Love, Marriage And Family 101. Anne Peters

Signed, your conscience.”

      Oh, brother. Straightening, Hally tossed down the pencil. She massaged an ache in the small of her back. She was thinking nothing was going to be important enough to write down when the next message had her scrambling for the pencil and notepad.

      “Ms. Mckenzie. This is Sergeant O’Rourke, L.B.P.D. Don’t be alarmed, but please give me a call at 555-5000, extension 24. It’s in regard to your mother. Thank you.”

      Oh, dear God. Hally sank down onto the chair in front of the desk and had to listen to the message twice more before she got the sergeant’s telephone number down on paper. Her hand shook as she stabbed the digits and pressed the phone to her ear.

      She gave the extension number when the police operator answered. It seemed to take forever before a male voice barked, “O’Rourke.”

      “Um.” Nerves momentarily rendered Hally incoherent. She took a deep breath. “This is Hally McKenzie returning your call.”

      “Ah, yes,” the officer said, his tone a bit less brisk. “Ms. McKenzie…”

      “Has something happened to my mother?” Hally asked, bursting into the policeman’s slight pause. He was no doubt finding his notes on the case or some such, part of her brain thought irrelevantly.

      “She’s all right,” Sergeant O’Rourke assured her. “But she asked me to give you a call and to say would you pack an overnight bag and bring it to Memorial Hospital, room number—”

      “Hospital!” Hally heard nothing beyond that dreaded word. She surged up off the chair. “What’s wrong with her? What happened? Why wasn’t I—”

      “She says she tried to call you. You didn’t answer.”

       The phone call.

      “She hung up before I could get the phone,” Hally explained tonelessly. Was there to be no end to disaster tonight? “She didn’t leave a message.”

      “Yeah, well. She was in pretty bad shape, just barely managed to dial 9-1-1. She fell into some glass. Lacerations…”

      “Oh—” With an inarticulate sound of distress, Hally pressed a hand against her mouth. Not her hands! She swallowed down nausea at the visions the officer’s words conjured up. “What was that room number again?”

      The pencil jerked in her hand as she wrote down what the sergeant said.

      Operating in a daze, she went over to her mother’s side of the house and stuffed toiletries, undergarments and anything else that seemed necessary into a bag. And all the while she thanked the Lord that her mother’s studio was out in the garage, meaning she wouldn’t have to look at the accident’s bloody evidence. She had never been able to stomach the sight of blood. This queasiness was one of the many things her father—a surgeon—had endlessly criticized her for.

      On the way to the hospital Hally wondered if she should have called Morgan to apprise her of the situation, but then decided she’d do so after she’d seen their mother and taken stock of the situation firsthand. The last thing she needed after everything else that had occurred today, was to listen to her highly pregnant-with-her-second-child and therefore even-more-easily-unhinged older sister.

      Bumping into James McKenzie at the door of her mother’s room was another thing Hally could have lived without.

      “Father,” she exclaimed, too tired and rattled to try to keep the appalled tone out of her voice or to edit her words for diplomacy. “What in the world are you doing here?”

      “Well, I am a doctor,” her father said mildly, looking Hally up and down in that way he had, that way that had always made her feel inadequate. It galled her to realize it still did. “And this is my hospital,” he went on. “At least to the extent that I’m the chief here.”

      “Oh. I didn’t, er, didn’t know…”

      “There’s a lot you don’t know, Halloran.”

      “Yes, well…” Despising herself for reverting to the very behavior—awkward ineptness—that had always drawn scathing comments from her father, Hally clenched her teeth and met his gaze with much of the same youthful defiance that had always been her defense. And here she’d been so sure she had outgrown that sort of response, too. “If you’ll let me by, I—I came to see my mother.”

      “Of course.” James McKenzie stepped aside. “It seems your mother fell and hit her head on the edge of her workbench. There was some bleeding, but nothing too serious. She’s sedated, but she’ll be all right.”

      Hally drew herself in so that she could move past without touching him in any way. Her gaze flicked to his once more, and what she saw in his eyes made her gasp. He actually looked hurt.

      Furious with herself even more than with her father, she jerked her eyes away and stumbled almost blindly into her mother’s room.

      The nurse at the bedside looked up at Hally’s entrance. She put a finger to her lips. “She’s just drifting off,” she whispered in very British English as Hally tiptoed closer. “Doctor gave her a sedative.”

      Hally mutely nodded her understanding. She was still undone by the unexpected emotions she’d glimpsed in her father’s eyes, and horrified by the sight of her mother’s bandaged right hand on top of the bedsheet. She let the bag drop to the floor and leaned closer to peer into the dear but pale and too-still features. They were usually so animated. A rather nasty-looking purple bump and bruise marred the high forehead.

      Ever so gently, lovingly, Hally touched the injury, letting her finger trail down the velvety cheek before pulling her hand away. I love you, Mom.

      “Concussion?” she asked in a low tone.

      The nurse shook her head. “Doctor wouldn’t have sedated her if he thought that. You’re family, of course.” It was a statement rather than a question.

      Hally nodded. “Her daughter.”

      “Oh,” the nurse said, her interest obviously aroused. “In that case, you’re…”

      “Doctor McKenzie’s daughter, too,” Hally finished for her. “Yes.” Wanting to forestall any further comments, she asked, “Will my mother be asleep all night?”

      “I would think so, yes.”

      “I’ve brought her some things.” Hally picked up the bag. “Where should I put them?”

      “In the nightstand would be fine,” the nurse said, leaving the room. “She’ll be discharged in the morning.”

      Hally took her time unpacking the small bag. Rather than hang it up, she draped her mother’s robe over the foot of the bed. Likewise, she arranged the satin slippers she had packed so that they were ready to be stepped into should her mother need to get up in the night.

      She glanced often at the still form on the bed, hoping against hope that her mother would wake and know she was there. When everything was done, feeling helpless, needing to be needed but realizing that there wasn’t anything else she could do, Hally softly kissed her mother on the lips and took her reluctant leave.

      “I’ll be back, Mom,” she whispered. “First thing in the morning.”

      

      After a drive home that was filled with a heavy silence neither Michael nor Corinne Parker was inclined to break, father and daughter walked single file into their house. Corinne would have proceeded straight to her room, but Mike stopped her.

      “I want to talk to you.” He jerked a chair away from the kitchen table and pointed to it. “Sit.”

      Folding her arms across her chest, ignoring the chair, Corinne pointedly propped her hip against the counter and didn’t move.

      A rage that was the culmination of everything that had gone before brought Mike over to her in one long