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“Then don’t,” Hally said. She was tired and also a bit put off by the waves of reserve now emanating from this brooding man like chilled air from an open refrigerator. She spoke curtly. “I’m heading home, but I expect to see Corinne in my office a half hour before class tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll see to it,” Mike promised, uncomfortably aware that he had affronted her, but in no condition, emotionally, to try to rectify the situation even if he wanted to. Which he didn’t.
The woman was his daughter’s teacher and assigned counselor. It was in the latter capacity that she had rushed to the stadium, looking to help. It had not been him personally she had aided out there, or even here at the station—it was the parent of one of her charges.
As she spoke to him, her face, smudged with dirt and lined with fatigue, was stern. And her tone was cool and professional.
“As we agreed,” she said, “I’d like you to pick Corinne up from school as well as drive her to school for the next several days, just to let her know we’re working in concert and that tabs are being kept. Please understand, however, that my interest can, of necessity, not go beyond her performance at school. I’ve got nine other students to counsel and I’d be a nervous wreck if I got personally involved in their home situations beyond what pertains to their studies. You do see that?”
“Absolutely,” Mike said, telling himself that was exactly what he wanted from her and no more. “Our family problems have nothing to do with you.”
“Well, at least not directly. So—” Hally shoved back her hair and met his eyes “—I’ll say good-night then.”
“G’night.” Mike half raised his hand as she backed away from him toward the exit. “Thanks again.”
Out on the sidewalk Hally congratulated herself on having made her position clear. Having done her good deed for the day, she told herself, she could now get on with her life. Future contact with Mike Parker would be minimal, confined to her office and school hours.
Bone-weary and longing for a bath, she stuck the key in the driver’s side door of her car. Turning it, her gaze slid down and sideways, past the front wheel to the pavement. Only to snap right back to the front tire with a gasp of dismay. It was flat. The darned tire was flat!
What next? Momentarily overcome by what was definitely the last straw, Hally let her forehead drop to the roof of the car.
What have I done to deserve this? she questioned whatever unkind fate had decreed she shouldn’t go home just yet. I’m tired, I’m hungry….
“Ms. McKenzie?”
Hally’s head jerked up. She took a deep breath and slowly turned around. In front of her, looking concerned, stood Mike Parker. And next to him, managing to look both truculent and defiant, stood Corinne.
“What’s the matter?” Mike asked, frowning. “What happened?”
As Hally wordlessly pointed; her gaze remained on her student. “Are you all right, Corinne?”
The girl gave a careless shrug and looked away, lips set in a stubborn line. But something had flickered in her eyes before she had averted them, and now she visibly swallowed.
She’s not as tough as she wants us to believe, Hally thought.
And knew with a kind of sinking feeling that all the rhetoric she had spouted earlier to Mike and herself about not getting personally involved had likely been just that—rhetoric. Looking at the girl, involvement seemed somehow inevitable.
As it usually had been in at least one case, with at least one student, every year for as long as Hally had been teaching.
Maybe it was because she could have used a sympathetic counselor herself when she was young and lost and so terribly at odds with the world. Her mother, dear friend that she since had become, had at the time been too miserable in her crumbling marriage herself to have been much support to her bewildered and unhappy younger daughter.
Whatever, some kids simply struck a chord; kids who needed understanding and support above and beyond the job description. Corinne Parker was one of those kids.
And it had nothing to do with the girl’s father.
To underscore that, Hally replied brusquely to Mike’s offer of help. “You get your child home, Mr. Parker. I’ve changed tires before, thank you very much.”
Ignoring his taken-aback expression, she bid both of the Parkers good-night and went to get the jack, wrench and spare tire out of her trunk.
Only to be elbowed aside, and not very gently. “I’d appreciate it, Ms. McKenzie,” Mike said without making a secret of the fact that it cost him to approach her after her outright rebuff, “if you’d have a word with Cory while I tend to this. She refuses to speak to me.
“And, yes…” He grimly forestalled the protest he was sure Hally was about to make. “I do realize that my request exceeds the boundaries you established, but—”
“I wasn’t going to refuse,” Hally interrupted, not bothering to argue any longer with him about the tire he was wrestling out of the trunk. “If you’ll hand me your keys and point out which car is yours, Corinne and I will go sit in it.”
“It’s the Buick,” Mike said, handing her the keys. “Seems like I owe you thanks all over again.”
“No, you don’t,” Hally said. “I haven’t done anything yet.”
She walked away, but she did hear Mike mutter, “That’s where you’re wrong.”
Not sure what to make of that, she touched the girl’s slumped shoulder, making her jump. “Come on, Corinne. Let’s go sit in your dad’s car.”
“While he fixes your tire?”
“That’s right.”
“I thought you knew how to do that yourself?” the girl muttered sullenly, keeping her eyes on the ground as she shuffled along at Hally’s light prod in the back.
“I do,” Hally said calmly. Sullen lippiness was something she could handle. Most kids resorted to that as their first line of defense. “But I wanted to talk to you.”
“You mean, he wanted you to talk to me,” Corinne sneered with a baleful glance at her father, hunkered down by the front wheel of the VW Bug.
“Yes, he did.” Hally unlocked the door of the latemodel Buick that Mike had indicated was his. It was her policy to be strictly honest with her students. No games, no subterfuge, no secret pact with their parents. And she expected complete honesty from them in return.
“Get in.” Sliding in behind the wheel, she reached over and unlocked the passenger door.
She watched with weary amusement as Corinne plunked herself down on the seat with a put-upon air. It was hot in the car and, like Hally, she left her door ajar. Slouching, she looked down at her hands. In profile, with traces of baby fat still rounding the contours of her face, she looked achingly vulnerable and oh, so young.
“Were you one of the rioters?” Hally asked. The outright question startled some life into the girl. She turned her head and blinked at Hally.
But her answer was predictably rude. “So what if I was?”
Hally regarded her calmly. Her gaze held the girl’s, who clearly wanted to look away. “Did you know that someone was killed there tonight?”
Corinne visibly swallowed. She sucked her lips inward. Her lashes fluttered and Hally saw a sudden sheen of tears glaze her eyes before she turned her face aside.
Hally’s voice softened. “Now, do you really want your father and me to think that you had a part in that?”
Looking down, the girl gave her head a quick, negative jerk.
“I didn’t think so.” Hally reached out to give Corinne’s hand a reassuring pat. It was instantly jerked away.
Hally ignored the rebuff. In truth, it was no more than she had expected. “I want to help,” she said, “if you’ll let me.”
“Humph.”
“Your father is not the enemy, you know,” Hally said quietly. And was startled in spite of herself by Corinne’s vehement and venomous retort.
“He hates me.” The girl’s face twisted into an ugly mask of anguish and disdain. As if sensing that Mike had come to stand outside the open door—or maybe it was the dismayed glance Hally directed just past the girl’s head that gave it away—Corinne turned to look right at him as she raged, “And I hate him.”
Chapter Three
The expression of raw hurt on Mike Parker’s face before he blanked it as deliberately as if he’d pulled down a shade, stayed with Hally as she slowly drove her car toward home. The spare tire did not allow for speed, which was just as well as she was in a meandering frame of mind after all the drama and trauma of the past several hours. She stopped briefly at the service station and dropped off her tire to be fixed.
Poor Mike, she thought. And poor Corinne, too. It would take a lot of time, patience and love for those two to find their way to each other. She ought to know; she and her father hadn’t found that way yet. And it was what—ten years later? Something like that.
The only thing Mike and Cory had going for them that was different from Hally’s situation with her father, was that Mike was there. His “defection” was not a fact, but a fixated notion that Corinne had come to wholly embrace as fact.
Doctor James McKenzie, on the other hand had, after years of philandering and sporadic, overstrict parenting, literally abandoned his wife and emotionally deserted his two daughters to marry his already-pregnant-with-his-child receptionist.
Hally pulled a face. Now thirty-four, Sweet Eva—their stepmother—was the same age as Hally’s sister Morgan, and only two years older than Hally herself.
It had all been rather sordid and sad, and to this day relations between Hally and her father were strained and contact practically nonexistent. Hally had only seen her father’s new wife and little half brother, now nine, a handful of times at a distance.
Stoutly in her mother’s camp, it was Hally’s choice to maintain the animosity, to ignore James McKenzie’s occasional olive branches and overtures. Reestablishing a cordial relationship with her father would have made her feel disloyal to her mother. Her sister, Morgan, did not see things that way. Morgan had always been their father’s pet, of course. And though she’d initially been hurt by his defection, with marriage and the birth of her own little boy—Kenny, now six—all had apparently been forgiven. Why, she even stayed in her father’s house during her infrequent visits to Long Beach.
Well, to each his or her own, Hally thought, a little righteously. But, seeing again in her mind’s eye Michael Parker’s look of anguish at Corinne’s hateful words, she wondered for the first time if her unrelenting attitude might not be causing her own father pain, as well.
Nonsense. Pulling into her drive, Hally resolutely brushed that unsettling notion aside. James McKenzie was much too arrogant and successful to let something as minor as the loss of one daughter’s trust and affection wound him in any way. Especially with his other daughter as doting as ever.
Getting out of the car, Hally absently glanced at her mother’s side of the house. No lights. She’d gone out.
Hally let herself into the house with a twinge of disappointment—some of her mother’s tea and sympathy would have been a good antidote to everything that had gone before. She sighed and resigned herself to a hot shower and some tea on her own.
She was greeted in the kitchen by an indignant Chaucer. Crouching and scooping the loudly meowing cat up for a hug, Hally hurried to apologize. “Did you get trapped in the house, you silly old thing, you?”
Chaucer was not big on displays of affection, however, and soon squirmed to be free. “Well, off you go then,” Hally groused good-naturedly as she let him out the back door. “Have fun….”
With a sigh—the house seemed strangely quiet and empty to her—she returned to the kitchen. She stood and looked around, irresolute. Was she hungry? She hadn’t eaten and a while ago she’d been starving. But somehow food held no appeal now. A novel occurrence. Maybe losing that five pounds wouldn’t be so difficult, after all.
Rolling her eyes, she considered a cup of hot tea but, spotting the blinking red light on the telephone console, dismissed that notion, too. Crossing over to the small planning desk, she pressed the Play button on the answering machine. Wine, she mused as the tape rewound with an audible whir. A nice glass of Chardonnay, that’s what she wanted.
There were obviously several messages that always seemed to send her dinosaur of a machine into a tailspin. It took forever to rewind to the beginning of the tape. As she poured the wine Hally decided she’d simply have to get with the program and order voice mail.
“Hally!” Ah, it speaks.
Setting down her glass, Hally picked up a pencil and bent over the desk, poised to jot down names and phone numbers. This was Morgan, however, sounding distraught. Of course, she often did. “Do you know where Mother is tonight? I’ve been calling and calling. And what are you up to, anyway? Phone me.”
Right. Hally rolled her eyes. With Morgan, who now lived in Detroit, everything became a crisis when she thought she was being excluded from the loop of family news.
“Hey, why weren’t you at aerobics?” Garnet Bloomfield. “I knew you’d chicken out, McKenzie. God will get you for that! I want to hear from you and it better be good. Signed, your conscience.”
Oh, brother. Straightening, Hally tossed down the pencil. She massaged an ache in the small of her back. She was thinking nothing was going to be important enough to write down when the next message had her scrambling for the pencil and notepad.
“Ms. Mckenzie. This is Sergeant O’Rourke, L.B.P.D. Don’t be alarmed, but please give me a call at 555-5000, extension 24. It’s in regard to your mother. Thank you.”
Oh, dear God. Hally sank down onto the chair in front of the desk and had to listen to the message twice more before she got the sergeant’s telephone number down on paper. Her hand shook as she stabbed the digits and pressed the phone to her ear.
She gave the extension number when the police operator answered. It seemed to take forever before a male voice barked, “O’Rourke.”
“Um.” Nerves momentarily rendered Hally incoherent. She took a deep breath. “This is Hally McKenzie returning your call.”
“Ah, yes,” the officer said, his tone a bit less brisk. “Ms. McKenzie…”
“Has something happened to my mother?” Hally asked, bursting into the policeman’s slight pause. He was no doubt finding his notes on the case or some such, part of her brain thought irrelevantly.
“She’s all right,” Sergeant O’Rourke assured her. “But she asked me to give you a call and to say would you pack an overnight bag and bring it to Memorial Hospital, room number—”
“Hospital!” Hally heard nothing beyond that dreaded word. She surged up off the chair. “What’s wrong with her? What happened? Why wasn’t I—”
“She says she tried to call you. You didn’t answer.”
The phone call.
“She hung up before I could get the phone,” Hally explained tonelessly. Was there to be no end to disaster tonight? “She didn’t leave a message.”
“Yeah, well. She was in pretty bad shape, just barely managed to dial 9-1-1. She fell into some glass. Lacerations…”
“Oh—” With an inarticulate sound of distress, Hally pressed a hand against her mouth. Not her hands! She swallowed down nausea at the visions the officer’s words conjured up. “What was that room number again?”
The pencil jerked in her hand as she wrote down what the sergeant said.
Operating in a daze, she went over to her mother’s side of the house and stuffed toiletries, undergarments and anything else that seemed necessary into a bag. And all the while she thanked the Lord that her mother’s studio was out in the garage, meaning she wouldn’t have to look at the accident’s bloody evidence. She had never been able to stomach the sight of blood. This queasiness was one of the many things her father—a surgeon—had endlessly criticized her for.
On the way to the hospital Hally wondered if she should have called Morgan to apprise her of the situation, but then decided she’d do so after she’d seen their mother and taken stock of the situation firsthand. The last thing she needed after everything else that had occurred today, was to listen to her highly pregnant-with-her-second-child and therefore even-more-easily-unhinged older sister.
Bumping into James McKenzie at the door of her mother’s room was another thing Hally could have lived without.
“Father,” she exclaimed, too tired and rattled to try to keep the appalled tone out of her voice or to edit her words for diplomacy. “What in the world are you doing here?”
“Well, I am a doctor,” her father said mildly, looking Hally up and down in that way he had, that way that had always made her feel inadequate. It galled her to realize it still did. “And this is my hospital,” he went on. “At least to the extent that I’m the chief here.”
“Oh. I didn’t, er, didn’t know…”
“There’s a lot you don’t know, Halloran.”
“Yes, well…” Despising herself for reverting to the very behavior—awkward ineptness—that had always drawn scathing comments from her father, Hally clenched her teeth and met his gaze with much of the same youthful defiance that had always been her defense. And here she’d been so sure she had outgrown that sort of response, too. “If you’ll let me by, I—I came to see my mother.”
“Of course.” James McKenzie stepped aside. “It seems your mother fell and hit her head on the edge of her workbench. There was some bleeding, but nothing too serious. She’s sedated, but she’ll be all right.”
Hally drew herself in so that she could move past without touching him in any way. Her gaze flicked to his once more, and what she saw in his eyes made her gasp. He actually looked hurt.
Furious with herself even more than with her father, she jerked her eyes away and stumbled almost blindly into her mother’s room.
The nurse at the bedside looked up at Hally’s entrance. She put a finger to her lips. “She’s just drifting off,” she whispered in very British English as Hally tiptoed closer. “Doctor gave her a sedative.”
Hally mutely nodded her understanding. She was still undone by the unexpected emotions she’d glimpsed in her father’s eyes, and horrified by the sight of her mother’s bandaged right hand on top of the bedsheet. She let the bag drop to the floor and leaned closer to peer into the dear but pale and too-still features. They were usually so animated. A rather nasty-looking purple bump and bruise marred the high forehead.
Ever so gently, lovingly, Hally touched the injury, letting her finger trail down the velvety cheek before pulling her hand away. I love you, Mom.
“Concussion?” she asked in a low tone.
The nurse shook her head. “Doctor wouldn’t have sedated her if he thought that. You’re family, of course.” It was a statement rather than a question.
Hally nodded. “Her daughter.”
“Oh,” the nurse said, her interest obviously aroused. “In that case, you’re…”
“Doctor McKenzie’s daughter, too,” Hally finished for her. “Yes.” Wanting to forestall any further comments, she asked, “Will my mother be asleep all night?”
“I would think so, yes.”
“I’ve brought her some things.” Hally picked up the bag. “Where should I put them?”
“In the nightstand would be fine,” the nurse said, leaving the room. “She’ll be discharged in the morning.”
Hally took her time unpacking the small bag. Rather than hang it up, she draped her mother’s robe over the foot of the bed. Likewise, she arranged the satin slippers she had packed so that they were ready to be stepped into should her mother need to get up in the night.
She glanced often at the still form on the bed, hoping against hope that her mother would wake and know she was there. When everything was done, feeling helpless, needing to be needed but realizing that there wasn’t anything else she could do, Hally softly kissed her mother on the lips and took her reluctant leave.
“I’ll be back, Mom,” she whispered. “First thing in the morning.”
After a drive home that was filled with a heavy silence neither Michael nor Corinne Parker was inclined to break, father and daughter walked single file into their house. Corinne would have proceeded straight to her room, but Mike stopped her.
“I want to talk to you.” He jerked a chair away from the kitchen table and pointed to it. “Sit.”
Folding her arms across her chest, ignoring the chair, Corinne pointedly propped her hip against the counter and didn’t move.
A rage that was the culmination of everything that had gone before brought Mike over to her in one long stride. He gripped her upper arm with viselike strength.
“I said sit,” he bellowed, yanking the chair closer still and pushing her down onto it. “And by damn you’ll sit, young lady.”
Releasing her as abruptly as he had grabbed her, Mike pivoted and stalked over to the window. He was breathing heavily as the veil of red fury slowly receded from in front of his eyes. Never could he remember having been this angry. He shoved a trembling hand through his hair, inhaling deeply and struggling for a modicum of calm before facing his daughter again.
“Things are going to change around here,” he finally said when he trusted himself to be rational. “You are going to act like a civilized human being…”
“Yeah,” Corinne drawled, her voice and expression full of contempt. “Like you just did, right?”
“Oh, no, you don’t”. Mike glared at her. “You’re not going to turn the tables and lay a guilt trip on me for manhandling you just now. Granted, I lost my temper, but you’d push even a saint to mayhem with your stubbornness and rotten attitude. And it’s going to stop.”
“Pfuh.” Lips twisted, her arms once again folded across her chest, Corinne turned her face aside as if bored.
Mike had to silently count to ten to keep himself from exploding all over again. He knew that if he hoped to get anywhere with her, it wouldn’t be by shouting. On the other hand, he had no intention of letting her off the hook. She had become a liar, a thief and a truant He intended to put a stop to those practices before they became ingrained.
He walked to the shelf, took down the porcelain cat and brought it over to her. He set it on the table. When she refused to look at it, he firmly but not roughly took her chin and forced her face around.
“There was two hundred dollars in that jar,” he said. “Now there’s seventy. I want to know what happened to the rest of it.”
“How should I know?” Corinne muttered. But she wouldn’t look at him, and her face flushed a deep red. The sight of it filled Mike with relief. It proved to him that she still had a conscience, that she wasn’t too far gone to be reached.
“Look at me,” he ordered, still holding her chin.
She complied with deliberate slowness, defiance blazing from her eyes.
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