LITMIR.BIZ

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Dawn supplied when he appeared stuck. “Actually, I know DC pretty well. I attended school at Georgetown, just a little farther upriver.”

      “You did? What grade were you in?”

      “I was a grad student. That would be, like, grade seventeen.”

      “Seventeen?” His eyes went big and round. “I’m just starting first grade. Does that mean I gotta do...um—” he gulped in dismay “—sixteen more grades?”

      “Maybe. If that’s what rows your boat.” She slanted Brian a quick glance. “Ask your father how many he did.”

      He gave his dad an accusing stare. “How many?”

      “More than seventeen,” Brian admitted apologetically. “But I didn’t do them one right after another. I took a break when I went into the marines and didn’t start grad school until after I got back from Iraq. Your mom took some of the same classes I did,” he added in an instinctive attempt to keep Caroline’s memory alive for her son. “She was working on a Master’s Degree in chemical engineering at the time. That’s where we met.”

      “I know. You told me. Look! There’s the Iwo Jima Memorial. They were marines, too, weren’t they, Dad?”

      “Yes, they were.”

      Brian had no desire to keep Tom anchored to the past. And he certainly didn’t want him to mourn a mother he’d never really known. Yet he found himself fighting a stab of guilt and making a mental apology to Caroline for their son’s minimal interest.

      * * *

      Damned if he didn’t feel guilty all over again when they crossed the Potomac into Maryland and approached the suburbs of Bethesda and Chevy Chase.

      Caroline had spent weeks searching for just the right neighborhood to bring up the big, noisy family she and Brian wanted to have. Six months pregnant at the time, she’d visited local schools, shops and churches to make sure they were international as well as fully integrated. She then spent hours with an architect designing updates to the home they’d purchased. Brian could see her touch in the lush greenery, the bushes that flowered from spring to late fall, the mellow brick and mansard roofs she’d insisted reminded her of their Paris honeymoon.

      After she’d died, he’d thought about moving. Many times. The house, the detached gatehouse, the garden, the curving drive all carried Caroline’s personal stamp. But he’d stayed put, pinned in place these past five years by EAS’s rapidly expanding business base and the fact that this was the only home Tommy had ever known.

      He told himself there was no reason to feel disloyal for bringing Dawn here to live, even temporarily. So she was young and vivacious and gorgeous? No big deal. All that mattered was that she’d clicked with Tommy. His son had been so shaken by Mrs. Wells’s accident. Terrified she might die on the operating table, like the mom he couldn’t really remember. Brian would have hired a dozen Dawn McGills if that’s what it took to ease his son’s instinctive fears.

      Although one McGill looked to be enough. More than enough.

      Brian trailed along as Tommy performed tour guide duty again. Eagerly, he showed her through the main house. The two front rooms that had been knocked into one to create a large, airy family room with sunshine pouring through the windows. The spacious, eat-in kitchen. The trellised patio and landscaped backyard with its fanciful gazebo.

      The laundry beyond the kitchen contained what Tommy insisted looked like spaceship appliances. The washer and dryer were gray steel, with lighted touch panels and front-loading glass portholes. A side door in the laundry room opened to the three-car garage, which housed Brian’s SUV and the small, neat compact Mrs. Wells preferred.

      “It’s leased,” Brian told Dawn. “I can trade it out if you’d like something bigger.”

      And flashier, he thought, to go with her red hair and multicolored toes.

      “It’s fine,” she assured him.

      Nodding, he tapped in a digital code on a flat-paneled cabinet in the laundry room. “You’ll need the car keys, as well as keys to both the gatehouse and main house.”

      While he retrieved the appropriate keys from the neatly labeled pegs, Tommy darted to the other door. It opened onto a covered walkway paved with flat flagstones.

      “This goes to the gatehouse,” he explained unnecessarily, since the two-story bungalow sat all of twenty yards away.

      It was made of the same mellow brick as the main house and had been converted into a comfortable retreat for Mrs. Wells. Once inside, they confirmed the cleaning service had indeed prepared the gatehouse’s second bedroom and restocked its kitchen.

      “This is perfect,” Dawn exclaimed.

      Delighted, she peered through the kitchen’s bay windows at the brick-walled backyard. Its lush lawn was bordered by early fall flowers lifting their showy faces to the sky, and the white-painted gazebo was perfect for sipping morning coffee while the sun burned the dew off the grass.

      “I can take my laptop outside to work,” Dawn told Tommy. “Although I doubt I’ll get much done with all those dahlias to distract me. And that green, green grass just begs for a cartwheel or two.”

      Tommy looked thrilled at the prospect of lawn gymnastics. Brian, on the other hand, had to forcibly slam a mental door on a vision of this woman with her fiery hair flying and her legs whirling through the air.

      “And speaking of distractions,” Dawn commented, turning to prop a hip against the red tiled counter. “You start school next week, right?”

      Tommy looked to his dad for confirmation, then mirrored his nod. “Right.”

      “That gives us the rest of this week to have fun. I haven’t seen the pandas at the zoo. We need to do that, and check out the new exhibits at the Smithsonian, and...”

      “And get in some shopping,” Brian interjected.

      “Now you’re speaking my language! I’m not bragging when I say I’m intimately acquainted with every mall and shopping center within a fifty-mile radius.” She turned an inquiring look Tommy. “What about you? Do you like to cruise the malls?”

      “No!”

      She hid a smile at his undisguised horror and turned to Brian. “So why suggest shopping?”

      “The school sent a checklist of supplies and uniform items we need to get.”

      “He has to wear a uniform?”

      “I don’t mind,” Tommy volunteered. “Dad explained that all the kids wear the same thing so no one makes fun of anyone else’s stuff.”

      “Well, that’s sensible.”

      Sensible, but kind of sad when Dawn remembered all the items of clothing she and Callie and Kate had shared over the years. So many, in so many different colors and styles, that they usually forgot who’d originally owned what. ’Course that was the difference between growing up in a small Massachusetts town versus a major metropolitan area with a socially and economically diverse population.

      “Okay, we’ll add a shopping expedition to our agenda. You’ll need to get me a copy of that checklist, Brian.”

      “I’ll print it out and give it to you at breakfast tomorrow. If you care to join us,” he added after a slight pause. “Mrs. Wells usually did.”

      “She ate dinner with us, too,” Tommy added, “’cept when she was tired ’n wanted to put her feet up. She had to do that a lot. But you don’t put your feet up, do you?”

      Dawn hated to burst his bubble. Especially after he’d proudly informed EAS’s chief pilot that she was, like, a hundred years younger than Mrs. Wells.

      “Sometimes,” she admitted.

      His brow furrowed, and while he struggled to reconcile Fun

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