She had thought of nothing else since she walked in the door tonight. For one thing, the argument with her husband, Nick had made her unusually susceptible to Art's tenderness… to his good-looking smiling face… to the fondness she had always felt for him, even when her sister was still alive. But Betty wasn't alive now and that was part of why she was here… to see about Joe… her own son who had been raised all his life as Art and Betty's child.

"Yes, Joe's doing perfectly well in school, Dot," Art answered, sipping his drink. "Both he and Lee are on the honor roll as a matter of fact. For kids their age, that's quite something!"

Joe was fourteen and Lee, their young daughter, thirteen – and Art recalled how much trouble he himself had been to his parents at that age.

"Yes, they're both good kids, Dot… I wouldn't worry about Joe if I were you. You know he adores you… and I think our original decision about him was correct." He wanted to finish this conversation as quickly as possible. Somehow, he couldn't really concentrate on the kids with Dot sitting across from him looking like an angel in the yellow lamplight. Her blonde hair softly caressing her peach colored cheeks, the limpidness of her blue eyes fringed with long silken lashes… the tempting expanse of calf that showed beneath her pleated skirt… all these things made it extremely difficult to concentrate on the topic at hand.

"I guess you're right…" Dot said hesitantly. It had been so hard to realize that her son would never call her mother… to him, she would always be Aunt Dot because of that night, fourteen years ago when, a frail blonde child herself, she had given birth to him and her older sister Betty, then newly married to Art, had offered to take him as her own. That way, they all figured, Dot could lead a meaningful life, one day meet someone who was worth marrying, unlike the louse who'd left town at the suggestion that he had gotten a sixteen-year-old girl pregnant.