Free No Place Like Home by Barbara Samuel Page B

No driving.”
    Malachi made a noise I couldn’t quite place. Derision, maybe. But Michael was focused on Shane. “And how many of those rules did you break last night?”
    “I dunno.” Shane raised a shoulder. Then his mouth quirked. “Uh, all of them. Not the beers.”
    Michael’s mouth lifted on one side. “And you see where you landed.”
    Shane nodded.
    I raised an eyebrow. “You’ve been giving him instructions on drinking?”
    Michael took my hand across the table. In the candlelight, he looked almost like himself, his blond hair gleaming on his shoulders, the dual hoops in his ears glittering. “Did you think he’d never get around to trying it?”
    “Maybe.” Just like he’d never have sex or a broken heart, or be penniless and have to eat refried beans from a can rolled into a tortilla for six days straight. Michael’s fingers moved on mine, and I didn’t have to look at him to know he was smiling fondly.
    “You mad?”
    I shook my head, but there was a hollowness in my chest as I looked at Shane, bent over his food with the rare and passionate appetite of a boy. His hair, thick and long, shone with the brilliance of youth and good living. Candlelight exaggerated the shadows below his high, slanted cheekbones and the strong line of his jaw. He’s beautiful, is my Shane, and so much like his father it’s eerie.
    It was only a year until he’d leave me. Probably not to college, not if he didn’t get his grades and life together, but somewhere. He wasn’t the kind of kid who’d hang around a minute longer than he had to. Then he’d be off to the world. The music world, most likely.
    And how could I stand not having him at the dinner table every night? I scowled at my margarita and picked it up with determination. “To growing up,” I said.
    He looked up at me, my beautiful son, with his father’s brilliant and soulful eyes, and grinned. “If we’re toasting that, I think I deserve a margarita, too.”
    “You’re grounded until you’re ninety, so it doesn’t matter if you grow up or not.”

    * * *
    I was the first one up the next morning. It wasn’t a cooking morning—those were Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays—but in spite of the margaritas and the upsets, or maybe because of them, I awakened just after six. A farmer’s sun, bright and clear to shine on all the crops, streamed in my windows, and I lay there and let it cover me, wash against my eyelids and my mouth and my neck. A breeze, cool from the night, blew the curtains up and touched the crown of my head.
    The house was silent all around me, and I thought of the males in their various bedrooms, Shane sprawled in a tangle of sheets, his unbelievably hairy legs sticking out of the covers. Michael, neat even in sleep, a single sheet tucked under his chin in the dark room that faced west, a room I’d given him deliberately so he could sleep as late as he needed to.
    And Malachi. The unknown quotient. I stirred my legs a little, dislodging cats, and imagined how he would sleep. On his stomach, naked or in a pair of white briefs. That brought up a picture of his beautiful behind clothed only in that thinnest of cotton. Mmm.
    The luxury of having the silence of the house and no pies to bake was too great to waste lying in bed. I got up, pulled on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, and went downstairs. I ground coffee beans and started the machine, then wandered outside to my aunt Sylvia’s herb garden. There was still rain on the leaves from a fierce, quick storm the night before, and the dampness intensified the smell. I plucked a frond of lavender and held it up to my nose, thinking of the wands she’d made of these plants, wands she sold and gave away, wands we all stuck in our drawers, wrapped in their braids of red and yellow and green string. Nearby, Berlin sniffed along the rows, scenting a squirrel, maybe, or a field mouse. Her fur glinted deep red in the early sunlight.
    But while I was doing all of that, there were