Cover of Night by Linda Howard Read Free Book Online Page A

one-on-one contact helped bring them back. On the other hand, she hated cleaning, and had to force herself to do it every day.
    “No argument there.” Sheila hesitated. “You didn’t cook much when Derek was alive.”
    “No. We split it about evenly, plus we’d order in. And we ate out a lot, at least before the boys were born.” Carefully she poured milk into a large measuring cup, bending down to eye the level markers. “But after he died, I spent every night at home with them and I got bored with the fast food I’d pick up, so I bought some recipe books and started cooking.” It was difficult to remember that that was only three years ago; the processes of measuring and mixing were so second nature now she felt as if she’d been cooking forever. The early experiments, when she had tried all sorts of exotic dishes, had also been a way to occupy her mind. She had also thrown out a lot of those efforts, judging them inedible.
    “When your dad and I first married and you kids were little, I used to cook every night. We didn’t have the money to eat out; a burger from a fast-food joint was a luxury. But I don’t do it much now, and I don’t miss it.”
    Cate eyed her mother. “But you still make those huge meals for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and you always baked our birthday cakes.”
    Sheila shrugged. “Tradition, family; you know the drill. I love everyone getting together, but to be honest, I’d just as soon skip the huge meals.”
    “Then why don’t I do the cooking for our get-togethers? I like it, and you and Dad can play with the boys and keep them occupied.”
    Sheila’s eyes lit up. “Are you sure you wouldn’t mind?”
    “Mind?” Cate gave her a look that questioned her sanity. “I’m getting the best end of the deal. They find new ways every day to get into trouble.”
    “They’re just being boys. You were adventurous, but Patrick’s first ten years came close to turning my hair white—like the time he set off that ‘bomb’ in his room.”
    Cate laughed. Patrick had decided firecrackers weren’t loud enough, or powerful enough, so one Fourth of July he somehow collected over a hundred of them. With a knife filched from the kitchen he had carefully split open each firecracker and dumped the gunpowder contents onto a paper towel. When he had all the gunpowder in a pile, he asked for an empty tin can, which, thinking he intended to make a can-and-string “telephone,” Sheila had cheerfully provided.
    He had read about the old muzzle-loading rifles, so he figured his bomb would follow the same premise, except he hadn’t been exactly certain what went where. He’d packed the tin can with toilet paper, tiny gravel, and the gunpowder, then twisted a length of thread together and soaked it with rubbing alcohol to make his fuse. To keep the floor from burning, he set his “bomb” on a cookie sheet—and as a finishing touch, he took his old fishbowl and turned it upside down over the can, with one side of the bowl propped up just a little bit so the thread could run under the rim and up to the can. His thinking had been that the bowl would contain everything and he’d get the noise and flash without having to clean up a mess.
    Not.
    The one good thing Patrick had done was to take cover behind his bed after lighting the fuse.
    With a loud bang the fishbowl shattered, sending glass and gravel flying around the room. The wad of toilet paper, having caught on fire, disintegrated into small flaming pieces that floated down to cover the bed, the carpet, even getting inside the open door of Patrick’s closet. When his parents burst through the door, Patrick was busily stamping out sparks on the carpet and trying to put out the nice little flame spreading on his bedspread by spitting on it.
    It hadn’t been funny at the time, but now Cate and Sheila looked at each other and burst into laughter.
    “I’m afraid that’s what I have to look forward to,” Cate said, torn between amusement