Magic (16 page)

She yawned, stretched, and scratched her arm. Snuggling against Bryan’s hard shoulder, she said coyly, “Thank you for the flowers. I loved them.”

Bryan turned his head and kissed her temple. “And I love you.”

Rachel’s heart jumped. She couldn’t get used to hearing him say that. She was afraid to say it back for fear the spell would be broken somehow, afraid she would be putting too much pressure on him, expecting too much of him.

She sifted a handful of petals through her fingers and scratched absently at her left hip. “Making love in flowers is the most romantic thing I can think of.”

“Flowers are romantic,” Bryan agreed absently. He shoved the sheet down and stared, frowning at his belly as he scratched it. “Ants aren’t.”

“Ants?” Rachel questioned, scratching her shoulder.

“Hmmm, yes,” he said. “It seems we have a bed full of them. They must have ridden in on the flowers,” he ventured, but his explanation was lost on Rachel, who shrieked and leapt from the bed, shaking herself like a wet dog. He watched her grab up her robe, thrust her arms into the sleeves, and bolt for the door.

“Have a nice shower!” he called, laughing, then he found a scrap of paper and a pen on the nightstand and he wrote himself a note—Beware of Ants.

Rachel stood outside the door to her mother’s bedroom, as nervous as she had been at fifteen when she had needed to ask permission to go on her first date. She was freshly showered, debugged, and looked as presentable, in her black dirndl skirt and lavender cotton blouse, as any voice teacher she had ever encountered. Her hair was secured in its knot at the back of her head and only a few tendrils had as yet escaped to frame her face.

It occurred to her that she shouldn’t have had to go to such pains to see her own mother. A mother wasn’t supposed to care about appearances. A mother was supposed to be accepting of her children whether they were in rags or designer wear. But it was that line of thinking that had caused the problems between her and Addie in the first place, so Rachel stopped that train of thought before it ran out of control.

It was a new day, a day for beginnings. She felt fresh and strong, rested despite the precious little sleep she’d had. Spending the night in Bryan’s arms had revitalized her, recharged her. She was brimming with energy and ready to take on whatever the day had in store for her. As she had showered the flower petals and ants from her skin, she had come to the conclusion that she would redouble her efforts to solve the problem with Addie.

Rachel raised her hand to knock at the door, but it suddenly fell open as if someone on the other side had jerked it back. Addie, however, was standing across the room in a yellow flowered housedress, scowling into her mirror as she struggled with the task of braiding her hair. She crossed one strand over, twisted it around again, pulled another across, then swore and let go the entire mess to start again.

It was clear to Rachel that her mother had either forgotten how to braid or the message from her brain to her hands was getting lost somewhere along the way; apraxia was the term the doctors used for it. In either case, it was sad, and it reminded Rachel yet again of how their roles were being reversed. She could easily remember Addie painstakingly plaiting her long hair on her first day of kindergarten, how she had sat very still on the wire vanity stool in her mother’s bedroom, staring wide-eyed into the mirror as her mother’s fingers had magically tamed her wild locks.

“Mother?” she asked softly, forcing herselt to step into the room before her memories could steal her courage from her. “Can I help you with that?”

Addie stared at her daughter, wondering just how much Rachel had seen. “Don’t you know how to knock?”

“It was open.”

Addie muttered, “Wimsey. Meddling old coot.”

Rachel ignored the odd remark. Taking a brush from the cluttered dresser, she went to stand behind her mother and began working on the hair that had once been as golden as her own, but had now paled to silver.

“I can do my own hair,” Addie said, staring at their reflections in the mirror.

“I know you can. I just want to help. Like you used to help me.”

Their gazes met in the glass, and Addie’s heart lurched. She had done everything for Rachel. She had been both mother and father. She had raised her daughter without help from anyone. She had held down two jobs at a time and had never run out of energy or drive. Now that daughter was standing behind her, braiding her hair because she suddenly wasn’t able to manage so simple a task herself.

“I believe I’ll wear it down today,” she said, moving away from the dresser. In the mirror she could see Rachel standing with her hands still raised, the hairbrush in one, reaching out toward her. Her daughter’s eyes were filled with hurt. Rachel let her arms fall to her sides as Addie moved another step out of reach.

She found a black sweater tying at the foot of the bed and put it on inside out. “I’m going down to breakfast. Hennessy should have the toast done by now.”

Rachel stood by the dresser, twisting the hairbrush around in her hands. Every ounce of that newfound strength had drained out of her. “Why won’t you let me help you?” she asked softly, hurting in a way that is peculiar to mother-daughter relationships—a deep, sharp hurt, like a needle piercing her heart.

“I don’t need any help,” Addie replied, squaring her bony shoulders with stubborn pride. “Not from you or Wimsey or anyone. I have managed quite well on my own for some time now, as you well know.”

With that she clomped out of the room, her boots thumping on the wood floor. Rachel closed her eyes and counted to ten, wrestling her temper and her tears under control.

“No luck?”

Startled, she looked up to find Bryan standing not two feet away. She shook her head, at a loss for words. She wasn’t sure she would have trusted herself to say them anyway. Her emotions were running dangerously close to the surface, muddied and churning like floodwaters. She had the strange feeling that if she let them out, they would swell up and drown her.

“You’ll work it out,” Bryan said gently, taking the hairbrush from her fingers and setting it aside. He gathered her into his arms and hugged her close, pressing soft kisses to her hair. “It’ll all work out. You’ll see.”

Rachel let her hands sneak inside the old cardigan he wore unbuttoned. Her arms slid around his lean waist. She nuzzled her cheek against his Chicago Cubs T-shirt, taking comfort in the solid muscle beneath the soft gray fabric. She noticed he didn’t say “give it time.” Time was not on their side. A little bit of Addie slipped away with every grain of sand in the hourglass. But he offered her his strength and his comfort, and she loved him for that.

“Here now, enough of this,” Bryan said, standing her back from him. There was a devilish twinkle in his eye. Rachel realized with a start that he was wearing a bedraggled black top hat. “I know you can’t get enough of me, but I won’t spoil you—unless you beg me to,” he added with a wicked grin.

“Conceited man,” she said, fighting back a chuckle. “I should beg you to have your head examined. Why are you wearing that ridiculous hat?”

“Ridiculous?” he questioned, highly offended. “I’ll have you know this hat was given to me by Anton Figg-Newton, master magician of England.”

He rolled the hat down his arm Fred Astaire–style and presented it to her upside down.

“Just reach in there and see what you find, girlie.”

Cautiously, Rachel leaned over and peered into the hat, narrowing her eyes in suspicion. “There’s nothing in there.”

Bryan made a great show of looking into the hat himself, turning it over, and shaking it.

“I think you got taken on that one, Merlin,” Rachel quipped.

A gleam came into Bryan’s eye. “Oh, ye of little or no faith. I merely forgot to say the magic word.”

“The magic word,” Rachel parroted flatly. She crossed her arms over her chest and tapped her foot in mock impatience.

“Marshmallows!” he intoned dramatically, and tapped the brim of the hat three times with the fingers of his left hand. This time he reached inside, and when he withdrew his hand, he was holding a brooch of intricately worked silver filigree set with a translucent stone of deep purple.

Rachel’s mouth dropped open as he handed it to her. It was an exquisite thing that looked to be very old and very valuable. The stone gleamed as it caught the morning light that streamed in through the window.

“Bryan, it’s beautiful,” she whispered reverently. “Where did you find it?”

“In my hat. Jeez, Rachel, I think your memory is worse than mine.”

“Really,” she insisted, fingering the brooch lovingly. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Is it an heirloom or something?”

He cleared his throat and looked uncomfortable. “I came across it in a country that frowns on exporting such things. You’re probably better off not knowing.”

She gave him a suspicious look, wondering, not for the first time, just who Bryan Hennessy really was.

“Legend has it that when a man gives this brooch to the lady of his heart, shell love him into eternity,” he said, taking the gift from her and pinning it carefully to the throat of her prim blouse. The stone picked up and intensified the color of her eyes, making Bryan’s breath catch. A crooked, self-deprecating smile tugged up one corner of his mouth. “It’s a custom also known as hedging your bets.”

“Thank you,” Rachel whispered, smiling at him. She rose up on her toes and kissed his cheek. Practically in the blink of an eye he had lifted her mood out of the doldrums. He was amazing and wonderful, and if she could tell him nothing else, she could at least tell him that. “What an extraordinarily sweet, bizarre man you are.”

Remarkably, he blushed, and Rachel’s heart swelled a little more with love for him. Grinning, she plunked his magic hat upon his head, grabbed his hand, and pulled him toward the door.

“Come on, Hennessy. Let’s go get some breakfast. I’m starved.”

“What’s your hurry?” Bryan asked, patting her bottom with a loving hand. “Ants in your pants?”

“Very funny.”

They sauntered down the grand staircase together, hand in hand, smiling at each other the way only lovers do, arguing amicably over how they would spend the day. Rachel insisted there was no time for anything other than marking prices on the antiques that would be offered at the tag sale in two days. Bryan insisted there was more than enough time for a stroll along the beach. But as they neared the kitchen, he broke off in mid-rebuttal and held a finger to his lips, suddenly alert to something going on in the next room. Together they inched toward the door, listening.

“You’re a meddling, bone-headed Democrat, Wimsey,” Addie said. “Just keep that long nose of yours out of my affairs. I don’t need you. I don’t need anybody.”

There was silence then. Bryan held his breath as he tried to tune in, hoping for anything—a sigh, a vibration in the air, anything.

“Keep your opinions to yourself, you blithering British idiot,” Addie snapped.

The rattling of pots and pans blocked out whatever response she might have gotten, and Bryan frowned in frustration. Rachel rolled her eyes in impatience.

“She’s just talking to herself,” she insisted in a harsh whisper.

Bryan ground his teeth. If only he had enough equipment to monitor every room in the blasted house. He had chosen to concentrate on the study and the foyer. Of course, Rachel wouldn’t have believed Wimsey was in the kitchen if the ghost had walked up to her and kissed her on the nose.

“This is ridiculous,” Rachel muttered. “Every sensible person knows there’s no such thing as ghosts.”

As soon as the last word left her mouth, the kitchen door swung inward so quickly neither of them had a chance to brace themselves, and they both went sprawling across the cracked linoleum. On the far side of the room Addie stood staring at them, a gray cloud billowing around her.

Bryan’s eyes widened at the sight. “An apparition,” he whispered.

“Apparition nothing,” Rachel said, clambering to her feet. “The kitchen’s on fire!”

Smoke rolled out of the old cookstove, an appliance that hadn’t seen action since Thomas Edison was in short pants. Rachel grabbed her mother’s hand and jerked her away from the thing while Bryan, who had scrambled to his feet, grabbed the fire extinguisher and blasted the blaze with white foam.

“Hennessy! You’re ruining my eggs!”

“Mother,” Rachel said between her teeth, “you were ruining the house. That stove doesn’t work.”

“Of course I know that,” Addie grumbled, but there was uncertainty in her eyes as she looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time.

“You should have waited for us to come down,” Rachel said, her temper rising like steam in a pressure cooker. Why couldn’t Addie accept her help? Was she going to cling to that damned stubborn pride of hers until she burned the house down around them?

Addie bristled like a cat. “I don’t take orders from you, missy!”

She hauled back to punch Rachel on the arm, but Bryan caught her fist in his hand and pulled her into his arms.

“Come on, beautiful. Let’s go dance in the fresh air while Cinderella cleans up the kitchen. Maybe we’ll run into Wimsey.”

“Pompous, presumptuous pinhead,” Addie said with a snarl, though it wasn’t clear whether she was referring to her invisible friend or to Bryan. She dug the heels of her rubber boots into the floor and gave him an amazed look. “Why on earth are you wearing that ridiculous hat?”

“There’s a rabbit in it,” Bryan said, coaxing her toward the door as Rachel began flinging pots off the stove in a rage. “I thought you might want hasenpfeffer for breakfast.”

“You’re an idiot, Hennessy,” Addie declared, but followed him out of the room nevertheless.

“I’ll second that,” Rachel grumbled, poking at the debris inside the cookstove with a tongs. “Ghosts. What intelligent man with degrees from two major universities believes in ghosts? What intelligent woman falls in love with a man who believes in ghosts? Ghosts. The man must have been hit over the head with something when he was young.”

She bent over to look inside the oven, and an enamel pot tipped off the cooking surface and bounced off her skull. She stared at the pot as it rolled across the floor, sure she had knocked it over during her initial burst of fury. Dismissing it, she turned her attention to the mess her mother had made.

“Oh, no …” she said on a long groan.