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.
