A Match for the Doctor (11 page)

When her cell phone rang a third time, just as she put her key into the lock on her front door, Kennon could finally indulge her curiosity. She paused to dig through her purse to retrieve the phone. It took her a minute, despite the fact that she'd stripped down her purse to what she felt were the bare essentials.

Locating the device, she flipped it open and let herself into her house. It was too dark to see the caller's name on the tiny screen. Kennon felt around for the light switch. “Hello?”

“Well, it's about time. If it hadn't been for that eighteen hours of labor I suffered through, I would have started thinking that maybe I'd made you up.”

Kennon suppressed a sigh. Finding the light switch, she turned it on as she closed the door with her back. “Hello, Mother.”

“Ah, you remember who I am, that's encouraging. But you've obviously forgotten my phone number, and where I live. I haven't heard from you in eons, much less actually seen you. Have you changed much? Would I still be able to recognize you if I saw you across the street?”

It hadn't been that long. She'd seen her mother just before she'd taken on this assignment. Her mother had
always liked to exaggerate. Ruth Cassidy had a flair for the melodramatic.

“Sorry.” Kennon apologized because she knew her mother expected her to. “It's been a little hectic lately.”

“Good hectic or bad hectic?” her mother pressed.

She hated getting the third degree, but she supposed that, since she was her mother's only child, there was no getting around it. Maybe, if she were in that same position, a divorced mother of an adult child, she'd feel the same way.

“Good hectic,” Kennon told her. “I've been working closely with a client.” Actually more closely with his daughters, she added silently, but her mother didn't need to hear that. She knew how her mother's mind worked. It leaped from one conclusion to another, creating a completely impossible fantasy scenario out of the tiniest bits and pieces.

“What kind of a client?” her mother was asking.

Oh, God, she'd woken the sleeping giant.

“The kind who needs to have his whole house decorated,” she answered, praying that would be the end of it. Knowing it wouldn't.

The answer seemed to satisfy her mother. Hope sprang eternal. And then it died the next moment. “Then he's wealthy. Good, good. Anything else you want to tell me?” her mother coaxed.

Right now she didn't want to tell her mother even this much because she knew the way her mother thought. Ruth Cassidy wanted nothing more than to have her only daughter, her only
child,
walk down the aisle and promise to love, honor and cherish a man in a rented
tuxedo. And if he was a rich man in his own tuxedo, so much the better.

Well, at least there were no surprises there. Her mother had been making noises about her “finding someone” from the moment Kennon had graduated high school and subsequently gone off to college.

“Anything else,” Kennon echoed. “Yes, my feet hurt and I'm tired. Can I call you back, Mother?”
Like, in another month or so?

“Of course you
can,
” her mother answered, sounding a little miffed. “But whether you will or not is a whole other story.” That was definitely the sound of complaining in her mother's voice, Kennon thought. “You know, I'm not going to live forever.”

Uh-uh, here we go again. The guilt trip. Not tonight, Mother. I'm exhausted.

“Of course you are, Mom. God's not ready to have you come up and rearrange heaven on him. You just might wind up being the first woman who lives pretty close to forever.”

She heard her mother sigh deeply on the other end. “Oh, ‘how sharper than a serpent's tooth—'”

About to open the refrigerator to get a can of diet soda, Kennon rolled her eyes. She'd been hearing this particular quote from
King Lear
since before she'd hit her teens.

“‘It is to have a thankless child,' uh-huh, yes, I know. I promise, Mom, if you give me a kingdom, I won't turn you out. You can even have your pick of towers.”
If you promise to stay there.
“But right now, I'm really beat and I still need to clean up—”

The second she said it, she knew she had made a
tactical mistake and could have bitten off her tongue. Her only hope was that her mother hadn't heard.

“Why do you need to clean up?”

Hope went down in flames. “Because I'm having company over tomorrow.” She hated being faced with a long list of things to do first thing in the morning.

Her mother was quick to volunteer helpful advice. “Your Aunt Maizie's got that friend with the cleaning service. I can get the number from her and you could give them a call—”

Evening stretched out before them. “Mom, my company's coming tomorrow at eleven,” she said, stubbornly not putting a name to her “company.” “There's not enough time for someone to—”

“Leave it to me. There's
always
enough time,” her mother promised.

Again Kennon rolled her eyes. Why did she even bother arguing? “Mom, I'm not about to throw away money on something I can do myself.”

“You sound exhausted. You're always edgy when you're exhausted. You need your sleep, baby.”

Kennon knew it was futile to point out that it had been a long time since she had actually qualified for that term. “Fine. I'll get up early tomorrow and clean then. Now, good night, Mom,” she said firmly, adding, “I'll call you back later,” to assuage her conscience.

She could have sworn she heard her mother say, “When pigs fly,” but she wasn't about to respond. She didn't want to be drawn into another round only to arrive nowhere.

K
ennon had nothing against mornings. As long as they arrived at a reasonable hour, say, seven-thirty or so. When they began at six, the way hers had today, all bets were off.

Groping her way into the kitchen after her alarm had unceremoniously woken her up, Kennon found that her first challenge of the day was making herself a bracing cup of coffee. Her coordination was not the greatest before the sun actually occupied the sky. But without coffee, she knew she was not about to come to for at least another hour if not longer.

Setting her alarm for six had seemed like a pretty good idea last night. Not so much this morning. But then, she really did need to get up this early. Her house needed cleaning and she needed to get moving.

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.