With a startled gasp, Alan was jerked wide awake at the terrifying peak of a nightmare. His eyes were wide and his heart pounded wildly as he leaped up on his elbows and stared at the gray walls of his cubical in the morning twilight as reality caught up with the lingering panic of the blood chilling nightmare.
He was safe in his bed, so he dropped back down on the mattress and drew a deep calming breath, then released it in a heavy sigh of relief. Turning his head on the pillow, he gazed at the fabric wall that separated his cubical from Ellie's, listening intently for any indication that he had disturbed her, but he heard only silence. His nightmare had not awakened her.
He had passed a long and restless night, achieving sleep only a short while ago, but had been brutally yanked from that slumber by the horrifying image of the young Tyrannosaurus standing over him, preparing to claim him as its next meal as he lay helpless on the ground.
Lacing his fingers together behind his head, he gazed up at the pocked ceiling tiles and reflected on the events of the previous day. Maybe Ellie was right. Perhaps they were connected in some unique and mysterious way that could not be explained by scientific logic. Whatever the motivation had been, she had somehow known that he was in serious trouble and had come nearly halfway around the world to save his life.
But what lay ahead for the two of them? Both were now widowed, each suffering the tragic loss of someone they had loved. His mother had firmly believed in fate, and had claimed that all things happen with a purpose. He knew what her rationale would have been had she been there, and at that moment, he could not help but wonder if it was true: Had he and Ellie been paired with the wrong partners in life? Was that why her husband and his wife had been taken from them?
Unconvinced, he dismissed those thoughts as unlikely. Although there were many mystifying things in the world that he did not understand, he did not believe in an outside influence on lives and relationships as staunchly as his mother. Humans had free will, and Mark Degler had used that free will when he had driven his family through that intersection, just as the drunk had chosen to get behind the wheel of a vehicle while intoxicated. Just as Alan Grant had elected not to go after Ellie when she had left him.
With additional sleep out of the question, he tossed back the sheet and stood up, discovering with some surprise that he was very stiff and sore from the encounter with the dinosaurs yesterday. As he attempted to stretch away the stiffness from his back, he caught his reflection in the dresser mirror, and he leaned closer to examine himself. The hollow of his shoulder, just below the clavicle, was bruised where the Tyrannosaur had struck him; noticeable, but not as severe as some contusions he had incurred. Another faint contusion and the accompanying soreness on his lower leg marked where the Rex had stepped on him. The minor injuries were a small price to pay for his carelessness. He was just thankful to be alive.
His skin felt damp and clammy, a lingering result of the nightmare and the humid atmosphere. Quietly, he opened his dresser drawer and retrieved a clean pair of folded jeans, and carried them down the hall to the lavatory. He paused briefly at the linen closet for a towel, then went inside the bathroom to get cleaned up.
He usually hated having to bathe in water that had been sitting at room temperature, but this morning, the cool water actually felt rather good, cooling and soothing his bruises and muscle sprains even as the goose pimples popped out in chilled protest on his skin. When his bath was completed, he dried himself on the towel, then wrapped it around his waist and tucked it into place as he exited the shower stall.
The sun was just starting to peek over the horizon when Ellie rolled sleepily from her bed and padded barefoot down the corridor to the lavatory. With eyes that were only half open, she pushed the door open and started to enter, then stopped abruptly as her eyes widened, startled, to find it occupied. Dressed only in his towel, Alan was combing his wet hair before the mirror, but when he heard the door open he turned toward her and one hand automatically went to his waist to verify that the towel was securely in place.
"Sorry," she mumbled as she politely averted her eyes. "I should have knocked. Sharing a bathroom is going to take some getting used to!"
"Payback for the time I walked in on you the other day," he acknowledged with a pleasant smile.
"Yeah," she agreed as she backed out the door. "I'll come back later." The door drifted closed behind her.
After she had gone, Alan stood quietly for several moments, leaning his hands on the Formica countertop that enclosed the wash basin as he gazed at the door, thinking about Ellie's comment. After so many years apart, the prospect of sharing a bathroom was, indeed, going to take some getting used to. It was becoming abundantly obvious that they would have to come up with a suitable method of alerting the other one that the lavatory was occupied, or else they were destined to eventually have an awkward encounter.
Turning back to the mirror, he finished combing his hair, then opened his shaving kit to complete his morning routine.
Ellie returned to her own cubical and sat down on the edge of her bed to await her turn in the bathroom. As she waited, she could not help but think about the fact that he had nearly kissed her the evening before, a long awaited, much desired display of affection between them that had once been as easy and comfortable as a simple touch. At the time, she had wanted that kiss desperately, but now, in the light of day, she was left with conflicting emotions as her heart pulled her in two different directions, a confusing game of tug-of-war between the memories of her husband and her affection for her past lover.
Rising from the bed, she went to the window and pressed her forehead against the cool iron bars to gaze out across the lawn, wondering how she had made such a tangled mess out of her life. Had she not married Mark, he would most likely still be alive and probably happily married to someone who was more suited to his prominent social status, someone who would have been more comfortable dressed in glamorous outfits and dutifully adorning his arm at the business functions and government social-gatherings that she had hated. But she would never have known those two beautiful children that had been hers for such a short time. She would never regret a moment of their lives, but she certainly regretted her decision to leave Alan. She had regretted that choice almost from the very beginning.
She sighed, heavily. Choices of the heart could be a very complicated matter, with many forks in the road. It was up to each individual to make the right choices and take the correct path toward a fulfilling relationship. Somewhere along that path, she had gotten lost.
"Bathroom's empty," said a voice from her doorway, jolting her from her reverie.
Turning toward the curtain that she had left open, she saw Alan leaning inside, dressed in his jeans, and she allowed her eyes to linger on his handsome face for several moments, mesmerized by his charming smile, before answering. "Thanks."
He proceeded to his own cubical to finish dressing while she snatched up the clothing she intended to wear that day, and went down the hall to the bathroom.
Alan had seen the way Ellie had been staring out the window, and knew from her posture that she was confused and depressed, presumably about the kiss that had almost occurred between them; a kiss that would almost certainly have led to an even more intimate encounter, had he not brought it to a halt.
What were you thinking? the voice in his head sternly admonished. She's only been a widow for three months!
He had seen the disappointment in her eyes when he had pulled away. She had wanted it too, and he had no doubt that she would have been receptive to his advances, no matter how far those advances had led. But it would have been for the wrong reasons, generated by the emotion of his near loss of life, and he knew that this morning they both would have been dealing with the ramifications of acting on those emotions.
He was confused about the intensity of those feelings as well, but he was uncertain what he should do about it. They were growing comfortable with one another again, and it would have been so easy to have picked up their relationship where they had left off, but he knew it was too early in her widowhood to engage in a relationship that was so intimate. In the five days that she had been there, he had seen progress in her demeanor; her smiles were more frequent and natural, the sadness in her expressive eyes was not so prominent, but he knew she had not yet come to terms, emotionally, with her loss. Taking advantage of a grieving widow was simply not a part of his character. Alone on the island together, he knew that temptation would arise again. Eventually, they might even succumb to that temptation, but until she was ready to deal with the emotional baggage she carried, he was determined to resist.
After dressing in a comfortable shirt and his favorite work shoes, Alan went downstairs and put on a pot of coffee, still contemplating the fact that if Ellie had walked in just a few minutes earlier when he was in the shower or a few minutes later as he prepared to get dressed, she would have caught him in a complete state of undress. If she had not walked in on him, he would eventually walk in on her. Completely alone before her arrival, he had not faced this problem, but now he knew he needed to find a simple solution.
His first thought was simply to clean up the women's bathroom for her to use, but he quickly rejected that idea, for it would take days to make it useable. It was in even worse shape than the men's room had been, since a broken window had allowed the weather to blow in a tremendous amount of debris. He had boarded up the window to prevent additional accumulation, but it was not worth the time and effort spent trying to clean it up when they had a clean bathroom already functional. No, the best solution was a sign on the door.
While the coffee was brewing in the coffee maker, he went down the hall to the office and looked through the supply cabinet, searching for something suitable with which to make his sign. The previous crew of scientists had left behind a variety of office supplies, some of which he had actually found useful, and as he scanned the metal shelves, his eyes came to rest on a letter sized cardboard box holding a stack of InGen letterhead.
"Perfect," he muttered to himself as he lifted the useless letterhead from the box, and returned it to the shelf. He was only interested in the white cardboard box. Removing it from the shelf, he carried it back to the desk he had designated as his, and sat down in the comfortable chair.
He had found a pair of scissors in the middle drawer, so he withdrew them and used them to cut off the sides of the box, leaving just the flat bottom of approximately 8 x 12 inches. Taking a black chisel-point marker, he wrote OCCUPIED on one side and VACANT on the other. Then, he used a hole puncher to put a single hole in the top of the sign, and threaded a piece of nylon string through it and tied the ends together. Locating a push pin, he went upstairs and pushed the pin into the door and hung his sign on it by the string. Standing back to admire his work of art, he heard Ellie come up behind him as she emerged from the bedrooms.
"So, what do you think?" he asked. "I made a sign for us to use whenever we go into the bathroom. Whenever we go inside, just turn it over so that it says OCCUPIED." He flipped the sign over, demonstrating the lettering on the reverse side. "That will alert us to the fact that the other is inside. When we're finished, just turn it back over to the VACANT side."
She cocked her head, looking at the sign with its bold black letters, and nodded her approval. "Good idea," she said, then smiled teasingly. "It doesn't hang straight."
He adjusted the position, trying to get it to hang straight, but it always slid slightly down on one side. "Well, it's a little hard to get the hole perfectly in the center," he admitted. "And look, when it hangs crooked like that, it makes my handwriting look straight. So, we have a choice; either the sign hangs crooked, or my handwriting hangs crooked."
She couldn't help smiling at his sense of humor. "So, what do you want for breakfast?"
"I don't care. Whatever you want will be fine." They turned toward the stairs, and started down to the first level, walking side by side without touching. "I'm not really that hungry, anyway."
"Alan, you barely ate anything yesterday," Ellie scolded, recalling his loss of appetite following the terrifying encounter with the Tyrannosaurus. "You're bound to be hungry, so I'll fix anything you want."
"Cereal will be fine," he replied, then to the skeptical arch of her eyebrow, he added, "Really. I like cereal."
They completed their walk down the stairs, and turned toward the kitchen. Ellie was thinking about how different Alan was than Mark. Her husband had insisted on a complete breakfast each morning, starting with a grapefruit half decorated in the center with a Maraschino cherry, followed by eggs, bacon and toast, or ham and hash browns, all of it prepared by the maid. Pancakes and waffles were eaten only as a Sunday treat. Cold cereal for breakfast was frowned upon as being too "lower class", even though little Charlie had loved Trix. She had allowed the child to eat the usual breakfast cereals for lunch, when Mark was at work, and the maid had kept her secret.
Reaching the kitchen, Ellie moved to the pantry to look over the variety of cereal. It was pretty well stocked with boxes of Shredded Wheat, Cocoa Puffs, Honeycomb, Raisin Bran, Chex, and Trix. The sight of her son's favorite cereal brought a lump to her throat. Quickly, she moved it out of sight behind the other cereal boxes. Some had been opened, others were still sealed. "What kind do you want?" she asked.
"I like 'em all. Surprise me," he replied.
She selected the Raisin Bran. "We've eaten a lot of fat and cholesterol the last few days," she explained. "Maybe we'd both do better with something reasonably healthy for a change."
He fetched a couple of bowls from the cupboard, and they each poured their own preferred amount of cereal and milk. After pouring their cups of coffee, they proceeded upstairs to the dining area on the roof, and sat down.
"So, what are we going to do today?" Ellie asked.
Seated near the railing, Alan's gaze wandered over the edge of the roof, falling upon the garden patch below them. Many of his tomato stakes were leaning precariously at right angles, pushed over by the storm, and the tall stalks of corn had not faired any better. "Well, actually I've been thinking that I need to get out in the garden and pick the vegetables and clean it up a bit. I haven't been out there since before you got here last week, and things are a mess after that storm the other day."
She gazed at him with worried eyes, wondering if he was nervous about returning to the field following his close call the day before. "You don't want to go out in the field?"
"We'll go out tomorrow."
She looked at him for a long moment, then asked, "Alan, are you uneasy about going out?"
He looked up, and she saw a flicker of annoyance in his eyes. "Why would you think that?"
"Well, we missed going out the day before yesterday and your research was postponed yesterday because of the . . . because of what happened, so I figured you'd want to go out today."
"Ellie, I didn't go out every day, even before you arrived," he told her. "I really do need to get into the garden or it will stop producing." She continued to look at him, her eyes telling him that she was unconvinced about his motives. He sighed. "All right, if you want the truth, I'm pretty sore this morning, and I just don't feel like taking a hike through the woods. I would rather relax in the garden for awhile, and then maybe take a nap. I didn't sleep very well last night."
She looked up again, taking note of his weary eyes. Just before she had fallen asleep, she had heard him tossing and turning on his bed. Plus, it was not surprising that he would be suffering some muscle pain after the force with which he had been struck by the Rex. "You do look tired," she said.
"I am tired," he admitted. "Look, what happened yesterday with the Rex was just an unfortunate accident. I've been over it in my mind a hundred times, and there is no way I could have foreseen the Rex knocking me down like that. It's just one of those situations where the components all fell into place, and the worst almost happened. It's not likely to ever happen again, and I'm not worried about it. Okay?"
She nodded, satisfied. "Okay." Several moments passed, then she asked, "Do you need any help in the garden? I used to help Dad."
He shrugged. "Sure, if you want to."
"Okay. First, I'll thaw out some hamburger meat, and we'll have stuffed peppers for supper."
His lips turned up in a pleased smile as he gazed at her across the table. "I've really missed your wonderful cooking, Ellie. Having you here preparing all these things I'd never have thought of is really a treat! I bet Mark really loved your cooking."
Ellie's expression went suddenly blank as her mind's eye turned inward, recalling the fights she'd had with Mark over her desire to do some of the simple things she had enjoyed, ordinary things that he considered beneath their social status. Alan had no way of knowing that cooking was one of the things her husband had not allowed her to do.
"We had a maid," she said, shortly. "She did the cooking." Standing up abruptly, she gathered her bowl and her cup, and carried them back to the stairs, and disappeared through the doorway. The tension left in her wake was so great that Alan suspected that had there been a regular door to pass through instead of the open trap door, she would have slammed it on her way back inside.
He stared after her, a curious niggling working its way into his mind, wondering if Ellie was upset over his mention of her late husband, or if it was something else, something about her marriage of which he was unaware. Picking up his empty bowl and coffee cup, he followed her down to the kitchen, but paused in the doorway to observe her.
She stood quietly at the sink where she had just deposited her cereal bowl, and leaned her hands on the edge of the basin as she stared into it. Her posture slumped, despondently, apparently overwhelmed by painful memories.
Alan's heart went out to her. Moving into the kitchen, he placed his bowl in the sink with hers, then placed his arm around her in a comforting fashion. He felt her stiffen briefly under his touch. Recalling that she had rejected his attempts to comfort her that first day, he fully expected her to do so again.
"It's okay, honey," he said, softly, urging her to allow him to console her.
Surprised by the unexpected term of endearment, words of affection that had once passed between them as effortlessly as drawing a simple breath, she turned toward him and understood that he was offering the solace that she so desperately needed. Succumbing to that need, she wrapped her arms around him and laid her head on his shoulder. His hand moved slowly up and down her back, soothing her.
"Ellie, I'm sorry I was so careless. I didn't mean to upset you."
"I shouldn't have snapped at you," she said, her cheek resting against the soft fabric of his shirt. "It wasn't your fault. Nothing that happened between Mark and me was your fault."
He absorbed the confirmation that something had been wrong in Ellie's marriage with a feeling of surprise. During his brief visit, she had seemed so happy, and he had assumed that she had settled into her husband's upper class lifestyle with ease. Obviously, she was concealing something from him.
"Do you want to talk about it?" he asked.
The only thing she wanted at that moment was to feel his arms around her, to savor this moment of physical contact. "No. I just want you to hold me for a few minutes."
He held her in his arms, waiting for her to break down completely, but that did not occur. When she finally drew back, he saw with surprise that her eyes were dry. Pulling away from him, she turned back toward the sink.
"I need to do the dishes."
"They can wait," he suggested. "There are only two bowls, two cups, and two spoons. We'll just be adding to them at lunchtime, so leave them. The garden is sort of like my therapy. Maybe it'll be good for you, too."
No longer in the mood to help him in the garden, she continued to gaze into the sink at the dirty dishes that would have immediately been washed by the maid back home; the maid Mark had insisted on hiring. He would have gone straight through the roof if they had been left in the sink any longer than it took to run the water and add the detergent. "I'm not sure I'll be of much help to you, Alan. Maybe you'd better go on without me."
He observed her face for a long moment and understood that she was withdrawing into her depression again. "Hey, you probably know more about gardening than I do," he said, cheerfully with an encouraging smile, a smile she had always found difficult to resist. "Come on, it'll be good for you."
She would much rather have retreated to her cubicle to be alone with her grief, but he seemed to want her in the garden with him, so she nodded her reluctant agreement even as she chastised herself for the negative thoughts he was having about her husband. Up until recently, her memories had been only of the good times they had shared, refusing to acknowledge that there had been bad times as well. Now, against her will, they were coming back to her with startling frequency. She tried to banish them from her mind, believing they diminished the value of her marriage, but with each one that was cast aside, another one slipped in to take its place. Maybe it would make her feel better to be outside in the fresh air and sunshine. Maybe it would give her an excuse to think about other things.
Unaware of the specifics of her emotional turmoil, he shoved his hand into his pocket as he walked toward the back door, and withdrew the key to the iron bars. "You want to get that bucket for me?" he asked as he inserted the key in the lock and pushed the bars open.
She picked up the bucket that sat on its place on the drier, and followed him through the door, then waited while he closed and locked it again.
The discarded sheets that had been removed from her bed the day she had arrived were still lying where he had placed them in the shade behind the water barrel. "I'm a little surprised they didn't blow away during the storm," he remarked as he returned the door key to the front pocket of his jeans.
Ellie looked down at the pile of sheets. Although the top layers had dried over the past couple of days, the ones underneath were still sopping wet and packed down from the weight of the water that had saturated them.
Reaching deeper into the denim trousers, Alan withdrew the pocket knife he carried, opened the sharp blade and gathered up the discarded sheets. Sitting down on the stoop, he used the blade to start the rips in the soiled linen, and began tearing them into ragged foot-long strips. Ellie set the bucket down, and assisted him in the ripping up of the sheets, understanding what he was going to use them for. When they had a sizable pile of strips, they gathered them up and took them to the garden to tie up the tomato plants.
"Looks pretty beat up," Ellie said as she looked through the fence at the plants that grew there.
He had severely neglected his garden since Ellie's arrival, preferring the time spent with her over the private time spent among his fruit-bearing plants, but if the plants were to continue to produce the fresh vegetables he had grown to love, he knew he would have to tend to their needs. "Yeah, most of it will be salvageable, though."
It was a beautiful, warm sunny day, without a cloud in the sky, a perfect day for being outside. Pausing at the entrance to the garden, he pulled the shirttails from beneath his waistband and unbuttoned his shirt, then removed it and draped it over one of the posts which supported the fence that surrounded the garden.
Ellie watched as he did this, wishing it was not considered indecent for women to engage in the same practice of stripping down to the waist in public. Even if it was an acceptable practice, she knew she would be unable to indulge, for her fair skin would blister, so she guessed it was just as well. Alan was just the opposite. Laboring in the sunshine in his garden, it was no wonder he had become tanned.
As he turned toward her to open the gate, she saw the bruise that darkened the hollow of his shoulder.
"Alan, you're bruised," she told him, reaching out to gently touch the discolored skin.
"Yeah, I saw it when I got up this morning. Must've been when the Rex hit me. I've had worse."
Lifting the gate latch, he pulled it open and they entered the large area that had been cultivated by the scientists who had previously lived there. It had taken a great deal of work on Alan's part to return the garden area to a useable condition, but he felt pride in a job well done, and his garden was healthy and productive. When they were inside, he pulled the gate closed behind them and securely latched it.
"What do you want me to do?" she asked, very much aware that this was his domain.
"Why don't you check out the squash and cucumbers, and see if any are ready to pick," he suggested.
Moving to the southern end of the garden, she waded into the tangle of vines that sprawled across the rich soil, stopping first at the squash plants heavily laden with yellow crook necked fruit, and began picking each one that was of suitable size. Some had grown large and tough, so she tossed them onto the grassy ground at the edge of the garden to be discarded. Unaccustomed to manual labor, she frequently had to pause to stand up straight to ease the stress on her back, and whenever she did, her eyes automatically sought out Alan, watching him as he worked, for this gardening interest was a side of him that she had never seen.
Moving slowly up and down each row, Alan inspected the tall stakes that had blown over in the storm the other day, reminding him of his neglect to what had become a cherished diversion from the rigors of scientific research. He stood them upright and hammered them back into place with the mallet he kept close by for that purpose. Next, he methodically tied up each of the tall vines, all of them sagging under the weight of the abundant fruit. When that task was completed, he removed the ripened red fruit, many of them weighing more than a pound, and placed them in the bucket with the squash and cukes that Ellie had picked.
Next, they moved on to the peppers and the eggplants, removing the ripened fruit, and pulling up and discarding any plants that were too badly damaged to produce any longer. Arranged in a tripod, the poles that supported the green beans had miraculously survived the storm. The pods were thick on their vines, and Ellie picked them while Alan moved on to inspect the corn.
The mature stalks of corn had not weathered the storm well, and many were leaning over. Others had fallen completely. Carefully, he righted the leaners and compressed the soil around their roots with his shoe to firm it up enough to support them. The ones that had fallen were checked for ripened ears, then pulled up and tossed over the fence. Briefly, he considered replanting, but it would take nearly four months for them to reach maturity, and he knew that his time of the island was nearing completion. He and Ellie would likely be gone by then. The smaller, waist high stalks had survived and would sustain them until they were ready to leave.
Huge gray-green watermelons were nestled in their patches of green leaves and vines, and Ellie's mouth watered at the thought of biting into one. "Why don't we have a watermelon for dessert tonight?" she suggested.
"Sure." Moving into the watermelon patch, Alan looked them over for a suitable candidate. Selecting one that appeared ripe, he used his pocket knife to slice away the vine, then lifted the heavy melon and carried it to the grassy area beside the fence, where the rest of the picked vegetables had been placed.
Next, he took up the hoe and cleared away the weeds that had sprouted in the fertile soil, while Ellie raked them up and deposited them on his compost pile near the garden.
When they finally returned to the house, Ellie placed the bucket of vegetables on the countertop, and began unloading it while Alan lowered the heavy watermelon on the worktable. The tomatoes were placed on an empty space on the counter top, the beans were dumped in one of the sinks to be washed, and the peppers and squash were placed in the vegetable drawer in the refrigerator.
"Corn is best cooked right off the stalk," Ellie stated. "We'll have corn and fresh green beans tonight along with those stuffed peppers. You want the corn left on the cob, or off?"
"You used to make corn that was scraped off the cob and fried with butter -"
"Yes. I can fix it that way, if you like."
She turned to the other sink and dumped the corn into it, thinking as she did that the work in the garden had been therapeutic, as Alan had claimed it would. She felt much better, and the bad thoughts in her mind had been pushed aside to make room for the current tasks that required her attention.
Alan watched while she began the task of shucking the corn and removing the silks, marveling at the fact that she had somehow managed to stay clean, even after working in the garden. He, on the other hand, was covered with dirt and grime from the plants, specifically the tomatoes, whose vines ejected a yellowish substance that clung to the skin, leaving yellow stains on his arms, back, and chest.
"I'm filthy," he told her. "I'm going to go upstairs and get cleaned up."
"Okay," she replied, in a considerably better mood than she had been when they had gone outside hours earlier. "Take your time. I'll be shucking corn and snapping beans for quite a while."
"I'll come back down and help you after I get finished."
�I�ll take care of it,� she told him. �You just rest up. Remember you said you wanted to take a nap.�
Leaving the kitchen, he climbed the stairs and selected some clean clothes, and carried them into the bathroom, remembering to turn over the sign he had made.
For the second time that day, Alan subjected himself to a cold water bath, washing away the sweat and dirt he had accumulated during his morning in the garden. After dressing once again, he took a couple of two gallon buckets up to the roof, and filled them with water from the rain barrels, then carried them down to the lavatory to replenish the water lost during his and Ellie's baths over the past few days.
When the barrel was full again, he stored the buckets under the small table that supported the small drug refrigerator, then went back downstairs. Ellie was in the kitchen rummaging around in the pots and pans, searching for a suitable skillet in which to simmer the corn. The cobs of corn, stripped of their husks and silks, were stacked on the countertop waiting to be scraped. She would snap the beans after lunch. The hamburger meat was thawing on the counter near the stove. His stomach rumbled in eager anticipation of a favored meal that he had not enjoyed since Ellie had left him.
He glanced at the watch on his wrist: Eleven thirty. Almost lunch time. Yawning with fatigue, he went into the front room and stretched out on the sofa to rest for a while before Ellie called him to lunch. Within minutes, he was sound asleep.
At twelve o'clock, Ellie went looking for him to ask what he wanted for lunch. She found him still on the sofa, facing away from the backrest, his arm folded under the throw pillow.
She smiled fondly as she knelt down beside the sofa to gently stroke away a lock of hair that had fallen across his eyes. "Well, I guess it won't hurt you to miss lunch," she said, softly. "You can make up for it at supper."
Her eyes were filled with love as she watched him for several minutes. Leaning forward, she pressed her lips against his forehead, then stood up and returned to the kitchen without waking him.
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