When the freezing air hit her toes, Addy realized that even her socks were soaked.
“Hi, Mom,” she said, and stepped into the welcoming embrace, returning it with a fierceness that had her mother narrowing her eyes in concern.
“Hi, yourself.” The concern switched gears as Susannah noticed the debris that had transferred to her own neatly pressed blouse and jeans. “Maybe I should take the rest of your clothes while we’re at it.”
“I’ll take you up on that, but can I come inside first?” Addy asked, grinning, as she swung her mother gently around by the shoulders and stepped into the warmth of her childhood home. The boots, she left on the porch.
“Get in, get in.” Her mother handed Addy a pair of slippers as she hustled her into the guest bathroom off the hall, disappearing and then returning moments later with a thick terry bathrobe. “Good Lord, girl. What happened to you?”
“Ladies’ mud wrestling,” she answered with a laugh, and stripped out of her clothes. Her mother accepted them gingerly with one hand. The bathrobe felt wonderfully clean. “It’s my new career.”
“And to think we could have saved all that money on your college tuition,” her mother called as she headed back toward the kitchen. “There’s coffee on, if you want some before you take a hot shower.”
“Absolutely.” She stepped into the sheepskin-lined slippers and followed her mother to the rear of the house. Through the smattering of architectural courses she’d taken for her own pleasure on her way to attaining a degree in civil engineering, she knew that her family’s home was a perfect example of the Chicago bungalow, one of thousands clustered around the city. But in her heart, the house was unique. She’d spent two-thirds of her life in this house and now, as she did each time she came home, she walked slowly through the rooms, pausing in each one to savor the memories evoked by every square foot of space.
And the photographs. Nearly every table, most of the walls, any shelf with a spare inch of space on its ledge, held collections of the pictures that tracked the Tyler family in their continuing lives. Maxie in fabulously outrageous Halloween costumes. Tyler, two seconds before carrying out his threat to tackle the photographer. Herself, Sarah and her mother caught off guard in dozens of moments.
Most of all, though, what caught her were the pictures of her father. Michael McKinley Tyler had been killed in a car accident when Addy was eight years old. Maxie hadn’t even been born yet. Addy knew she was the only one of his four children who could remember him clearly, remember his wickedly flashing dark eyes and the music he could pour out of his saxophone like a liquid-gold rain in their small living room. So she took special pleasure in the recognition that flowed warmly through her with every picture of his smiling face.
“Hi, Daddy.” She blew a kiss at a photo of her father wailing away on the sax in the smoky darkness of a jazz club. Having greeted the house, she followed the dark aroma of French roast to the kitchen.
“Still the same as you remember?” her mother asked as she cracked the oven door and peered inside. Two mugs waited, steaming, on the butcher-block table.
Addy wrapped cold hands around the heavy ceramic mug and inhaled deeply, drawing in the rich scent. She’d first tasted coffee the day she turned six and the only thing she’d wanted for her birthday was to be allowed to watch her dad play with his band. Perched sleepily on a chair in the corner of the club, up far past her bedtime, waiting for the late set to start, her mother had let Addy sip a milky café au lait to stay awake. Smoke, jazz and coffee were inextricably linked for her from that night on.
“I think I’d run screaming out the door if you ever redecorated.”
“Your brother and sisters would have me committed. But before they invade, how was your day? Other than finding your true career path in mud wrestling, that is.”
“Disturbing.” Her mother’s raised eyebrow encouraged her to continue. Addy bit her lip and tried to find the right words for her questions. In the end, the simplest way seemed best. “Mom, did you know that Great-Aunt Adeline died?”
Susannah briefly closed her eyes and dropped her head beneath the light of the stained-glass lamp hanging above the table. When she looked back at Addy, her eyes, and her words, were calm. Measured. “Yes, I’d heard.”
“Why didn’t you tell us? Tell me?” If she hadn’t known, Addy was sure her siblings were equally in the dark.
Her mother paused before speaking.
“You wouldn’t even remember meeting her. You were just a baby. But I used to send her pictures of you. Your brother and sisters, too, but I always hoped she’d feel some kind of bond with you at least. Since you were named for her.” She shrugged. “I honestly didn’t think you would even hear about it.”
“Surprise, surprise,” Addy murmured, mostly to herself.
“Who told you?”
“Aunt Adeline’s attorney.”
“What?” Confusion battled surprise on her mother’s face.
“Apparently you were more successful than you thought. I’ve been named in her will.” Addy’s irritation blossomed anew at the mere thought. She knew her anger was a mixed-up tangle directed at both her great-aunt and Spencer Reed, but she resolutely shut thoughts of the disturbingly attractive man out of her head. “Maybe she thought she could buy her way back into your good graces on her deathbed.”
Ceramic mug met wood tabletop with a forceful clatter.
“Watch your mouth, Adeline Marie Tyler.” Her mother’s voice crackled with real anger. “You may not live under my roof anymore, but in this house we don’t disrespect the dead, or their last wishes.”
Susannah jumped up and paced the tile floor, eventually stopping to yank plates and water glasses from a cabinet. She turned and thrust the stack of plates at her eldest daughter. “If Aunt Adeline changed her feelings at the end and then died before she found a way to tell us, that’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. Go set the table.”
Addy stood and took the dishes, but remained stubbornly in one spot.
“I don’t want anything from her. She meant nothing to me.”
Her mother cupped a hand against Addy’s cheek, brushed a tangle of curls behind one ear. Gentleness rested in her touch.
The shrill peal of the telephone rang through the house.
“Answer that. Set the table. You’ll figure the rest out later.” Her mom patted her cheek and turned back to the stove.
She set the plates down in the dining room before heading to the tiny phone table in the hall. Answering the phone with her mind on other things, she was confused by the voice she heard. She moved the handset away from her ear, stared at it for a moment and then put it back.
“Excuse me? Who is this?”
“Spencer Reed, Ms. Tyler. I wanted to let you know—”
“How did you get this number? It’s not even mine.”
She could hear the impatience in his words and pictured his lips thinning as he pressed them together. “There are a lot of ways to get information if you’re willing to pay for it. But in the case of your mother’s home phone number, your aunt gave it to me years ago.”
“Great-aunt,” she shot back, not willing to let him claim an ounce more family intimacy than absolutely necessary. “It would have been kinder of her to use the number herself and call my mother just once in the last twenty or thirty years. Speaking of which, why doesn’t this bequest go to my mother? She’s the nearest relation. Or why not my brother and sisters, too? Why just me?”
He paused before speaking. She could picture him leaning back in an oversize leather chair, looking up at the ceiling. He would treat even her snippy