22

Window Reflections

Charity Begins at Home

Amanda quietly closed the French door behind her and walked across the room to the kitchen sink. She could hear the powerful rumble of Lee's new car as he started it up to drive away. She smiled as she heard it. Seeing Lee that excited about something was a rare event, he reminded her of the boys when they had received a new toy or had learned something new and wanted to show it to her. It had taken her a little by surprise that he had stopped by so late to share the new car with her, and yet it also seemed like such a natural thing for him to do. She was kind of getting used to Lee Stetson popping up in her back yard at any given moment.

It didn't surprise her however, the other day when he had shown up to ask her to get him into the car show. There was a time earlier that year, when he would have been reticent to ask her for help, or had made sure that she knew it was all Billy's idea. But now it just seemed routine. So routine that she could laugh about it. "National security," "you are our only hope," "the whole operation depends on you," and "this could get dangerous" were all phrases that were becoming a regular part of her vocabulary. To think last year her job for the Unified Charities Fund Drive had been to get sponsors for the program. This year it had begun as refreshments director and had developed into stopping dangerous men and rescuing Lee from a freezer. Things like that were becoming common place and just part of the mix in her now exciting life because of her growing involvement with the Agency.

If her mother had known about it all she might have thought that the Agency took advantage of her just like Mrs. Coleman. Sometimes Amanda wondered about that too. Was she too much of a pushover? Could people like Mrs. Coleman and Lee Stetson just take advantage of her? What was that quote that her mother was trying to remember the other day? It was from Shakespeare she remembered. "The quality of mercy," that was it. "The quality of mercy is not strained; It droppeth as the gentle rain from Heav'n upon the earth beneath." A thought floated through her mind; in some ways that is how it seemed when she worked with Lee, like somehow her part was to be the gentle rain on the hard ground of the Agency and maybe even in Lee's life. Perhaps there was more purpose than coincidence in her taking on a job at the Agency.

Another wisp of conversation passed through her mind. Her mother had made a comment about older men the other night as they were doing dishes. It had caused her to pause momentarily and think but then she had gotten distracted by the assignment with Lee at the Equidome. What was it her mother had said? Amanda had a lot to learn about older men. She hadn't thought about that before. When she had met and married Joe they had been in their twenties with a lot of life ahead of them, plans and dreams and an open ended future. By now most of the men she would interact with might not be older men like Perrine but they would probably have some history, maybe even some hurt in relationships. Maybe some of them would have experienced some failure, like she had. Her mother had said that successful men didn't like to admit that they had failed in love. She wondered how that might pertain to Lee; he had definitely not had a smooth road when it came to loving relationships, she had learned enough in this past year to know that about him. Actually as she thought about it she wondered if he had heard her mother's comments, after all, he had heard about apricot and cinnamon bubble baths.

She looked up into the window wondering about how much Lee had heard of other conversations over the past year and noticed her reflection. What she saw caused her to smirk. She was wearing her nightgown. She had stood outside in the dark talking to Lee Stetson in her nightgown. She had turned down the opportunity for a late night ride with a very handsome man in a new sports car in her nightgown. She knew she had done the right thing to not accept the offer. The last time she had accepted something from Lee in her nightgown her whole life had taken this crazy turn. Imagine if she had gone for a midnight drive with him? No, she wouldn't imagine that. She had sworn off imagining such things after her thoughts had gotten so out of control that weekend at the Cumberland. After the path that her mind had travelled just now about older men failing at love and how Lee related to that she decided that the wisest thing she could do would be to go upstairs and call it a day. She was only slightly perturbed that she couldn't control her dreams as well as her waking thoughts.