With the letter typed and ready to be posted, Linda busied herself with clearing her desk until quitting time. She considered leaving early, what with the long weekend ahead, but after having turned down her boss for the umpteenth time, she felt it wiser not to take advantage.
At five o'clock, to the second, she quietly locked her desk and walked out of the building with the rest of the office staff. Outside, she was pleased that she hadn't been confronted with Karl Williams again, and she ran to her car in case he might be following her. She wanted to get home to her son, and she didn't think she could take anymore of her boss's arguments about why she should go out with him. The three-day weekend was that much sweeter for the fact that she wouldn't be making excuses to him.
Home was a simple and small house in San Bruno – a fifteen minute drive from work, and a source of pride for Linda. She had bought it when Rick was ten, and she had worked hard to make the house comfortable for them. It was in a typical suburban neighborhood and ordinary, but it was the center of her life efforts… the symbol of all that she worked to achieve.
"Rick, I'm home," she called as she entered the house. There was no answer, but she heard the sound of water running and realized that her son was in the shower. She had her coat off and hung in the closet when the running water stopped, and as she walked down the hall toward the kitchen, she called out again while passing the bathroom. "Hi, I'm home!"
"Hey, Mom?"
Linda stopped and turned around as the bathroom door opened, and she saw her handsome young son standing in the hallway, a towel wrapped around his slender waist. His head and broad, muscular shoulders were still wet from the shower, and he had a hopeful gleam in his eyes that she recognized immediately. He was going to ask a favor.
"There's something important I want to talk to you about, Mom…"
"O.K., dear…"
"I'll join you in the kitchen in just a minute," he said smiling, and he hurried back into the bathroom.
Linda smiled, only slightly annoyed by his mysteriousness; and, as she walked to the kitchen to start dinner, she couldn't help thinking about how mature Rick had become. Standing in front of her almost naked, he looked far more man than boy: his shoulders broad, waist narrow, and long muscular legs definitely those of a young man. It was as though he had suddenly grown away from her to enter his own world, a world where he was less dependent on her. That disturbed her! She found herself wishing he hadn't been wearing the towel around his hips so that she could have looked upon his manhood and make sure he was completely normal, but she blushed for having such a shameful thought and quickly put it out of her mind.
Rick, of course, was more mature for his age than Linda wanted to admit, and his handsome, almost rugged, features made him even appear older than sixteen. He had no difficulty passing for eighteen, and there were times he had even succeeded in passing for twenty-one. His good looks had aided him in gaining experience beyond his years, but for his mother, he still feigned more innocence than he possessed.
Linda had food out of the refrigerator and ready to cook by the time Rick joined her in the kitchen, and she was so engrossed in getting dinner ready that she had forgotten that he wanted to talk about something important. "How was school today, dear?" she asked.
"Fine, Mom, fine…" he answered sitting down at the kitchen table, a serious look on his face. "What I wanted to talk about… Well, with this three day weekend: it's a great chance for us to do something different…" He stopped, realizing his mother was hardly listening as she arranged pots on the stove. "Mom, could you hold up a minute? This is important to me!"
She remembered and blushed slightly. "I'm sorry, dear. I'm so hungry, I was wrapped up in the food here." She pushed a pot off the burner, and then smiling at her son, sat down beside him at the table. "Now, what is it again?"
In his most serious voice, Rick started again. "I was thinking, what with this three day weekend, that we should take the opportunity to get away…" He hesitated, "To a place like Big Sur…" Then his words rushing out, "There's a camp where cabins are very reasonable this time of year, and the change of scenery would be nice for a change. It's really beautiful there you know, and the weather forecast says warm and sunny all weekend… It would be great, Mom, really great!"
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.
"Well, Mom…? How 'bout it? Can we go?" Rick said anxiously, though he knew his mother rarely refused his requests.
She turned away from the stove, still relishing the chance to tease her son. "That sort of thing takes time to plan," she said, and she was prepared to continue her kidding until she saw the hurt expression on her son's face. "I mean, we couldn't possibly leave tonight… But, how about tomorrow?" And she was pleased by the warm glow of excitement that radiated across the kitchen.
"Oh, that's great, Mom! I mean, I meant tomorrow! Heck, that still gives us two nights there!" he said hurriedly, and he stood up from the table and hugged his pretty mother.
Her heartbeat quickened as she felt her son's hard young body against her, but she turned away immediately, looking in a pot as if the food might be burning. "There's one thing you haven't considered, dear," she said in her most serious tone, but she waited to go on until Rick had again sat down at the table. "Since this is a three day weekend there is a strong possibility the camp will be full… We may not be able to get a cabin!"
"No problem," he said smiling, "Karen's going to have her Mom reserve us a cabin the moment they get there. I figured you'd say O.K." He laughed loudly, and so did his mother.
CHAPTER TWO