No Place Like Home

by Leigh Michaels

  “Hey,” Brendan said, startled. “What’s causing this?”

  “I can’t sleep either,” she sobbed. “I’m tired of houses! I look and I look, and there’s nothing big enough or grand enough or good enough, and I just want to crawl home to my own four walls and my cat and never see another For Sale sign again!”

  He put his arms around her and she cried out her frustration against the lapel of his tweed jacket while he gently rubbed her shoulder blades. There was comfort in his arms, and she cried for a little longer than she would have if she had been alone. His shoulder was so very strong, and his fingers were so very gentle as he massaged her tense muscles, and his aftershave was so sweetly tangy to her nose. He had very nicely shaped ears, too, she noticed vaguely.

  “Finished?” he asked finally.

  She gave one last hiccupy sob and nodded.

  “Then you’d better let go of my lapels,” he said, “or I’m afraid I can’t answer for what might happen next.”

  She didn’t quite know what that meant, but she released her stranglehold on the soft tweed and stepped away. He sat down on the edge of the fake marble wall that surrounded the fountain and looked up at her thoughtfully. “For a minute there,” he said, “I wasn’t sure whether you or the nymph were producing more gallons per minute. I think, all things considered, that we’d better give up the rest of the houses and call it a day.”

  “I’m all right now,” she said doubtfully.

  “And if I showed you Buckingham Palace you’d say you didn’t like the wallpaper. Come on. Would you mind awfully if I run an errand before I take you back to the plaza?”

  Kaye shook her head. “No. Graham’s busy with his staff meetings tonight.”

  She had left work a little early that day, and the pale winter sun was just setting when he parked the car in front of a crowded little antique shop in downtown Henderson.

  “I love to rummage in places like this,” she said hopefully.

  “Come on in. There’s nothing clandestine about my business.” He reached into the back seat for a large cardboard box.

  Kaye peered over the top. “That’s the most garish hand-painted china platter I’ve ever seen,” she said.

  He made a face at her and pulled the platter out of its newspaper wrappings.

  “Did you paint it yourself, or did you buy it because you liked it? Sorry if I’ve hurt your feelings.”

  “I have no feelings where this platter is concerned, except a deep hope that I can sell it.”

  She looked at it more closely. “It’s chipped, too.”

  “I know.” He held the door for her, the platter balanced casually under one arm.

  “Are you trying to raise a little cash till the commissions come through?” Kaye speculated.

  “If it was mine, I’d take it out to the rifle range and use it for target practice.” He put the platter down on the counter and said a cheerful hello to the man behind the counter.

  “Some of Nora’s stuff again?” the man asked warily, and when Brendan nodded, the shopkeeper picked the platter up and turned it over to examine the bottom for markings.

  Kaye looked idly through a mug full of hat pins, but her attention was riveted on the platter. If it wasn’t Brendan’s, she wondered, then why on earth was he trying to convert it into cash? And who was Nora? Not the brunette at the real estate office, that was sure. He’d called her Cindy.

  The shopkeeper shook his head. “I just can’t,” he said. “Business has been bad, and I don’t have a prayer of selling a piece like that. If times were better, I’d give Nora a price even if I had to keep it on a shelf in the back room, but—”

  “I know, Joe. Don’t fret about it. I’ll think of something.” Brendan tucked the platter under his arm. “Ready, Kaye?”

  “Who’s Nora?” she asked, after he had settled the platter gently into the box on the back seat, quite as carefully as if it had been Limoges. “And why are you selling her dishes?”

  “Nora is a friend of mine who has fallen on hard times.” He got into the car, but he didn’t start the engine. He bit his lip and sighed. “I suppose I’d better tell her as soon as possible.”

  “There are other antique shops,” Kaye reminded.

  “I think I’ve tried them all this time. Joe was a last resort, and I only took it to his shop because Nora will ask about him. When she has a good piece, Joe gives her top dollar. But I hate to see him stuck with something he can’t sell.”

  “So you have to tell her it’s worthless.”

  “Something like that. Would you like to meet her? She seldom has visitors.” He didn’t look at her; he was watching for a break in traffic.

  “And I can help with the burden of breaking the bad news,” Kaye murmured. “Sure, I’ll be a sport. I owe you a favor.” Besides, she thought, I’m dying to meet his Nora. And a little surprised to be invited, as well.

  “I think you’ll like her. Fate has not smiled on Nora Farrell the last few years. She was only trying to make a living, and the state put her out of business.”

  Kaye’s eyes widened. “What was she?” she demanded, and decided to put it delicately. “A lady of the evening?”

  Brendan laughed. “Heavens, no! When you meet Nora, you’ll be ashamed of yourself for even thinking such a thing. She was running an impromptu convalescent home. You know, taking in elderly people when they’d been ill, until they were well enough to go home.”

  “And the state didn’t like it?”

  “If you’re going to charge fees for services like that, you have to be licensed,” he pointed out. “Not that Nora was exactly getting paid, but she couldn’t afford to do it for free, so each person she nursed helped out with the costs.”

  “It sounds to me as if the officials were splitting hairs.”

  Brendan nodded. “That’s the way it seemed to me, too, but we got nowhere when we protested. We tried to tell them she was providing an important public service because most of those people couldn’t afford standard convalescent care. Then we tried to explain that people weren’t really paying Nora; they were just giving her a small gift of appreciation.”

  “But they didn’t go along with it?”

  “No. Nora couldn’t get licensed because there are pages of requirements, and there was nothing else she could do to earn money. Nora is seventy-three. So now she’s living with her nephew and his family, and she sells a treasure now and then so she can have some of the luxuries of life. You know, frivolous things like a chocolate bar once a week and occasionally a new pair of stockings for church.”

  His voice was almost fierce, and Kaye shivered.

  “Sorry. I must sound as if I think it’s all your fault.” He smiled crookedly at her, but there was no humor in his eyes.

  “So it’s Nora that you take to church every week,” she murmured. “Your secret’s out, Brendan.”

  “My reputation is in your hands. I don’t like to go to see her empty-handed.”

  “Or, in this case, worse than empty-handed,” Kaye agreed. “Is that why you’re bringing me?”

  “Would you run into the little shop on the corner and get a two-pound box of Hilliard chocolates? I’d go myself but there’s no place to park. Here’s the money. I’ll go around the block so I don’t tie up traffic.”

  “Something tells me,” Kaye muttered to herself as she waited on the corner in the biting wind a couple of minutes later, the cellophane-wrapped box under her arm, hanging on to her hat in a valiant effort to keep it from going south for the rest of the winter, “that keeping up with Brendan McKenna’s Good Samaritan instincts could be a full-time job!”

  The dark blue car stopped at the corner, blocking traffic, and Kaye dashed across to it. Horns were honking as she threw herself in, and her door wasn’t quite shut yet when Brendan hit the gas.

  “Hey,” Kaye protested. “Are you trying out to be a stunt driver in a spy movie, or what? Here’s your change. You’ve got expensive taste when it comes to frivolity, you know.”<
br />
  “Stick the box under your coat when we go in,” he suggested. “I used to take her Haagen-Daz ice cream, but her nephew has two teenage boys, so Nora would get about three spoonfuls and they’d eat the rest. The chocolates she can hide in her room, if the kids don’t know she’s got them.”

  Somehow, that was the saddest thing of all, Kaye thought—the idea that an adult woman could not have something of her own without hiding it from the people she lived with, the very ones who should be making sure that she was not wholly deprived. She swallowed hard, trying to get rid of the lump in her throat. She had the feeling that Nora Farrell would not appreciate the idea of someone crying for her.

  The house they went to was a small bungalow in a middle-class neighborhood, one of a row of identical dwellings. There was a small car in the driveway, and a battered pickup truck was parked carelessly in the snow that covered the front lawn. Kaye looked at the house in horror. “How many people live here?” she asked.

  “Five.”

  “Brendan, it’s hardly big enough for a honeymoon cottage.”

  “Certainly not by your standards,” he said.

  She felt as if she’d been slapped. Was that why he had brought her, she wondered—to show her how selfish it was of her to want a big house, when other people had to live in this smashed-together fashion?

  He got out of the car. “Are you coming?”

  “I don’t think I need to. You’ve already made your point. I know that you think I’m being ridiculous about needing a big house when other people live like this.”

  He looked astounded. “I don’t think any such thing.”

  “But you said—”

  “I meant that it is a small house, and especially after the ones we’ve been looking at, it seems to be about the right size for a doll. Don’t take it personally.” There was an undercurrent of charm in his voice that tugged at her, pulling her away from the safe, sane shore and out into a dark, uncertain sea.

  She looked up at him, and got slowly out of the car, quite as if there was an invisible string linking them together.

  The teenaged boy who answered the door was wearing a ragged T-shirt with a less-than-polite phrase printed on the front of it. The television set was blaring, and the coffee table was loaded with potato chip bags and dirty dishes. “Did you bring old Nora any ice cream?” he asked by way of greeting.

  “Not today,” Brendan said, with firm politeness. “Would you tell her we’re here, please?”

  “Tell her yourself,” the boy suggested. His eyes were already back on the flickering TV screen.

  Brendan swore under his breath and led the way down a narrow hall. When he knocked on a closed door, Kaye could hear a slight rustle inside. The door opened a bare inch, and a joyous voice said, “Brendan! And you’ve brought your young lady!”

  Brendan laughed and kissed the old woman’s cheek. He was a first-class actor, Kaye thought; gone was the irritable and frustrated man who had obviously wanted to dust the living room floor with that impudent teenage boy. “Not my young lady, Nora,” he corrected. “This is Kaye Reardon. I’ve told you about looking for a house for her.”

  So there is a young lady, Kaye thought, if Nora knows about her. That’s interesting.

  “You’re the one who’s been keeping him so busy,” Nora said. She held out a thin, almost transparent hand to Kaye, and then the smile died suddenly out of her china-blue eyes. “You shouldn’t have brought her, Brendan,” she said in a horrified whisper. “I can’t entertain a grand lady in my bedroom.”

  Kaye took the slender hand and impulsively leaned forward to kiss Nora’s cheek. She smelled of lavender-scented soap, Kaye thought, and wondered if that had been another frivolity provided by Brendan. Nora was wearing a pale-blue dress with an old-fashioned cameo pinned to the tiny ruffle at the throat. She stood so straight that it seemed to Kaye that she probably never bent over at all. “I came to see you, not the furniture,” Kaye said.

  “Oh,” Nora said. “You were right, Brendan. She is a lady.”

  “Of course she is,” he said, in a teasing half-whisper. “I wouldn’t inflict anyone on you who wasn’t. She’s also carrying contraband.”

  Kaye had forgotten the box of chocolates that was digging into her ribs under the white fur jacket. She handed the candy over, and Nora’s eyes filled with tears. “Oh, you shouldn’t have, my dear girl,” she said. “But I love them so. How did you know these are my favorite kind?”

  Kaye started to correct her, to tell Nora that the chocolates were from Brendan. But he interrupted. “I cannot tell a lie, Nora,” he said lazily. “I told Kaye you liked them best.”

  Can’t tell a lie, my foot, Kaye thought. He had told the strictest sort of truth, but he had certainly managed to leave the impression that the chocolates had been all her idea! Well, perhaps it was easier for him that way, she thought. Nora might feel that she shouldn’t accept gifts every time he came.

  Nora opened the box and solemnly offered it around.

  Brendan crunched a chocolate-dipped almond and told Kaye, his eyes dancing, “These aren’t bad, you know. You have very good taste.”

  “I’ll think of you every time I eat one, Miss Reardon,” Nora said. She tucked the box under her pillow and sat primly on the edge of the bed. “I’m so glad you stopped by, Brendan. I hate to bother you on the telephone, but Alma Wiggens told me today that there was a window open on the sun porch. Some careless person who was looking at it left it open, no doubt. I’d have taken care of it myself if I could only get over there to do so, but with the cold—”

  “You stay right where you are,” Brendan said. “I’ll stop on my way home and close the window.”

  “I’d so like to see it again,” Nora said wistfully.

  “I’ll take you over some day next spring.”

  Kaye was baffled. I haven’t the vaguest idea what they’re talking about, she thought, and I don’t think I should ask.

  “You know how careful I always was of it, Brendan,” Nora went on.

  There was a harsh knock at the bedroom door. “Mom says your dinner’s ready and to get rid of your company right now,” the teenager said.

  Nora’s eyes flickered with pain, and then she drew herself up even straighter. Kaye wanted to give her a hug, but she knew any show of sympathy would make it even more difficult for Nora. Her dignity, Kaye thought, was her only defense.

  Brendan’s jaw set hard, but he said, easily enough, “I’ll see you on Saturday, Nora.”

  “You won’t forget the window, will you?”

  “I’ll take care of it right now. You don’t mind, do you, Kaye?”

  “Of course not,” Kaye said, wondering what it was that she was agreeing to.

  “Thank you, dear.” Then Nora’s eyes shadowed again, and she asked, almost fearfully, “Have you had any luck with the platter, Brendan?”

  “Oh, I almost forgot about that.”

  Kaye’s heart was in her throat. The bad news would be another blow to this gallant lady who had already absorbed so much, and she wished there was some way of shielding her from it.

  Brendan reached for his wallet. “The owner of a little shop downtown said she’d never seen anything quite like it.” He pulled out two twenty-dollar bills and handed them to Nora.

  Kaye’s mouth dropped open. She shut it and concentrated on admiring the way Brendan had gotten around that one without telling a lie.

  Nora gave a long sigh, and then tried to smile. “I’m so pleased, really I am, my dear,” she said. “And of course I don’t need a platter any more. But—well, it’s hard to let go of things like that. I painted it myself when I was just a girl, and I did like it so.”

  “I’m sure the new owner will treasure it,” Kaye said gently. “May I come and visit you again?”

  Nora’s eyes took on a watery glow. “I’d be so pleased. But no more chocolates, you hear? When I can’t even offer you a glass of water, you shouldn’t bring me expensive things.”

  “I
’ll just bring myself,” Kaye promised solemnly. She bit her tongue till they were back in the car, and then she said casually, looking out the window, “Make sure you don’t forget to take that platter out of the back seat before Saturday night.”

  “I just couldn’t tell her,” Brendan said. He sounded half-shy, like a child making a confession.

  “For heaven’s sake, don’t be ashamed of yourself! It would have broken my heart if you’d told her the truth. Where are we going, anyway? What’s this about a window and a sun porch?”

  “Among the other things Nora lost when she had to give up her convalescent home was her house. She couldn’t keep up the mortgage payments, so the bank repossessed it.”