Page 29 of Families and Other Enemies

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THENEXTMORNING, as Kellen drove south down the highway, she called hands-free to the Di Luca Winery.

Max picked up the phone. “Kellen?”

“Right. May I speak with Rae, please?”

A pause. Maybe some disappointment. She sort of hoped. Then, “Rae, your mama wants to speak with you.”

Just like before, Kellen heard, “Yayyyyy!” Then Rae’s breathless voice came on the phone. “Mommy! Guess what I’m doing?”

“Eating breakfast?”

“Yes! Grandma made biscuits and she burned the bottoms.”

Kellen heard Grandma Verona muttering in the background.

“I had scrambled eggs with spinach and cheese. I love spinach! My friend Chloe hates spinach. I like it with balsamic vinegar. Daddy said I have expensive taste. My zio in Italy makes balsamic vinegar and—”

Kellen didn’t know how to get a word in edgewise, so she interrupted. “Rae, I have something to tell you.”

In a serious voice, Rae asked, “Is it momentous?”

The kid was seven. Where did she get this vocabulary? “Yes. I have one more solemn responsibility and duty, and when I’m done, I’m coming to live with you.”

“Yayyyy!” For a little person, Rae had good lungs. “Daddy, Mommy’s come home. Grandma, Mommy’s coming home!”

“Home? Whoa. I still don’t know whether we should exactly call it—” There was a loud thump, and Kellen’s ear rang like a gong.

Max’s voice came on. “Sorry. She was so excited she dropped the phone. Now she’s dancing... You’re coming to stay here?”

“You can get the whole story from Rae. I have one more solemn responsibility and duty—”

Max started laughing. It didn’t sound like mean laughter, more like genuine amusement.

“Then I’ll travel to the winery to be with Rae.”

Max abruptly stopped laughing. “And be with me?”

Complications! “Max...”

“Sorry. One step at a time. I don’t mean to scare you off before you even get here.”

When Kellen got to the winery, she would be in his power. She wasn’t defenseless anymore, and Max was nothing like her abusive dead husband, but still, the idea of being on his property raised the hair on the back of her neck. “You’re not helping.”

He knew the right thing to say, the right tone to take. “I’m not going to trap you here. You’ll be free to leave anytime.”

But she wouldn’t. She had a solemn responsibility and duty to Rae, too. “I don’t know how long my journey will take, hopefully, at tops, a couple of weeks.” She stopped, wrestled with her innate privacy and finally managed to add, “I’m going to visit my aunt in Nevada. She’s in a memory care facility—she has dementia. I want to touch base with her in a meaningful way. The medical establishment tells me she has her good days and her bad days, so the length of time I’m away isn’t up to me.”

“I understand.” Max sounded warm and comforting, like a down throw tossed around her shoulders. “Thank you for trusting me with your family situation.”

Trust? Him? Yes, of course. Apparently Bridget wasn’t the only one with trust issues. “I’ll keep you up to date,” Kellen said. “Talk to you soon.”

“I look forward to that.” That pleased tone of voice...

Kellen shivered even though the summer sun was shining in her window...and not from fear.

THISTIME, AS Kellen pulled into the memory care facility, she chose her parking spot carefully, making sure her steering wheel and seat belt were shaded by one of the spindly trees in the parking lot. She gathered up the visitor’s ID tag from its place between the seats and clipped it to her jeans. She stepped out into a desert heat so stifling it hurt to breathe, walked across the sweltering parking lot, pressed the button at the front door of the facility and was buzzed in.

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