Bryan sobered and sighed. “There is no Lester. Um… your mother thinks she owns a parakeet.” He shrugged apologetically. “If she does, I haven’t been able to find it.”
“Oh.”
“I keep meaning to buy her one, but I forget things. I’m sure I’ve written myself a note about it,” he said, pulling a fistful of paper scraps from his pants pocket. He sorted through them, frowning.
“That’s all right,” Rachel said.
Addie thought she owned a parakeet. This man, who was a virtual stranger, intended to buy her one to placate her. How sweet. What a sweet, sexy, rumpled con man he was. Her heart warmed, then she caught herself and shuddered, cursing her wildly swinging emotions. She felt as if she were trying to keep her balance on the deck of a ship pitching violently in a stormy sea.
Stuffing his notes back in his pocket, Bryan watched her from under his lashes. She looked so lost. In a way it made him think of Addie at the instant her mind snapped from normal to non-functioning. But then Addie would retreat into her fantasies. Rachel didn’t have that option.
Without thinking, he took a step toward her. Odd, but he felt almost as if he’d been pushed toward her. When he caught himself he had already begun to reach out to her. Stopping in his tracks, he slapped his hands together and tried to look decisive. “You must have a suitcase or something out in your car. I’ll go get it.”
He turned and let himself out, taking big gulps of the cool night air as he crossed the porch and jogged down the steps.
“Holy Mike, that was a close call, you moron,” he grumbled to himself. His sneakers crunched on the gravel drive as he headed for a beat-up little Chevette that was parked beside Addie’s old Volvo wagon.
The farther he got from the house, the steadier he felt. The sea air was refreshing. Moisture from the fog that had rolled in at sunset dampened his skin. He leaned against the roof of the little car and let the sound of crashing waves wash the tension from him.
Drake House stood on a cliff overlooking the bay on the very northern edge of Anastasia. Because of the lay of the land and the size of the estate, its nearest neighbor was a quarter mile away. The house on its lonely precipice was a giant sentinel, a gaudy reminder of a bygone age.
It might have looked like a happy, magical place once with its turrets and gingerbread and gables. Now, run-down and in dire need of a coat of paint, it looked like something out of a horror movie. The land that stretched out before it had at one time been a beautifully manicured lawn. There had been gardens and even a maze. He’d seen pictures of it in Anastasia’s Architecture: A Pictorial Essay. The gardens had long since gone to weed and the maze had become a tall, tangled mass of wild brambles.
The few people who came to visit Drake House called during daylight hours, bowing to superstitions they would never voice. Most of them came to browse through the antiques Addie had collected to sell. The kids of the town sometimes came to the end of the driveway at night. Bryan had seen them-groups of four or five kids who weren’t brave enough to come any closer. They stood down at the gate, shoving each other through the portal but never farther. They were thoroughly convinced the place was haunted. They were also scared to death of Addie.
Addie. Bryan glanced up at the house and caught a glimpse of her silhouette as she passed a window. He knew she was going to all the bird cages she had collected, filling the little dishes with seed. In the morning he would clean the trays out before she got up, or she would be upset thinking there was something wrong with Lester. It never seemed to bother her that Lester wasn’t in any of the cages. Unless, of course, she was seeing birds that weren’t actually there. Ghost birds.
He found his pencil and a crumpled bit of paper and made a note of that, then shook his head as he tucked the scrap of paper into his hip pocket and forgot about it. Addie could be fairly lucid. At times she was sharp as a tack. Then in the blink of an eye she would be talking to people who weren’t there, feeding birds she didn’t own.
It was a sad situation, but it wasn’t any of his business, he reminded himself. He’d dealt with his own sad situation; he didn’t need to get wrapped up in another.
Rachel watched her mother go from bird cage to bird cage, panic tightening her throat. Addie couldn’t be this bad already. The possibility that she was terrified Rachel. The further her mother retreated from reality, the less chance there would be for them to reconcile.
In her own mind, because she had only just learned of the problem, Rachel felt as if her mother had just developed this illness. She wanted to forget that Addie’s decline had doubtless begun several years earlier, and her mother had either ignored or hidden it for a long while.
Addie had moved to Anastasia upon her retirement from teaching music in Berkeley, not long after Rachel had gone on the road with Terance. According to Dr. Moore, the people of Anastasia had labeled her erratic behavior “eccentric,” and, by the good doctor’s own admission, the town had more than its share of oddballs, so Addie hadn’t really stuck out. It was only after she had backed her Volvo clear across Main Street and into the front of the movie theater that anyone had thought to alert Dr. Moore.
“Mother, it’s very late,” Rachel said wearily. She leaned against the door frame of the parlor, letting it support her weight for a moment. Now was not the time to try to deal with any of this mess-the illness, the emotional baggage, Bryan Hennessy. “You should be in bed.”
Addie set her birdseed down and turned toward her daughter, arching a brow. Resentment burned through her. She resented Rachel for leaving her, for abandoning their dreams, for trying to tell her what to do now. She resented the fact that it had taken a call from that idiot Moore to bring her daughter home. The pressure of her feelings built inside her like steam, which she vented on Rachel.
“I won’t have you telling me what to do, missy,” she snapped, eyes flashing. “I’m not some incontinent old woman who needs to be taken care of like a child.”
Rachel reined in her own ready temper, forced a sigh, and hung her head. She was so tired. She’d driven clear from North Platte, stopping to sleep only once for just a few brief hours. Before the marathon drive had been the marathon fight and subsequent end of her relationship with Terence. And before that had been the devastating news of her mother’s illness. All of it weighed down on her now like the weight of the world on her shoulders. At the moment she would have given anything for someone to lean on, just for a minute or two.
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?