Gordon is five and Harriet is forty-four, and she is his father's secretary. She's a small woman, and her petite face is framed with soft blond hair that she wears in a sleek chignon. When Gordon first meets her, he's airsick from the helicopter ride to his father's office, his first time in a helicopter. This was supposed to be thrilling and exciting, but instead had been filled with too much noise and stark terror and he'd squeezed Scott's fingers until his eldest brother had shaken his hand off and pulled him close into a one-armed hug instead, held him tight until they'd landed.
Gordon throws up on Harriet's shoes and then bawls his eyes out and wishes for his mother, and then for Scott, and finally for his father. His second and third choices are closeted in his father's office, for an important meeting about Scott's Future. So Harriet cleans the little boy up, sits him in her lap at her desk, and lets him play games on her computer. He eats far too many hard candies from a jar in her desk. Gordon's smitten by the time Scott and Dad come to collect him for lunch. He waves and blows a kiss as he leaves.
Gordon is exactly seven, and Harriet is forty-six. She's stopped by the house to drop off some paperwork for their father, who's taken the day off for his fourth son's birthday. She steps inside for cake, but can't stay long, drops off her file folder of documents and says a polite happy birthday to the birthday boy. She's remembered a card, bright yellow with blue sea-horses, and some joke written inside that's entirely forgettable, but that makes the little boy laugh, mostly because he reads it all the way through without any help.
As she leaves the house, he comes barreling down the front walk after her, with a Valentine card in hand. This is leftover from school, but he did make it himself. "Happy Valentine's day!" he tells her, and hands her a card that's more glitter than paper, and rains shards of reflected light onto the lawn. He gives her a hug and a sticky, ice-cream cake kiss on the cheek, and waves her off as she climbs in her car to head back to the office. The card goes into a drawer of her desk, and she makes a note to buy him a birthday card next Valentine's day, too. They'll continue to exchange them over the years, jokes for him and glitter for her.
Gordon is nine and Harriet is forty-eight, and she's holding his hand next to his mother's graveside, because Grandma's arms are full of Alan, and Dad and Scott and John are all tall and straight and solemn as the awful white box is lowered into the ground. Virgil's on his other side, but he's only twelve, and the hand that isn't holding Gordon's is rubbing tears out of his eyes.
Gordon's not crying and neither is Harriet. He's gone too numb from the whole thing, he's spent all his tears. He's just there, just small and alone and disconnected, in between his brother and a woman who isn't his mother. Harriet's free hand goes to her purse and retrieves a handkerchief, which she nudges him in the shoulder with. He lets go of her hand and passes it to Virgil, who mumbles something that's probably a thank you. Lucille's boys were raised right, after all. Harriet's hand ghosts across the back of Gordon's head, her fingers gently stroke soft blond curls, and she pulls his face to rest against her side. The tears start up again. She sheds a few for him.
Gordon is twelve and Harriet is fifty-one, and he's sitting in a huff in the waiting room in front of his father's office. His nose is bloody and one eye is blacked and his arms are folded tight across his chest. Harriet is quietly typing, permitting him space and solitude, while he waits for Jeff Tracy to land the company jet, and come to the office to deliver the sentence.
All of a sudden he's telling her how it isn't fair, how he didn't start it. How there'd been three of them and one of him and he'd only been trying to get away, to go find Virgil. So he'd bit and kicked and broken another boy's arm, so he'd done what he had to. There should have been a teacher there to break it up sooner, his ribs hurt and he can't see out one eye. It's not fair. It's not his fault he's small, it's not his fault he's angry, not his fault he comes last in half his classes and that everyone had expected better. He's not dumb, it's just hard. It's not fair that kids are so mean.
There are still hard candies in Harriet's desk, and she tosses him one across the room, marshals her thoughts while he crunches his way sullenly through grape flavoured sugar. She has no kids of her own, and Jeff's never been the sort of father who consults with anyone about his parenting. Tough but fair is his mantra, but looking at the sweethearted boy who's sent her a valentine every year for the past five, Harriet suspects that tough isn't what works on him.
So she lets his father know, tells Gordon's side of the story for him, because she's known Gordon long enough to know that Gordon won't. When Jeff arrives, he's still tough, but he's also a great deal fairer than he might have been otherwise. Harriet gets a watery grin and a wave from Gordon, as he and his father leave to get dinner and have the all important talk about Gordon's Future.
Gordon's fifteen and Harriet's fifty-five, and it's the company Christmas party. She's given Scott a kiss on the cheek beneath some cleverly placed mistletoe, and John and Virgil have been bullied into a duet of violin and piano, but both are secretly delighted to play together, and to play where it's politely appreciated. Alan's too young and he's at home with his grandmother, sugar cookies and gingerbread and the one present he'd been allowed to open early. The strains of The Holly and The Ivy float through the party.
Harriet goes looking for Gordon and finds him, by some off chance, huddled behind the desk in some unused office. He's made himself comfortable with a stolen bottle of white rum from behind the bar, a good third of it gone. This is confiscated, but gently, because it's Christmas and of all the boys, Gordon's the one who's somehow surest to miss his mother at this time of year. She sits with him for a while, perched on the edge of the desk, and let's him mumble and ramble his way through torn up emotions. She ruffles his hair and tells him to wait, and goes to inform his father, discretely, that Gordon's picked up some indigestion and she's taking him home.
Gordon falls asleep in the passenger seat of Harriet's sensible little sedan, with her shawl wrapped around his shoulders because he'd mislaid his jacket, and there hadn't been time to look for it in slipping away from the party and sneaking down to the parking lot without being noticed. It's not a long drive. Harriet plays classical music on the radio. Gordon gets nudged and bullied awake in the driveway of his family's home, and Harriet herds him up the slippery front walk and hands him off to his grandmother. A look passes between the two older women, and Gordon gets hustled off to bed, tucked in and kissed and sighed at. Harriet waits for the return of her shawl, and ends up whiling away the evening over tea with her boss's mother, talking about Jeff and his boys. She forgets the square of cashmere anyway, and it stays in Gordon's possession for longer than it should, as a reminder of a night he doesn't remember.
Gordon's seventeen and Harriet is fifty-six, and he's burst into her room with a bouquet of flowers and a heavy disc of bright gold around is neck. He bounds onto her hospital bed and leans over for a grandmotherly kiss on the cheek, asks if she saw him, asks if she watched him win. Of course, of course she had. She's never been so proud. The highlight of the year. It's been too long since they've seen each other and there's a great deal of catching up to do, though all Gordon really has to talk about is long months of training, and all Harriet really has to talk about is long months of chemotherapy. Still, they find things to say.
It's not a hospice, or anyway, not yet, but there's something sort of melancholy about the conversation. It's not the last one they'll have, far from it. With the mad dash to the Olympics over, Gordon's got time to wind down and relax, and he'll keep in touch. He'll visit her every week, at least. He'll return the cashmere shawl, wrapping it snug around her slim shoulders and saying they keep these damn hospital rooms too cold, as though that's the reason why his old friend is shaking. He'll sit and he'll read to her, and he'll talk about his future, and how he and his brothers are going to make a difference in the world, and how she just needs to wait and see.
Harriet won't tell him, she'll just nod and smile and ruffle his hair, but there are plenty of ways to make a difference in the world, and he's already made a great deal of difference in hers.
Gordon's nineteen and Harriet won't get any older. There'll be a church filled with white light and flowers, a sunny spring day that's wrong for the occasion. He'll be not quite as tall, nor as straight or solemn as his brothers, the last time they were all at a funeral together, but he'll take the steps up to the pulpit anyway, and he'll awkwardly shuffle his notes. He'll spare a glance towards another white casket, buried beneath white lilies, and through the tears in his eyes there'll be a smile on his face when he starts,
"When I was five years old, I fell in love with an older woman. And I was lucky enough that she loved me right back."