​     Twenty-five minutes earlier:

     Alison came out of the shower wrapped in a towel and her hair still pinned to the top of her head.

     "Got anything I can wear?" she asked.

     Cathy pointed to her closet. "I'm not sure we're exactly the same size, though. You could have Janet make you something. It would only take a second."

     "That's okay." Alison struggled to look through Cathy's closet and keep the towel around her body at the same time. Finally, she gave up and hung the towel on the knob of the closet door.

     She went to Cathy's dresser.

     "Which one's the underwear drawer?"

     "Second one down on the left."

     As Alison returned to the closet, Cathy said, "So..."

     "So...what?"

     "I need to know before we get back to the kitchen."

     "What?"

     "What was it like with Winston?"

     "Kathy!"

     "He was a plant, Alison!"

     "Oh you...that didn't all start until a month or so ago. Ooo, I love this dress. Can I wear it?"

     "Try it on."

     "Winston looked as old as Gramps, for one thing. I didn't feel that way about him for a long, long time, but I'll tell you something." She looked at herself in a mirror at what she'd just put on. A little big, but, overall, it worked. "I wasn't thinking about that the whole time I lived with the botanics."

     "Alison, please." 

     "Well, yeah, in one way I'm always thinking about it, I can't get away from it, but, no, other botanics came on to me, but I just couldn't get interested. I need a brush. Can I use this one?"

​     "Use the one in my top drawer. It's brand new."

     "You know what I really missed, though? I missed the love."

     "Oh Alison."  

​     "I missed Mom, and I missed you and Skip."

     "You can't even begin to imagine how much I missed you. It's not that I don't love my brother, but for the last year it's been nothing but Skip, Mom, and the internet, and Skip gets lost in his virtual worlds for days at a time, so..." 

     "Winston would come by my room after dinner to say good night, he'd joke and say he was coming by to tuck me in, but I came to love the quiet visits we'd have, then came to need them. I'd get so lonely sometimes, and sometimes there'd be a little fear and resentment in there, too. I'd be alone in my bed, and I'd just be trembling sometimes, but never after a visit with Winston. Finally, one night, he told me he wanted to kiss me, and I had to admit that I'd been thinking about him, too, but I could never really consider it because of, you know, the whole grandfather thing. Still, the more time we spent together, the more we came to love each other, until finally..." 

     "How was it?" 

     "It was fine, the first few times more than fine because we loved each other so much. I have no idea really what...I have absolutely no experience when it comes to...he seemed a little...uh...dry? Is that the word I'm trying to come up with? Parched? I chalked it up to his age. I chalked everything up to his age. Then just as...he...I began..."

     Sobs overtook Alison like a summer storm.

     "Alison..."

     "I loved him! I don't care what anybody says! If he hadn't come along, I...I'll miss him until..." 

     The sobbing stopped as quick as it'd started. Alison pulled tissue from a dispenser on Cathy's dresser to blow her nose. "I've been through a lot."

     "We all have. We're still going through it. That's what all of this is about. I love you so much. I'm starved. Let's see what Mom's dreamed up. I'll bet it's tuna sandwiches. She has no imagination whatsoever. You need to put some pants on."​  

                                                    CONTINUE