“I really don’t feel well.”

“I know you don’t.” The room was a good-sized rectangle with a charming little alcove, bare but adequate with a twin bed and an oak chest of drawers. “This will do for now, Julia. The point is just to get you comfortable.” She dealt first with Julia’s purse, then loosened the zipper of the silk dress and leaned over to take off the older woman’s shoes. As she was kneeling on the hardwood floor, she felt Kern behind her.

“Mother? What on earth are you doing here? And who…”

He never finished the sentence. Trisha turned her face up to his and relished the few moments when he still didn’t recognize her. The last time she had seen Kern she had been in torn jeans and one of his cast-off shirts, looking twelve and feeling ninety, with hair unwashed and exhaustion in purple swirls under her eyes. Suddenly she remembered it very well.

She remembered how Kern had looked at the time, too. He had worn jeans and a red flannel shirt, and he looked perfect in them because Kern had looked damned-well perfect all the time.

He did not look perfect now.

Her eyes scanned the familiar territory. His face was strong and square, with ragged eyebrows and a jutting chin that was covered with more than the beginnings of a curling, bristly beard. The soot-black hair was thick and still inclined to resist the taming of a brush. His hawk eyes had the same piercing quality, the color and sheen of old pewter. The overall image was the same: power and pride. He claimed several inches above six feet and there was no stinting on the frame. His height, the beard and the single hand on a hip all added up to the most primitive sort of man.

But it was the new territory that shocked Trisha to total stillness. A wretchedly jagged scar was far too close to his right eye, and still so red that the stitches could not have been long removed. The hollows beneath his eyes spoke of weariness and his right wrist was swathed in cream, the bandage held in place with a sling. Perhaps in some ridiculously irrational way Trisha had never really believed that he had been hurt. To her, Kern had always been like his mountain-immovable, unhurtable, unbeatable. She had never been able to picture him as vulnerable, as she had once been so very vulnerable.