LITMIR.BIZ

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place to touch down, however briefly. Swirls of turquoise, at her wrists, ears and neck and along her torso, marked her path. Turquoise was one of her two favorite colors.

      “Confused,” she responded, pivoting to face him on the three-inch heels that rendered her five-foot-five. “My firstborn, the most stable child of the litter, has ventured into my territory without so much as a single request for input.” She flounced down on the sofa, clouds of turquoise floating about her still trim hips and softly coming to rest in a circle around her. “I’d say I was more than confused. I’d say I was hurt.”

      Accustomed to these performances whenever his mother was in town, Philippe hardly looked away from his monitor and the equation that troubled him. “No reason to be hurt, Mother. And as for your ‘territory,’ since when have you been moonlighting as a handyman?”

      “Handyman?” Frowning, Lily moved forward on the sofa. “I thought you were having the house redone.” Although she strongly maintained that of the three of them, Philippe had inherited her artistic bent, he had always been determined to bury it. By now his flair was so far from the surface, it would have taken a crane to be resurrected. She liked being consulted on matters, liked being in the thick of things. Color schemes, textures, room dynamics, these all came under her purview.

      “Not quite.” He had a strong hunch he knew where his mother had gotten her information. Georges had been the one to let J.D. in the other day when she had dragged him off to those damn stores. “Tell Georges to get his facts straight.”

      “It wasn’t Georges,” she informed him, on her feet again and moving about. She stopped to finger a plant she had given him the last time she’d visited. It was two steps removed from death. On an errand of mercy, she walked into the hall, her destination the kitchen. “It was Alain.”

      “Tell Alain to get his facts straight next time,” he called after her.

      Philippe didn’t bother asking how his other brother had gotten into this. He imagined it was like the old fashioned game of telephone, where Georges had taken his own interpretation of the events and told them to Alain who then put his own spin on it before telling their mother. He was actually surprised they didn’t have him buying a villa in the south of France or some equally improbable scenario.

      She was back with a cup full of water. Lily poured it slowly into the pot, then tried to arrange the drooping, drying leaves. “And the facts are?”

      Philippe glanced at his mother. He should have known that she would want in on this. She was the one he should have sent with J.D., not gotten roped into traipsing around after the woman from store to store, selecting things that held little to no interest for him. All he’d wanted was to have a cracked sink replaced.

      But to say anything on that subject would get him sucked into a conversation he didn’t want. “That you don’t come by enough for me to see you with a scowl on your face.”

      “Scowl?” The plant was completely forgotten. Lily reached for her purse and the compact mirror inside. “I’m scowling? I can’t scowl, I’ll get wrinkles before my big show.” Mirror opened, she reviewed her appearance from several different angles, then decided that she was fine. Not twenty-two-year-old fine, but fine nonetheless.

      Philippe caught the magic word. “Another big show?”

      “Always another big show,” she declared with gusto. It was what she thrived on, that and the men in her life. “If I can’t paint, I’ll just lie down and they can throw dirt over me.” She tossed her head, dark ends flirting with the tops of her shoulders. “I’ll be as good as dead.”

      She certainly had a way of phrasing things, he thought. “They throw enough dirt over you, you will be.” One of the first things he’d ever learned about his mother was that, barring some crisis, there was nothing she liked to talk about more than her paintings, so he gave her a gentle nudge in that direction. “So, where and when is this big show?”

      “Three weeks from Saturday at the Sunset Galleries on Lido Isle.” She recited the information as if it had been prerecorded. And then she gave him a deep, penetrating look. “You’ll be there?”

      Turning in his chair so that he faced her instead of the computer, he grinned. “Wouldn’t miss it.”

      She took hold of his hands as if that was all she needed to discern whether or not he was telling her the truth. Fingers wound tightly around his palms.

      “No, really, you’ll be there?” She nodded absently toward the screen. “You know how you get when you get involved in your work.”

      “I’ll be there,” he promised, wiping any trace of a smile from either his voice or his face.

      Lily sighed, as if getting him to agree had been an ordeal. “Good. I want you to meet him.”

      “Him?” Philippe eyed his mother warily. “There’s another him?” He should have known there would be. It had been, what, five months since the last one had been sent packing? That was a long dry spell for his mother.

      “Yes,” Lily replied joyously. She’d moved on to the rear of the room to gaze out at the backyard it faced. All three houses shared it as if it was one large yard instead of the culmination of three. “You need a gazebo, Philippe,” she decided and then, glancing back at him, she waved her hand. “Get that look off your face, I know what you’re thinking.”

      He made it a point to be as laid-back as she was dramatic. “I sincerely doubt that.”

      She was not his mother for nothing. “You’re thinking, here we go again.”

      He laughed, impressed. “Very good. I guess I’m getting too predictable.”

      She didn’t waste words on defending her past choices. She was a woman who had always believed in moving forward. “This time, it’s different.”

      And where had he heard that before? Philippe mused. He went back to focusing on his work, uttering a tolerant, “Of course it is.”

      “It is,” she insisted, crossing to his desk and presenting herself behind his monitor so that he was forced to look at her. She clasped her hands together and resembled a schoolgirl in the throes of her first major crush. “Kyle is everything I’ve been looking for in a man. Funny, smart, youthful and vigorous—”

      Philippe shot his hand up in the air to halt the flow of words. “If that word doesn’t apply to the way he polishes your silverware, Mother, I really don’t want to hear about it.”

      Lily rolled her eyes. “Oh Philippe, you know what your trouble is?”

      Yes, he had a mother who had never grown up. “I’m sure you’ll tell me,” he replied patiently.

      She took his chin in her hand, lowering her face to his. “You’re not at all like your father.”

      Moving his chair back, he eyed his mother. “I thought that was a good thing. You left my father because he gambled away the floor from under your feet,” he reminded her.

      She refused to dwell on the bad. It was one of her attributes. “But first he swept me off those feet, Philippe. He had this zest for life—”

      “Otherwise known as Texas hold ’em.”

      “Oh Philippe,” she sighed mightily, “you were born old.”

      He didn’t see it as a failing. If anything, it kept him from making his mother’s mistakes and leading with his heart instead of his head. “One of us had to be and someone had to be there for the boys.”

      The hurricane stopped moving. Lily’s expression turned serious. “Was having me as a mother so terrible?”

      He wouldn’t allow his mind to stray to the hundred and one shortcomings his mother possessed. The bottom line was that she meant well in her own way and she did love them. Of that he was certain. So he smiled at her and said, “You had your moments.”

      “I

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