The President's Daughter by Mariah Stewart Page B

.”
    “Steven?”
    “He’s Graham’s brother, too.”
    “The brother between Graham and Thomas,” Simon said quietly, as if to himself. “The one who died.”
    “Why did you say that?” Kendall sat back in his chair, clearly startled. “Steven didn’t die.”
    “Oh, I’m sorry. I was thinking of someone else,” Simon covered. If, in Kendall’s mind, Tommy Hayward had just graduated from high school, Kendall and Graham would be fourteen years old. And Steven, two years older than Graham, who died in a boating accident when he was nineteen, would still be alive.
    “That was a dumb thing to say,” Kendall muttered, and focused his eyes out on the lawn again.
    Simon touched the man’s arm, and when he turned back to Simon, Kendall said, “Got any gum?”
    “No, sorry. Not today.”
    Miles Kendall rocked for a few long minutes, a distant look in his clouded eyes. Simon watched in silence, wondering just where Kendall’s mind had taken him.
    Finally, Simon stood and said, “Mr. Kendall, may I come back to see you again?”
    “Will you bring gum?”
    “I’ll bring something,” Simon promised, thinking about just what Miles Kendall might do with a whole pack of chewing gum. “Maybe more mints. Would you like that?”
    “Sure.” Kendall nodded enthusiastically. “Tomorrow?”
    “Sure. Tomorrow,” Simon told him.
    “Mints,” the old man said with quiet satisfaction. “Tomorrow.”
    Tomorrow,
Simon thought as he patted his new friend on the shoulder,
perhaps we’ll be in a different
decade.
    He glanced over his shoulder just as Kendall turned back to the windows and went still.
    Then again, maybe not . . .

CHAPTER FIVE
    Her arms folded across her chest and a half smile on her lips, Dina watched as her mother first examined, then rejected, one dress after another from the display in a favorite store. By the time Jude reached the end of the rack, she’d found only two garments to her liking, and those she held out for Dina’s opinion.
    “The black?” Jude asked. “Or the gray?”
    “The green.” Dina reached behind her mother for a soft crepe dress of pale sage. “Definitely, the green.”
    Jude frowned.
    “Not my style. That would look terrible on me.”
    “How do you know? You haven’t tried it on.”
    “I make it a habit of not trying on things that I know would depress me. A dress, for example, that is cut lower in the back than the base of my spine—”
    “It’s not
that
low.”
    “—is probably not a good look for this middle-aged body.” Jude took the green dress from Dina’s hand and returned it to its place on the display. “Though I do appreciate the fact that you obviously are blind to the extra ten pounds around my middle and the fact that the skin on my upper arms continues to wave on its own long after I’ve said good-bye.”
    “Ten pounds? Nothing that a good workout program can’t help.”
    “Remind me to have this conversation with you again on your fiftieth birthday. In the meantime, I’m leaning toward the gray. What do you think?” Jude stood in front of a mirror and held the dress up to her body. “Simple lines and a great color to set off that wonderful amethyst necklace that you bought for me in Mexico last summer.
    “I think I’ll try it on.” Jude turned in the direction of the dressing room. “Why not take another look and see if there’s something you may have missed the first time around? I’ll just be a minute.”
    Jude’s
minute
was actually seven, but Dina didn’t mind the wait. A second look through the racks produced nothing that caught her eye, so she amused herself by trying to count the number of piercings on the face and earlobes of a young girl who was waiting for the elevator. Dina was up to eleven when Jude stepped out of the dressing room.
    “The gray is perfect,” Jude declared, smiling as she returned the black dress to the rack.
    With a look of longing at the pale green, Dina said, “Mom . . .”
    “Yes?” Jude was