Read Magic for Free Online

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.