“Not at all, darlin’—what gave you such an idea? I’m never too tired to meet a friend of yours, particularly an Irish lad.”
Tierney’s face appeared in the partly open doorway, looking flustered. “Sorry about that,” she murmured breathlessly as she opened the door wide and beckoned him in. “Detective—ah, Wade, I’d like you to meet my grandmother, Jeannette Doyle.”
He didn’t know what he’d expected—an invalid, someone frail and ancient, but sprightly, perhaps?—but it sure as hell wasn’t the person who rose from a chair near the window as he entered, holding out her hand in greeting.
She was, quite possibly, the most exquisitely beautiful woman he’d ever seen. She wasn’t tall, but her slender build and the way she carried herself made her seem so. Her head sat atop her long neck at an angle that made him think of ballerinas in flowing white dresses, or a queen bestowing her grace upon her subjects. Her hands seemed to have a life of their own, like white doves or lilies, and her hair, parted in the middle and falling in gentle waves to her shoulders, was an incredible shade of red-gold that seemed to capture light where there was none and give it back a thousand times brighter. She wore slim black slacks and a long tunic top in a soft sea-green, with iridescent blue-and-gold braided trim around the edges of the draped sleeves and neckline, and open-toed, wedge-heeled gold slippers.
“Wade Callahan,’ tis a pleasure to meet you.” Her smile was flirtatious as a girl’s, her blue-green eyes bright and wicked.
And it was only then, when she drew near enough to reach out and place those graceful white hands in his, that he saw the lines around her mouth, the softness of her jawline, the fragile crepelike skin around her eyes that gave away her age. Though just what that might be, he wouldn’t even venture to guess.
She pulled her hands from his and tilted her head, regarding him in a measuring sort of way. “But you’re no more Irish than the pope, now, are you, lad?”
He caught a breath and let it go in a gust of surprised laughter, almost covering Tierney’s dismayed gasp.
“Gran!”
“Well, he isn’t,” the lady hissed back, like an obstinate child.
Tierney shot him a look of mute apology. She seemed tense, watchful, Wade thought, like an anxious parent with a precocious and unpredictable child. His cop sense prickled along the back of his neck, telling him something was “off” here—not dangerous or anything like that—just odd.
“No, it’s okay. She’s right,” he said, surprising himself; his personal history wasn’t something he normally shared with strangers. “I was adopted. It’s my adoptive parents who are Irish.” He smiled winningly at the old lady. “Ma’am, I don’t have any idea what I am, to tell you the truth. Mongrel, I expect.”
Jeannette hesitated, looked wary, suddenly, and frightened. Wade felt a creeping sensation along the back of his neck as she leaned forward and peered into his face. One frail-looking hand clutched his with surprising strength. “Do I know you?”
“No, Gran,” Tierney began, but the old lady had already jerked around to transfer her anxious hands and worried frown to her granddaughter.
“I don’t know him, do I? Who is he? What is he doing here? Is he lost?” On that last word, her musical voice dropped to a cracking whisper. “I believe he’s lost, Isabella. Go and get him some tea. And some biscuits. He’s probably hungry, young boys are always hungry, you know…”
Chapter 2
“Yes, Jennie, darling,” Tierney said soothingly as she put her arm around her grandmother’s shoulders and gently turned her toward the kitchen, “I’m sure he is hungry. Why don’t you go and find some biscuits to go with the tea. And some sandwiches would be nice.”
She didn’t look at the detective. She was too busy bracing against the fractured emotions—confusion, fear, grief and anger—that radiated from Jeannette in waves at times like these. She couldn’t worry right now about what he might be thinking. She’d felt his sharp flash of recognition before the barriers slammed shut like storm shutters, but no doubt the clamor of Jeannette’s emotions would have overwhelmed his anyway.
She left her grandmother opening cupboards and muttering to herself and went back to the living room, bracing for the inevitable questions. The suffocating blanket of sympathy.
She found Detective Callahan where she had left him, hands in his pockets, jacket askew, watching her with thoughtful, compassionate eyes.
You’re right, Jennie, darling, lost is a better word than missing. He’s lost those pieces of himself.
“That will occupy her for a while. She won’t remember such a complicated task,” she explained with a small smile of apology. “She’ll sit down at the table and try to pick up the threads, which will be upsetting for her. To avoid it she’ll go somewhere inside her mind, somewhere in her past where she was happy. That’s where she spends most of her time now.”
“Alzheimer’s?” the detective asked. She nodded, and he murmured, “I’m sorry.” The sympathy was there, but muted, as all his emotions seemed to be.
Except for those bright flashes, like strobe lights in the dark. “So am I. I wish you could have known her the way she was. She was…something.”
“She still is.”
She threw him a quick, grateful glance and thought, He has the nicest eyes. Kind eyes. An instant later she saw those same eyes narrow and become slightly less kind.
“Who is Isabella?”
“You don’t miss much, do you?” she said lightly, stepping past him to open the door. “That’s my mother’s name. Gran calls me that when she’s…confused. Which is why I call her Jennie, then—she doesn’t understand why I would call her Gran when as far as she’s concerned she’s my mother.”
He followed her onto the landing. “Jennie? Not Mom or Mother?”
“Evidently,” she said, without looking up as she closed and locked the door, “that’s what my mother called her.”
“Evidently?”
“I haven’t seen my mother since I was three.”
“Ah.” His tone was flat, but she felt a wave of something warm, almost like kinship wafting after her as he followed her down the stairs. At the bottom he glanced at her before reaching past her to open the door—a gesture of gallantry she suspected must be automatic for him. Someone had taught him manners, and taught them well. “Something we have in common, I guess.” She threw him a curious look and he gave her back his wry smile. “I don’t remember my mother, either.”
She couldn’t know what a rare thing it was for him to talk about that stuff—at least he didn’t think she could. He sure as hell didn’t know what made him do it.
“I never said I don’t remember her,” she said as she passed him. “My memories of my mother are quite vivid, actually.”
“From when you were three? Is that part of the…” He waved a hand, trying to think of a term that wouldn’t be insulting. “Your psychic thing?”
