Magic

FOUR

Rachel awoke early from a fitful sleep. Soft gray light seeped into the room through the window. She struggled with the covers that were tangled around her, and pushed herself up in the bed so she could lean back against the headboard. She was exhausted. The mere idea of getting out of bed made her groan, and when she thought of what she would have to face, she almost crawled back under the covers. Not that it would have done her any good. She hadn’t gotten a moment’s rest during the night. Dreams had haunted her, one right after another, interweaving and intermingling until they couldn’t be separated. Even now emotions assailed her, panic chief among them.

The main theme of the dream marathon had been Addie. How were they ever going to get through what was ahead of them if her mother wouldn’t accept her help? It was one thing for Rachel to say she was going to take care of Addie. Accomplishing that task was going to be another thing altogether. Addie had never been the kind of woman who stood to the side, wringing her hands and letting other people run her life. She had always been so strong, so independent, such a dictator, running their lives like an admiral on a tight ship.

Rachel was a woman now and hardly the subservient, obedient little thing she had been in her youth. Because of Terence’s lack of responsibility, she had been forced to the role of leader. She had handled the job with the same grit and determination her mother had always shown. She knew from experience how to take charge of a situation.

But she didn’t know how to take care of Addie. It seemed completely unnatural to assume her mother’s role as head of the family and relegate Addie to second place. And she knew with a sense of dread that was like a lump of ice in her stomach that Addie wasn’t going to go down without a fight.

The first logical step was the appointment Rachel had scheduled with Dr. Moore. Perhaps he would be able to make Addie see reason. Hopefully Bryan had been right in saying Addie would be more composed in the morning, better able to understand and to cope with the changes that were inevitable.

A tiny flame of hope flared to life inside her, and it burned a little hotter as she continued to think about Bryan.

A strangely clear image of him waking up filled her imagination. His tawny hair would be tousled, his blue eyes bleary and heavy-lidded. He would rub his hand along the stubble on his strong jaw. She could almost smell his warm male scent, could almost feel his warm weight in the bed beside her. That warmth crept into her and swirled lazily through her body.

Rachel forced her eyes open wide and all but leapt from the bed.

“What are you doing, thinking that way, Rachel Lindquist?” she demanded, staring at her reflection in the cracked mirror. With her cheeks flushed and her hair a wild tangle around her head, she looked like a strumpet. A scowl turned down her pretty mouth. “What’s the matter with you? Bryan Hennessy is not now, nor will he ever be a part of your life. You are going to see to that first thing this morning.”

Whether he was a legitimate scientist or not didn’t enter into it. She couldn’t afford to pay him for his questionable services. She had things like doctor bills and rent to consider.

It still made her angry to think he would take money from Addie. Her mother was obviously not in full command of her faculties. This ghost business of hers was most probably some result of the Alzheimer’s. Rachel had read that some victims of the dementing illness experience hallucinations. This ghost, this “whimsy,” was probably just that-whimsy. The mother she remembered would no more believe in ghosts than she would believe in Santa Claus.

Rachel padded across the cold floor to the window for her first glimpse of the view from Drake House. Stepping over a large pair of battered loafers and around a bird cage, she peeled back one of the sheets from the glass. Fog obscured the view. She could hear the distant crash of the ocean, but she couldn’t see the lawn, let alone the cliff edge or the blue water beyond.

“How symbolic of my life at the moment,” she said dryly.

She turned away from the window and set herself to the task of preparing to face the day. With an eye toward pleasing her mother, she dressed in a conservative white blouse and a hunter-green jumper, painstakingly restored order to her hair, then turned to make the bed. That was when she found the rose.

A single yellow rose, slightly mangled, was peeking out from beneath the spare pillow she had hugged and punched and tussled with throughout the night. She picked it up by the end of the stem, staring at it in shock and disbelief as a petal dropped off and drifted to the bed.

Warmth surged through her before she could check it. A rose. How lovely. How thoughtful. How sweet. Then a blush bloomed on her cheeks and indignation rose up inside her. Bryan Hennessy had snuck into her room! He’d come into her room while she had been asleep.

Of all the low, strange things to do. How long had he stood beside the bed, looking at her? A minute? Five minutes? The very idea was mortifying! She might have been talking in her sleep or snoring or drooling, while this man she barely knew watched her!

Leaving the housekeeping for later, Rachel turned on her heel and stormed purposefully from the room to go in search of her midnight caller.

Bryan woke slowly, knowing Instinctively that he would be better off unconscious. All the clues were there as his mind reached cautiously up out of the depths of sleep: an ache here, the beginnings of a pain there. Still, his eyes came halfway open, and he rubbed his hand along his jaw, rasping a two-day growth of whiskers against his palm. He realty did have to remember to shave later.

The light in the billiard room was dim. It was early, he guessed, early enough for him to get to the bird cages before Addie did. Groaning, he pushed himself upright on the felt-covered slate of the old billiard table and swung his long legs over the edge. His body protested in more places than he cared to count.

“Maybe I’m getting too old for this kind of thing,” he reflected as he retrieved his spectacles from the cue-stick rack and put them on. He looked at himself then in the ornate mirror that hung on the wall, taking up a space equal to that of the billiard table. Even through a couple of decades worth of dust he looked bad. He looked like a vagrant. His shirt was rumpled beyond redemption, the tails hanging out of his equally wrinkled pants. His wilted magic rose drooped over the edge of his shirt pocket.

A shower, a shave, and clean clothes were the order of the morning, he thought as he slicked his disheveled hair back with his hands. But first, the bird cages.

He went into the parlor and unearthed the coffee can filled with bird seed Addie kept stashed behind a burgundy velvet fainting couch. Also behind the couch were a dozen unopened bags of bird seed and a foot-high stack of mail. Addie was notorious for stashing things away, like a squirrel hoarding nuts for the winter. And, like a squirrel, she often forgot where she had buried her booty. She never forgot her bird seed, however. She only forgot that she didn’t have a bird.

Bryan wondered what her frame of mind would be this morning. He hoped for Rachel’s sake Addie would be in one of her more normal periods. The two of them had a lot to talk over, a lot to settle between them, and not much time to do it. That was the one sure thing about Addie’s illness: it would progress. There would be no remission, no reprieve. What needed settling between mother and daughter needed settling as soon as possible.

“Not that I’m getting involved,” Bryan mumbled as he opened a wire cage and scraped the seed out of the little dish and into the coffee can. “I’m just here minding my own business, doing my little job.”

To distract himself from the inner voice that was trying to tell him differently, he began to sing softly to himself. “I got a ghoul in Kalamazoo-”

“Mr. Hennessy.” Rachel paused in the doorway of the parlor, ready to launch into her tirade, but the sight of Bryan brought her up short. He was crouched over a little bamboo bird cage-Just one of dozens of bird cages in the room-digging bird seed out of the tiny dish with one large finger.

“Addie gets upset if Lester doesn’t eat,” Bryan explained, his expression serious.

Rachel’s heart turned over in her breast. Not many men of her acquaintance would have catered to an old lady the way this one did. But then, he was getting paid for it, she reminded herself, steeling her resolve.

She marched across the room and thrust the bedraggled flower in his face. “Would you care to explain the meaning of this?”

Bryan rose slowly to his full height wincing absently at his stiff muscles. His gaze moved from the flower to Rachel and back again. He took a deep breath, pondering. His eyebrows rose and fell, and he pushed his glasses up on his nose.

“It’s a rose,” he said finally.

“I know it’s a rose,” Rachel said irritably. “Would you care to explain why I found it on my pillow this morning?”

She was staring up at him with fire in her violet eyes, as if finding a rose on her pillow were some horrible affront to her sensibilities. Bryan couldn’t stop the soft, thick warmth that filled his chest. She was lovely. There was no denying that. She had to have just combed her honey-colored hair back and arranged it at the nape of her neck, but already wisps had pulled loose to curl around her face. She was no doubt trying her darnedest to look indignant, but her features were too soft and angelic for her to quite pull it off.

“Mr. Hennessy,” she repeated, her tone clipped. It was the tone of an irate schoolteacher. “I’m waiting for an explanation.”

Bryan sighed a bit, dragging his gaze off the lush, kissable curve of her lower lip. He gave her a bright smile. “Is this a riddle? I do like a good riddle.”

“It’s an infringement on my privacy, and I don’t like it at all,” Rachel said, thumping the bedraggled flower against his chest. “I know I was sleeping in what is technically your room, but that doesn’t give you the right to just walk in-”

“I wasn’t in your room.”

“Then how did this get on my pillow?” she asked, shaking the flower for emphasis. Yellow petals floated to the floor.

Bryan’s broad shoulders rose. Behind his spectacles his blue eyes sparkled. He smiled his most engaging smile. “Magic?”

Rachel frowned in disapproval. “I don’t believe in magic, Mr. Hennessy.”

“My name is Bryan,” he corrected her soberly as he lifted the flower from her small fingers. “Everyone should believe in magic, Rachel,” he said. He held her gaze with his as he performed a little sleight of hand, making the rose disappear and a playing card appear in its place.

His eyes went wide. The trick had worked! He had his magic back!

Trying to swallow some of his excitement, he handed the queen of hearts to Rachel.

She looked at it and went on frowning, unimpressed. “Card tricks?”

“It’s the best I could do on short notice,” he said cheerfully. “I’m not the kind of fellow who keeps silk scarves tucked up his sleeve, you know. You must know, or you wouldn’t have thought I was the one in your room last night.”

“It had to be you,” Rachel insisted. “Who else could it have been?”

“Addie, I suppose.” He rubbed his chin in thought, and his eyes brightened suddenly. “Or Wimsey. Did you see anything, hear anything? Did you notice any change in the air temperature?”

“I don’t believe in ghosts, either,” Rachel said. “No sensible person does. Which is another reason I’ve come to see you. I’m going to have to ask you to leave, Mr. Hennessy.”

“Oh, dear.” Bryan sighed. “I thought we’d settled this. My deal was with Addie.”

“My mother isn’t… up to… making decisions like that,” Rachel said, avoiding the word competency and its legal ramifications. “Really, I think it’s quite cruel of you to play on her illness this way. I should probably report you-”

“Whoa there, angel,” Bryan said, a thread of steel in his soft voice and the glint of it in his eyes. His jaw hardened as he stared down at her, all traces of the innocuous magician gone. “Let’s get something straight here right away. I’m not taking advantage of Addie. I’m not taking a red cent from her, and I heartily resent that you think I would.”

“But you said you have a contract-”

“That’s right. Addie has agreed to let me stay here and search for the ghost.”

“There is no ghost,” Rachel said in exasperation. “Don’t you understand? Addie isn’t well. This ghost is just what she calls it-whimsy.”

Bryan stared at her, solemn and sad. “Just because you don’t believe in something doesn’t mean it isn’t true, Rachel. Trees fall in the woods all the time, and they make plenty of noise even though you’re not there to hear it.”

Rachel refused to listen. Her mind was made up. “My mother is a lonely old woman who has invented this whimsy to keep her company. There’s no reason for you to stay, Mr. Hennessy.”

“I’m going to start walking with a cane if you don’t stop that mister business,” Bryan grumbled, combing his hair back with his fingers. He took a deep, cleansing breath and started in again. “I am aware of Addie’s illness. Has it occurred to you what it must be like to know your mind is slipping away a little bit at a time and realize there’s nothing you can do about it? Have you considered what it must be like to have everyone in town think you’re some kind of lunatic and not believe a word you say?

“You may not believe in ghosts, Rachel, that’s your prerogative, but Addie believes in Wimsey, and I believe there’s every chance that he’s a genuine, bona fide entity. If I can prove that, I can give Addie a little bit of her dignity back. Don’t you think that’s worth having a nuisance like me around for a little while?”

Rachel couldn’t find any words for a rebuttal. She felt ashamed of herself for the things she had accused Bryan of. Worse, she felt a strange flutter of panic in her throat. If he had been a con man, she could have gotten rid of him. If he had been a crook, she could have sent him on his way and held on to her righteous anger. But he wasn’t a con man or a crook. He was a temptation. Her heart rate shifted gears at the realization.

She had wanted him gone not only to protect her mother, but to protect herself. There was something about Bryan Hennessy that attracted her beyond reason, and she couldn’t allow that. She was there because of Addie. Addie would need her undivided attention. She couldn’t waste her energy on an attraction to a man who made up silly songs and pulled playing cards out of thin air.

“What do you say, Rachel?” Bryan queried softly. He suddenly felt compelled-almost propelled-to step closer to her. It was too early in the day to question the wisdom of getting too near, so he gave in to the urge. He inched a little closer so she had to tilt her head back to look up at him. It would have been so simple to raise his hands and frame her face. The desire to do that and to lean down and kiss her swam through him.

His held breath burned in his lungs as he waited for her answer. Would she let him stay? Why did it matter so much? This trembling hope inside him had to do with something other than Wimsey, but he refused to think of what it could be. He told himself he needed this job right now because he needed something to focus on. It wasn’t that he was interested in getting involved with Rachel. Despite the argument his inner voice had put up the night before, he wasn’t convinced he could help her.

But as he looked down at her, at the uncertainty and the questions that filled her eyes, the need to have her say yes grew inside him to mountainous proportions. And the attraction both of them would rather have denied strengthened and tightened its hold.

“What do you say, Rachel?” he asked, his voice a whisper. “Will you give me a chance?”

Rachel swallowed hard. Her heart was pounding, her knees were wobbling. There was something more in his question than permission to work in the house. She read it instinctively as she stared up into his earnest blue gaze. She felt it in her heart, and fear cut through the haze of this strange desire. How could she cope with a man who believed in magic?

In some distant part of the house a door banged and voices sounded.

She couldn’t, Rachel whispered to herself. The last thing she needed was a man who believes in magic.

Bryan flinched slightly. He had heard the words spoken only in her soul, and they went straight to his heart.

Before he had a chance to wonder about it, the voices that had sounded faraway were suddenly sounding again-just outside the parlor. Then the doorway was filled with the substantial form of Deputy Skreawupp. The deputy hooked his thumbs behind the buckle of his belt, his arms framing his pot belly. He scowled, his frown reaching down his face nearly to his double chins. He bore a striking resemblance to Jonathan Winters but hadn’t nearly the same sense of humor.

Bryan raised his eyebrows and stepped back from Rachel, breaking the tension that had enveloped them both. Suddenly a hand reached around from behind the deputy and a finger thrust forth.

“There she is!” Addie’s voice was muffled by the deputy’s bulk. “She’s the one.”

The deputy lumbered forward, his dark gaze pinned on Rachel, whose expression was the very picture of stunned surprise. “All right, angel face, the jig’s up,” he said, his voice a flat, comical monotone that could have belonged to a detective in a movie from the forties.

“I beg your pardon?” Rachel squeaked, her gaze darting from the deputy to her mother and back.

Addie gave her a cold, hard look. “She’s the one, Officer. The intruder.”

“Mother!” Rachel exclaimed, aghast. Embarrassment flamed in her cheeks.

“She looks like my daughter, but she isn’t,” Addie said. “She’s an imposter. She broke in here last night and stole my dentures.”

“That’s low,” the deputy said, shaking his head reproachfully. “I’ve heard it all before. Desperate times and desperate measures. Makes me sick.”

“It’s not true!” Rachel insisted emphatically. “I am her daughter.” She turned toward Addie, her big eyes imploring. “Mother, how could you say that?”

“You’re not my daughter. My daughter left me,” Addie said flatly. She lifted her slim nose regally and gave a dismissing wave of her hand. “Take her away, Deputy. I’m going to go have my toast. Hennessy, to the kitchen.”

With that she turned on the heel of her green rubber garden boot and marched from the room, obviously expecting Bryan to follow her. Bryan cleared his throat and smiled pleasantly at the deputy. “I believe there’s been a small misunderstanding here.”

The deputy pulled out a pocket notebook and a pencil, prepared to take Bryan’s statement. “You were here last night?”

“Yes. I slept on the billiard table. I wouldn’t recommend it.”

Skreawupp halted his scribbling and pointed at Bryan with his eraser. “Don’t get cute with me, bub. I’ll clip you like a wet poodle.”

Bryan looked shocked. “Please, sir, there’s a lady present!”

“Look,” the deputy growled, his droopy shoulders slumping further. He gave up on Bryan, directing his questions to Rachel. “I am damned sick of being called out here on all kinds of wild goose chases. Are you Batty Addie’s daughter, or what?”

“I am Rachel Lindquist,” Rachel said tightly, her chin rising defiantly, her eyes burning with fury at the deputy’s attitude. “Would you care to see proof of identification?”

“Skip it.” He tucked his notebook back into his breast pocket. “I should have known this would be another waste of my valuable time. Last month she had me out here because she thought a commie sub had washed up on her beach. Before that she was being abducted by a religious cult. I don’t need it.”

“Well,” Bryan said in a tone that belied the anger in his own eyes, “we’ll all kick in a little extra on our taxes next time around to compensate.” He followed the deputy into the hall and pointed the way to the front door. “I’d show you out, but I have to go make the toast.”

“Hippie,” Skreawupp muttered, swaggering away. He turned and pointed a finger at Bryan. “I’ve got my eye on you, Jack.”

Rachel pushed past them both and strode stiffly down the hall, trying to find her way through the maze of rooms to the kitchen. She found rooms packed full of dusty old furniture, one room that was crammed full of old wooden church pews stacked one on top of another like cordword. Finally she pushed open the correct door.

The kitchen had once been sunny yellow, but the color of the walls had dulled over the years to a dingy ivory shade. It was a huge room with black and white tiles on the floor and an array of oversize appliances, one of which was an outdated wood-burning cookstove that had been left ostensibly for decorative purposes. Near the window was an oak table that had been haphazardly set with mismatched china. Addie sat at her place, her back straight, her hands folded in the lap of her flowered cotton housedress. She refused to look when Rachel entered the room.

“Mother, we have to talk,” Rachel said through clenched teeth.

“I don’t want to talk to you. Where is Hennessy? I want my toast.”

Rachel pulled out the chair beside Addie’s and sat down. She composed herself as best she could. She had read about the kind of behavior her mother was exhibiting, but comprehending a textbook and living the reality were proving to be two very different things. Logically, she knew Addie’s behavior stemmed from her illness. Realistically, she knew her mother was probably incapable of manipulation because manipulation required a great deal of careful thought and planning, and those were abilities Addie was losing.

Emotionally, she couldn’t help but feel hurt and humiliated and angry. She resented the way she’d been treated since coming to her mother’s house. She felt manipulated, because Addie had been a master at it in her day. It had been Addie’s machinations that had ultimately driven them apart. That was a difficult thing to forget now, when Deputy Skreawupp’s squad car was rolling down the driveway.

“Mother,” Rachel said, trying to speak calmly so she wouldn’t precipitate another catastrophic reaction like the one she had been greeted with the night before. “I’m Rachel. I’m your daughter.”

Addie glanced at her, annoyance pulling her brows together above her cool blue eyes. “Of course I know who you are.”

That was her standard reply when she wanted to cover up a lapse in memory, but this time it was the truth. She hadn’t recognized Rachel earlier, when she’d seen her in the upstairs hall. Now she was ashamed of having called the police, but it was over and done with and there was nothing she could do about it. She closed her eyes and turned away.

“Mother, I know about your illness. I’ve come here to help.”

“I’ve been a little forgetful recently, that’s all. I don’t need help.”

“You don’t need help or you don’t need my help?” Rachel asked, her anger lapping over the edge of her control like a pot threatening to boil over. She reined it in with an effort, but the toll it took came through in her voice. “Can’t we put the past behind us and deal with this together?”

The past. Addie looked at her daughter long and hard. There were gaps in her past that grew larger by the day, but she remembered word for word the fight that had taken place before Rachel’s departure from Berkeley. “You abandoned me. You abandoned everything we’d worked so hard for.”

“You forced me out!” Rachel responded without thinking, lashed out. All the hurt, the pain, the bitterness was there just under the surface. The only difference between herself and her mother was the amount of control she exercised over those feelings.

Rachel took a shallow, shuddering breath and pushed herself up out of the chair. The bread was sitting on the counter, and she methodically undid the twist tie and reached into the bag.

“We’re going to see Dr. Moore today to talk.”

Addie made a face. “He’s a Nazi. I don’t want anything to do with him.”

Rachel’s hands shook as she placed two slices of bread in the toaster. The urge to explode made her tremble from her emotional core outward. “We’re going.”

“You can’t tell me what to do, missy,” Addie began. Her movements very deliberate, she rose from her chair and pushed it back. A flush stained the whiteness of her cheeks. Her daughter was trying to wrest her independence away from her. Well, she wouldn’t take it lying down! She wouldn’t take it at all! Simply because she was getting older and a little forgetful didn’t give Rachel the right to waltz in and take over. “Who do you think you are, coming back here after all these years and thinking you can just walk in? Terence put you up to this, didn’t he? That no-account, whining little weasel.”

“Terence is out of this, Mother,” Rachel said softly, her throat tight with a building flood of emotion.

A triumphant gleam flared in Addie’s eyes. “That’s the first sensible thing you’ve done in years. I warned you about him. I told you-”

Suddenly, the kitchen door was flung wide open, and Bryan danced in, singing “I’ve Got a Crush on You.” Seemingly oblivious to the tension in the room, he grabbed Addie and danced her around, hamming it up outrageously as he sang the song to her. Addie blushed like a bride and giggled. Almost instantly her anger was diffused.

“Hennessy, you big Irish rascal,” she said, batting a hand at him as he left her by her chair and danced away. “You don’t know the meaning of decorum.”

Bryan halted in the center of the room, cleared his throat, and began to orate: “Decorum: conformity to the requirements of good taste or social convention; propriety in behavior, dress, et cetera; seemliness.”

“Did you catch any of that, Rachel?” Addie wondered dryly.

Rachel slammed the butter knife down on the countertop. “Your toast is ready.”

“Hennessy makes my toast. I won’t eat yours. You’re probably trying to poison me.”

“The thought has crossed my mind,” Rachel muttered to herself, then was assailed with guilt, even though no one else in the room had heard her and she hadn’t meant it.

“Let me handle this,” Bryan whispered, bending down near her ear as he lifted the plate of toast from the counter.

“No,” Rachel said forcefully. She grabbed the plate back out of his hand, nearly sending the bread to the floor.

The fact that Bryan, an outsider, could deal better with Addie was like salt on an open wound. And it was yet another reason she couldn’t allow him to stay. She and Addie had to square things between them now, or at least establish their new roles. She was the one who was going to be taking care of her mother, not Bryan Hennessy. Lord knew, men like Bryan Hennessy opted out the minute the going got rough.

He was Terence in spades-a dreamer, a coaster, a man who ignored reality with an idiotic grin on his face. Abruptly, the comparisons overwhelmed her and coupled with her need to take care of Addie.

“No. I don’t need you. We don’t need you,” she said, glaring up at him. “Take your stupid card tricks and your stupid roses and get out of here!”

Bryan backed away as if she’d slapped him. He really didn’t need this, he told himself, echoing Deputy Skreawupp’s line. He didn’t need the kind of trouble Rachel Lindquist was facing, and he sure as hell didn’t need to get kicked for his efforts to help.

Without a word he turned to leave the room, but the door from the kitchen to the hall wouldn’t budge. He put a shoulder up against it and heaved his weight into it, but it held fast. Drawing a slow breath into his lungs, he stood back and planted his hands at the waistband of his jeans. Behind him, he could hear life going on at the Lindquist family breakfast table. Rachel was trying to give Addie her toast, and Addie was refusing to touch it, her voice rising ominously with every word.

“I have to be the world’s biggest glutton for punishment,” Bryan mumbled to himself, shaking his head. He turned around, his sunniest smile firmly in place. “Did you say you’re going to town? I’ll ride along; I need to go to the library.”

“I didn’t invite you, Mr. Hennessy,” Rachel said. A perverse thrill raced through her at the thought that this man did not take no for an answer. He was like a human bulldozer. And that innocently pleasant face he presented the world was nothing more than a very distracting mask.

“No, you didn’t,” he said affably, taking his seat at the table. “What time do we leave?”

“Two,” she answered automatically, then halted her thinking process. Her eyes narrowed and her lush mouth thinned. She wasn’t going to be bullied. She wasn’t going to let Bryan Hennessy worm his way into her life. “Be sure to pack your toothbrush,” she said, rising and going to the stove to start a pot of coffee. “We’ll drop you off at the nearest hotel.”

“The truth is, it may already be too late, honey.” The memory of Dr. Moore’s gentle, fatherly voice played through Rachel’s mind as she sat behind the wheel of her decrepit Chevette.

“For all the research being done, we know very little about the disease. It progresses differently in different people, depending upon what areas of the brain are attacked. Some people lose the ability to read, while others can read but not comprehend what they’ve read. Some can understand a conversation in person but not over the phone. Some can remember everything that happened in their lives ten years ago, but they can’t remember what happened ten minutes ago.”

“She seems to remember everything that happened five years ago,” Rachel said ruefully.

Dr. Moore, who had the wisdom of decades in medicine and in dealing with people, had reached out to take her hand, knowing that small comfort might soften the blow. “But she may not be able to comprehend what happens today or tomorrow. I’m not saying it can’t happen, sweetheart. At this point in Addie’s illness, it’s anyone’s guess. I just want you to realize that you can’t pin your hopes on a reconciliation, because it might never come about.”

Rachel rested her forehead against the steering wheel and closed her eyes against a wave of despair. A reconciliation with Addie was the one thing she had wanted, needed, to pin her hopes on. What else was there? Certainly not a cure for Alzheimer’s; no one knew yet what caused the disease, let alone what would cure it.

“Are we going to sit here all day, or is there some other vile place you intend to force me to go to?” Addie asked imperiously.

“We need to stop at the drugstore,” Rachel said.

“I don’t want to go to the drugstore.” The drugstore was a confusing place, aisle upon aisle of items and millions of brands from which to choose. Addie never went there if she could help it. She gave Rachel a shrewd look. “I suppose you’re going to force me to go in there nevertheless.”

“You don’t have to go in. You can wait in the car if you like.”

Too distracted to notice her mother’s sigh of relief, Rachel started the engine and pulled out of the clinic parking lot and into the flow of tourist traffic. The fog that had blanketed the coastal village in the early morning had long since burned off. The day was bright with a blue sky. Anastasia’s quaint streets were clogged with people browsing and window-shopping and admiring the carefully restored Victorian architecture of the town. Through the open windows of the car came the sounds of the traffic, the calling of gulls, and the distant wash of the ocean against the shore.

It all seemed comforting, Rachel thought. So normal and sane. She could easily grow to love Anastasia. Unfortunately, she would never have the chance. She had a job waiting for her in San Francisco when the fall school term began. A call to a former vocal instructor who was now an administrator at the Phylliss Academy of Voice had landed her a position. As soon as she had sorted out Addie’s affairs, and they had sold Drake House, they would be moving south to the city. Anastasia would be a place to visit on weekends if they were lucky.

By some small miracle of fate there was a parking spot opening up in front of Berg’s Drugstore just as Rachel piloted her car across the intersection at Fourth and Kilmer. She pulled into it and cut the engine.

“I’ll only be a minute,” she said as she grabbed up her purse and slipped out of the car.

Addie smiled serenely, her eye on the keys dangling from the Chevette’s ignition.

“So, Addie has a daughter,” Alaina Montgomery-Harrison mused, seizing instantly upon the one significant thing Bryan had said since she’d walked outside her office with him to enjoy the sun. She leaned back against the sun-warmed side of the building that housed her law practice, her smart red Mark Eisen suit a startling contrast against the white stucco. Her cool blue eyes studied her friend intently. “What does she look like?”

Bryan shrugged uncomfortably. He stuck his nose into one of the library books he’d borrowed on the history of the area and mumbled, “Like a woman.”

Alaina gave him a look. “Oh, that narrows it right down. So she falls somewhere between Christie Brinkley and Roseanne Barr?”

“Hmmm…” Glancing up with bright eyes and a brighter smile, Bryan attempted to derail her from her line of questioning. “How’s my beautiful goddaughter?”

“She’s perfect, of course,” Alaina said, idly checking her neatly manicured nails. “What a lame attempt to throw me off the scent, Bryan, really. Why so secretive?”

“I’m not being secretive,” he protested. “There’s simply not that much to tell. She’s Addie’s daughter. She’s young, she’s pretty, they don’t get along.” She cried on my shoulder, and I haven’t wanted to kiss a woman so badly in ages, he added silently, turning the pages of his book without seeing them.

“That’s putting it in a nutshell. You should get a job with Reader’s Digest. Think of the money they could save on paper if they had you to condense books for them,” Alaina said. She reached out and gently closed the book Bryan was using as a prop to evade her questions. Her gaze searched his face with undisguised concern. “Where do you fit in at Drake House?”

Bryan held his expression carefully blank. “I’m there to find a ghost.”

“And?”

“Sometimes I really despise your keen insight,” he complained. Alaina was characteristically unmoved by the remark. He heaved a sigh. “All right. It’s a tough situation. If I can in some small way help Rachel and Addie-”

At that instant a car horn blared and a rusted orange Chevette squealed around the corner. People on the sidewalk leapt back, shrieking as a wheel jumped over the curb and a trash can went sailing. Bryan’s eyes rounded in horror as he caught sight of the driver.

“Addie!” he shouted, dropping his books and taking off after the car.

The Chevette veered across the street, eliciting a chorus of horn-honking from cars in the oncoming lane, and jumped the curb into Kilmer Park. People and pigeons scattered. Addie stuck her head out the window of the car, waving and shouting for people to get out of her way.

Bryan caught up with her as she cranked the steering wheel and began driving in circles around the statue that immortalized the late William Kilmer, an obscure botanist who had grown up in Anastasia and gone on to relative anonymity. He jogged alongside the car until he managed to get the passenger door open, then he executed a neat gymnastic movement and swung himself into the moving vehicle. All he had to do then was reach over and switch the ignition off. The Chevette rolled to a halt.

Bryan heaved a huge sigh of relief. The park was full of tourists now gathering around to satisfy their morbid curiosity. Addie might have ended the earthly outing for any one of them and sent them on to a more permanent sort of trip.

“There’s something wrong with the brakes,” Addie grumbled, scowling, completely unwilling to admit she had forgotten how to work them.

Rachel ran up beside the car, her face as pale as milk. Bryan climbed out, rounded the hood, and took her by the arm. He dangled the keys from his forefinger, then closed his fist gently over them as he guided Rachel a short distance away.

“Addie isn’t allowed to drive,” he said softly, managing a half smile at the look on her face.

Rachel was too petrified to speak. She merely stared up at him, horrified at what had happened and what might have happened.

“It’s all right,” Bryan said, easily reading her feelings. “No one was hurt.”

Without thinking, he leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to her lips. Golden sparks of electricity burst through him, stunning him.

“I’ll drive us home,” he said breathlessly, not quite certain how he had managed to speak at all. His heart was pounding like a jackhammer.

Dazed, Rachel lifted a hand to her lips. He’d kissed her. He’d kissed her and immediately the icy terror that had filled her had melted away. She knew she was supposed to tell him he wasn’t coming home with them, but she couldn’t begin to form the words in her head. For one of the few times in her life she was rendered completely speechless. It was amazing.

“We’ll go home. You can have a nice brandy and lie down for a while,” Bryan went on as he led her back to the car. “Dinner is at seven.” He opened the door to the backseat and helped her in, then leaned down into the open window. “By the way, we dress for dinner at Drake House.”

“Dress?” Rachel questioned dumbly.

“Hmmm. Black tie or the closest you can come.”

“You’re serious?” she said, trying to read his expression, “You’re not joking?”

Bryan smiled. “Quite and no. At any rate,” he said, his eyes crinkling attractively at the corners, “I’m hardly ever more serious than when I’m joking.”

He straightened then and took the ticket Deputy Skreawupp handed him without saying a word. His look warned the deputy to follow suit. Opening the driver’s door, he slid into the Chevette beside Addie, saying, “Scoot over, beautiful, and let a man handle this machine.”

Addie giggled and punched his arm. “You big Irish rascal, you.”

He piloted the car slowly out of the park, leaning out the window, waving and smiling to the crowd as if he were driving in a parade. Addie joined in his enthusiasm and leaned out her window, throwing out old Life Savers she had found in her handbag.

And in the backseat, Rachel sat staring blankly into space, marveling over the power of a simple little kiss.