“The kid with the rubber bayonet?”
Erin laughed. “That’s the one. I think he’s catching onto the concept that scaring the hell out of a gal isn’t likely to win her heart.” She glanced down at her watch at the same moment the shrill of the bell for the start of class sounded overhead. “Blast, I gotta run. No time to call Babs now.”
“Want me to call?”
“No, I should wait a little while. If you’re right and there’s nothing seriously wrong, I don’t want to make Babs’ day any worse by calling too early. I’ll call after this next class.”
“Let me know if it turns out to be anything more than a hangnail.”
“Will do. Catch ya later.”
Kat hung up the phone. Sitting at the kitchen table, her fingers back in place on the keyboard, she stared blankly at the screen unable to bring her thoughts back to her article about “Visiting St. Augustine Florida on a Budget”.
A single file line of fuzzy yellow ducklings waddling across the patio caught her attention. Slowly, a fist-sized knot clenched in her stomach. If Erin was upset, anything could be wrong. One of Erin’s feelings could run the gamut from something as simple as knowing a loved one had been burglarized and was alone and upset, or something as serious as needing to rush someone to emergency surgery.
Kat leaned back, remembering the burglary as clearly as though it had happened yesterday and not five years ago. She’d been alone in her trashed apartment, freaking out at the thought of a stranger’s fingers touching her stuff. When the phone rang, she nearly shot through the ceiling.
“Are you okay?” Erin had asked in a rush, sounding more frazzled than Kat felt.
After chatting with her intuitive friend for an hour and a half, Kat had felt a little less violated. By the time Erin had spread the word to Anna, Kat had almost forgotten anything bad had happened. When she’d gotten off the phone with Babs, she was packing for a much-needed girls’ weekend in San Francisco.
Erin might be the second-sighted of the group, intuitively aware of whatever mischief abounded in their lives, and Anna the fighter ready to march into battle for those she loved, but Babs was the mother hen, making sure the family always found the time to come home. If Erin was right, and Kat didn’t doubt she was, whatever was happening, it was happening to Babs.
Still staring out the window, Kat watched as mama duck dipped her webbed toe into the edge of the water before gliding across the small man-made lake. Like good little ducklings, the fuzzy little balls of yellow feathers followed mama’s lead, swimming away. She’d never tell her friend, but Kat had named the mama duck Babs.
“You all right, Miss O’Hanlon?”
Erin glanced up at the young man in front of her. “I’m sorry. Did you say something?”
“You look a little...upset.” The handsome kid in baggy jeans that hung low on his hips leaned his book on Erin’s desk.
“Just distracted.” She lifted a shoulder and shook her head. Jason was a quiet boy. It usually worried her when her students didn’t seem to have many friends, but Jason appeared to be content in his solitude. It shouldn’t have surprised her that he’d be the one to notice her mood. Touched by his still furrowed brow, she smiled despite the unease stirring inside her and watched him take his usual seat at the back of the room.
“Y’all have ten minutes to go over your review sheets before I pass out today’s quiz.” The simultaneous groans that rumbled through the room would have been amusing if Erin weren’t so preoccupied. Something simply wasn’t right.
Her grandmother always said the women in the family had a way of knowing when they were needed, some more so than others. Her mother always got the urge to telephone someone at just the right moment to offer comfort, support, or a ride to the hospital. Her grandmother was much the same, though she also often knew days before anyone else when someone in the family was about to pass on. Whatever this sight was, it seemed to have dwindled with her generation.
All Erin knew was that she’d get a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach telling her something wasn’t right with someone she cared about. Didn’t matter if it was an irritating hangnail as Kat had teased, or a bellyache that struck at two in the morning like Babs’ appendix had done their sophomore year of college. Unlike her mom who knew straight away who to call and bypassed the nervous Nellies, Erin could spend an entire day, or longer, figuring out who and what had her all worked up.
At least her friends didn’t think she was nuts, despite having given her the nickname Taisch. Once during a visit to Dallas the summer after freshman year, her grandmother had told Erin’s friends the Irish had a name for those with second sight. Even though Erin’s premonitions were more a feeling than an actual seeing of the future, they’d begun to call her by the Gaelic word after Erin had awakened in a cold sweat an hour before Babs curled into a ball, screaming from the pain of a burst appendix. Her friends had quickly learned to respect whenever one of those feelings struck. She wished this one wasn’t scaring her so.
In thirty minutes the class would be over and she could call California. Who knows, maybe Kat was right and it really was just a hangnail. The vise in her gut tightened. She looked past the kids’ grimaces to the clock on the wall. Twenty-eight more minutes.
Barbara Preston - Babs. The phone slipped from Anna’s ear and landed in her lap. Her mind ran in a million directions. Anna remembered the last time her friend had seen fit to interrupt an important meeting. Babs had called to say the flight her parents were on had fallen off the radar somewhere over the Rockies. Oh God.
With her heart racing at mach one, she retrieved the receiver from her lap and waved it at her assistant. “Take over the call to Italy for me, then patch Mr. Lambert through. And find me some Tums.”
“Right away.” Liz stepped back, pulling the door closed.
Placing her overseas call on hold, Anna took a deep breath, straightened her shoulders then pressed the button with the green flashing light. “Anna Bartiglioni.”
“Hi, Anna. This is Mark Lambert.”
“Yes, Tom’s friend. How are you?” She tried to inject a calm to her tone that she didn’t feel.
“I wasn’t sure you’d remember.”
She thought he sounded a little shaky and wondered if he was making the same effort to sound under control that she was. “Of course, I remember you. Scotch, neat, and you balance a mean lampshade. What has you calling at seven in the morning? Or are you in New York?” New York. Maybe that was it. He was in New York. But that wouldn’t be considered urgent. Or was he so arrogant he thought she’d consider his visiting New York an urgent matter?
“It’s not good news. I had a flat tire this morning. Easy enough to change but I was already running late and the tire only made it worse. I needed to let Tom know he might have to take over for me at a company meeting scheduled for first thing this morning. Since I knew he wouldn’t have had time to get to work yet, I called him on his cell.”
Anna took another deep breath, wishing he’d skip the details and get to the point.
“A Burlingame police officer answered.”
Every ounce of oxygen she’d breathed in whooshed out in a dizzying rush.
“All he would tell me is there’d been an accident and the victims were being flown to San Francisco Memorial.”
Victims? Flown? Anna’s fingers tightened their grip on the phone. For a short instant she’d felt a guilty relief that Tom was the one in trouble and Babs would merely be in need of emotional support. Just as quickly, relief transformed itself into anguish at the thought of Babs losing Tom and the baby. It would kill her. “He wasn’t alone?”
“No. I called San Francisco Memorial. All they would tell me was that Mrs. Barbara Preston was in surgery.”
Anna didn’t hear another word. The chair seemed to wobble beneath her, threatening to slip out from under her with the rest of her world. Her heart and lungs had stopped, and her mind had gone blank except for one thought. Babs was hurt. Badly. “I’m on my
way.”
“I thought you’d want to know. I don’t know how to reach--”
“I’ll call them,” she interrupted. “I should be on the next flight. See you there.” Without waiting for a response Anna hung up the phone, opened her desk drawer, grabbed her oversized pocketbook, stuffed the framed photo inside and pushed away from the desk with such force, the chair flew back and crashed into the wall. Shoving her office door open with a bang, she turned to Liz without stopping. “Walk with me.”
“I’m still on hold.”
“They can go to hell. Call old man Peterson. Tell him I’ve got a family emergency. Let his precious Junior figure out this mess.” If she didn’t get the right designs, have them up to Nobel standards, and in store by the debut date, her name would be mud. If anything happened to Babs and she wasn’t there to help, her name wouldn’t mean a damn thing to her anyway.
She was nearly to the elevator when she realized Liz was scurrying to keep up, a small bottle of antacids in hand. “Book me a one-way ticket to San Francisco.”
“Coach or business?”
“You can put me on the damn wing if you want. Just make sure when that plane takes off, I’m on it.” She dropped the pills into her pocketbook and stabbed impatiently at the elevator buttons. “Arrange for a car at the airport- no, wait, an SUV. I’ll have my cell phone. If I’m able to work from San Francisco, I’ll notify you what to send me.”
Liz was hurriedly taking notes. “Shall I notify anyone else?”
“You’d better warn all the buyers. If this turns out to be as bad as I think it is, God help us, Junior will be in charge.”
Read the rest of THE CHAMPAGNE SISTERHOOD here!
OTHER BOOKS
BY CHRIS KENISTON
Honeymoon For One
FAMILY SECRETS SERIES
The Champagne Sisterhood
The Homecoming
Hope's Corner: Texas
ALOHA SERIES
Shell Game
Aloha Texas
Almost Paradise
Mai Tai Marriage
Dive Into You
Shall We Dance (novella)
Look of Love
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Author of eight contemporary novels, including the award winning Champagne Sisterhood, Chris Keniston lives in suburban Dallas with her husband, two human children, two canine children, and now her kitty grandchild. Though she loves all her family equally, she admits being especially attached to her German Shepherd rescue. After all, even dogs deserve a happily ever after.
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Hope's Corner Page 29