She went back into the kitchen, took a glass from the drainer, and poured herself another martini from the full pitcher in the refrigerator. She sat at the kitchen table and finished off the drink. She was tired, she decided then, much too tired to worry about this or anything else. She went quickly to her room, resisting the temptation to pour a take-along drink, and she shut her bedroom door just as the sounds of Natalie and Kevin entering the kitchen disturbed the sudden silence. The refrigerator opened and closed, but that was all she could hear.

Liz undressed in the pale, amber light from her night table lamp. She stood looking at herself briefly in the fulllength mirror that stood on its own stand in one corner of the room, feeling an unguarded pride in her perfectly formed body as seen in the diffused glow. Sometimes she felt so old, yet the proof of her voluptuous youth, even at forty two, could be seen in the fresh bloom of her still firmly rounding tits with their lush pink areolas and in the subtle curve of her hourglass figure, the thin waist that flowed gracefully to the taut girlish curve of her full swelling thighs. Then, putting on her nightgown to quench a naughty desire to sleep in the nude, she switched off the lamp and slid beneath the covers of the huge, king-sized bed.

Her green eyes open and staring at the ceiling, she lay for awhile, thinking of Kevin and of what she had witnessed between Natalie and him. What a brazen bitch she was! Bitch. She turned the word over in her mind because it tasted so good. Yet why was she venting her anger at Natalie alone? Could it be that she was jealous of her? No, she was really angry for what the young girl had provoked her son into doing, she was sure. The boy had been neatly raised and he was coming apart at the seams!