The Trouble with Angels (Angels Everywhere #2)(21)

"It’s Madge,” Bernard said, struggling to keep his voice even. "She felt so much better after your visit and was up and walking around. Then she fell. I’m at the hospital. The doctor thinks she might have broken her hip.”

Paul closed his eyes in pain and frustration. "I’m so sorry.”

"Why would this happen to Madge?” Bernard demanded. "Why would God ask her to suffer more? Hasn’t she already suffered enough?”

"I assure you, Mr. Nichols, I didn’t leave a message on your answering machine,” Maureen said, and drew in a shaky breath, determined to settle this matter once and for all. "But I did intend to contact you.” It just so happened that her mother had beaten her to the punch.

Her words were met with a brief silence. "In other words, you didn’t call me, but you planned on doing so.”

"That’s right.”

"Then who left the message?”

"Actually, I’m fairly certain it was my mother,” she said. "But since I’ve got you on the line, I’d like to ask you about riding lessons for my daughter.”

Thom Nichols rattled off the details as if he’d given them out a hundred times that same afternoon and could recite them backward if asked. Maureen wrote down the pertinent information.

"My daughter’s twelve,” she said.

"I have a twelve-year-old myself,” came Thom’s companionable reply. "They can be quite a handful, can’t they?”

"Oh, yes.”

Thom told her about a recent incident with his daughter and Maureen found herself doodling, drawing a series of looped circles. She’d recently read an article that claimed there was some deep sexual meaning in doodles. Frankly, she had never been one to talk on the phone and draw silly, nonsensical symbols. All at once it was as if she were another Georgia O’Keeffe. She didn’t know if it was the man or the sorry state of her sex life.

Thom Nichols was the friendly sort, she noted, and he liked to talk. Maureen found herself smiling once or twice, and before she realized what she was doing, she’d agreed to drive out to Nichols’s Riding Stables the following day and meet Thom and his daughter.

If everything met with Maureen’s approval, she’d sign Karen up for riding classes. That was what Maureen had agreed to, but as she replaced the receiver she realized she barely knew one end of a horse from the other. What she could find to approve or disapprove would fit on the head of a thumbtack.

Karen arrived home an hour later. She burst into the front door and demanded, "What’s for dinner?”

"What do you want?”

"Steak and lobster.”

"Well, you’re getting spaghetti.”

"I like spaghetti.”

"With green beans and a tossed salad.”

Karen shook her head in a way that made Maureen want to laugh. "Mom, you’re ruining a perfectly good dinner with all that green stuff again.”

"I thought we’d take a drive tomorrow,” she announced casually as Karen set the table.

"That sounds like fun. Where do you want to go?” Karen stuffed bread sticks into a water glass and carried it over to their place settings.

Maureen hesitated, wondering how much she should say. She had the funny feeling she was traipsing around a pool of quicksand—one wrong step and she’d be stuck for life.

"I don’t want you to get your hopes up. We’re just going to check out this place and see if we can fit riding lessons into our budget.”

Karen went stock still. "Riding lessons?” she whispered with such rapture, one would think she’d stepped through the gates of heaven to walk on streets of pure gold. "On a real, live horse?”

"Yes, but—” Maureen wasn’t allowed to finish. Karen flew across the kitchen at breakneck speed and threw her arms around her mother’s waist with such ferocity that it nearly toppled Maureen.

"Oh, Mom! You’re the most wonderful mother in the whole world. Riding lessons! Do I get to pick which horse I get to ride? Where is this place? How did you find out about it?”

"Settle down, sweetheart. One question at a time.”

Maureen couldn’t remember when her daughter had been more animated. She asked a dozen questions at least that many times until Maureen was thoroughly sick of the subject.

Karen went to bed without an argument and was up the next morning at the crack of dawn.

"Mom, Mom, wake up!”

Maureen managed to raise one apathetic eyelid to find her daughter standing next to her mattress, fully dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt. Her hair was combed and her teeth brushed. The newspaper was tucked in one hand, and her other sported a steaming cup of coffee.

"What…time…is…it?” Maureen didn’t lift her head from the pillow, and the question came out slurred and pathetic sounding.

"Five-thirty.”

Maureen groaned. "Honey, even the horses are still asleep.”

"But they won’t be by the time we arrive. Come on, Mom, it’s a beautiful day. Rise and shine.” The twelve-year-old set the frightfully thick newspaper and coffee on the nightstand. Before Maureen had time to prepare herself, Karen leaped on the bed, buckling the mattress.

"How long have you been up?” Maureen wanted to know.