Magic

“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