The Sleeping Doll

party at the Marine Club on Sunday evening. Dance was the designated driver, so they could enjoy themselves and drink as much champagne and Pinot Noir as they wanted. She thought about inviting Winston Kellogg but decided to wait on that one. See how tomorrow’s “afterward” date went.
    Dance thought about dinner and could summon up zero desire to cook. “Can you guys live with pancakes at Bayside?”
    “Woo-hoo!” Maggie called. And began debating aloud what kind of syrup she wanted. Wes was happy but more restrained.
    When they got to the restaurant and were seated at a booth, she reminded her son it was his job to pick their Sunday afternoon adventure this week before the birthday party. “So, what’s our plan? Movie? Hiking?”
    “I don’t know yet.” Wes examined the menu for a long time. Maggie wanted a to-go order for the dogs. Dance explained that the pancakes weren’t to celebrate the reunion with the canines; it was simply because she wasn’t in the mood to cook.
    As the large, steaming plates were arriving, Wes asked, “Oh, you hear about that festival thing? The boats?”
    “Boats?”
    “Grandpa was telling us about it. It’s a boat parade in the bay and a concert. At Cannery Row.”
    Dance recalled something about a John Steinbeck festival. “Is that on Sunday? Is that what you’d like to do?”
    “It’s tomorrow night,” Wes said. “It’d be fun. Can we go?”
    Dance laughed to herself. There was no way he could’ve known about her dinner date with Kellogg tomorrow. Or could he? She had intuition when it came to the children; why couldn’t it work the other way?
    Dance dressed the pancakes with syrup and allowed herself a pat of butter. Stalling. “Tomorrow? Let me think.”
    Her initial reaction, on seeing Wes’s unsmiling face, was to call Kellogg and postpone or even cancel the date.
    Sometimes it’s just easier. . . .
    She stopped Maggie from drowning her pancakes in a frightening avalanche of blueberry and strawberry syrups, then turned to Wes and said impulsively, “Oh, that’s right, honey, I can’t. I have plans.”
    “Oh.”
    “But I’m sure Grandpa’d want to go with you.”
    “What’re you going to do? See Connie? Or Martine? Maybe they’d like to come too. We could all go. They could bring the twins.”
    “Yeah, the twins, Mom!” Maggie said.
    Dance heard her therapist’s words: Kathryn, you can’t look at the substance of what he’s saying. Parents tend to feel that their children raise valid objections about potential step-parents or even casual dates. You can’t think that way. What he’s upset with is what he sees as your betrayal of his father’s memory. It has nothing to do with the partner himself .
    She made a decision. “No, I’m going to have dinner with the man I’ve been working with.”
    “Agent Kellogg,” the boy shot back.
    “That’s right. He has to go back to Washington soon, and I wanted to thank him for all the work he’s done for us.”
    She felt a bit cheesy for gratuitously suggesting that because he lived so far away Kellogg was no long-term threat. (Though she supposed Wes’s sensitive mind could easily jump to the conclusion that Dance was already planning to uproot them from friends and family here on the Peninsula and resettle them in the nation’s capital.)
    “Okay,” the boy said, cutting up the pancakes, eating some, pensive. Dance was using his appetite as a barometer of his reaction.
    “Hey, son of mine, what’s the matter?”
    “Nothing.”
    “Grandpa would love to go to see the boats with you.”
    “Sure.”
    Then she asked another impulsive question. “Don’t you like Winston?”
    “He’s okay.”
    “You can tell me.” Her own interest in food was flagging.
    “I don’t know. . . . He’s not like Michael.”
    “No, he’s not. But there aren’t many people like Michael.” The dear friend who isn’t returning my calls at the moment. “That doesn’t mean I can’t have dinner with them, does it?”
    “I guess.”
    They ate for a few minutes. Then Wes blurted, “Maggie doesn’t like him either.”
    “I didn’t say that! Don’t say things I didn’t say.”
    “Yeah, you did. You said he’s got a potbelly.”
    “Did not!” Though her blush told Dance that she had.
    She smiled, put down her fork. “Hey, you two, listen up. Whether I have dinner with somebody or not, or even go out to the movies with them, nothing’s going to change us. Our house, the dogs, our lives.