No Place Like Home (13 page)

“
Then what happened?”

“
The bank shut off the boiler last winter to save money and didn’t bother to drain the plumbing. The pipes froze and burst, and when spring came, there was water all over everything.”

Kaye winced at the thought of gallons of water trickling through the walls and ceilings. “That was pretty idiotic.”

“
It happens. Most of the time, one vice-president doesn’t know what the others are up to, so a perfectly saleable house becomes a ghetto in one fast winter.”

“
Nora doesn’t know about this, does she?” she said slowly.

He shook his head. “And she isn’t going to know, if I can help it.”

“
You said you’d bring her over next spring.”

“
And next spring I’ll come up with another excuse. Why do you think I came myself instead of bringing her over to take care of the window? If she saw her precious house like this, she’d go straight downtown and murder the president of the bank, just to make her point.”

“
I’d be cheering her on,” Kaye said. She kicked idly at the broken plaster. The dust from the ceiling had settled into the infinitesimal cracks in the flagstone blocks. It would take a week with a fire hose to scrub it out, she thought.

“
Actually,” Brendan said, with an attempt to be scrupulously fair, “a lot of the damage you see wasn’t caused by the water, but by the repairmen. The bank finally concluded that a house without a heating plant isn’t in demand, so they replaced the whole thing. But they didn’t worry much about aesthetics. Wait till you see the upstairs.”

“
I’m not certain I want to.” But she followed him up the wide stairway, past a rose-point window that must, she thought, be gorgeous in daylight.

He was right. There was scarcely a room that would be habitable without major work. Ugly brown water stains scarred the ceilings. Wallpaper was falling. Carpets had been pulled up and holes sawed in floors to install new pipes.

“
The bulldozer is sounding better and better,” she said.

“
It would be criminal,” Brendan said. “It’s still structurally sound—the foundation is in wonderful shape. But try selling this baby. No one wants it.”

“
What about you, Brendan?”

“
I’m afraid the only future I can see for this house is if someone cuts it into apartments. At least it would earn some of the costs back.”

“
I meant that you might want it for yourself. You said you liked Victorian houses.”

“
Victorians, yes. Life projects—no, thanks.”

“
You just don’t like to be tied down,” Kaye accused. “You want to be free to do whatever strikes your fancy.”

“
I am not your father, Kaye. Don’t tar me with the same brush.”

She ignored the warning in his voice. “Doesn’t avoiding responsibility get a little old, Brendan?”

He looked for a moment as if he’d really like to slap her. Then he said, “It hasn’t yet. If it ever does, I’ll let you know.” He vanished down the hall with his board.

Kaye wandered into a big bedroom. The light fixtures were fantastic, she thought. And the fireplace that was nestled into one corner was surrounded with jade green ceramic tile and topped by a golden oak mantel.

What a shame, she thought, that such a lovely house had been reduced to such a state. Another year and it might not be repairable at all. Nevertheless, even in this state of disarray, the house had something of Nora’s own personality—an air of dignity that was no less real for being battered.

Kaye walked through room after room. She wasn’t quite sure when she started counting them and assigning a use to each one. But when she came back into the biggest bedroom, she found herself visualizing her choice of wallpaper, her favorite shade of curtains, and the tall four-poster bed that she had always wanted to own, placed just so against the far wall, so that two people could snuggle there and watch a dying fire...

It reminded her of what she had come in to ask Brendan in the first place, before he had started to act bizarre and she had forgotten everything else. She sought him out in the sun porch, where he was fitting the board into the empty spot where the pane of glass had been. The missing pane, she thought, felt almost like a toothache did—a nagging soreness that was always there, reminding her that something was badly wrong under the surface.

“
Brendan,” she announced. “This is a wonderful house.”

“
I know,” he muttered. “You think I should buy it, restore it, and live happily ever after in it, spending the rest of my days patching up roofs and pipes.”

“
Not exactly.”

He looked over his shoulder warily, and when he saw the mulish expression on her face, he groaned. “You’re doing it again, Kaye.”

“
What?” she demanded. “Do you think I’m falling blindly in love with another unsuitable house?”

“
You took the words right out of my mouth.”

“
But I’m not blind to its faults. I know it’s got all kinds of things wrong with it. On the other hand, you said yourself that it’s solidly built, and all the structural things are fine.”

“
I may have said that, but—”

“
Look at the space. Look at the high ceilings. Look at the woodwork!”

“
Look at the damage.”

“
There is that, of course. But it can all be fixed, and when it’s finished it will be a beautiful house again—a house to be proud of. I’m sure Graham will think it’s worth the investment.”

“
Let me get this straight, Kaye. Are you telling me that you plan to ask Graham to buy this house and finance a renovation?”

“
Why shouldn’t I? He is my fiancé.”

“
Oh, I don’t know,” he drawled. “I just thought you might possibly be doing some thinking about changing that.”

Anger made her stammer just a little. “Get this straight, Brendan McKenna. One lousy kiss doesn’t mean that I’m questioning my engagement.”

“
You should do yourself a favor. Before you settle down to Graham, you should check out all your options.”

“
And do what? Move in with you? Even if I wasn’t going to marry Graham, I’m not about to start playing house with you, Brendan. You’re not my type. Have I made myself clear?”

He was standing with arms folded across his broad chest, staring out the window into the darkness. He said finally, “Perhaps I should remind you, Kaye, that you weren’t invited to play house with me.”

It made her furious. “Pardon me for misunderstanding,” she said with awful politeness. “Of course I should have realized you wouldn’t tie yourself down to any woman. She might interfere with your fishing!”

“
She might try,” he agreed silkily. “I think it’s past time to go home, before this quarrel goes any further. You’re tired and emotionally unstable, and you’re making no sense at all.”

They didn’t exchange a word all the way back to the plaza where Kaye had left her car that afternoon. “Would you like me to follow you home?” Brendan asked.

“
No, thank you,” she said stiffly. “I wouldn’t want to trouble you.”

He nodded. “I’d think about that house a great deal before you talk to Graham about it,” he said.

She wanted to turn away as if she hadn’t heard, but curiosity interfered. He sounded quite matter-of-fact about it now—not angry at all—and she wondered why.

He seemed to read the question in her eyes. “I don’t believe it’s Nora’s house that you want at all,” he said. “I think you want an excuse—a long-term project that will postpone the wedding.”

She gasped. “That is without a doubt the most ridiculous thing anyone has ever said to me.”

“
Think about it,” he advised, and his car sped away.

Kaye’s apartment was bleak and lonely. She didn’t want to go in, she thought as she turned the key. She didn’t want to be alone.

Omar came to greet her, but even his welcoming purr had an accusing quality. She sat on the couch in the darkness and stroked the cat’s soft white fur and thought about what Brendan had said.

“
He’s absolutely crazy,” she told Omar. “To think that I would want to postpone my wedding—to suggest that I might not know what I’m doing...”

It made her so furious that she squeezed the cat, who protested loudly. “Sorry, Omar,” she said. “But the amateur psychologist has it all wrong.”

Nora Farrell’s house would not have appealed to her at all, Kaye thought, if she had seen it earlier. It was only after a fruitless search that she was willing to even consider such a project. If, to have the grand house that they wanted, she and Graham had to delay their wedding for a few months, then they would do that. It didn’t make it an ideal solution, but it would be worth it in the long run.

Nora Farrell’s house had been a home once, and it could be again. It had been beautiful once, and it could be again. With, she told herself honestly, a great deal of work, and money, and time.

She sat there in the dark for nearly an hour, thinking about the house. Away from its atmosphere of decayed charm, and restored to a more realistic frame of mind, she finally admitted the truth to herself. Unless he fell in love with it as she had—a prospect that even Kaye thought was less than likely—Graham would not be willing to put money into a house in that neighborhood.

Brendan had been right about that; the preservation district might reach out to include Nora’s street, and it might not. To Graham, it would be a gamble not worth taking, no matter how wonderful the result might be. Nora Farrell’s house would probably never return the money invested in it, and so there was no point in even discussing such a project with Graham.

That conclusion did not make her feel at peace. “I’m the one who will be spending all my time there,” Kaye told Omar. “Shouldn’t I be able to have what I want?”

He stopped purring, and Kaye realized how very self-pitying she must sound. Here she was, complaining about which house she would end up living in, knowing very well that anything Graham agreed to buy would be a showplace—a home any woman in the city would envy her.

Meanwhile, there were people like Nora Farrell, who through no fault of her own had been put out of her home and was now reduced to living in a tiny room in a house where she was not even welcome. No one even cared about her except Brendan...

Brendan.

Had she been, perhaps, a little too hard on him tonight? He had shown himself to be soft-hearted, and even perhaps a bit sentimental, and after all, it
had
only been a kiss. Kaye wasn’t in the habit of thinking herself irresistible, but maybe they had been spending too much time alone together. Perhaps she had accidentally left him with some mistaken impressions.

And as for her own reactions to him—well, the man was certainly attractive. She could hardly be blamed for giving in to that impulse to enjoy being kissed, being held. It certainly didn’t mean that there was anything sinister about it.

“
If Graham just wasn’t so busy this week,” she told Omar, “it would never have happened at all.” Not that it was Graham’s fault, exactly, she told herself hastily. He couldn’t help being so very busy at the factory. But she was lonely. Brendan must have felt that, too, and taken it as encouragement.

Not that he had been serious either, Kaye told herself with a flicker of relief. “One kiss does not lead to any thing more serious,” she announced, “and both of us made that very clear.”

Should she just find another real estate agent? That might be the simplest way, but she dreaded the idea of going through all of those preliminaries again. She thought it over and decided that surely nothing so drastic would be necessary. Besides, she reflected, it just didn’t seem fair, after Brendan had done all that work, to drop him now and go to someone else.

She’d just have to be more careful when she was around him in the future, she decided, and went to bed with a mind at rest.

*****

Sunday brunch at Claudia’s was something of a tradition, Graham told Kaye when he came to get her that morning, and Claudia’s greeting was almost an echo. “Graham comes to brunch whenever he can,” Claudia told her. “Sunday morning is one of the few times when business doesn’t intrude.”

“
I’m afraid that’s the way the business is, Mother. In fact, I have to fly to Colorado tonight. We’ve got an unacceptable bacteria level in the plant out there, and no one can find out where it’s coming from.”

Kaye sipped her tomato juice, and wondered if he meant it was all right for there to be
some
bacteria in the baby food, as long as it wasn’t too much.

Better not ask,
she told herself.
This is not the time to start learning about his business.

“
Well, push it to the back of your mind and enjoy your brunch,” Claudia ordered him. “Why don’t you take your skis and have a day’s vacation, as long as you have to be out there anyway?”

“
Skis?” Graham looked at Claudia as if she was a museum exhibit. “I’ve never owned skis, Mother.”

“
So rent them.” Claudia turned to Kaye. “You don’t know how much I hope that you can teach this serious son of mine to have a little fun,” she said. “How is the house-hunting coming along, by the way?”

“
Slowly,” Kaye said.

Graham looked at her with a sidelong smile. “It shouldn’t be,” he said. “You’ve been spending enough time with your real estate agent to find a dozen houses.”