up the costume between them and herded them all down the hall. "Thanks, I'd love to wear a sheet."
Hayden, trying to recover, pointed to it. "Technically she's naked."
Gwen did not want to be part of a conversation about what did and didn't constitute virginity, but… "Who's naked?"
"Venus!" Bryan pointed at Hayden. "Even I know that one. It’s where she's standing in that giant clam."
Jason’s eyes lit up. "With all the nymphos around her?"
Gwen watched Hayden recover as he got back on familiar footing, the guy who knows stuff, the one you call when you’re on a game show and the categories are history, art, science, math, and things Oprah says.
He cleared his throat. "Actually, it’s Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, and I think you mean nymphs."
The boys were really expanding their horizons… clamshells, nymphos, Botticelli. "Well, never say a liberal education isn’t worth the money."
"She’s naked." Jason shrugged. "It’s not like a guy forgets that kind of thing."
Bryan lifted a hand to Jason. "Burned into our retinas."
Jason high-fived him. "In a good way."
She smiled at the whole dopey lot of them. "I'd hate to think there were things burned badly into your retinas. Come on, I'll follow you to the frat house, and we'll get you in." If she'd had sons she'd want three just as wonderful and ridiculous as the boys.
The kitchen was surprisingly well-equipped. It shouldn't have surprised her since it supported a nearly hundred member house. She'd been kabobing, stuffing grape leaves, crumbling feta, and smelling the now overly familiar aroma of lamb for what felt like hours. It was all made oddly perfect in a Greek house with her flowing white robe, belted with a gold girdle and matching a gold laurel leaf crown in her hair. If Venus cooked, and God knew women who were born with those kind of breasts on the half shell, did not cook... but if Venus did cook, they might have been friends.
Just beyond the kitchen’s swinging doors, she could hear the sounds from the main room. There'd been kegs rolled in the back door and through the kitchen for a good half-an-hour. And at some point in the late afternoon, a pledge shared part of a counter top with her as he sliced a mountain of fruit. It went into a new, she was told, plastic garbage can. She did not want to know what that was about. They were mostly underage she was sure, and the house was dry by every college standard, so she was going to distance herself from all things stirred in a garbage can. She couldn't be liable based on providing lamb. She just hoped no one got hurt.
She looked up from her kabob skewers to see her mother swing through the door. "Gwennie, they said I’d find you here."
"Who said you’d find me here?"
"The boys. They are dears. Can I help?"
"Is it another parent's weekend?"
"Unofficially. I came to check on my girls."
"You saw Missy?"
"Had lunch with her."
Gwen felt a squeeze of pain. She’d been left out again, out of her own daughter's life. Well, she was done worrying about it. Okay, soon she'd be done worrying about it. Dammit, she was never, ever going to stop worrying about it.
Ellen must have seen the sulk on her face and countered with her own sulk, delivered with far more skill. "She'll be fine. You'll be fine. Who the hell cares about me?"
Gwen walked around the island and hugged her. "Hi, Mom."
Ellen sniffed. "Lord, you smell like Mr. Telekronos. Now, what can I do?"
"I'm good right now, but in about an hour everything will be up, and I'll need to plate and stock the buffet table. I'll need every free hand then."
"Good, because Bryan's taking me to get a costume. He said I could come as a grandmother, but I said I’m not that kind of girl."
"Good for you. Get something sexy, Mom, like Lady Godiva or Britney Spears." Gwen could see her childhood pass before her eyes, the too blonde hair, the tricked-out cleavage. Her mother might not have changed, but thank god she’d had to slow down a little during the senior years.
"Lady who?"
Of course her mother would know who Britney Spears was. "Find an appropriate costume and come back in an hour. How’s that?"
"Yeah, Mom, I was actually kidding about the Britney Spears costume."
"You were actually sarcastic, and I’m not Britney Spears. I’m Hannah Montana, although I don’t have panties on, and that’s something Britney did, wasn’t it? In that cab that I