Magic by Tami Hoag

before. “I’m Rachel. I’m your daughter.”
    Addie glanced at her, annoyance pulling her brows together above her cool blue eyes. “Of course I know who you are.”
    That was her standard reply when she wanted to cover up a lapse in memory, but this time it was the truth. She hadn’t recognized Rachel earlier, when she’d seen her in the upstairs hall. Now she was ashamed of having called the police, but it was over and done with and there was nothing she could do about it. She closed her eyes and turned away.
    “Mother, I know about your illness. I’ve come here to help.”
    “I’ve been a little forgetful recently, that’s all. I don’t need help.”
    “You don’t need help or you don’t need my help?” Rachel asked, her anger lapping over the edge of her control like a pot threatening to boil over. She reined it in with an effort, but the toll it took came through in her voice. “Can’t we put the past behind us and deal with this together?”
    The past. Addie looked at her daughter long and hard. There were gaps in her past that grew larger by the day, but she remembered word for word the fight that had taken place before Rachel’s departure from Berkeley. “You abandoned me. You abandoned everything we’d worked so hard for.”
    “You forced me out!” Rachel responded without thinking, lashed out. All the hurt, the pain, the bitterness was there just under the surface. The only difference between herself and her mother was the amount of control she exercised over those feelings.
    Rachel took a shallow, shuddering breath and pushed herself up out of the chair. The bread was sitting on the counter, and she methodically undid the twist tie and reached into the bag.
    “We’re going to see Dr. Moore today to talk.”
    Addie made a face. “He’s a Nazi. I don’t want anything to do with him.”
    Rachel’s hands shook as she placed two slices of bread in the toaster. The urge to explode made her tremble from her emotional core outward. “We’re going.”
    “You can’t tell me what to do, missy,” Addie began. Her movements very deliberate, she rose from her chair and pushed it back. A flush stained the whiteness of her cheeks. Her daughter was trying to wrest her independence away from her. Well, she wouldn’t take it lying down! She wouldn’t take it at all! Simply because she was getting older and a little forgetful didn’t give Rachel the right to waltz in and take over. “Who do you think you are, coming back here after all these years and thinking you can just walk in? Terence put you up to this, didn’t he? That no-account, whining little weasel.”
    “Terence is out of this, Mother,” Rachel said softly, her throat tight with a building flood of emotion.
    A triumphant gleam flared in Addie’s eyes. “That’s the first sensible thing you’ve done in years. I warned you about him. I told you—”
    Suddenly, the kitchen door was flung wide open, and Bryan danced in, singing “I’ve Got a Crush on You.” Seemingly oblivious to the tension in the room, he grabbed Addie and danced her around, hamming it up outrageously as he sang the song to her. Addie blushed like a bride and giggled. Almost instantly her anger was diffused.
    “Hennessy, you big Irish rascal,” she said, batting a hand at him as he left her by her chair and danced away. “You don’t know the meaning of decorum.”
    Bryan halted in the center of the room, cleared his throat, and began to orate: “Decorum: conformity to the requirements of good taste or social convention; propriety in behavior, dress, et cetera; seemliness.”
    “Did you catch any of that, Rachel?” Addie wondered dryly.
    Rachel slammed the butter knife down on the countertop. “Your toast is ready.”
    “Hennessy makes my toast. I won’t eat yours. You’re probably trying to poison me.”
    “The thought has crossed my mind,” Rachel muttered to herself, then was assailed with guilt, even though no one else in the room had heard her