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family!”
    Her face went pale, and Travis felt instant remorse. Lord, he hadn’t meant to snap at her like that. He heaved a sigh. “I’m sorry, Mother. It’s just that…”
    Travis ran his hand through his hair in frustration, then sighed again. “He doesn’t know you’re here, does he?”
    Judith looked away and her reply was toneless. “No…no, he doesn’t.”
    “So after five years of obeyin’ his dictates, of avoidin’me, of not takin’ my phone calls or answerin’ my letters—five years, Mother!—a hospitalization has finally given you the courage to come see me. But only on the sly. What would it take, I wonder, to dredge up the courage to see me openly? My funeral?”
    He saw her flinch, and remorse nagged at him again, but he shook it off. He was her son damn it! Her firstborn, on whom, along with his brother and sister, she’d lavished all the love and affection of a devoted mother. Yet she’d thrown him away—on the spiteful orders of a man she didn’t even love!
    He still remembered the day she’d admitted that to him. The day he’d stumbled on her crying in the stables, where he later learned she often went when she was troubled. Wadded up on the hay-strewn floor was a lace-edged handkerchief. He’d retrieved it and begun to hand to her, thinking it was hers.
    But it hadn’t been hers. Before she took it from him, he noticed the unfamiliar initials embroidered on one corner. And although he’d been only thirteen, he’d known. When he asked her, she’d told him that, yes, his father had a mistress.
    “What’ll you do, Mother?” he’d asked next.
    “Do, darlin’? Why, what can I do?”
    “You can leave him! He can’t possibly love you if—”
    “Love has nothin’ to do with it, Travis,” she’d interrupted.
    “But he’s lied to you!” Travis had been outraged. “Lied to all of us! All those excuses ‘bout how he’s always tied up in surgery or goin’ off to lecture on—”
    “Travis McLean, I’ll not have you speak of your father that way! Of course, he hasn’t lied to y’all. Your father does work long hours at the hospital, and his work most certainly takes him out of town to lecture sometimes. Your father is a world-famous heart surgeon!”
    And then, with the uncanny perception of the young,he’d said, “That’s why you’re stayin’, isn’t it, Mother? It’s because of who he is, not because you love him. Isn’t that why you said love has nothin’ to do with it?”
    Fresh tears welling in her eyes, his mother had nodded, then taken him in her arms. “But I was wrong to say it that way, son,” she’d murmured. “I may not love him, but I’d do anythin’ for you children. Love has everythin’ to do with that!”
    Now, as he sat in this bland, sterile room, Travis wondered about that, too. Did she really love her children as she’d professed? Over the years he’d assumed they were the reason she stayed in a loveless marriage. But when the day had come when he’d dared his autocratic father’s wrath by choosing to follow his own path, she’d meekly aligned with her husband against him. Had let him cut Travis out of their lives.
    As for their loveless marriage, Travis soon began to suspect it was nothing out of the ordinary. He’d spent a lot of time growing up amidst the privileged children of families where divorce was rampant; his prep school had been full of them. Soon he began to accept the fact that the love he thought was missing in his parents’ marriage simply didn’t exist.
    Still, until five years ago, he’d believed in parental love. Now he wasn’t even sure about that.
    With an irritated gesture, he steered the conversation to more certain ground. “Tell me about Sarah. Is she well? Happy?”
    Obviously relieved by the shift in topic, his mother managed a smile and nodded. “She loves Georgetown. Doin’ splendidly there, too. Of course, we all know she would. Her adviser says she’s taken to pre-med like a duck to