. The other four books in the series lay nearby.
"Where did you get those?"
"Last night when I went into town. There's a kids' store-mainly clothes, but the owner sells some books and toys, too. She had these in the window. When I told her you were here, she got pretty excited about it." He tapped the page with his index finger. "This Benny character-"
"Those are children's books. I can't imagine why you'd bother reading them."
"Curiosity. You know, there are a couple of things about Benny that seem kind of familiar. For example-"
"Really? Well, thank you. He's entirely imaginary, but I do try to give all my characters qualities that readers can identify with."
"Yeah, well, I can identify with Benny, all right." He gazed down at a drawing of Benny wearing sunglasses that looked very much like his silver-rimmed Revos. "One thing I don't understand… The store owner said she'd gotten some pressure from one of her customers to take the books off the shelf because they were pornographic. Tell me what I'm missing."
Roo finally hopped off the couch and came over to greet her. She leaned down to pat him. "Have you ever heard of SKIFSA? Straight Kids for a Straight America?"
"Sure. They get their kicks going after gays and lesbians. The women all have big hair, and the men show too much teeth when they smile."
"Exactly. And right now they're after my bunny."
"What do you mean?" Roo trotted back to Kevin.
"They're attacking the Daphne series as homosexual propaganda."
Kevin started to laugh.
"I'm not kidding. They hadn't paid any attention to my books until we got married, but after all the stories about us appeared in the press, they decided to jump on the publicity bandwagon and go after me." She found herself telling him about her conversation with Helen and the changes Birdcage wanted in the Daphne books.