Magic (6 page)

“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.