"Well, if you don't want to wait on me, I can always leave these things and maybe come back later." The girl didn't move. "Then again, maybe not," Kathryn said, crossing her fingers and telling her conscience to stop its muttering.
Mary sighed. "Well," she said slowly, "in that case, I suppose..."
"Terrific." Kathryn gave her a big smile, reached out and snagged the black and white bikini and its matching sarong from the rack. "You're doing the right thing, Mary, you'll see."
Minutes later, she dashed out of the shop carrying an armload of parcels. Just a few more stops before she headed home.
Home, to Matthew.
* * *
The VW was just pulling away as Ada came hurrying out of the storeroom.
"Well now, Kathryn..." Her beaming smile faded. "Where's Miss Russell?"
Mary cleared her throat. "Gone."
"Gone?" Ada plumped her hands on her ample hips and fixed the hapless girl with a stony glare. "What did you do to offend her, you useless child?"
"Nothin'," Mary said quickly. "Oh, nothin' at all, ma'am. She said that if I didn't ring up her order right away, she'd leave. It was a big order, Miss Ada, I didn't think you'd want to lose it, all that clothin' and shoes and things."
Ada cocked her head. "Shoes? Men's shoes?"
"Yes ma'am. It was all men's things, Men's jeans and shorts, shirts and socks and a belt, too."
"Everythin' bought for a man? Are you sure?"
Mary thought for a minute. "Well, not everythin'. The lady bought that bikini, too, the one with the skirt? The really expensive one?" She drew a breath. "Did I do the right thing?"
Ada waved her hand. "Yes," she said absently, "you did the right thing." A minute passed. Then she picked up the phone and dialed a number. "Elvira? Elvira, the strangest thing just happened..."
* * *
Kathryn gunned the VW up the drive at Charon's Crossing and brought it to a bone-jolting stop.
She'd spent most of the trip home thinking about Matthew's reaction to all the wonderful things she'd bought. Clothes. Magazines. A couple of terrific books that showed how planes flew and computers worked. And the best thing of all, the Sony TV set, sitting safely boxed on the rear seat.
She only wished she'd thought of it days ago, of how simple it was going to be to share her world with Matthew. He was fascinated by everything she took for granted, from something as simple as the shower to something as complex as her portable computer which she'd plugged in and showed him last night. And his mind was so quick... he absorbed whatever she told him, then tossed out endless, complex questions in his quest for more information.
But she'd grown up a child of the millennium, accepting miracles like nuclear energy and space travel as everyday reality. The answers she gave him were often superficial. Not that Matthew ever complained. Still, it was easy to see that he yearned for more information about this strange, new world.
Kathryn gathered up an armful of packages, grabbed a couple of magazines from the top of the stack—Discovery, with a wonderful cover shot of the latest spacewalk—and PC World, with the new IBM portable computer splashed across its face—and hurried up the steps. She juggled the stuff in her arms, struggling to work a hand free so she could open the door.
"Matthew?" she called as it swung open. "I'm home."
The magazines slid to the floor as she dumped her parcels on the hall table.
"Matthew?"
The rooms that opened off the foyer were all empty. In the kitchen, the note she'd left him hours ago still lay on the table, one end waving lazily in the breeze coming through the open window, the other neatly pinned by the sugar bowl.
Kathryn went to the steps.
"Matthew? Are you upstairs?" Smiling happily, she trotted up the staircase, automatically detouring around the cold spot, and headed for the bedroom. "You lazy thing," she said, laughing, "are you still...?"
No. He wasn't. The bed was neatly made, looking as if no one had slept in it. The room itself was empty.
"Matthew?" she said uneasily.