The Mulberry Tree

“It was two A.M.,” Matt said. “If you’re going to live under this roof, young man, you’re going to follow some rules.”

“I’ve already got one father,” Alex said, glaring at Matt.

Bailey stepped between the two of them. “Both of you are five years old. Where were you last night, Alex?”

“With Carol,” he said; then, when both Matt and Bailey looked at him in astonishment, he shrugged. “Older women like me. They confide in me. Give me an old lady, and she wants to bare her soul to me. And, occasionally, bare other things. Not that Carol . . . Poor lady.”

“How is she?” Bailey asked.

“Okay. But she was pretty angry at her husband. She regrets that they didn’t make up before he died.”

Matt took a seat at the table, and Bailey went to pour hot water into her teacup, but then, as she stood at the window looking out at the mulberry tree, what Alex had said hit her. He’d meant to be flippant, but . . .

She turned to look at Matt, and he was watching her, waiting for the same thought to hit her. For a moment she and Matt stared at each other, wide-eyed.

“Did I miss something?” Alex said.

“I think we may have a job for you,” Matt said softly.

“An acting job.”

“Doing what?” Alex asked suspiciously.

“We need someone to get a woman of—” Matt looked at Bailey. “How old is your sister?”

“Forty-one.”

“She’s that much older than you are?”

When Bailey nodded, Matt turned back to Alex. “We need someone to meet a forty-one-year-old woman and find out about a piece of paper, if it exists, and if it does, where it is.”

Alex looked from one to the other. “I’m going to need more information than that,” he said.

Matt looked at Bailey in a silent question: Was it all right to tell Alex about Jimmie? After a moment’s hesitation, she nodded, and Matt began telling Alex all that he needed to know. He had, of course, seen Bailey on TV on the arm of her flamboyant husband.

It was when they got to the part about Dolores, Bailey’s sister, that Matt turned to her. “If your sister is forty-one now, that means that when you were seventeen, she was already twenty-six.”

“Yes,” Bailey said, not seeing his point.

Matt and Alex exchanged one of those male looks that said that women had inferior minds.

“So?” Bailey said.

“And didn’t you tell me that she was beautiful?”

“Yes,” Bailey said. “She looked like a beauty queen. In fact, she won several pageants.”

Matt smiled. “So let me see if I have this straight. Dolores was twenty-six, beautiful, and unmarried.”

Alex looked at Bailey. “And you were seventeen, fat, and had a nose big enough to shelter a flock of geese from the rain.”

“Is there a point to this?” Bailey said, narrowing her eyes at both of them.

Matt and Alex smiled at each other, then Alex nodded toward Matt, as though to say, You take the honors.

“But in spite of the differences between the two of you, you bagged the man half of the women in America wanted. Right?” Matt said.

“I never looked at it that way,” Bailey said, “but I guess you’re right. I did.”