Eddie stayed at the hospital with Polly for the rest of the day. Louise slept and the most major of accidents that happened was that a child had tried to swallow one of those little green army men. While the frantic mother shrieked and fretted mercilessly over the 4-year-old boy, Polly carefully extracted it and while the child by the name of Simon sucked happily on a bright red lolli, Polly scolded him playfully about putting things in his mouth and the mother took him home.

In the back room, Polly changed out of the jacket and pants and traded them for loose drawstring jeans and a black tank top. She let her beautiful hair down and it always gave him a little punch in the belly when he saw it. He knew it was stupid, he knew it was there, either pulled back or hidden under a battered baseball cap she would wear when he knew her, but now he noticed little bits of sparkle about her. In her ears were chandler diamonds earrings, on her wrist was a platinum and diamond charm bracelet he was sure he had saw in the window of Tiffany's.

Eddie didn't say anything about the pieces of jewelry she was wearing but smiled as she stepped out and linked their hands companionably. "Come on cowboy, I'll make you some dinner" He had to grin. "I'm only going to accept your invitation if it's your mother's old recipe for spaghetti and meatballs" Polly laughed. "I'll see that it is then, I just need to wake Doc Crawford up. I hate having to wake him up, I don't have the heart to most of the time let alone fire him"

Once the 91-year-old man shuffled off Polly set the alarms, locked the doors behind them, and ran a hand through her hair. A dust covered Corolla was waiting with the beaten red Mustang Eddie had gotten from the airport all alone in the gravely parking lot. "You can leave that here if you want, it'll be perfectly safe," Polly said as she dug about in her purse for her car keys. "Sure," Eddie said a little uncertainly and got into the seat next to Polly as she nearly had to kick the car into ignition and drove off.

Polly's house sat prettily behind a little flowerbed and an ancient weeping willow dripping with Spanish moss. The door of the door flew open and a bullet with sandy blonde hair shot out. "Mom!" Said the boy who couldn't have been a day over 10. "Mrs.Hanson made me eat lima beans and they were dis-gust-ing" Polly smiled and ruffled his fine hair. "Did you ever finish your homework?" At his uneasy silence, she kissed his forehead. "Then you deserved it. Luke this is an old friend of mine Eddie Alden. Eddie this is Lucas, he's my son" Luke eyed him with his dark cobalt blue eyes for a long minute. "Are you the skinny guy in the picture in Mom's bedroom?" "Yes," Eddie said with a laugh. "I am"

Polly ushered the two of them inside and Eddie began to take in the soft feminine touches among the rubble that came along with having a child. A beautiful vase sat on a squat highly polished chest of drawers that was pushed against the wall that was painted a deep rose. In the vase were beautiful long stem calla lilies that perfumed the air and brought back so many memories.

"What is your homework Luke?" Polly asked as she scrubbed her hands briskly with anti-bacterial soap. "Fractions, I hate fractions. Fractions blow chunks. Why do I have to do these dumb things anyway?" Polly rolled her pretty eyes at her son playfully. "Because my darling son, not everything comes in a whole and sometimes you have to figure out the parts of them" Luke pouted and looked identical to his mother. "Why? And why can't I just do it after dinner?" Polly turned and began to boil water in a tall brass pot. "Because that's just how the world works, and you can do it after dinner if you don‎'t want your hour of TV-Movie time"

"That's not fair!" Luke said standing up from the table. "News flash to Luke: Life's not always fair. Now do your homework or go scrub up for dinner and lose your hour" Sensing the tension on the rise, Eddie smoothly intervened. "Let's see those chunk-blowing fractions," He said as he sat Luke down in the chair and looked over his shoulder to see the book. "Oh yeah Polly," He said as he turned his head and gave a quick wink to her. "This stuff is really hard. I'm not surprised he can't get it" Luke looked up at Eddie, determination narrowing his dark blue eyes. "I can to get it" He said stubbornly but Eddie shook his head. "No, this is really tough stuff, maybe you should go wash up and maybe you're mom will do it for you later"

"It's not that hard. Look you take this 3 ¼ and you multiply it by 2 and it'll be 3 2/8 and then you can add it to the 6 3/8 and then the answer will be 9 5/8 see?" Luke asked triumphantly as he jabbed at the paper with the pencil that he had been chewing on then added as if on second thought. "Was that a trick?" Eddie laughed "That's good kid, now do the last five and I'll talk your mom into extending your hour." Luke shot up from the table, ran down the hall to his room with the book, and scattered papers in hand doing some sort of war cry.

Polly was smiling as she chopped sage leaves and threw them into a brass pot of boiling water. "You're good with him. Normally we would go on arguing for hours before we reached any sort of conclusion, so thanks are in order" She turned from the pot on the stove and got out a bottle of wine from the bottom wrung of the refrigerator and a corkscrew from the drawer. "Kunde Sauvignon Blanc, I hope you like it, it's quite good, I stopped drinking red wine, stains teeth and god knows what else" She poured two glasses and handed one to him.

"And actually I've been meaning to talk to you," She cast an uneasy look to Luke's room. "I was sixteen when I got pregnant with Luke-" Eddie held up a hand to stop her. "You don't need to explain Polly, I get it" Polly took a deep sip of her wine as if to steady herself. "I know I don't, but I just don't want you to think I'm easy or something. A quick lay" Eddie's eyes remained carefully blank. "I don't think that Polly, and you're lucky I don't get offended easily" "I know you don't think that, but it's been hard raising him alone and here if you have a cold it's everybody's cold, you should know that. My father left us this house and that helped quite a bit, but-it's difficult to explain" The door to Luke's room burst open and he tramped out. "I'm done and I washed up now when do we eat, I'm starving" It hadn't mattered to Luke that before his mother had arrived home he had eaten half a bag of corn chips, popcorn, and drank about a gallon of chocolate milk, he was starving and that was all that mattered. "Dinner will be ready when it's ready, now why don't you show Mr.Alden the new video games you begged me to buy for you" Luke's face lit up and he grabbed Eddie by the hand and dragged him to the small game room.