The Heart of the Matter by Muriel Jensen Page A

and wait.
    “Thank you.” Jason wasn’t sure what he felt. Anger had ridden him since yesterday, but she’d come so quickly to Matt’s aid that it was now impossible to maintain. “It helped him a lot to see you.”
    “I’m happy I could help.” She wandered restlessly toward the window, then turned and smiled. “I know where all the candy machines are. Can I get you anything?”
    He looked surprised. “Did I hear you correctly? Did you offer me processed sugar, hydrogenated oils and artificial flavor?”
    She made a face at him and settled onto a blue vinyl chair. “Sometimes the situation requires that you feed thenerves before you consider what to feed the body. If chocolate would help you relax…”
    He sat opposite her, stretching his long legs out and crossing them at the ankles. “Seeing him in his own bed would help me relax. Until then…” He made a small gesture with one hand intended, she guessed, to express the helplessness of parental worry.
    “Barry’s the best,” she said.
    “Yes, I know.”
    Silence filled the small dimensions of the room. Beyond the half-closed door were the sounds of dinner rounds, but inside, Jason and Laura sat about five feet apart, looking everywhere but at each other.
    “I’m sorry about Wednesday,” she blurted finally. She glanced up at him to find him studying his knee. One of his legs was propped at a right angle on the other and he plucked absently at a fold in the denim.
    He looked up at her, his gaze condemning. Then he smiled suddenly and the reprimand was gone. “Good. Because that was pretty ridiculous. Any man who’d try to deal with two women at once would have to be out of his mind, considering how one can make you crazy.”
    “Did Lucy make you crazy?” she asked gently.
    “Yes,” he answered without hesitation. Then he laughed lightly. “She was a commercial artist, wild and mercurial and so excited about everything you couldn’t help but be excited, too. She was never on time for anything, yet she also never seemed to miss a thing. She lost everything important-birth certificates, the kids’ immunization records, the checkbook.” His focus drifted and he sighed. “Yet she anticipated every emotional need the kids or I ever had.”
    Laura sighed. “Well. She sounds one hundred and eighty degrees different from me.”
    He came out of his thoughts and resettled in the chair, crossing his legs at the ankles. “Yeah. Me, too. But when you love somebody it doesn’t matter if you’re both the same or wildly different, as long as you’re working for the same thing. The little irritations mean nothing. It’s the big things that get you where you’re going.”
    “And where is that?”
    “Kids,” he replied. “Friendship. Comfortable old age on a front porch rocker with the ocean at the end of your lawn.”
    She bought into the image. “And a light on in the window. And a cat on the sill.”
    They fell silent again. From beyond the door they heard vague electronic sounds, the whoosh of pumps and the cozy sound of silverware against crockery.
    “So, what happened to the cake?” Jason asked.
    Laura frowned in puzzlement. “Pardon me?”
    “The carrot cake you were delivering to the boys. On Monday.”
    Oh, yes. The fateful carrot cake. She smiled grimly. “Down the garbage disposal.”
    “That’s criminal,” he accused.
    “I was angry and it was very satisfying,” she admitted with a self-deprecating shrug. “I’ll make them another one.”
    “We’re heading for New Hampshire next Monday,” Jason said casually. “That is, if Barry doesn’t think it’ll be a problem for Matt.”
    “Oh.” Her voice sounded a little thin, even to her own ears, so she powered up the smile that went with it. “I’ll make it tomorrow, then, so you can enjoy it over the weekend.”
    She’d known all along that it couldn’t be any different,but it now seemed clear that the light in the window and the cat on the sill were out of the