“It's easy for me, too, Tan.” She hadn't been able to argue with her that night. “I don't have to get used to anyone's quirks. I live the way I please. I make my own rules. And when I want, he takes me to Paris or London, or L.A. It's not such a bad life.” They both knew it wasn't entirely true, but there was no changing it now. They were set in their ways, both of them. And as she tidied the papers on her desk, she suddenly sensed him in the room. Somehow, she always knew when he was there, as though years ago, someone had planted a radar in her heart, designed to locate only him. He had walked silently into her office, not far from his own, and was looking at her, as she glanced up and saw him standing there.

“Hello,” she smiled the smile that only they had been sharing for more than twelve years, and it felt like sunshine in his heart as he looked at her. “How was your day?”

“Better now.” He hadn't seen her since noon, which was unusual for them. They seemed to touch base half a dozen times during the afternoons, met for coffee each morning, and often he took her to lunch with him. There had been gossip on and off over the years, particularly right after Marie Durning died, but eventually it had died down, and people just assumed they were friends, or if they were lovers, it was both discreet and dead-end, so no one bothered to talk about them anymore. He sat in his favorite comfortable chair across from her desk and lit his pipe. It was a smell she had come to love as part of him for more than a decade, and it pervaded all the rooms in which he lived, including her own bedroom with the East River view. “How about spending the day in Greenwich with me tomorrow, Jean? Why don't we both play hookie for a change?” It was rare for him to do that, but he'd been pushing very hard on a merger for the past seven weeks, and she thought the day off would do him good, and wished he would do things like that more frequently. But now she smiled at him regretfully.

“I wish I could. Tomorrow's our big day.” He often forgot things like that. But she didn't really expect him to remember Tana's graduation day. He looked blankly at her and she smiled as she said the single word. “Tana.”

“Oh, of course,” he waved the pipe and frowned as he laughed at her, “how stupid of me. It's a good thing you haven't depended on me the way I have on you, or you'd be in trouble most of the time.”

“I doubt that.” She smiled lovingly at him, and something very comfortable passed between them again. It was almost as though they no longer needed words. And in spite of the things Tana had said over the years, Jean Roberts needed nothing more than she had. As she sat there with the man she had loved for so long, she felt totally fulfilled.

“Is she all excited about graduation day?” He smiled at Jean, she was a very attractive woman in her own way. Her hair was peppered with gray, and she had big, beautiful dark eyes, and there was something delicate and graceful about her. Tana was longer, taller, almost coltlike, with a beauty that would surely stop men in the street in the next few years. She was going to Green Hill College in the heart of the South, and had gotten in under her own steam. Arthur had thought it a damn odd choice for a girl from the North, since it was filled mostly with Southern belles, but they had one of the finest language programs in the States, excellent laboratories, and a strong fine arts program. Tana had made up her own mind, the full scholarship had come through, based on her grades, and she was all set to go. She had a job in New England at a summer camp, and she would be going to Green Hill in the fall. And tomorrow was going to be her big day—graduation.

“If the volume of her record player is any indication of how she feels,” Jean smiled, “then she's been hysterical for the last month.”

“Oh, God, don't remind me of that … please … Billy and four of his friends are coming home next week. I forgot to tell you about that. They want to stay in the pool house, and they'll probably burn the damn thing down. He called last night. Thank God they'll only be here for two weeks before moving on.” Billy Durning was twenty now, and wilder than ever, from the correspondence Jean saw from school. But she knew that he was probably still reacting to his mother's death. It had been hard on all of them. Billy most of all, he had been only sixteen when she died, a difficult age at best, and things were a little smoother now. “He's giving a party next week, by the way. Saturday night, apparently. I was ‘informed,’ and he asked me to tell you.”

She smiled. “I shall make due note. Any special requests?”

Arthur grinned. She knew them all well. “A band, and he said to be ready for two or three hundred guests. And by the way, tell Tana about that. She might enjoy it. He can have one of his friends pick her up here in town.”

“I'll tell her. I'm sure she'll be pleased.” But only Jean knew how big a lie that was. Tana had hated Billy Durning all her life, but Jean had forced her to be courteous whenever they met, and she would make the point to her again now. She owed it to Billy to be polite, and to go to his party if he invited her, after all his father had done for them. Jean never let her forget that.

“… I will not.” Tana looked stubbornly at Jean, as the stereo blared deafeningly from her room. Paul Anka was crooning “Put Your Head on My Shoulder” and she had already played it at least seven times, to Jean's dismay.

“If he's nice enough to invite you, you could at least go for a while.” It was an argument they had had before, but Jean was determined to win this time. She didn't want Tana to be rude.

“How can I go for a while? It takes at least an hour to drive out there, and another hour back … so what do I do, stay for ten minutes?” She tossed the long shaft of golden wheat colored hair over her shoulder with a look of despair. She knew how insistent her mother always was about anything that emanated from the Durnings. “Come on, Mom, we're not little kids anymore. Why do I have to go if I don't want to? Why is it rude just to say no? Couldn't I have other plans? I'm leaving in two weeks anyway, and I want to see my friends. We'll never see each other again, anyway.…” She looked forlorn and her mother smiled at her.

“We'll talk about it another time, Tana.” But Tana knew just how those discussions went. She almost groaned. She knew how stubborn her mother was going to be about Billy Durning's party, and he was a creep, as far as she was concerned. There were no two ways about it, and Ann was even worse in Tana's eyes. She was snobby, stuck up, and she looked easy, no matter how polite she pretended to be to Jean. Tana knew she was probably a whore, she had seen her drink too much at some of Billy's other parties, and she treated Jean in a condescending manner that made Tana want to slap her face. But Tana also knew that any hint of her feelings to her mother would lead them into a major battle again. It had happened too often before, and she wasn't in the mood tonight.

“I just want you to understand how I feel now, Mother. I'm not going.”

“It's still a week away. Why do you have to decide tonight?”

“I'm just telling you.…” The green eyes looked stormy and ominous and Jean knew better than to cross her when she looked like that.

“What did you defrost for dinner tonight?”

Tana knew the tactic of avoidance, her mother was good at that, but she decided to play the game for now, and followed her mother into the kitchen. “I took out a steak for you. I'm having dinner with some of my friends.” She looked sheepish then. As much as she wanted her own life, she hated leaving Jean alone. She knew just how much her mother had given her, how much she had sacrificed. It was that which Tana understood all too well. She owed everything to her mother, not to Arthur Durning, or his selfish, spoiled, overindulged children. “Do you mind, Mom? I don't have to go out.” Her voice was gentle, and she looked older than her eighteen years as Jean turned to look at her. There was something very special between the two of them. They had been alone together for a very long time, and had shared bad times and good, her mother had never let her down, and Tana was a gentle, thoughtful child.

Jean smiled at her. “I want you to go out with your friends, sweetheart. Tomorrow is a very special day for you.” They were going to dinner at “21” the following night. Jean never went there except with Arthur, but Tana's graduation day was occasion enough to warrant the extravagance, and Jean didn't need to be as careful now. She made an enormous salary from Durning International, at least compared to what she had made as a legal secretary twelve years before, but she was cautious by nature, and always a little worried. She had worried a lot over the past eighteen years since Andy had died, and sometimes she told Tana that was why things had turned out so well. She had worried all her life, in sharp contrast to Andy Roberts' easy ways, and Tana seemed to be a great deal like him. There was more joy in her than in her mother, more mischief, more laughter, more ease with life, but then again life had been easier for her with Jean to love and protect her, and Tana smiled now as Jean took out a pan to cook the steak.

“I'm looking forward to tomorrow night.” She had been touched to learn that Jean was taking her to “21.”

“So am I. Where are you all going tonight?”

“To the Village, for a pizza.”

“Be careful.” Jean frowned. She always worried about her, anywhere she went.

“I always am.”

“Will there be boys along to protect you?” She smiled. Sometimes it was hard to know if they were protection or a threat, and sometimes they were both. Reading her mind, Tana laughed and nodded.