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Maybe she couldn’t have expected to be welcomed with open arms, but she hadn’t expected a total rejection either.
    Addie raised her fists suddenly and jigged around like an old-time prizefighter, her braid bouncing, a truculent light in her eyes. “Go away! Get out of my house!”
    “Mother, don’t!” Rachel ordered, wincing as Addie popped her one on the arm.
    “You’re a traitor! I don’t want you here!”
    “Mother, stop it!” Rachel shouted, dodging away from another blow.
    She couldn’t believe this was actually happening. She had been bracing herself for a fight, but not one like this. As she backed into the hall and toward the front door, she kept thinking that any second she would wake up and discover it had all been a dream, a strange black dream. But how far back would the nightmare go, she wondered dimly. A week? A year? Five years?
    “Get out! Get out!” Addie chanted. She couldn’t seem to stop herself from saying the words over and over, but she couldn’t bear to look at Rachel’s face as she said them, so she turned her back to her daughter and went on shouting. It was as if the floodgates on her emotions had been suddenly thrown wide. Anger and hurt spewed out unchecked.
    Rachel pressed her hands over her ears and squeezed her eyes shut. Abruptly it all become too much. She turned and bolted for the front door, knocking over half of Bryan Hennessy’s equipment as she went. She flung the heavy door open and ran out onto the porch, where she stopped and leaned against a post, feeling dizzy and sick.
    “What happened?” Bryan asked, setting her two suitcases down on the ground at the bottom of the steps.
    “She threw me out,” Rachel whispered, stunned. “She doesn’t want me here. She meant it. She told me to leave and never come back, and she meant it.”
    She sounded so small and lost. Bryan’s heart twisted in his chest.
    Rachel hugged the wooden column as if it were the only solid thing in a world suddenly turned to illusion. “I have to help her,” she murmured to Bryan beseechingly. “She’s my mother. I have to help her. She’s my responsibility now. But she doesn’t want me here.”
    “Look,” Bryan said, climbing the steps to the porch, “it’s late. Addie gets really irrational when she hasn’t had a good night’s sleep.” He wanted to tell her that everything would seem better in the morning, but the bald truth was Addie could be irrational at any time. There was no guarantee of her behaving any differently tomorrow.
    Rachel faced him, leaning her back against the post. She wrapped her arms across her middle, fighting to hold herself together. In a matter of days her whole world had torn loose from its moorings. All the dreams she had believed in had died. The rainbow she had followed away from home hadn’t ended in a pot of gold. And the home she had returned to was full of strangers. The nightmare wasn’t going to end when she opened her eyes in the morning. The bad dream had just begun.
    “My mother is losing her mind.” She uttered the words as if she had only just realized what they meant and what the ramifications for her own life would be.
    She looked up at Bryan through a shimmering window of tears. It suddenly didn’t matter that he was a stranger or that she had questioned his motives. He was someone’s son. He had a family somewhere, a home he would return to one day. Maybe he would understand a little of what she was feeling, and she needed so badly to share it with someone, just for a minute or two.
    As the first fat tears teetered over the barrier of her thick lashes, she said, “What am I going to do?”
    Bryan instantly forgot his vow of non-involvement. What man could stand there and watch this lovely creature crumple like a wilting rose? He could offer her his strength if nothing else. He took her gently into his arms, as if her body were as fragile as her spirit, and pressed her cheek to his chest. Sobs tore through her, terrible,