“Well, I’m positive I don’t feel like your mother.”
She blushed and said, “You don’t look like my mother either.”
“Glad we settled that.” He grinned. “So let’s start with the simple stuff. Where do you go to school?”
She told him. “How about you?”
“Bryce Academy,” he said, naming the most exclusive and prestigious school in the Tampa Bay area. “Not my choice.” He sounded apologetic. “I was enrolled at birth.”
“I’ve heard it’s a good school.” What a lame thing to say. She’d never been good at small talk.
He took a bite of his pizza. “I’m not exactly a stellar student. But then, I don’t care.” He leaned sideways in his chair. “But I’ll bet you are, aren’t you, Kathleen.”
The way he said her name sent a shiver through her, which made her face redden again. “There’s nothing wrong with making good grades.”
“Right.” He measured her with his sexy brown eyes. “So why did you volunteer to be a Pink Angel? Because you want to save the world?”
He made it sound as if being a do-gooder was not very cool, which irked her. “No. I joined because my two best friends made me.”
He laughed. “I like your honesty, Kathleen.”
“What about you? Are you into saving the world?” She almost added, “Because you sure don’t look the type,” but instantly thought better of it. He had probably joined to meet girls.
“No way. I either wore an orange jumpsuit and picked up trash alongside the highway this summer or became a volunteer.”
Her eyes widened. From all she’d read and heard, the program didn’t take troublemakers. “But how—?”
“Friends in high places,” he said, leaning so close that she smelled soap on his skin.
Her skin tingled. “Oh.”
He straightened. “My parents are both cardiologists here. My older brother is starting his medical residency in Detroit, and my older sister, an ophthalmologist in Denver, is doing eye surgeries in Bosnia to help the downtrodden. You might say that the Kiefer clan is steeped in the brine of medicine. And good deeds.”
Kathleen heard an undercurrent of bitterness in his voice, recognizing it because she had experienced the emotion herself. “And so you’re a Pink Angel. Does that mean you’re starting down a medical career path of your own?”
“Hardly.”
“So, then, what do you want to be when you grow up?” She was being sarcastic, and Raina had warned her more than once about being sarcastic. “Guys don’t like to be put down.”
Her comment didn’t seem to bother him. “Who says I have to grow up?” he asked.
“Why wouldn’t you want to? It’s what people do.”
“I think being grown up is highly overrated and a lot less fun than I’m having now.”
“Including picking up trash in an orange jumpsuit?” He was making her angry. She looked down at her pizza but had lost her appetite. With doctors for parents, a private school education and his pretty-boy good looks, he seemed arrogant.
“Would you fall for a guy wearing orange?”
“I wouldn’t fall for a guy like you at all.”
“Ouch,” he said, slumping over as if he’d been shot.
Her face got hot again.
He straightened and looked her squarely in the eye. “You know, Kathleen, I think I’m going to have a much better time this summer than I’d planned on having.”
“Why’s that?”
His sexy grin emerged. “Because I’ve never been with you before. And from my vantage point, I think you’re going to be a delicious experience.”
Too stunned to respond, she watched him edge out of his seat, walk up the steps and leave the auditorium.
“Yoo-hoo! Earth calling Kathleen.” Raina snapped her fingers in front of Kathleen’s face, making her friend jump.
“Sorry!” Kathleen said, flushing. “I—I was lost in space.”
Holly took Carson’s seat. “Who’s the hunk?”
“What?”
“The guy who was sitting here. Raina and I watched the two of you talking; then he got up and left and you got that vacant stare on your face. You didn’t even see us come down the stairs. What did he say to you?”
“He’s a jerk,” Kathleen said, folding over her paper plate and squashing the uneaten pizza.
“It was that Kiefer guy, wasn’t it?” Raina asked. “My mom knows his parents. They share an office in the hospital and do tons of heart surgeries. They’re supposed to be really good.”
“Well, their son’s a conceited dope.”
“Listen to that, Holly—he’s got our best friend all shook up.” Raina feigned shock.
“Don’t tease me.”
“Lighten up, Raina,” Holly said, immediately sympathetic toward Kathleen. “Maybe he said something dirty. Did he? Did he make a crude pass?”
“All guys are crude,” Raina said. “Except for my Hunter. He’s a saint. Which is a problem too,” she added as an afterthought.
“What did the guy say to you?” Holly persisted.
“He thinks knowing me will be ‘delicious.’”
“Whoa, that qualifies as out of bounds,” Raina said. “Want me to have him dumped from the summer program? I’ll bet if I tell my mother, she can make it happen.”
Kathleen shook her head. “He didn’t say it in a crude way. It was more like a comment. You know, an observation.”
Raina arched an eyebrow. “Maybe we should skip this pizza bash and go have a heart-to-heart at the Sub Shop.” It was one of their favorite haunts.
“I’m for it,” Holly said. “We may need to dissect the whole conversation. We might have to plan a strategy to help Kathleen deal with this guy.”
Kathleen eyed the wall clock and sat bolt upright. “Oh my gosh!” She grabbed for her purse and riffled through it. “I told my mother I’d be home by noon and it’s one-thirty.”
“So you’re a little late. She knew you were coming to an orientation,” Raina said.
“I’ll bet she’s called. I turned my phone on vibrate so it wouldn’t ring during the tour.” She found her phone in her purse, looked at the display and groaned. “Oh, yes. I have three missed calls.” She started up the stairs. “Come on, Raina, drive me home.”
“Your packet,” Holly called.
“Bring it. I’ve got to get home right this minute.”
“Wait,” Raina called, scooping up her things.
Kathleen was rushing so fast that she tripped on the top step. “Hurry! Don’t you understand? What if Mom’s in trouble because I’m late!”
“Mom! I’m home,” Kathleen called, dumping her belongings onto the table in the foyer. She turned and waved away Raina and Holly, still in the car.
Raina yelled, “I’ll call you!” before driving off.
The house was cool and quiet. Fear made Kathleen’s heart hammer. She hurried to the kitchen, where she found her mother sitting in her electric wheelchair, staring out the patio doors. She could tell that her mother had been crying. “Mom, are you all right?”
“I was scared,” Mary Ellen McKensie said, sniffing back tears. “I—I thought something bad had happened to you.”
“I’d turned my phone off. I’m sorry. The orientation took longer than I thought.”
“You should have called. You know how I worry.”
The chastisement irritated Kathleen. Her mother’s fears were irrational and aimed to make Kathleen feel more guilty than she already did. “I said I was sorry. Have you eaten lunch?”
“I wasn’t hungry. Just worried.”
Kathleen took deep breaths to calm herself. “I left you a sandwich in the refrigerator before I left. All you had to do—”
“I wasn’t hungry,” her mother interrupted. “Have you eaten?”
“I was planning on having lunch with you,” Kathleen lied. “If I eat with you now, will you be hungry?”
“Maybe.” Her mother looked contrite. “If we eat
together.”
“Fine.” Kathleen busied herself with preparing a second sandwich. In minutes she had put the food on the table and poured them each a glass of ice tea.
Her mother rolled her wheelchair to her spot at the round kitchen table. “You should drink milk,” she said.
“I don’t want milk, Mom.” Kathleen bit into her sandwich to keep words she might regret from spilling out of her mouth.
“How was the orientation?”
“Fine.” Kathleen watched her mother pick up the sandwich on her plate with a shaking hand. “Do you want me to cut that any smaller for you?”
“I can manage.” They ate in strained silence. “Do you think you’ll like being a Pink Angel?”
Kathleen knew her mother was trying to say “I’m sorry,” but at the moment, all she felt was anger toward her mother for acting helpless when she could do better, and anger at herself for getting distracted at the hospital and forgetting about her duties. “I have a stack of papers to go through, but yes, I think I’ll be good at it. One of a volunteer’s most important jobs is transporting patients around the hospital. I know how to do that really good, don’t you think?”
“You’ve been transporting me for years. Would they like a reference?”
Kathleen offered a conciliatory smile. “Probably not.”
“Do you know your hours? When you’ll be working?”
“I’ll have to go the same times as Holly and Raina. Raina’s really gung ho, so I imagine we’ll do the max.”
“You could drive our van.”
Their family vehicle was a wheelchair-adapted van, a monster that Kathleen didn’t like driving around town unless she had to. It had a special mechanical lift for loading her mother and the wheelchair, as well as special controls that her mother could use to drive it herself.
“You may need it,” Kathleen said.
“I can’t drive it without you.”
“Sure you can. You did at Christmas.”
“I’ve gotten worse since Christmas.”
Kathleen wasn’t sure that was true, but so long as her mother thought she couldn’t do something, she wouldn’t try. “Raina will drive. I’ll go with her.”
With their lunch finished, Mary Ellen said, “I feel light-headed. I should take a nap.”
Kathleen followed the wheelchair into her mother’s room. There she snapped on the chair’s brakes, locked her arms around her mother’s upper body from behind and helped her swing herself onto the bed. Kathleen covered her mother with a quilt sewn by her great-grandmother. “Get some rest.”
“What will you do?”
“Call Raina. Read. Surf the Net. The usual stuff.”
“You can order pizza if you don’t want to cook tonight,” her mother said.
“I’m kind of sick of pizza. I’d rather cook us something.”
“All right.” As Kathleen was about to close the bedroom door, her mother added, “I love you.”
“I love you too, Mom.”
Once the door was closed, Kathleen sagged against the wall. She missed going to school. At least it filled up her days. The volunteer program might turn out to be her salvation this summer after all. Besides, having to dash home from a volunteer job if her mother needed her would be a whole lot easier than leaving a paying job. She conjured up Carson’s face and sexy grin. Delicious. He’d called her delicious. She wondered how yummy she’d be to him if he ever got a glimpse into her real life. A life dedicated to caring for a mother with multiple sclerosis.
three
KATHLEEN WAS LOST in a book when her phone rang. She answered and heard Raina’s perky “Is everything all right?”
“Of course it is,” Kathleen confessed with a sigh. “Mom was overreacting.”
“She treats you like a slave.”
“Raina…don’t,” Kathleen warned. This had been a sore point between them for years. Raina made no bones about her belief that Mary Ellen’s helplessness was due in part to Kathleen’s availability. Kathleen knew that while Raina was right about some of it, she wasn’t right about all of it. Raina hadn’t watched Mary Ellen deteriorate right before her eyes as Kathleen had. In the past ten years, from the time Kathleen was six, she had watched her mother go from having spastic tremors in her legs that caused her to fall to using a cane, then a walker and, finally, a wheelchair. And while her mother could stand and manage a shuffling kind of walk, the effort was painful. Kathleen saw her attempting it less and less.
“Sorry, sorry,” Raina said quickly. “I’m not trying to hassle you. I’m just always wishing things were different for you.”
“I wish things were different for my mother,” Kathleen said. “I wish a lot of things.” Her gaze automatically went to the large photograph of her father that she kept on her bedside table. Mary Ellen said that his smile and hers were twin images, stamped forever on Kathleen’s face. Kathleen’s father was dead, taken from them both when Kathleen was seven by a drunk driver who had struck their car, killing James McKensie instantly and sending Mary Ellen to the hospital in serious condition, where she remained for almost a month. Kathleen had been at home with a sitter, so she’d been spared, but the accident greatly accelerated the course of Mary Ellen’s MS, first diagnosed when Kathleen was two. Her father’s life insurance policy and a settlement from the other driver’s insurance company had been the only things that had saved Kathleen and her mother from a life of desperation.
“Did you zone out on me again?” Raina asked.
Kathleen tore her gaze from her father’s photo. “Whoops—sorry about that. So what’s up?”
“After I dropped Holly at her house, I went back to the hospital and found my mom and filled her in on our morning. I mentioned Carson Kiefer and she just rolled her eyes. Seems he’s some kind of a problem for his parents. Nothing major, but he’s got a rep for getting into trouble.”
“I’m hardly surprised.”
“Are you interested?”
Kathleen bristled. “No way.”
“I just thought you’d like to know the buzz about him. Think of it as a background check.”
“I’m sure our paths won’t even cross. It’s a big hospital.”
“Maybe. Anyway, I also went to the volunteer office and picked up our polo shirts.”
“How? I haven’t turned in my paperwork yet.”
“Mom arranged it. It helps to have an inside track. I also signed us up to start on Monday morning. Okay with you?”
“I guess.”
“Good. Hunter and I have a date tonight, so we’ll drop off your shirts on our way to the movie.”
“I’ll be looking for you.”
Kathleen was loading the dishwasher that night when her mother, leading Raina and Hunter, rolled her wheelchair into the kitchen. “Your friends are here to see you.”
“Shirt delivery,” Raina said brightly, and dropped a bag onto the table.
Kathleen peeked into the bag. “Pink just isn’t my best color. It’s the red hair, I think.”
“I got us each a blue one too.”
Hunter grinned. “You two are funny. It’s a volunteer job, not a fashion show.”
“Kathleen’s always fussed about her red hair, and I think it’s just beautiful. Her father was a redhead, you know.” Mary Ellen sounded wistful.
“How have you been feeling?” Hunter asked, quickly changing the subject.
Kathleen was grateful. She didn’t want her mother getting nostalgic and depressed. The doctor had told Kathleen that some depression was caused by Mary Ellen’s MS medications, but still Kathleen tried hard not to trigger any episodes.
“I’m doing all right. Kathleen takes good care of me.”
“You look great. New hairstyle?” Hunter’s compliment made Mary Ellen smile and reach up to smooth her hair. “My mom said for you to call her if you ever need anything from the store and Kathleen’s not here. She’ll be glad to run errands for you anytime.”
“That’s nice of her.”
R
aina took Hunter’s hand. “Let’s not be late.”
“What are you going to see?” Kathleen asked, feeling envious. She’d love to be heading out to a movie with a guy of her dreams.
“Some dopey love story,” Hunter said, with a wink.
“Better than some movie with a hundred car chases and flying bodies,” Raina said.
“Since when? I like car chases.”
“Go,” Kathleen said, pointing to the door.
Raina said, “I’ll pick you up at nine Monday morning.”
Kathleen knew the announcement was for Mary Ellen’s benefit. “I’ll be ready.”
Once they were gone, Kathleen turned back to the table and the bag. She shook out the two shirts, one pink, one navy blue, with the hospital’s logo stamped in white over the pocket. On the pocket was an inch-high stylized angel sewn in white thread. She ran her finger over the emblem on one shirt.
Her mother looked up at her, her eyes full of tenderness. “The pink shirt will look fine on you. You’re young and pretty and you look good in anything you wear.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
“That Hunter’s a nice boy.”
“That’s what Raina says too. She says he’s one in a million.”
“You’ll find a nice boy one day too. And you’ll leave.”
A warning bell rang in Kathleen’s head.
“Now, Mom, Prince Charming hasn’t found me yet, and based on the guys I know at school, he won’t be coming along anytime soon.”
Mary Ellen sighed, backed up her chair and turned toward the doorway. “One of my shows is coming on TV. Want to watch it with me?”
“No!” Kathleen wanted to shout. The last thing she wanted to do was spend a boring evening watching boring reruns on the boring tube. But school was out, so she couldn’t use homework as an excuse. “Sure,” she said. “Let me finish up in here and I’ll be in. I’ll make us some popcorn.”
“I’d like that,” Mary Ellen said, rolling her wheelchair through the doorway.
Kathleen busied herself with making popcorn. Sometimes she felt totally trapped in her life. But what could she do about it? Her mother needed her. Through no fault of her own, her mother had a terrible disease and no one to take care of her except her daughter. Kathleen’s father was dead and gone, and she would never have the chance to talk to him or have him as a part of her life. What had happened to their family wasn’t fair. Not fair at all.