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“Coffee?” Florence asked. “Tea?”
“Water would be good,” Molly said.
“Fizzy stuff or regular?”
“Regular, please.”
Florence brought her a glass of ice and a bottle. While Molly poured, Florence took up an obstinate pose over by the sink, leaning against the counter with her arms folded.
“What are you doing here?” Florence demanded, evidently having withheld the question as long as she could.
Molly, about to take a sip of water, set her glass down again. “I don’t know,” she answered truthfully. Psyche had contacted her by phone a week before and issued an urgent summons, with very little accompanying explanation.
“We have to talk about this in person,” she’d said.
“Seems to me you’ve done enough damage,” Florence told her, “without coming here. Especially now.”
Molly swallowed. She was thirty years old, and she ran one of the biggest literary agencies in L.A., dealt with egotistical, high-powered authors, editors and movie people practically every day. Now, sitting in Psyche Ryan’s kitchen, clad in the jeans, T-shirt and sneakers she’d been wearing for forty-eight hours straight, she felt diminished, as though she’d regressed to her college days, when she hadn’t had the proverbial two nickels to rub together.
“Don’t give her a hard time, Florence,” a gentle voice interceded softly from somewhere behind Molly’s chair. “I asked her to come, and Molly was kind enough to agree.”
Both Molly and Florence turned, Molly rising so quickly that she nearly knocked over her chair.
Psyche stood framed in a doorway, a painfully thin woman clad in a peach silk robe and matching slippers. Two aspects of her appearance leaped out at Molly—one, Psyche was beautiful and, two, she was obviously bald beneath the little crocheted cap she wore.
“Will you look in on Lucas, please?” Psyche said to Florence. “He was still asleep a few minutes ago, but he’s not used to the house yet, and I’d rather he didn’t wake up alone.”
Florence hesitated, gave a terse nod, glowered once at Molly and left the kitchen.
“Sit down,” Psyche told Molly, gliding gracefully toward her.
Molly, who was used to giving orders, not taking them, immediately complied.
Psyche drew back the chair next to Molly’s and sat down with a little sigh and a gingerly wince. “Thank you for coming,” she said, offering a hand. “I’m Psyche Ryan.”
Molly shook the hand, found it weightless as a wad of tracing paper. “Molly Shields,” she replied. Her gaze drifted to Psyche’s cap, back to the pair of enormous violet eyes beneath it.
Psyche smiled slightly. “Yes,” she said. “I have cancer.”
A chasm opened in the bottom of Molly’s heart. “I’m sorry,” she said. About so much more than the cancer. “Is it…?”
“Terminal,” Psyche confirmed with a nod.
Tears of sympathy stung behind Molly’s eyes, but she didn’t allow herself to shed them. She didn’t know Psyche well enough for that.
Inevitably her mind fastened on Lucas.
Dear God, if Psyche was dying, what would happen to him? Having lost her own mother when she was fifteen, Molly knew the emptiness and constant undercurrent of fruitless searching that could result.
Psyche seemed to be tracking Molly’s unspoken thoughts—at least, some of them. She smiled again, reached across the tabletop to squeeze Molly’s hand. “As you know,” she said, “my husband is dead. Neither of us have any family. Since you’re Lucas’s biological mother, I hope…”
Molly’s heart leaped over the logical next conclusion, but she reined it in, back over the jump, afraid to risk the shattering disappointment that would follow if she was wrong.
“I’ve hoped you’ll care for him after I’m gone,” Psyche said. “Be his mother, not just on some paper in some file—but for real.”
Molly opened her mouth, closed it again, too shaken to trust her voice.
Psyche drew back a little, huddling in her exquisite peach robe, studying Molly with a worried expression. “Maybe I presumed too much, sending for you the way I did,” she said, very softly. “If you’d wanted to raise Lucas, you wouldn’t have given him up.”
Desperation, sorrow and hope swelled within Molly, a tangle of emotions she’d probably never be able to separate. “Of course I want him,” she blurted, lest Psyche reconsider and withdraw the offer.
Psyche looked relieved—and exhausted. “There are a few strings attached,” she warned quietly.
Molly’s heart scrambled up into the back of her throat. She waited, still terrified of tipping the balance the wrong way.
“Lucas must be raised in or around Indian Rock,” Psyche said. “Preferably in this house. I grew up here, and I want my son to do the same.”
Molly blinked. She owned a thriving literary agency in L.A., along with a house in Pacific Palisades. She had friends, an aging father, a life. Could she give all that up to live in a small, remote town in northern Arizona?
“Lucas will inherit a considerable estate,” Psyche went on. She took in Molly’s clothes and the worn backpack on the floor next to her chair. “I have no idea what your financial situation is, but I’m prepared to provide generously for you, until Lucas is of age, of course. You could turn the house into a bed-and-breakfast, if you wanted.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Molly said. “For you to give me money, I mean.” It was strange how quickly a life-changing decision could be made, if the stakes were high enough. Several of her clients, if not all, would balk when she told them she’d be operating out of Indian Rock from now on. Some would want out of their contracts, but it didn’t matter. Her bank accounts bulged, despite her lifestyle, and as agent of record she would collect commissions in perpetuity on the many works she’d already sold.
“Good,” Psyche said. She sniffled, took a tissue from the pocket of her robe and dabbed at her eyes.
For a few moments the two women sat in silence.
“Why did you give Lucas up?” Psyche asked. “Didn’t you want him?”
Didn’t you want him? The words blew through the bleak, weathered canyons of Molly’s soul like a harsh and bitter wind. She could have kept Lucas—she had the resources and certainly the desire—but she supposed that, like taking the bus from L.A., surrendering her son had been a way of punishing herself. “I thought he’d be better off with two parents,” she finally replied. It wasn’t the whole answer, but at the moment it was all she had to offer.
“I would have divorced Thayer,” Psyche said, “if it hadn’t been for Lucas.”
“I didn’t know—” Molly began, but she strangled on the rest of the sentence, couldn’t get it out.
“That Thayer was married?” Psyche prompted, not unkindly.
Molly nodded.
“I believe you,” Psyche said, surprising her. “Were you in love with my husband, Molly Shields?”
“I thought I was,” Molly replied. She’d met Thayer at a party in L.A., and immediately been swept away by his good looks, his charm and that sharp, albeit devious, mind of his. The pregnancy had been an accident, but she’d been happy about it, overjoyed, in fact—until she’d told Thayer.
After all this time, the memory of that day was still so painful that Molly turned away from it, pushed it to a back corner of her brain.
“My lawyer has already drafted the papers,” Psyche said, trying to rise from her chair, finding she was too weak and sinking into it again. “You may want to have them reviewed by counsel of your own before they’re finalized.”
Molly merely nodded, still absorbing the implications of Psyche’s words. Instinctively she got to her feet, helped Psyche to stand.
Almost as though she had radar, Florence reappeared, elbowed Molly aside and wrapped one strong arm around Psyche’s waist to support her. “You’d better lie down again,” the older woman said. “I’ll just get you upstairs.”
“Molly,” Psyche put in quickly, almost breathlessly, as though she were afraid of being swept away before her son’s fate was settled, “you come, too. It’s time you got to know Lucas. Florence, you’ll show Molly to her room, won’t you? Help her get settled?”
Florence passed Molly a poisonous glance. “Whatever you want, Miss Psyche,” she said, “that’s what I’ll do.”
Molly trailed after the two women, down a hallway, into an elevator with an old-fashioned grate door. The little box lurched, like Molly’s heart, as it sprang upward, shuddered its way past the second floor to the third.
Psyche slept in a suite of rooms boasting a marble fireplace, antique furniture, probably French, and elegantly faded rugs. A bank of windows overlooked the street on one side and the backyard on the other, and stacks of books teetered everywhere.
Distracted, yearning to see Lucas, Molly nonetheless spotted the names of several of her authors on the spines of those books.
“Through that doorway,” Psyche said, pointing, as Florence steered her toward the bed.
Once again Molly called upon every bit of self-restraint she possessed to keep from running in that direction. Running to Lucas, her son, her baby.
The nursery, a sizable room in its own right, adjoined Psyche’s. There was a rocking chair over by the windows, shelves jammed with storybooks, an overflowing toy box.
Molly took all that in peripherally, focused on the crib and the chubby toddler standing up in it, gripping the rails and eyeing her with charitable trepidation.
He seemed golden, a fairy child bathed in afternoon sunlight, his light hair gleaming and gossamer.
Molly, who wanted to race across the room and crush him to her, did neither. She stood still, just inside the doorway, letting the boy take her measure with solemn eyes.
“Hi,” she said, smiling moistly. “I’m Molly.”
And I’m your mother.
* * *
KEEGAN MCKETTRICK STOOD impatiently beside his black Jaguar, waiting for the tank to fill and appraising the pile of designer luggage resting between the newspaper box and the display of propane tanks near the entrance to the town’s only gas station/convenience store. Even from a distance, he could tell the bags weren’t knockoffs, and whoever owned them had most likely come in on the four-o’clock bus from Phoenix. He pondered the mystery while his car guzzled liquid money.
He was replacing the hose when a familiar station wagon bounced off the highway and rolled by, with Florence Washington at the wheel.
Keegan wanted to duck into the Jag and drive off, pretend he hadn’t seen the other car, but that would have gone against his personal code, so he didn’t. He’d known Psyche Ryan, née Lindsay, was back in town, that she’d come home, with her adopted son, to die.
He’d geared himself up to go by and see her several times since her return to Indian Rock, but he’d been reluctant to call or knock on the door, in case he disturbed her. If she was as sick as he’d heard she was, she was practically bedridden.
The station wagon rolled to a stop over by the propane tanks and the Louis Vuitton bags.
As Keegan squared his shoulders, he saw Florence turn in his direction, gazing balefully through the window.
He reminded himself that he was a McKettrick, born and bred, and chose to advance instead of retreat, assembling a smile as he did so.
Meanwhile, the door on the passenger side sprang open, and a slight woman with shoulder-length honey-colored hair got out.
Keegan glanced at her, looked away, registered who she was and looked back. He felt the smile evaporate from his lips, and forgot all about his plan to ask Florence if Psyche was up to receiving visitors.
His jaw clamped as he rounded the back of the wagon to confront Thayer Ryan’s mistress.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he growled. He couldn’t recall her name, but he remembered running into her at a swanky restaurant up in Flag one night. She’d been sitting with Ryan, that scumball, at a secluded table, clad in a slinky black cocktail dress and dripping diamonds—gifts, no doubt, from her married lover, and almost certainly charged to Psyche, since Ryan had never had a pot to piss in.
The woman flinched, startled. A pink flush glowed on her cheekbones, and her green eyes flickered with affronted guilt. Still, her gaze was steady, and more defiant than ashamed.
“Keegan McKettrick,” she said. Then she tried to go around him.
He blocked her way. “You have a good memory for names,” he told her. “Yours slips my mind.”
Florence, meanwhile, opened the back of the station wagon, presumably to stow the bags. “I’m not doing this all by myself,” she said.
Keegan remembered his manners—at least partially—and waved Florence back from the luggage. “There’s another bus tonight,” he told the woman whose face and body he recalled so well.
“Molly Shields,” she said, and raised her chin a notch to let him know she wasn’t intimidated. “And I’m not going anywhere. Kindly get out of my way, Mr. McKettrick.”
Keegan leaned in a little. Ms. Shields was a head shorter than he was, and he must have outweighed her by fifty pounds, but she didn’t shrink back, and he had to accord her a certain grudging respect for that. “Psyche’s sick,” he said in a grinding undertone. “Just about the last thing she needs is a visit from her dead husband’s girlfriend.”
The flush deepened, but the spring-green eyes flashed with swift defiance. “Step aside,” she said.
Keegan was still getting over the brass-balls audacity of her attitude when Florence interceded, poking at him with a finger.
“Keegan McKettrick,” the old woman said, “either make yourself useful and load up those bags, or be on your way. And if you can take time out of your busy schedule, you might stop by the house one of these days soon and say hello to Psyche. She’d like to see you.”
Keegan deliberately softened his expression. “How is she?” he asked.
Molly Shields took the opportunity to slip around him, grab one of the suitcases.
“She’s bad sick,” Florence answered, and tears glistened in her eyes. “She invited Molly here, and I’m not any happier about it than you are, but she must have a good reason. And I’d appreciate some cooperation on your part.”
Keegan was both confounded and chagrined. He nodded to Florence, lifted two of the five suitcases by their fancy handles and hurled them unceremoniously into the back of the station wagon, doing his best to ignore Molly Shields, who sidestepped him.
“You tell Psyche,” he said to Florence, “that I’ll be by as soon as she feels up to company.”
“She usually holds up pretty well until around two in the afternoon,” Florence replied. “You come over tomorrow, around noon, and I’ll set out a nice lunch for the two of you, on the sunporch.”
Keegan didn’t miss the phrase “for the two of you” and neither, he saw from the corner of his eye, did Molly, who was wrestling with the largest of the bags. “That sounds fine,” he said, and jerked the handle from Molly’s grasp to throw the suitcase in with the others.
She glared at him.
He went right on ignoring her.
“I’d best pick up some bread and milk while we’re here,” Florence said, addressing Molly this time. With that, she disappeared into the convenience store.
“Does Psyche know you were boinking her husband?” Keegan asked in a furious whisper the moment he and Molly were alone.
Molly gasped.
“Does she know?” Keegan repeated fiercely.
She bit her lower lip. “Yes,” she said very quietly, when he’d just about given up on getting an answer.
