Disclaimer: I do not own of these characters; they are the property of Shoot the Moon Enterprises and Warner Bros. Television. I acknowledge gratefully the hard work of the creators of the series who brought to life characters we like so much we can't let them go.
Developing from Negatives
"Well I'm glad to hear your first week back at work went well, Darling. I hope they didn't have you doing anything too strenuous."
"No Mother, we just did some location research over at Briarwood Sanatorium and a few interviews with the family of a poet we're doing a project on."
Lee smiled into his plate at how easily Amanda made the truth sound so innocuous. Somehow without the mention of murderous ex-Agency personnel and threats to national security, their jobs sounded so dull.
"Well, I hope Lee is keeping you from over-exerting yourself. I still can't believe the doctors let you go back after only six weeks."
"Mother, I'm fine. I'm almost completely healed and at work, it's mostly just doing research on the computer. I wish you'd stop making it sound like I'm still an invalid. It's bad enough with Lee threatening to handcuff me to my desk."
"I wish he could," sighed Dotty theatrically. "You're too eager to get right back in the middle of everything."
"Oh I could - you'd be surprised what kind of props are kicking around our office," grinned Lee.
"Don't encourage her!" scolded Amanda, even as she smiled back. "You're just as bad – if you had your way, I'd have just stayed in the car all day." She could have kicked herself as she watched the smile wiped from Lee's face. She got up from the table abruptly and carried her plate to the sink. "It's nice to get back into my regular routine. I've missed the wall-to-wall activities with you guys. Jamie, do you have anything planned for tomorrow night? I've got Phillip's school dance but maybe you and Lee could go get a bag for that new camera before anything happens to it."
"Amanda, have you forgotten Bart's exhibition opening is tomorrow? He said he'd leave us tickets at the door."
"Oh my gosh, I completely forgot about that! I'm sorry, Lee, I promised to help chaperone the dance – I can't back out now, because I know they're short of volunteers as it is." Amanda stuck her head around the corner from the kitchen where Lee and the boys were still picking at dinner. "But you should go – it would be nice to hear what they've been up to."
"What kind of exhibition is it?" asked Dotty, who had followed Amanda into the kitchen and was now returning to sit at the table with her dessert plate. The two boys looked mournfully at the slice of pie in front of her. "Now don't look at me like that, you two. You know the rules – no vegetables, no dessert."
"But grandma, it's Brussels sprouts – you know I don't like those," sighed Jamie, poking the offending spheres around his plate.
"Well, I'm getting myself more milk to wash them down then," said Phillip, getting up with his glass and walking towards the fridge.
Jamie turned to yell at him about not offering to get him any but was distracted by something in his peripheral vision. He turned his head in time to see Lee's hand scoop the rest of the sprouts off of his plate and drop them on his own, all without looking at Jamie. He turned to look at his grandmother who was looking down at her plate and had missed the whole thing.
"It's a photography exhibit," Lee answered Dotty as he began spearing the vegetables he'd liberated with his fork and popping them in his mouth. "An old friend of mine is a photo-journalist and the Herald is hosting a show of some of his best work."
"You remember, Mother. Bart Stoller is that journalist friend of Lee's who exposed all the corruption in Santa Maria a year or so ago," came Amanda's voice from the kitchen.
"Oh, of course. I read about that exhibit – I forgot you'd met him, Amanda."
Phillip wandered back to the table and sat down again. "Ugh, you ate all yours already, Wormbrain? You should have thought of a way to disguise them like I did!" He picked up a sprout and took a large swig from his glass and gulped it down.
"Well, I didn't notice you offering to get me any," answered Jamie hotly, forgetting momentarily that he had not in fact eaten any of them himself.
"Well, Phillip, since Jamie's done and you've developed such a foolproof method, maybe you should help Lee out with finishing his," said Dotty dryly. "He seems to have ended up with more on his plate than he deserves."
Jamie looked over at his grandmother, who gave him a small wink before re-addressing herself to her pie. Phillip looked at Lee with an appalled expression as he lifted his plate towards Phillip's as if he was offering it to him. Lee only managed to keep a straight face for a few seconds before he dropped his plate back in front of him and scooped the last few sprouts onto his fork with a laugh at Phillip's look of relief.
"I suppose if there's a new photography exhibit, that means I missed getting to see the Rock Hudson retrospective," sighed Dotty. "It's been so crazy the last few months I completely forgot about it until now. Such a pity about him – he was a lovely looking man in his day."
"Was Rock Hudson your dream guy, Mother?" asked Amanda as she came back to the table carrying the rest of the pie. Lee stood up and motioned to Jamie to help him collect the remaining dinner plates and they headed to the kitchen to scrape them.
"Well, he was just marvelous in 'Giant', you know. We went to see it one night when the furnace broke down and we needed somewhere warm to go. You were only six and you fell asleep fifteen minutes into it, so your father and I got to canoodle all the way through." She smiled faintly at the memory. "Everyone talks about James Dean in that movie but Rock Hudson was so tall and so handsome and with such beautiful eyes. He was a lot like Lee that way."
There was a muffled laugh from the kitchen. "Not too much like me, I hope," commented Lee as he returned to the table and sat down.
"No, you're more like Amanda's father. Rock was more like her Uncle Christopher."
"Your Uncle Christopher?" Lee looked at Amanda in bemusement. "Who's that?"
"Daddy's brother. Honestly, Lee, sometimes I swear you don't listen to anything I say. He's the one who lives in Santa Fe and runs the art gallery."
Lee dug into his memory but came up blank. "Is he the one who thought he was a wizard?"
Dotty and Amanda both began to laugh. "No, Dear, that's my side of the family – the Wests weren't nearly as crazy," said Dotty. "But my brother-in-law is a confirmed bachelor, as we used to say."
"Oh," said Lee as comprehension dawned. He turned to Amanda. "Is that –"
"In my security clearance file? Yes, of course it is," she answered him. "But it's not a big secret. Uncle Chris has been out for years."
"Out of what?" asked Jamie.
"Out of the closet, Stupid," answered Phillip before any of the adults could. "That's why he lives with Uncle Roy."
"Oh, that," said Jamie shrugging. "He's the one with the parrot, right?"
"Yes, Dear, that's right. Now if you're done with dessert, how about you and your brother clear the table and you can go pick a movie to watch tonight" answered Amanda. They watched as the boys did as she asked and then left to flop on the family room sofa, squabbling over the movie choice as usual.
Dotty leaned forward confidentially and asked, "Amanda, did I ever tell you about actually meeting Rock Hudson?"
"No, Mother, I don't think you ever did," Amanda smiled at Lee who was still looking bewildered by the turn the dinner table conversation had taken.
"That was thanks to your Uncle Chris, of course – I can't believe I never told you about it! Your father and I went out to visit him just after your wedding – I suppose that's why I forgot to tell you, what with you having just moved out of the house. Anyway, Chris took us out to a nightclub and that was the year they were filming that western near Santa Fe – you remember, the one he was in with Dean Martin, and he came into the club that night! Talk about exciting! The whole place went crazy!"
"Did you meet Dean Martin too?" asked Lee.
"No, Dear, this wasn't his kind of club. Dino preferred Las Vegas and this was the kind of club Christopher and his friends went to," answered Dotty.
"But you got to meet him? Rock Hudson, I mean?" asked Lee.
"Well, in a manner of speaking, I did. He walked right up to us, squeezed Carl's butt and asked him if he wanted to dance!" She paused for a moment as Amanda began to shriek with laughter. "That's not even the best part – when your daddy turned and pointed to me and said 'I'm sorry, I prefer blondes', he looked me up and down and said 'I never understood the thing for queens, but whatever floats your boat, Handsome' and walked away! Oh you can laugh," she went on, eyeing Amanda and Lee who were now both almost helpless with laughter, "But it was mortifying in the moment. Mind you, we got a lot of free drinks that night because there were so many men hitting on your father after that."
"What did Daddy do then?" asked Amanda, mopping the tears from her eyes.
"He told me I'd always be his queen and then he swept me off to dance with a rose between his teeth," sighed Dotty with a faraway look. "Your father was no slouch in the romance department, Amanda."
"I remember," said Amanda. "I think there were times he picked a fight with you just so he could make it up to you later." She looked at Lee and shuddered theatrically. "I learned the hard way to enter the house slowly and make a lot of noise after one of their 'arguments'."
Lee grinned at her. "I guess I should be happy I never went through that with my uncle. I think he was a confirmed bachelor because he was so grumpy, he scared off all the ladies."
"And I'm sure having a horribly-behaved little boy in tow didn't put a cramp in his style at all," answered Amanda, her eyes brimming with merriment as she looked at him.
"I was adorable even then. I would have been like catnip to the right woman," said Lee with a virtuous look that was almost completely ruined by his inability to keep a straight face. "And besides, he could always palm me off on Barney if he'd really wanted to date."
"Oh! Now isn't that funny, you bringing up Barney in the middle of all this!" exclaimed Dotty. "I meant to ask you, Lee, what you thought would be a good housewarming present for him and Gus?"
"What?" said Lee, still unused to the abrupt conversation changes that always seemed to happen with Amanda and Dotty.
"Didn't he tell you he was moving? I guess he probably thought I'd have mentioned it to you since he and I have been keeping in touch since the accident. Well, when Gus rebuilt his place after the fire, he made it all a bit more like a cottage and less like a fishing shack, so Barney finally agreed to move in with him on a more permanent basis and I'd love to send them both something as a housewarming gift and also as a thank-you for letting me stay with them all those weeks. They're such a lovely couple and I don't know what I would have done without those two looking after me. Not that you weren't good company, Lee Dear," she reached over to pat his hand, "But sometimes it's just nice to talk to people your own age."
Her eyes narrowed as she looked at Lee who was still staring at her blankly. "You did know they were together, didn't you? You're usually so observant and of course, you've known Barney practically your whole life."
"Well, yes, of course I knew, but I didn't realize you knew. We didn't talk a lot about day-to-day stuff while I was out there," explained Lee. Amanda reached over to squeeze his hand at the shadow that went across his face. "And I didn't say anything because, well – I mean, he had to keep it a secret for a lot of years being in the Air Force."
"I hadn't thought of that," said Dotty thoughtfully. "I guess that's why it took so long for Gus to convince him to move in. And that brings me back to my question about what to send them as a gift. Any ideas?"
Lee shrugged. "Not really. Moving all the time means Barney didn't collect a lot of things because he didn't want to have to move lots of stuff as well, and Gus lost a lot of things in the fire so there's probably lots of things they need."
"Well, I'll keep thinking. It shouldn't be something they need, it should be something they want too." Dotty got up and collected the remaining plates. "I'll load the dishwasher while you two go sort out the boys. From the sounds of it, they're still fighting over the choice in there."
"You two never fail to amaze me," Lee commented to Amanda as they got up and moved towards the family room. "Is there anything that can faze your mother?"
"If there is, I haven't figured out what it is yet. And really, once you've been horribly insulted by Rock Hudson, what's left that could bother you?" chuckled Amanda as Lee snorted with laughter. They found Jamie and Phillip in full fight mode over what to watch.
"Nice try, Chief, but that one is way out of your age range," said Lee reaching over the couch and snagging the box for "The Year of Living Dangerously" out of Jamie's hands. "I got that one for the grownups to watch later. What are your other choices?"
"But Lee!" whined Jamie. "That one's about a photographer! We always end up watching something Phillip likes about cars and nobody ever makes movies about the stuff I'm interested in."
"Yeah, they do," said Phillip, cackling. "They made 'Revenge of the Nerds' didn't they?"
"And you know which one they made about you? 'The Jerk'!" replied Jamie.
"Whoa, enough already!" said Lee holding a hand to stop the argument before it went further. "You're right, Jamie, but this one is still too violent for you guys." A thought struck him and he went on, "Tell you what though – why don't you come with me to Bart's exhibit tomorrow? He's the real deal and he knows one end of a camera from another way better than I do. He could probably give you some pointers."
Jamie looked at him, undecided. He still wasn't sure he liked Lee, but the offer was so tempting.
As the question hung in the air, Lee finally turned away, saying "Never mind. I just thought you might enjoy it, but it's no big deal."
The image of Lee scooping those Brussels sprouts off his plate suddenly flashed through his mind and he found himself saying shyly, "Okay. Yeah, I'd like to go to that." He was surprised at how pleased Lee looked at his answer. He looked over at Phillip who was rolling his eyes at him and turned back to Lee. "We'll be going in the 'Vette right?" he asked, delighting in the furious noise Phillip made.
Lee's lips twitched as if he knew exactly why he was asking. "Of course. Your mom will need her car anyway since she's driving giving Marietta down the street a ride to the dance as well."
"What! Mom! I can't be seen going to the dance with her! None of the other girls will look at me if it looks like I've brought her!" Phillip's cries of outrage were like music to Jamie's ears. He glanced at Lee who had a matching grin to his own.
"Oh, don't worry Sweetheart," said Amanda sympathetically. "I can drop you a block away from the school and let you walk from there."
Jamie stood back and watched Lee talking to the latest woman who had approached them in the twenty minutes since they'd arrived at the exhibition. He hadn't seen this side of Lee before – he couldn't quite place what it was about him but he knew that this wasn't the Lee he saw with his mother. That Lee was relaxed and smiled a lot; this Lee smiled too, but Jamie could tell he wasn't having a good time. He began to wonder why Lee had been so interested in coming to this because he'd been sort of miserable from the moment they'd walked in.
Jamie edged away to go have a closer look at the photographs along the wall nearest them. He turned back for a moment and realized Lee had shifted position so that he was facing him even as he continued to talk to the woman who had him cornered. Jamie turned back to the photos and was soon lost in studying them. He was deep in thought over an action shot taken in Santa Maria when a voice beside him said, "You're not one of the usual crowd at these things."
He turned to look up at the man who was smiling slightly down at him. "No, I guess I'm not but my mom's boyfriend brought me because he thought I'd like these. He's a film producer, but I like photography better."
"And do you? Like these, I mean?" The man seemed genuinely interested in his answer.
"Oh yeah. I want to be a photographer like this," Jamie answered readily. "I mean, look at this one. Look at the way he caught the expression on this woman's face even with the light behind her. You can't really see anything else, but somehow there's reflected light on her face and then he's framed it so that and the tank behind her are the only things in focus. I can't figure out how he did it."
"You know what? That's the first intelligent comment I've heard about any of these all evening. Come and have a look at this one and tell me what you think." The man headed down the room towards another picture, motioning Jamie to follow him.
Jamie slowed down and looked back over his shoulder to wear Lee was standing and saw he was watching him. He pointed down the room to tell him where he was headed and Lee gave him a slight nod before turning back to the conversation he was having. Jamie couldn't help smiling as he watched his eyes glaze over a bit, his boredom evident to anyone who knew him well.
"So, what do you think about this one?"
Jamie looked up to find himself in front of a picture of a pair of small children mugging for the camera while in the distance behind them, two hooded figures hung from a scaffold in a public square. The crowd in between was mostly men although more than a few had children up on their shoulders, apparently to help them see better over the crowd at the activity going on at the scaffold.
"How does he make it look like the bodies are swaying in a photograph?" he asked out loud, before starting to piece it together. "Oh wait, I get it - everything is in sharp focus except for those – they're a bit blurry. Oh, and the way the stripes on this kid's soccer shirt are scrunched up, it's got the same up-and-down dark stripes as the bodies. But I like the way the kids are dressed up to go watch something horrible and then they aren't even paying attention because they just want to get their photo taken. Like they're so innocent and it makes you wonder what the guys who were hanged did."
The man standing beside him burst out laughing. "You've got quite the eye, kid. Most people are freaked out by the way I had the little kids all smiles at a hanging and you're the only one who likes it for the same reason I do – because of the way it ended up being balanced that way. That was a lucky shot because I was really just taking a photo of the kids because they were cute and because they promised if I took their picture, they'd stop following me around ruining my shots." He grinned down at Jamie who was staring up at him open-mouthed. "So, if anyone ever tells you not to work with animals and small children later, you should probably know you should ignore them from time to time."
"You took these?"Jamie couldn't believe he'd just explained the pictures to the guy who took them. "You're Bart Stoller?"
"Well, since you're my biggest fan here tonight, you can just call me Bart." Bart clapped him on the shoulder with a grin and began looking around the room. "What's your name? Jamie King? Okay Jamie King, come and stroke my ego some more and tell me what you think about the rest of these."
The two of them began circling the room, Bart explaining the stories behind the pictures, Jamie excitedly asking questions about the photography techniques. Eventually it occurred to him that he hadn't checked in with Lee for a while and turned to look around the room for spotted him just in time to see a small blonde woman launch herself into Lee's arms, who greeted her with a kiss on the cheek and a hug that lifted her right off the ground. When he put her back on the ground, Jamie's heart sank at how happy Lee looked that this woman was all over him. The bored smile was gone – this was the warm smile Jamie was used to seeing, but not given to strangers so he knew she was someone Lee liked a lot and based on the woman's expression, it was mutual.
"Are you ok? You look upset all of a sudden." He looked up to find Bart looking at him with a concerned expression.
"It's nothing," he started to say, only to watch Bart's face change as well as he followed Jamie's gaze and suddenly bellowed out "Dammit, Stetson! Put my wife down! Go get your own damn woman!"
Bart turned to Jamie and motioned him to come with him. "I need you to come meet my wife. She likes to think I only have a career because I take photos to go with her stories – I need to prove to her I have my own fans." Jamie followed in his wake, watching Lee's face light up again as Bart approached, his hand outstretched in greeting only to have Bart give him a bear hug. When he stepped back, the woman slipped easily under Bart's arm, resting her arms loosely around his waist, laughing up at him, while his free hand came to rest on what Jamie could now see was the slightly round stomach of pregnancy.
"Well, if you will ditch me at these things, I'm going to find the next best-looking guy in the room."
Lee pretended to clutch his chest. "You're breaking my heart, Colleen. I only rate next best-looking?"
"Deal with it, Stetson, you're second best and I bet you don't have a fan here like I do." Bart turned to where Jamie was standing. "Jamie King, this is my wife Colleen and one of my oldest friends, Lee Stetson. Colleen, Jamie here is the only intelligent person I've met here tonight. He thinks I'm a genius, don't you Jamie?"
Lee had started to laugh as soon as the introductions started. "Like mother, like son – I can never leave you guys alone at parties."
"Um, yeah. It's nice to meet you Mrs. Stoller but I know already Lee – he's who I came with." As he walked around Bart to greet Colleen, Lee's hand dropped naturally across his shoulders.
"Bart, Colleen, this is Amanda's son, Jamie. He's a photographer too."
Colleen reached across to shake Jamie's hand. "Nice to meet you Jamie. We haven't seen your mom or Lee in way too long."
"Amanda King is your mom?" asked Bart. "I thought you said you came with –." He stopped abruptly and looked at Lee and Jamie with narrowed eyes before starting to smile. He looked down at Colleen who was looking at him questioningly. "I owe you $20 apparently" and watched comprehension dawn on her face.
"No way!" She turned to smile at Jamie. "We didn't think Lee would ever smarten up enough to ask your mom out. Took you long enough, Stetson"
"Yes it did" answered Lee, looking embarrassed. "Unlike Jamie, I'm not that smart." He tried to distract his friends by gesturing to the exhibit and asking Jamie, "So you've been having a good time?"
Jamie looked up at him with shining eyes. "Yeah, this was cool. Thanks for bringing me."
"My pleasure, Jamie."
"Lee, do you actually enjoy going to those kind of things?"
Lee glanced over to where Jamie was sitting in the passenger seat. "Sometimes. When I get to see friends like Bart and Colleen, they're fun but mostly they're dull. Why do you ask?"
"You just looked really bored most of the time, like you didn't want to be talking to the people you were talking to."
Lee looked at him in consternation. "Was it that obvious?"
"Not really. You just look different when you're talking to people like the Stollers. Or Mom."
Lee couldn't help thinking how much Jamie was like Amanda with his powers of observation. He realized Jamie was asking another question.
"Don't you and Mom have to go to a lot of these? If they're so dull, why do you go?"
"Well, it's part of our work so we have to go to meet industry people and stuff. But since I'm there with your mom, they're not that dull because she makes things like that seem fun. And tonight it was fun because I got to see what interested you."
Jamie was silent for another few blocks, before suddenly asking, "They thought Mr. Stoller had been killed in South America one time, right? That's when Mom met them." He saw Lee look sideways at him and shrugged. "I asked Mom a bit about them after you asked me to come with you."
"Yeah, that's right. He was missing for a few weeks, but it turned out he was hiding out because he had evidence about a corrupt government official."
"Like Dad did in Estoccia? When he had to come home?"
"I guess it was kind of like that, yeah."
"And when you were in trouble and Mom went away with you to clear your name?"
Crap thought Lee. He pulled the Corvette over to the curb and turned off the engine. "Okay, Jamie, where's this going?"
Jamie turned so he was facing him, and leaned back against the door, arms crossed. "Why did Mom get shot? Was she doing something that made someone want to shoot her?"
Lee had been expecting almost anything except that. "No! Absolutely not! That was an accident. We were just caught in the middle of a crime scene."
"So you were there together," said Jamie. "She said she was going by herself but it was you that called Grandma."
Lee winced mentally at how he'd walked right into that one. Like mother, like son, he reminded himself again. "Okay, yes, we were," he admitted.
"So why'd she lie about it? Mom never lies about stuff."
Oh, Jamie, if you only knew, thought Lee to himself before trying to extricate himself from another verbal trap. "Well, that's probably something you should ask your mother."
"I want to hear your version," said Jamie, stone-faced. "You were already dating so why was it a secret?"
"Well, part of it was because we knew that if your grandmother knew we were going away together, she'd make a really big deal about it and you and Phillip were still getting used to the idea of your dad getting married again. It just seemed like there was already a lot going on for you guys to figure out without wondering what was going on between me and your mom."
He couldn't see Jamie's expression clearly with the way the light from the streetlamp was bouncing off his glasses. The silence stretched out for what seemed like a lifetime while Jamie considered Lee's answers. Finally he sighed and slumped back into the car seat.
"And if we didn't think you were serious about Mom, you could leave too."
"What? No!" Lee knew they'd moved into some new territory and wished desperately it was Amanda dealing with this conversation. "What are you talking about?"
"Everybody leaves us, one way or another. Grandpa died. Dad left. Heck, even Dean left without a goodbye. Mom almost died."
Lee knew they'd hit the crux of the problem now. "But she didn't. She fought really hard not to leave you. And your dad came back."
Jamie looked at him and rolled his eyes. "Only because he had to. He'd still be in Africa and coming home once or twice a year if he hadn't gotten in trouble. And he's only staying now because of Carrie."
"That's not fair, Jamie; he loves you and Phillip. He may not have come home for the right reasons, but he's staying for them." Once again, Lee found himself cursing Joe just a little bit for the collateral damage his version of saving the world had caused.
"Really? The most time he's spent with us since he got home was when he had to move in when Mom was in California." He looked over at Lee, who simply raised one brow and said nothing. "Okay, I'm exaggerating. But it's still weird having a dad that hardly knows me. Do you know what he got me for Christmas? A baseball mitt."
"Well, you play baseball," said Lee gently.
"Yes, which is why he gave me a baseball mitt the Christmas before that."
Lee couldn't help laughing. "Did he? He probably forgot with everything that was going on with him coming home last year. And I probably shouldn't tell you this but your mother had to talk me out of getting you guys a train set last year."
"Really?"
"Really. Believe me, it's a guy thing. When you grow up, you will also be completely dependent on women to keep you from buying terrible presents like scarves for people."
Jamie grinned at him. "That would explain the bookends Dean gave Mom."
"Bookends? He really gave her bookends?"
"Yeah. Those ones in the family room with the Empire State Building on one side and King Kong on the other. I was only little and even I knew that was a terrible gift." He sighed and glanced at Lee before staring back out the front window again. "And I know we were little then but he never hung out with just me and Phillip like you do – he said he liked us, but I know he really only liked Mom. I never knew why, but one day he was there and then he wasn't."
"Well, I like hanging out with you two. I didn't get to do a lot of that kind of stuff growing up as an only child, sort of."
Jamie looked embarrassed. "Sorry, I didn't think of that. You had it way worse – at least I had parents."
"I didn't say that to make you feel bad. It's just part of who I am, but I can't help envying you and Phillip for having someone like your mom growing up. I'll introduce you to my uncle someday and he'll be happy to tell you all about what a horrible kid I was but if I'd had someone like your mom in my life, I probably would have been quite a different person and had quite a different life."
"But then you might not have met Mom," Jamie commented.
Lee's face lit up with a slow smile – the one Jamie knew was reserved for his mother. "That's true - I guess it all turned out for the best."
Jamie couldn't help smiling back. "I guess so." He ducked his head down and took in a deep breath before looking back at Lee. "Lee? I've been a real jerk to you. I blamed you for a lot of stuff that wasn't your fault and I've been giving you a hard time. So I wanted to say I'm sorry."
"I get it." Lee shrugged slightly at Jamie's look of disbelief. "I do. And to be honest, I'm glad you were taking it out on me and not your mother."
He could see the look on Jamie's face and went on. "I know that you must have blamed your mom for getting shot. I know it because I know I was angry at my parents for leaving me. It took me a lot of years and your mother to help me really understand that sometimes people leave even when they don't want to." He studied Jamie for a minute, recognizing all the guilt and fear there that he'd felt in those first few days after Amanda had been almost killed.
"Jamie, you know your mother will never leave you if she has any other choice. And I can tell from the way from the way that Carrie acts with you guys that she honestly enjoys spending time with you both so she's not going to come between you and your dad. And as for me, well the truth is, I have been hearing stories about you two since the day I met your mother and I feel like I've known you for years so I'm going to be pretty hard to get rid of too." At that moment, trying to sound convincing, he desperately wished he could end that sentence the way he should: especially since I've already married your mother.
"What kind of stories?" asked Jamie.
Lee had to think for a moment. "How about the story of how you got the chickenpox on your birthday but Pretzel the Clown came anyway? Or when you and Phillip exploded the science project volcano all over the kitchen?"
"You heard about that? That was a long time ago."
"I heard those and a lot more. You know how much your mother talks, right?" Lee waited for an answering smile from his stepson.
"And you stuck around anyway?"
"I did. They were great stories. I wanted to hear more of them."
Lee watched Jamie absorbing that before he reached over and turned over the ignition. "So, any other questions or can we head home now? Your mom will want to hear all about Bart's show."
"We can head home." He waited for Lee to pull back into traffic before saying "It was really nice of Mr. Stoller to offer to help me with photography lessons. Do you think he meant it?"
"I know he meant it. We've already worked out a day next weekend for you to go meet up with him, I just need to check with your mom to make sure it's okay. He really was impressed with the stuff you said about his pictures and he wants to see what you can do. I already told him you're pretty good, so don't let me down, okay?" He gave Jamie a quick smile to let him know he was teasing.
"I'll try." He knew he had one other thing he wanted to ask but he wasn't sure how to. Finally he just blurted it out. "Are you and Mom going to get married?" He felt the car speed up a little as if Lee had stepped harder on the accelerator unexpectedly. He kept staring straight ahead but he could tell that Lee was giving him sideways looks, trying to decide how to answer.
"How would you feel about it if I said I'd like to?"
Jamie hid a smile at how nervous Lee suddenly sounded. "It'd be okay I guess."
"Glad to hear it," was all he answered but Jamie noticed that Lee's hands weren't gripping the steering wheel nearly as hard as they had been a few seconds before.
"Ready to go?" came the whispered question from the doorway.
Jamie looked up from where he was packing his camera bag on his bed and grinned at Lee. "I don't know why you're whispering. He'll sleep through the end of the world if it comes first thing on a Saturday morning." He looked over to where Phillip was sprawled across his bed, tangled in his blankets, mouth open and as Jamie described, completely undisturbed by the conversation going on over his head.
Lee had to laugh at Jamie's assessment. "I remember being exactly like that at his age. It drove my uncle crazy." He gestured to Jamie's bag. "Got everything? I told them we'd be there by 9:30."
"Yep, let's go." Jamie walked out of the room, smiling shyly at Lee as he passed.
Five minutes later, the Corvette was pulling away from the curb. Amanda waved goodbye as she leaned in the frame of the open front door, sipping her coffee. She knew something had happened the night Lee had taken Jamie to that exhibition, something that had gotten them back on easy terms, but whatever it was, neither of them were sharing it with her. She'd tried to pry it out of Lee but he'd just given her a cryptic look and said it was "guy stuff". She couldn't help smiling to herself at how pleased he'd looked with himself as he said it though.
"You know, Amanda" said Dotty suddenly materializing at her elbow with her own coffee mug in hand. "I was thinking that what we should send Barney and Gus is one of those nice frames with all the spaces for different photos. Curt took some really nice pictures of the two of them when they were showing us the sights, and of course, we could put in some of you and Lee and it could be a sort of a welcome-to-the-family thing as well as a housewarming gift.
"That sounds like a lovely idea, Mother, but don't you think it might be a bit presumptuous to assume he thinks of me as family?"
Dotty sipped her own coffee for a beat, eyes twinkling at Amanda over the edge of the mug. "Oh no, Darling, I really don't." She paused and smirked at her daughter. "But if you'd rather wait until after you marry Lee, we'll have to think of something else."
"Mother!"