Soon.
The landline rang at five to seven, just after she’d cleared away her coffee cup and what had passed for breakfast. She looked at the phone accusingly. It was too early for a wrong number, unless it was coming from another part of the country and, considering that she didn’t know anyone from another part of the country, that wasn’t exactly likely.
When it continued ringing, she reached for the receiver. “Hello?”
“Oh, good,” she heard her mother’s voice cheerfully declare, “you’re up.”
This had to qualify as penance somewhere, Kennon thought. “I had to get up, the phone was ringing,” Kennon responded, her voice devoid of any kind of emotion or inflection.
“Very droll, dear. But you are up, right?” her mother asked.
“Yes, I’m up.” And feeling terrible, she added silently. “But why would that matter to you?” she asked. Bits and pieces of her conversation with her mother last night came back to her. Was her mother giving her a wake-up call?
“Because I know you hate for me to use my key to get into your house.”
That got her attention. Kennon was wide-awake and on her feet immediately. The last thing she wanted was her mother driving over here at this hour.
“Mother, you don’t need to use the key,” Kennon told her.
She heard her mother sigh. “But breaking down the door is so melodramatic, dear. We’d only have to put it up again, and repairing it would use up too much precious time.”
“‘We’?” Kennon echoed incredulously. “Who’s ‘we’?” she demanded.
Rather than words, the sound of the doorbell ringing was her answer. Taking a deep fortifying breath, Kennon made her way over to the front door and opened it, hoping for a burglar.
Her hopes were dashed.
“We are, dear,” Ruth Cassidy said, smiling broadly as she gestured about. Kennon found herself looking at her mother, her aunt Maizie and another, stately, pleasant-faced woman, all of whom stood right outside her threshold. “This is Cecilia Parnell, one of your aunt Maizie’s dearest friends,” her mother announced, nodding toward the woman on her left. “We’ve come to get your house ready,” she added, sweeping in with the aplomb of a woman who was accustomed to taking charge.
Kennon turned toward her aunt, hoping that she could appeal to the woman’s common sense.
“It’s not being photographed by Architectural Digest. There’s no need to ‘get it ready.’ I’m just having a man and his two daughters over.” This huge slip of the tongue she could blame on the fact that she was still sleepy and not thinking clearly—but then, when it came right down to it, her mother had that sort of effect on her all too often.
“Oh, so he’s the one coming over.” Ruth’s wide smile grew even wider—and even more satisfied looking.
As if you haven’t already figured that out, Kennon thought. She knew that her back was against the wall and the sooner she verified the fact for her mother, the sooner this cat-and-mouse game would be over.
“The girls wanted to see my house. I said fine. Come at eleven. They’re coming. End of story,” she said in a clipped economy of words.
Rather than say anything to her daughter, Ruth looked over at her former sister-in-law. “You see what I have to put up with?” It was a dramatically intoned question, ending with a deep, soul-wrenching sigh.
In response, Maizie gazed at her late brother’s daughter and patted Kennon’s cheek. “Don’t worry, dear, we’ll be out of your hair before you know it. Just relax, we’ll take care of everything.”
How could she relax with hot-and-cold mature women running about her house? “But I don’t need you to clean my house, Aunt Maizie. Please, I can do this myself,” Kennon insisted.
There was actually sympathy in Maizie’s eyes and, for one bright, shining moment, Kennon believed she’d won. But the moment passed as soon as Maizie opened her mouth to speak.
“No offense, dear, but Cecilia can do it better. It’s what she does—quickly and thoroughly,” Maizie assured her niece. Then she looked at Ruth and slipped her arm through the other woman’s arm. “C’mon, we’re going to need you.”
A bit puzzled, Ruth looked from Maizie to her daughter. She hadn’t come to work. “But I thought I’d just talk to Kennon—”
“Sorry, you thought wrong.” Maizie hustled her toward the stairs. “If you’re very good, Cecilia’s going to let you use the vacuum cleaner upstairs—”
“There’s no need to clean upstairs,” Kennon protested, following in their wake. “Everyone’s going to stay down here.”
The look Maizie gave her seemed to marvel at her naiveté. “They’re eight and six,” she reminded her niece. “They move around, explore, all while you’re sitting on the sofa, confident that they haven’t budged. We’ll clean upstairs. Besides, you never know how things might turn out…”
She allowed her voice to trail off, ushered out by a smile that would have been called mischievous if the woman had been forty-five years younger. “Go, take a hot bubble bath. Relax. We’ll take care of everything.”
That was when the doorbell rang again.
This was beginning to feel like an Amtrak station in the middle of Los Angeles, Kennon thought, irritated, as she went to the door again. She opened it to find another woman she didn’t recognize. This one appeared to be around the same age as her mother, her aunt and the woman they’d brought to clean her house.
“Ah, you must be Kennon,” the newest invader said warmly.
“I must be,” Kennon agreed, doing her best not to sound unfriendly—or annoyed. “And you’re part of my mother’s posse?”
“More like part of Maizie’s,” the quietly attractive woman confided. “I’m Theresa.”
The next moment, Theresa Manetti was carrying in a rather large covered tray. Stunned, Kennon turned around to see her mother ducking down the hall behind her aunt. Not so fast, Mother.
“Mother, what is going on?” she called out. She was afraid to find out who would turn up on her doorstep next. A gypsy violinist?
Ruth Cassidy did not make her way back. Only her voice was heard as she answered, “The rest of your life, I hope.”
Kennon shook her head, momentarily accepting defeat. She went upstairs to get a hot shower and to hopefully wake up from this fantasy that had somehow invaded her brain.
By the time Kennon finally left the shelter of the hot shower and got dressed—in a room that looked infinitely better than it had when she’d shut the bathroom door behind her—she had the unmistakably eerie feeling that she was alone.
Had all of this been a fantasy the way she’d told herself it was?
She would have really bought into the idea that she’d just imagined all this, except for the fact that everything in her house was practically sparkling now.
How could four women who, while not old, had definitely seen some years go by, work so fast, Kennon wondered, stunned. Whatever vitamins they were taking, she most certainly needed to tap into their supply—and cut her mother’s stash while she was at it.
Moving from room to room, Kennon looked about in absolute wonder. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen everything so neat and tidy at the same time.
There was nothing left for her to do except get ready. That, and try to tame the butterflies that had made a sudden, unexpected appearance in the middle of her stomach.
This was absurd, Kennon lectured herself. There was no reason to feel nervous—and she wouldn’t be nervous if it hadn’t been for her mother making such a big deal out of all this.
If she hadn’t come barreling in with her mop squad and cleaned up a storm.
Tidying up would have kept her busy and, Kennon felt, more importantly, kept her from thinking. Now there was nothing for her to do but think.
And answer the door, she thought as she heard the doorbell ring. She glanced at her watch. It was still early. Maybe that was her mother again, coming back with some kind of provocative outfit for her to wear and
tempt Simon with, she thought sarcastically.
Most likely a G-string and pasties. Her mother was desperate. After all, Cousin Nikki had a man—and Kennon didn’t. Her mother was nothing if not competitive when it came to things like that.
“Forget something?” Kennon asked as she swung open the door.
“Not that I know of,” Simon answered. He was standing there, one hand on each of his daughter’s shoulders. Most likely to hold them in place. The girls seemed ready to spring at her. “Did I?” he asked, his eyes traveling over the length of her.
His long, lingering glance told her he wasn’t seeing her as his decorator, or even as the woman who had earned the adoration of his daughters. He was looking at her as if he was seeing her for the first time—and definitely liking what he saw.
“No,” she replied, her mouth only slightly more moist than a box of three-day-old sawdust. “I, um, thought you were my mother. She just left.”
He glanced over his shoulder toward the street. But there was no foot traffic to speak of. “Sorry I missed meeting her.”
“No, you’re not,” Kennon assured him emphatically. “Trust me, you’re not,” she added for good measure. She glanced down at the girls, feeling on more secure ground when she addressed them. “Hi, girls. I sure hope you came hungry, because there’s enough food here to feed a squadron of people.”
“You shouldn’t have gone to all this trouble,” Simon told her as he released his daughters. True to form. Madelyn and Meghan were across the threshold in an instant, looking around, absorbing everything.
Kennon knew that her mother would have wanted her to say something about it being no trouble at all, that she’d whipped this up on the spur of the moment, but she had always preferred the truth. Now was no exception.
“I didn’t,” she told him, closing the front door behind him. “My aunt has this friend whose cooking, I’m told, brings tears to your eyes.”
“Heartburn?” Simon guessed, his face utterly straight.
It took her a second to realize that he was kidding. Kennon laughed, the tension, for the most part, mercifully draining from her. “No, apparently the woman is so good, she knows how to make a feast out of a twig and a medium-size napkin.”
“Now that I’d like to see,” he told her, his amusement apparent.
“And her other friend, as you can see—” Kennon gestured slowly about the room and the house beyond “—cleans up a storm.”
Simon listened and nodded, though there was a bit of a skeptical glimmer in his eyes. “Are these your mother’s friends, or your fairy godmothers?”
It did sound a little like a fairy tale, now that she thought about it, Kennon acknowledged. “A little of both, I imagine. My mother thought I needed help in order to impress you.”
When she said this, it was meant to be an all-encompassing you, but one look at his face told her that he’d taken the word in the singular sense.
“You don’t need help for that,” Simon assured her quietly.
Her skin both warmed and entertained a chill at the same time. It defied understanding, but then so did the look in his dark blue eyes. She had to remind herself to breathe.
“Can I see upstairs?” Meghan asked eagerly, unwittingly coming to her rescue. Kennon took the opportunity to pull herself together.
Simon was still trying to find his way in this maze called parenthood, looking for a golden mean that allowed him to be a disciplinarian without being an ogre. He tried to instill his voice with affection even as he made it stern, no easy feat.
“Meghan.” He turned to look at his younger daughter. “What did I say about asking for things?”
“Don’t,” the little girl mumbled, dejected, as she kept her head down.
“That’s all right,” Kennon assured him. After Cecilia had swept through, she had nothing to hide, nothing to feel ashamed of. Every single last cobweb, as well as the spider responsible for it, had been sent packing. “Sure, you can go see upstairs.” She gestured toward Madelyn to include her in the safari. “You all can.”
“Dad, too?” Meghan wanted to know, showing her father a toothy grin as if to say that there were no hard feelings.
“Your dad, too,” Kennon assured her.
Okay, so it was a good thing, she thought as she led the way upstairs, that Cecilia had decided to clean upstairs. She just fervently hoped she wouldn’t be forced to admit that to her mother. Humble pie was not her favorite form of dessert, and her mother was not above crowing a little when things went her way.
It wasn’t until they all came back downstairs again after the impromptu tour of the second floor that it suddenly struck Kennon. Someone was missing.
Edna.
She knew it was the woman’s day off, but she’d thought the nanny would take the opportunity to come by anyway—as a friend. Had she had a relapse? Now that Kennon thought of it, Edna had been looking a little under the weather. The woman had never fully recovered from that time she’d come down with the flu.
“Where’s Edna?” she asked Madelyn abruptly. “I thought that maybe she’d come along with you after all.”
“She wanted to come but she got a phone call,” Meghan volunteered.
Kennon looked at Simon over the tops of his daughters’ heads. “Nothing bad, I hope.”
That, he thought, was a matter of opinion. His was that it was bad, but not for the reason that someone might initially think. It was bad because it left him high and dry—and in need of a nanny.
“Her nephew’s wife just gave birth to their first baby and she’s come down with an extreme case of the jitters,” he told Kennon. “Edna asked if she could take a few days off to help out. She sends her regrets,” he added.
Meghan tugged on his jacket sleeve. “Is it catching?” she asked when he finally gave her his attention.
“No, it’s not something one person can give to another,” Simon answered. Meghan seemed relieved when she smiled her thanks.
She didn’t know about that, Kennon thought. If what Simon maintained was true, then he wouldn’t have made her feel so terribly jittery inside.
“When’s she coming back?” she asked him for conversation’s sake.
“She said Thursday—with any luck,” Simon added. “In the meantime, I’m going to have to call the cardiovascular group tomorrow morning and have them move around my appointments,” he said more to himself than to the woman he was talking to.
Kennon didn’t quite follow him. “Why?”
He smiled indulgently. He’d discovered that the more he smiled, the more he was inclined to smile. Another revelation that Kennon was responsible for.
“Because as of yet I haven’t found a way to be in two places at once, no matter how hard I try. I can’t very well see patients and pick up the girls from school at the same time.” It was June and ordinarily school would either be over or winding down for the summer. But he’d enrolled the girls in a year-round school, thinking it would be good for them.
Kennon could see how attempting to be in two places at once might be a problem for him. But the solution was easy enough.
“I’ll pick them up for you,” Kennon volunteered cheerfully. She liked the look of surprise that entered his eyes. Liked, too, the way it made her feel that she had put it there. “I already know where the school is and it’s not like I have to put in eight hours behind a desk every day. I’m my own boss so I can arrange my schedule accordingly. I can also be there to pick them up from school.”
Grateful though he was, that wasn’t the end of the complications.
“I also need someone to stay with them until I get home. Do you know anyone who would be available for that?” he asked.
Actually, she did. Her mother. Her mother would be thrilled to babysit, but if Kennon made that suggestion to the woman, it would be tantamount to opening up a Pandora’s box. She knew from past experiences that her mother was the type of person who, if you gave her an inch, she not only took a mile, but constructed a building o
n it and gave the property a fancy new name.
In the long run, Kennon felt that she would be better off just offering to pitch in herself. After all, it wasn’t going to be an ongoing thing. It was just for a few days, and her decorating business wasn’t exactly drowning in work at the moment.
The belt-tightening conditions of the present economy had been hard on everyone. Nathan was perfectly capable of running the shop for the next couple of days.
“Yes, I know someone. Me.”
Simon looked at her skeptically, even as his daughters let out a gleeful cheer and lost no time in surrounding her.
“I can’t ask you to do that,” he protested.
“You didn’t ask,” Kennon pointed out. “I volunteered. Not the same thing,” she assured him with a smile. “Besides, it’s only for a couple of days, right? It’ll give me more time to concentrate on your house and the different ways I can make it pop.”
He had the distinct impression that she already could achieve that result, and not just with his house, but he said nothing and just nodded his head. It was, in the final analysis, a whole lot safer that way.
Chapter Twelve
The thing about Southern California rain was, when it actually did rain, it usually poured.
Kennon rushed the girls from the car into their house. The cloudburst had hit less than ten minutes ago with a fierceness that she’d seldom seen.
Like most Californians, when she heard the weatherman predicting rain at this time of year, she listened with only half an ear.
Rain had its time and place in Southern California, occupying a spate of time referred to as “the rainy season.” It stretched from November to March. This, however, being summer, did not fall into that time frame. Consequently, forecasts involving various degrees of precipitation were generally ignored because, like the monsters that lived beneath a young child’s bed, they rarely, if ever, actually materialized.
Chalk one up for the weatherman. Even though she and the girls had dashed all of about ten feet from car door to house door, all three of them were pretty well drenched.
A Match for the Doctor Page 12
