And the oddest thing about her was something Harry couldn't really have known. She looked so much like his mother at the same age. It was uncanny as Harrison watched her step lightly out of the car, and he followed her into the hotel. They went to the Potpourri restaurant and slid into a booth. He seemed to be constantly watching her, as though trying to understand who she was, and what she meant to his son. He found it difficult to believe that she was only his “friend,” as she claimed, and yet she was insistent about that as they talked and she had no reason to lie to him.

Tana smiled as she watched his eyes. “My mother feels the same way about it that you do, Mr. Winslow. She keeps telling me that ‘boys and girls can't be friends,’ and I tell her she's wrong. That's exactly what Harry and I are … he's my best friend in the whole world … he's like a brother to me.…” Her eyes filled with tears and she looked away thinking of what had happened to him. “… I'll do anything I can to help make him all right again.” She looked at Harrison Winslow defiantly, not angry at him, but at the fate which had crippled his son. “I will, you'll see … I won't just let him lie there on his ass,” she blushed at the word, but went on, “I'm going to get him up and moving and giving a damn again.” She looked at him strangely then. “I have an idea, but I have to talk to Harry about it first.” He was intrigued. Maybe she had designs on the boy after all, but he didn't think that would be so bad now. Aside from being pretty, she was obviously bright and the girl had a hell of a lot of spunk. When she spoke, her eyes lit up like green fire, and he knew that she meant everything she said.

“What kind of idea?” He was intrigued by her, and if he hadn't been so worried about his son, he would have been amused.

She hesitated. He'd probably think she was crazy, particularly if he was as unambitious as Harry said. “I don't know … it probably sounds crazy to you, but I thought … I don't know.…” It was embarrassing, admitting it to him. “I thought that maybe I could get him to go to law school with me. Even if he never uses it, it would be good for him, especially now.”

“Are you serious?” There were laugh lines coming to light beside Harrison Winslow's eyes. “Law school? My son?” He patted her hand with a grin, she was an amazing child, a little ball of fire, but he wouldn't put anything past this girl, including that. “If you can talk him into that, especially now,” his face sobered rapidly, “you really would be even more remarkable than I think you are.”

“I'm going to give it a try when he's well enough to listen to me.”

“That'll be a while, I'm afraid.” They both nodded silently, and in the silence heard someone singing carols outside, and then suddenly Tana looked at him.

“Why do you see so little of him?” She had to ask, she had nothing to lose, and if he got angry with her, she could always leave. He couldn't do anything to her, but he didn't actually look upset as he gazed into her eyes.

“Honestly? Because Harry and I have been a lost cause until now. I tried for a long, long time, but I never got anywhere. He's hated me ever since he was a small boy, and it's only gotten worse over the years. There was no point inflicting new wounds after a while. It's a big world, I have a lot to do, he has his own life to lead,” tears flooded his eyes and he looked away, “… or at least he did, until now.…”

She reached across the table and touched his hand. “He will again. I promise you … if he lives … oh, God … if he lives … please God, don't let him die.” Tears flooded her eyes, too, and she brushed them from her cheeks. “He's so wonderful, Mr. Winslow, he's the best friend I've ever had.”

“I wish I could say the same.” He looked sad. “We're almost strangers by now. I felt like an intruder in his room today.”

“Maybe that's because I was there. I should have left you two alone.”

“It wouldn't make any difference anymore. It's gone too far, for too long. We're strangers now.”

“You don't have to be.” She was talking to him as though she knew the man, and somehow he didn't seem so impressive any more, no matter how worldly or debonair or handsome or sophisticated he was. He was only another human being, with a devastating problem on his hands, a very sick son. “You could make friends with him now.”

Harrison Winslow shook his head, and after a moment he smiled at her. He thought Tana a remarkably beautiful girl, and he suddenly wondered again exactly what the story was between Harry and this girl. His son was too much of a libertine, in his own way, to let an opportunity like this pass him by, unless he cared about her even more than she knew … maybe that was it … maybe Harry was in love with her … he had to be. It couldn't be what she said it was between them. It seemed impossible to him.

“It's too late, my friend. Much, much too late. And in his eyes, my sins are unforgivable.” He sighed. “I suppose I'd feel the same way in his shoes.” He looked unwaveringly at her now. “He thinks I killed his mother, you know. She committed suicide when he was four.”

She almost choked on her words. “I know.” And the look in his eyes was devastating, raw pain that still lived in his soul. His love for her had never died, nor had his love for their son. “She was dying of cancer and she didn't want anyone to know. In the end, it would have disfigured her, and she couldn't have tolerated that. She'd already had two operations before she died … and…” he almost stopped, but went on, “… it was terrible for her … for all of us … Harry knew she was sick then, but he doesn't remember it now. It doesn't matter anyway. She couldn't live with the operations, the pain, and I couldn't bear to watch her suffer. What she did was a terrible thing, but I always understood. She was so young, so beautiful. She was very much like you, in fact, and almost a child herself.…” He wasn't ashamed of the tears in his eyes, and Tana looked at him, horrified.

“Why doesn't Harry know?”

“She made me promise I'd never tell.” He sat back against the banquette as though he'd been punched. The feeling of despair over her death never really went away. He had tried to run away from it for years, with Harry at first, with women, with girls, with anyone, and finally by himself. He was fifty-two years old and he had discovered that there was only so far he could run, and he couldn't run that far anymore. The memories were there, the sorrow, the loss … and now Harry might go too … he couldn't bear the thought as he looked at this lovely young girl, so full of life, so filled with hope. It was almost impossible to explain it all to her, it was all so long ago. “People felt differently about cancer then … it was almost as though one had to be ashamed of it. I didn't agree with her at the time, but she was adamant that Harry not know. She left me a very long letter at the time. She took an overdose of pills when I went to Boston overnight to see my great aunt. She wanted Harry to think her flighty and beautiful, and romantic, but not riddled with disease, and so she went … she's a heroine to him.” He smiled sadly at Tana. “And she was to me. It was a sad way to die, but the other way would have been so much worse. I never blamed her for what she did.”

“And you let him think it was your fault.” She was horrified, and her green eyes were huge in her face.

“I never realized he would, and by the time I understood, it was already too late. I ran around a great deal when he was a child, as though I could flee from the pain of losing her. But it doesn't really work that way. It follows you, like a mangy dog, always waiting outside your room when you wake up, pawing at the door, whining at your feet, no matter how dressed up and charming and busy you are, how many friends you surround yourself with, it's always there, nipping at your heels, gnawing at your cuffs … and so it was … but by the time Harry was eight or nine, he had come to his own conclusions about me, and he got so hateful for a while that I put him into boarding school, and he decided to stay, and then I had nothing at all, so I ran even harder than before … and,” he shrugged philosophically, “she died almost twenty years ago, and here we are … she died in January.…” His eyes looked vague for a moment and then focused on Tana again, but that didn't help. She looked too much like her anyway, it was like looking into the past, just seeing her. “And now Harry is in this awful mess … life is so rotten and so strange, isn't it?” She nodded, there wasn't much she could say. He had given her a great deal to think about.

“I think you should say something to him.”

“About what?”

“About how his mother died.”

“I couldn't do that. I made a promise to her … to myself … it would be self-serving to tell him now.

“Then why tell me?” She was shocked at herself, at the anger in her voice, at what she felt, at the waste people allowed in their lives, lost moments in which they could have loved each other, like this man and his son.

They had wasted so many years they could have shared. And Harry needed him now. He needed everyone.

Harrison looked apologetically at her. “I suppose I shouldn't have told you all that. But I needed to talk to someone … and you're … so close to him.” He looked at her point blank. “I wanted you to know that I love my son.” There was a lump in her throat the size of a fist and she wasn't sure if she wanted to slap him or kiss him, or perhaps both. She had never felt that way about any man before.

“Why the hell don't you tell him yourself?”

“It wouldn't do any good.”

“It might. Maybe this is the time.”

He looked at her pensively, and then down at his hands, and then finally into her green eyes again. “Perhaps it is. I don't know him, though … I wouldn't know where to begin.…”