"Malcolm?"
She grimaced. "He watched my lessons today."
Ahh...
They fell silent for a few moments, just watching the fish make lazy circles above artistically arranged slate blue pebbles. Finally Margo glanced up sidewise. "You don't like paperwork much?"
Kit rubbed his nose. "No. Tops a whole list of things I loathe."
She smiled. "I guess everybody's got their own list, huh?"
"What's on yours?"
She rested chin on knees again. "Oh, stuff "
"Like for instance?"
"I dunno. Snow, for one. Minnesota winters suck. Snow gets old real fast. Especially when you're too old to make snow angels in it. All that's left is cussing because the roads are closed and you're late to wherever it is you need to be."
Kit smiled. "You sound eighteen going on forty-two." She stuck out her tongue, prompting a chuckle. "I was twenty, you know, before I saw more than a quarter inch all at one time.
"You're from Georgia. Doesn't snow much."
"Just what do you know about me? I mean, besides what's in all the tabloids?"
Margo grinned. "They're awful, aren't they? I think my favorite was the one where you were abducted by mad scientists from way, way up time and they altered your sex and you got pregnant and then they changed your sex back and sent you home after you had the baby."
"Oh, good God, you're kidding?"
Her eyes twinkled. "Nope. They even had a picture, you were out to here," She indicated a very pregnant stomach. "I love what they can do with computer graphics programs, don't you? The little old ladies that buy those things in the grocery stores actually believed it."
Kit just groaned. "I knew there was a reason I didn't go up time much these days."
Margo chuckled.
Kit decided the time was right, but he hesitated anyway, reluctant to destroy their fragile rapport. "Margo ..."
She looked up again. "Yeah?"
"Would you tell me about my ...I don't even know if I have a son or a daughter."
The sparkle vanished from Margo's green eyes. She swallowed and turned her face away. "Daughter. You had a daughter."
"Had?"
Margo wouldn't look at him. "Mom died. A few years ago."
The ache of losing something he'd never had a chance to cherish left Kit struggeling against sudden tightness in his chest. He blinked rapidly several times, fighting a salty sting behind his eyelids. How had Kit's only child died. His daughter ...She couldn't have been very old, if she'd died several years ago. An auto accident? Catastrophic illness?
"What was her name?" Kit whispered, trying to keep his voice steady. "What did she look like?"
Margo didn't answer for a moment. Then, in a low voice, "Mom's name was Kitty."
Quicksilver pain flashed through him. Sarah had actually named their child Kitty
"She had hazel eyes. Kind of sandy-colored hair. When I was a little girl she laughed a lot. Look, I know ...I know you want to hear about this and I want to tell you, but--" She blinked rapidly. Kit realized quite abruptly his grandchild, too, was on the verge of tears.
"Margo?"
She turned away again. "I was the one who found her. Can we talk about something else? Please?"
How old had Margo been when her mother died?
Kit wanted to ask a thousand questions, but Margo wasn't ready to answer them.
"What about your grandmother?" Kit tried, remembering with cutting clarity the last time he'd seen Sarah.
Margo sniffed. "I've never seen her. Mom ran away with Dad when she was seventeen. I'm not sure Grandma van Wyyck even knew where Mom was or that we existed. I ...I had a picture. But everything I had was stolen. In New York. I even had to buy new shoes."
Kit, too, mourned that photograph's loss. "What was the picture like? How did she look? Did she seem happy?"
Margo seemed to come back from someplace even farther away than Kit had been. She studied him for a long moment. "You're still in love with her. Aren't you?"
Kit managed a pained smile. "Does it show?"
"Well, you're crying..."
"Am I?" He swiped at his cheeks. "Damn..."
Margo dug in a pocket and held out his hanky. She'd laundered it somewhere. "Here."
Kit managed a shaky laugh. "Thanks, imp. You've rescued my reputation as an unflappable time scout."
She started to say something, then stopped.
"What? Whatever it is, say it. Or ask it."
Margo frowned. "It's nothing much. just... Everything I ever heard or read ...Mom used to say you grew up a dirt-poor Georgia boy, had to scrap and fight for everything you had I used to think about that, sometimes. It made me proud, knowing you'd made it, but ...I always thought..."
"You thought I ran out on Sarah van Wyyck? Because she stood in the way of my plans?"
She flushed, but her silence answered the question.
"I loved your grandmother very much, Margo. But sometimes even when people love one another, they have different dreams, different goals. Your grandmother's life and mine...it didn't work. Probably never would have worked. But I still loved her, even when she left me."
Margo's eyes widened. "She left you?"
Kit cleared his throat. "At the risk of sounding like my granddaughter, mind if we talk about something else?"
Margo blinked. Then she said, "I guess we all have stuff it hurts too much to talk about, huh?"
"Yeah. I guess we do."
She gave him a funny little smile. "Did you ever go back to Georgia?"
"No. I didn't really see much point. You plan on going back someday? To Minnesota?"
Her face hardened. "Yeah. I do. But not for very long."
"Unfinished business?"
She sniffed. "Something like that." She shook herself slightly. "Anyway, that's about it for my life's history. I had a twin brother, but he was killed in the big quakes caused by The Accident. That's when my folks left California and moved to Minnesota. I don't really remember it. I was just a baby." She shrugged. "I grew up, left home, came here. The rest isn't worth telling."
Kit thought it would have been, but didn't want to press the issue. He'd already learned more than he'd dared hope. A daughter, a grandson both lost to him and a granddaughter who didn't like snow and thought tabloids were stupid and was the kind of person who'd go back and settle old scores. Or maybe debts. Just what sort of unfinished business did she have and with whom? She was hardly old enough to have made the kind of enemies Kit had occasionally made. An affair of the heart, maybe, despite her protestations that she hadn't been jilted. A man didn't have to jilt a girl to make her want to come back and settle affairs. Sometimes all he had to do was fail to notice. Or fail to act. Or maybe it was simply that she needed to repay someone who'd helped her buy that ticket to New York. Or...
Maybe someday she'd trust him enough to tell the rest.
Kit spotted Malcolm heading their way from Residential, an honest-to-goodness picnic basket slung over one arm, and decided to let his granddaughter have her picnic without Grandpa hanging around. "Well, here comes your lunch date. I guess I'd better tackle that paperwork. Just do the fish a favor and don't flip Malcolm into the pond between the sandwiches and the desserts?"
The sparkle came back to Margo's eyes. "Okay. Although after what Sven did to me, I don't think I could flip a soda straw into the fish pond,"
Kit rumpled her hair affectionately. "Good. Proves you're doing it right. See you at dinner, imp."
Her smile brightened his whole mood. "Okay."
Kit returned Malcolm's wave, then headed back up to his office. Very deliberately, Kit switched the camera view on one particular video screen, leaving his grandkid her privacy. Besides, with Malcolm Moore as chaperon he didn't really have anything to worry about. Kit chuckled, recalling the full-blown panic in Skeeter Jackson's eyes when he'd cornered that worthy and made matters crystal clear, then settled down to the bills in a better frame of mind than he'd enjoyed in days.