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
“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.”
