Tami Hoag - Magic

The image of Bryan Hennessy drifted through her mind. For an instant she could have sworn she felt a man’s arms around her. How absurd, she thought, shaking free of the strange sensation.

“What room should I take?” she asked. “I’m going to bed.”

“Not in my house.”

Rachel’s head snapped up as her heart skipped a beat. “What?”

“I don’t want you here,” Addie said bluntly. “Go away.”

Rachel stared at her mother. She couldn’t have moved if her life had depended on it. Maybe she couldn’t have expected to be welcomed with open arms, but she hadn’t expected a total rejection either.

Addie raised her fists suddenly and jigged around like an old-time prizefighter, her braid bouncing, a truculent light in her eyes. “Go away! Get out of my house!”

“Mother, don’t!” Rachel ordered, wincing as Addie popped her one on the arm.

“You’re a traitor! I don’t want you here!”

“Mother, stop it!” Rachel shouted, dodging away from another blow.

She couldn’t believe this was actually happening. She had been bracing herself for a fight, but not one like this. As she backed into the hall and toward the front door, she kept thinking that any second she would wake up and discover it had all been a dream, a strange black dream. But how far back would the nightmare go, she wondered dimly. A week? A year? Five years?

“Get out! Get out!” Addie chanted. She couldn’t seem to stop herself from saying the words over and over, but she couldn’t bear to look at Rachel’s face as she said them, so she turned her back to her daughter and went on shouting. It was as if the floodgates on her emotions had been suddenly thrown wide. Anger and hurt spewed out unchecked.

Rachel pressed her hands over her ears and squeezed her eyes shut. Abruptly it all become too much. She turned and bolted for the front door, knocking over half of Bryan Hennessy’s equipment as she went. She flung the heavy door open and ran out onto the porch, where she stopped and leaned against a post, feeling dizzy and sick.

“What happened?” Bryan asked, setting her two suitcases down on the ground at the bottom of the steps.

“She threw me out,” Rachel whispered, stunned. “She doesn’t want me here. She meant it. She told me to leave and never come back, and she meant it.”

She sounded so small and lost. Bryan’s heart twisted in his chest.

Rachel hugged the wooden column as if it were the only solid thing in a world suddenly turned to illusion. “I have to help her,” she murmured to Bryan beseechingly. “She’s my mother. I have to help her. She’s my responsibility now. But she doesn’t want me here.”

“Look,” Bryan said, climbing the steps to the porch, “it’s late. Addie gets really irrational when she hasn’t had a good night’s sleep.” He wanted to tell her that everything would seem better in the morning, but the bald truth was Addie could be irrational at any time. There was no guarantee of her behaving any differently tomorrow.

Rachel faced him, leaning her back against the post. She wrapped her arms across her middle, fighting to hold herself together. In a matter of days her whole world had torn loose from its moorings. All the dreams she had believed in had died. The rainbow she had followed away from home hadn’t ended in a pot of gold. And the home she had returned to was full of strangers. The nightmare wasn’t going to end when she opened her eyes in the morning. The bad dream had just begun.

“My mother is losing her mind.” She uttered the words as if she had only just realized what they meant and what the ramifications for her own life would be.

She looked up at Bryan through a shimmering window of tears. It suddenly didn’t matter that he was a stranger or that she had questioned his motives. He was someone’s son. He had a family somewhere, a home he would return to one day. Maybe he would understand a little of what she was feeling, and she needed so badly to share it with someone, just for a minute or two.

As the first fat tears teetered over the barrier of her thick lashes, she said, “What am I going to do?”

Bryan instantly forgot his vow of non-involvement. What man could stand there and watch this lovely creature crumple like a wilting rose? He could offer her his strength if nothing else. He took her gently into his arms, as if her body were as fragile as her spirit, and pressed her cheek to his chest. Sobs tore through her, terrible, wrenching sobs. She didn’t seem strong enough to cry so hard, he thought. He could feel her sobs echoing through his chest, and he had to fight down the knot in his throat.

She was hurting-not physically, but with the kind of pain that comes from confusion and broken dreams and mourning a lost future. He could understand that all too well. He could understand her need to be held. He couldn’t understand his own overwhelming need to hold her, but even as his brain tried to decipher it, his arms tightened around her and his lips brushed against her temple.

“Shhh… you’re too tired to think straight. Let’s get you settled in. Well talk about it in the morning,” he murmured, not even aware that he had included himself in her dilemma.

Even though he whispered something about going inside, he made no move to leave the porch. He simply rocked her gently back and forth as the mist swirled around them and the sea crashed in the distance. He knew a strange contentment in holding her, but he didn’t question it. For the first time in a long time something was soothing the ache in his heart. He didn’t dare wonder why.

They entered the house through a back door, passed through a corner of the large dark kitchen, and went into an old-fashioned pantry, where Bryan opened what appeared to be a tall cabinet set into the wall. Rachel followed him, mute, as they went up a dusty, unembellished servants’ staircase, a place hung with cobwebs and bare light bulbs dangling from thick black cords in the ceiling.

“I’m sorry about breaking down that way,” she said, embarrassed now that the tears had dried. “I don’t ordinarily do that kind of thing.”

“That’s okay. You don’t ordinarily get chased out the house by your mother either,” Bryan said. “Careful on this step. Stay to the right. Dry rot, you know. You have to watch for stuff like that in these old houses.”

Rachel glanced down at the crack in the wooden tread as she bypassed the step altogether, wondering how much of the rest of the house was rotting away. She had hoped to get by without investing much in repairs before they sold the place. What money of hers she had managed to keep out of Terence’s slippery hands wasn’t going to go far. Her mother had been running an antiques business for several years, and then there was the money from her father’s police pension fund, but their expenses were going to run high. She had to consider Addie’s medical bills, the deposit on an apartment in San Francisco, and their day-to-day living expenses. She had no idea how Addie had taken care of her money recently. If Bryan Hennessy was an example, she had been squandering it with a lavish hand.

A ghostbuster. Rachel shook her head.

They exited through a door that blended into the paneled wall of the second-story hallway.

“Here we are,” Bryan said softly. He put on a pleasant smile and slid the hidden door shut with the toe of his battered sneaker. “Just like in the movies, huh?”

Rachel took in little of her surroundings. Her normal curiosity had been diluted by the circumstances of her visit. Maybe in a day or two she would find it interesting that the house had a secret stairway and real mahogany paneling, that the floor in the foyer below was made of imported Italian marble. Right now none of that penetrated her senses. Nor did the musty smell of old carpets and draperies. For the moment it was all she could do to put one foot in front of the other and follow Bryan Hennessy down the hall.