There was more to it, Linda knew, and she smiled her most motherly smile. "Change of scenery is nice once and a while, but the cost of staying two nights just for that… Well, I don't know." She was teasing him, and enjoying it. "Maybe if we had some friends there? We might find more things of interest…"

Rick leaned forward, elbows on the table, and he grinned sheepishly at his mother. "I got the idea this afternoon. When I was talking to Karen Boyd. She and Mrs. Boyd are going there tonight; and, well, I thought it would be fun if we went too…"

Linda nodded, then stood up to begin fixing dinner again. She had figured it was something like that, and she wasn't about to disappoint her son. Karen was his girlfriend, though an innocent relationship as far as Linda knew, and she, too, came from a one-parent home. Valerie Boyd, Karen's mother, was a divorcee, and Linda had known her since Rick first took her daughter to a school dance. They had become friends because their children dated off and on, but got together only on occasions when they did things with Rick and Karen. These occasions consisted mostly of Sunday afternoon picnics or weekend school events, and they got along well together, though they had little in common. They were both about the same age and living without husbands, but that was where the similarities ended. Valerie Boyd worked as a saleswoman in an exclusive dress shop, and she dated men often, going to places that Linda had only seen from the outside. Yet, if going to nightclubs and expensive restaurants involved dating men, Linda was glad to do without it, while she held nothing against Valerie for what she did. For Linda, the friendship was like being in on the social doings without actually having to participate in them, so going to Big Sur and meeting Valerie there sounded like just another Sunday picnic slightly extended. It would be fun, and it was something she had to do for Rick.