She grabbed the walker and pulled herself upright. "That's it, it's over. I'm not going. I can't stay in that house, chowing down a big turkey dinner while my father is eating cold baked beans out of the can in his bachelor pad. Don't answer that," she warned tightly when the phone began to ring.
"Hello, Kelly residence," Saint Just said, picking up the phone.
He smiled, held it out to Maggie. "Exquisite timing. Your mother. Now you can inform her as to your decision."
Maggie hopped backward a good three feet even as she shook her head furiously; she really was becoming more proficient with that walker of hers. "Tell her I broke my leg and you had to shoot me."
"You broke your foot, and she probably heard you anyway. I seem to have forgotten to depress the Mute button."
"Oh, hell," Maggie muttered as she hopped back to the bed and snatched the phone from him, pasting a large, patently artificial smile on her face as she said, "Hi, Mom!"
Saint Just returned to his task, that of packing up Maggie while she was powerless to stop him, pretending not to listen to Maggie's side of the conversation, even if she did little more than mumble the occasional, "Uh-huh."
Maggie's mother, if she had existed during the time of the English Regency, would have been a be-feathered matron, tall and rawboned, her proud pigeon chest puffed out, her manner abrupt, condescending, and, to be frank, fairly obnoxious. That she was Maggie's mother was a constant astonishment to Saint Just.
In point of fact, Alicia Kelly was one of the myriad reasons Saint Just had felt it necessary to poof—as Maggie insisted on so inelegantly terming his truly impressive feat—into her life.
He was, he had long ago decided, the part of Maggie that she had felt missing from her life. The confident part, the brave and daring part; a creation of her imagination, one composed of all the elements of herself that she believed she lacked.
And what Saint Just lacked, what Maggie believed she also lacked, had been completed with the creation of their own dear Sterling Balder, who was all heart, and caring, and almost childlike devotion.
What Maggie didn't realize was that she couldn't possibly have created Saint Just, created Sterling, and made them both believable to her readers, unless she herself was made up of all those virtues she felt she lacked.
By herself, Maggie was intelligent, yet unsure of herself. With him—with Saint Just, and with Sterling—she was at last complete. It was the stuff of fiction, but it worked. It worked enough for Saint Just to be able to join her, bringing Sterling along. It worked enough for the three of them to exist together on the same astral plane, or whatever such things were called.
Not that Maggie was a frail flower, but she had never quite mastered how to deal with Alicia Kelly's rather overbearing personality, feeling more attuned to her father, the hapless, straying Evan Kelly. With her father out of the house, cast out of the family, Maggie would be spending Christmas with the strangers who were her mother and siblings.
It was all rather sad.
"Yippee!"
"I beg your pardon?" Saint Just said, catching the tossed phone in self-defense. "Did I miss something, or is that the usual ending to the sort of monosyllabic dirge you've been chanting for the past ten minutes? Yippee?"
Maggie fell back onto the mattress once more, but this time she looked much more the inviting picture than she had earlier. The pout was gone. The tears were gone. "Tate's bringing another couple with him, so Mom says we can't stay at the condo. She can't toss Erin out without her throwing some huge hissy fit, and God forbid Tate and his pals could find a hotel, so I'm the natural choice. We're bunking in with Dad. Isn't that fabulous? Why didn't I think of that in the first place?"
"You're not upset that your mother would deny you a place at the family hearth, giving that place instead to some friends of your brother's?"
"Upset? I'd be doing handstands, if I could. For once being the black sheep of the family is showing some benefits." She turned her head to look at Saint Just, caught in the act of removing a few sweaters from one of the drawers. "And speaking of black, pack the black cashmere sweater, please. You like me in the black cashmere. Oh, I feel so much better."
"How gratifying, I'm sure. So there will be no more pouting?" Saint Just asked facetiously.
"I've still got this thing on my leg. Don't expect unmitigated bliss here. But, no, there will be no more pouting. Tomorrow it's under the river and through the Pine Barrens, to celebrate another Kelly Dysfunctional Christmas. But we'll be doing it mostly from Dad's apartment, not the condo. With any luck, we'll actually get through the next few days with nobody murdering anybody. And for our family? Hell, that'll be ... it'll be like a Christmas miracle."
And now a few words from our Shadowy Figure
lurking in the background ...
Yes! Yes, I've got it.
The perfect way.
The perfect crime.
The perfect answer.
The timing has to be right. Maybe the weather, too, but probably not.
All that I've ever wanted, soon to be mine, mine, mine!
It's coming. My moment.
I probably should get a haircut ...
Chapter Five
Maggie leaned her forearms on the steering wheel and looked to her right, past Alex, to see the full flight of wood-slat stairs leading up to her father's borrowed bachelor pad.
She should have realized. Lots of the houses nearest the ocean were built on pilings, to allow parking beneath them, off the street, and to avoid flood damage during nor'easters and the occasional hurricane.
"Great. How am I supposed to get up there? Fly?"
"It would be an interesting phenomenon if you could, and one I'd be delighted to witness. Or I could volunteer my services," Alex suggested, opening the car door. "But I believe I'll first reconnoiter, ascertain if your father is indeed at home and receiving visitors. Much as I adore you, sweetheart, the idea of carrying you up those stairs, and whatever stairs may lay beyond the door, just to carry you back down again, does not really appeal."
"I'd be insulted, if you weren't right. Going up I can handle. Coming down again is another story, not that I don't trust you not to drop me. Okay. He's in 2B. Sounds like the second floor, huh? Damn."
She waited, tapping her fingertips on the steering wheel, for Alex to return to the car. It would have been easier, logistically, to stay at her mother's house (no longer her parents' house), but she'd rather have to bump herself up two flights on her fanny than admit that to anyone.
Sterling leaned on the back of the front seat. "What will we do if your father isn't at home?"
Maggie opened her mouth to say they'd just have to suck it up and go to her mother's, and then changed her mind. It was stupid, putting off the inevitable, but she was a devout coward, and it was time she owned up to that sad fact. "I don't know, Sterling," she said brightly. "You said you wanted to go to Atlantic City again. We could do that."
"Oh, yes, that would be above all things wonderful. Do you think they still have the dancing woodpeckers?"
Maggie frowned, trying to decipher that statement, and then smiled. "Oh, right, the dancing woodpeckers. On one of the nickel slots you played last time. I remember now. I'm sure they do, Sterling. Ah, here comes Alex. So?" she asked as he climbed back into the front seat.
"There's a note on his door—his second-floor door, so I believe you'll, as you say, owe me big time, before this visit is concluded. I look forward to that. He's at the dentist for something called a crown, and doesn't expect to be home for a few hours. We just missed him, as a matter-of-fact. But he did leave a key under the mat, which is either a testament to the citizens of this small city or a remarkable lapse in judgment by your father."