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Might Have Been
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by Kat
Parsons
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part 5
Monday, August 12, 1985 (continued):
It wasn't until the paramedics had moved Richie onto their gurney that Tessa spotted the bottle in the folds of his covers. She recognized the logo before she even picked it up. It was cough syrup--not Richie's, which was formulated for children, but the cough syrup the doctor had prescribed for her. It was a new bottle, and she'd used only one or two doses so far, but it was empty. And it contained codeine. She choked on a sob and hurried after the paramedics, who were already halfway up the hall.
*****
Mrs. Branaugh joined them in the waiting room, and sat down by Tessa to offer what comfort she could. Tessa blamed herself for Richie's condition. All other medicine in the house was kept out of Richie's reach, but she had kept the cough syrup in the medicine cabinet over their bathroom sink so it would be handy, since she had to take it every four hours. It had seemed safe: Richie was ten, he could read the label and know it wasn't his medicine, he knew the stuff tasted terrible--they had to wrestle him down to take his--so why would he get into it, and what would he be doing in their bathroom, anyway?
Duncan's thoughts kept him on his feet, pacing. If he could only feel Richie's Buzz--but they were much too far away. He had no way of knowing if Richie was alive or dead. If Richie died…If Richie died, he would wake up again, although probably not for some hours. Duncan could be there, in the morgue, and take him away. But where? What life was possible for a child who wouldn't grow up? A child who would be easy prey to headhunters?
He could protect Richie, of course. They could move frequently, reinventing their identities every year or two. But for how long? And how could he condemn Richie to an eternity in fifth grade? Could he let that happen to Richie? Might that not be a greater cruelty than the alternative? It would kill Tessa.
In his mind's eye, he saw himself abandoning Tessa in the midst of her grief, smuggling the child he loved out of the morgue, driving him to a secluded spot--that park overlooking the ocean, perhaps--giving him a kiss and a candy bar, and then raising his sword. The scene played itself out again and again, and sometimes Richie never suspected what was about to happen. Most of the time, though, the boy would look up; the curly-haired head that rolled away was frozen in an expression of shock and betrayal, and the blue eyes stared up at him, reproaching him, and would reproach him for as long as he lived and beyond.
Father Andresson arrived, followed immediately by a doctor. "Richard Ryan family?" the doctor asked.
All four presented themselves immediately. "Well?" Duncan demanded.
"I'm Dr. Paul Gray," he began.
Like we care who he is, Duncan reflected, impatient of social niceties.
"Richard arrived suffering respiratory depression as a result of codeine overdose. The danger in a situation like this is that the patient will go into coma and respiratory arrest--"
Oh, God in heaven, he's dead, Duncan despaired, seeing a matching dread on Tessa's face. He's going to tell us Richie's dead.
"--but the paramedics did an excellent job of supporting his respiratory function, and as soon as he arrived we administered naloxone to counter the narcotic effects. Richard has regained consciousness--"
Four people simultaneously thanked God, the priest at rather more length than the others.
"Can we see him?" Tessa implored.
"He's on his way to the PICU for overnight observation, but as soon as he's settled you can go to him."
"Dr. Gray, I'm Richard's caseworker," Mrs. Branaugh said quickly. "It's very important that I interview Richard as soon as possible."
The doctor studied her for a moment. "Richard is very anxious. He's calling for his parents. I would rather not put him through the stress of an interview right now."
"His parents?" Duncan asked. "Are those his words?"
The doctor nodded. "He told me it's going to be made final tomorrow."
"It was," Tessa agreed, tears running unheeded down her cheeks. "But they'll never let us keep him now, and it's all my fault."
Mrs. Branaugh put a comforting arm on Tessa's. "Don't jump to conclusions, honey. Right now, you go to Richie."
Tuesday, August 13, 1985:
"In short, your honor," Mrs. Branaugh concluded, "prior to last night's incident, the Department of Social Services found no cause for any hesitation in approving this adoption. The environment the MacLeods have provided Richard is clean and stimulating, it is a warm and loving home, Richard's scholastic improvement speaks for itself, and his behaviour has improved markedly."
"I am troubled, however, by last night's incident," the judge said, regarding the MacLeods and Layton with a severe glance. "There might easily not be a child to adopt today if--"
Richie, dressed in a set of hospital scrubs with the arms and legs rolled up because no one had gone home since the ambulance had taken him away in his pajamas the previous night, had been sitting in a glum lump of misery. He was separated from Duncan and Tessa by the bodies of the caseworker and the lawyer, and had been drumming his heels incessantly. He jumped up, now, and stamped his foot. "That was your fault," he told the judge before breaking off into a peal of coughing that threatened to knock him off his feet.
Judge Mays lowered his glasses and regarded Richie severely. "Really? And how did I do that, young man?"
Richie didn't back down, though his eyes swam with tears--from the coughing, of course, Tessa thought with a tremulous inner smile. "It wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for you."
"Uh, Richard, you might want to--" Layton tried to suggest.
"No, no, Mr. Layton--you're not Mr. Ryan's attorney. You let him speak," the judge admonished him. He turned back to Richie. "Go on, Mr. Ryan."
Richie planted himself belligerently in front of the judge's desk, his hands on his hips. "If we didn't ha-ha--" He lost his voice a moment, fought to get it back, and continued with another stamp of his foot, "--have to come to you and beg you not to take me away from my mom and dad, I wouldn't ha--" The "h" did it to him again, and Tessa could see the frustration he was feeling. She could also feel Duncan's sudden move beside her. She glanced over at him and saw him watching Richie with an odd intensity.
"Damn it!" Richie said finally, the tears streaming down his reddened face. "It's so hard to talk." Mrs. Branaugh took pity on him and reached out to pull him toward her, but he resisted. "I want to go home with my mom and dad and if you don't let me I'm gonna hate you my whole life."
"Richie," Tessa scolded, afraid of the impression he might be making. "That's rude. The judge isn't our enemy."
"He's mine," Richie insisted.
Duncan got up and walked over to Richie. He put an arm around his shoulders and pulled him close with one hand while he fished a handkerchief from his pocket with the other. He handed it to the boy, knowing Richie would never tolerate anyone else wiping his face. "Your honor, we love Richie. We were over-confident because of his age, but I promise we'll never again leave any medicine where he can get into it. I think what Richie's trying to tell you is, he was afraid if he came in sick today, you would take him from us. He thought if he took more medicine he'd get better faster. Is that right, Rich?"
Richie nodded and sank against him. "I wanted to be well today."
"Your honor--prove to Richie that the court has a heart. We've worked very hard to become a family, and I thought we were doing pretty well. Last night in the hospital, Richie called for his parents, and he meant us. Just now, he's referred to me twice as his dad. He's never done that before. He's asked you to let him go home--and he means our home. To me, that says we have become a family."
Tessa joined them, wanting to lend her presence to the picture they made, her voice to the plea. "Please, your honor, don't take Richie from us. He is…most dear to us."
She watched anxiously as the judge looked over the letters of recommendation they had amassed, the academic test scores, the report cards, Mrs. Branaugh's report, the essays they had each written. "Please, your honor," she repeated when she couldn't stand it any longer.
"I have no desire to break up a family that works," he said finally, and took up his pen to sign the first of the forms.
Tessa gasped for air, realizing she hadn't even been trying to breathe.
"The state is entrusting you with a human life, Mr. and Mrs. MacLeod. Take good care of your son. Richard, you are now Richard Ryan MacLeod."
Friday, November 28, 1986:
The next year continued with its ups and downs, but they had truly bonded, and overall it was easier than the first year. Richie at twelve was up with his age group in reading and math and, though he continued on the small side, he was rugged and quite fearless. He was his mother's staunchest fan and his father's playmate, and if he sometimes roamed the apartment during the night and refused to say why, it was happening less often. He had assigned chores at home--keeping his room clean, making his own lunch before school each morning, sweeping the shop, doing the dishes every third night. Tessa even had dreams of teaching him to cook, though nothing really appetizing had so far come of her efforts. He could make a mean sandwich, however, and was the official household sandwich maker.
Duncan was not altogether surprised, under these circumstances, when on the day after Thanksgiving he heard a sudden bang and cry from the apartment above. Kitchen accidents were common, but usually not serious. After an initial period of upset, Tessa had grown philosophical about Richie's slippery fingers; she was just waiting till he got a little more ept, and then she intended to get a whole new set of dishes.
Just in case, however, Duncan pushed aside his bookwork and headed upstairs to investigate. Richie persisted in picking up broken glass with his bare fingers, despite all their admonishments. "I won't cut myself," he would assure them blithely, generally shortly before he did so.
What Duncan found when he arrived in the kitchen, however, was no broken dish, but a grease fire raging in a pan, across the stove and up the curtains, and Richie attempting to bat it out with a dishrag already afire. The sleeve of his shirt was smouldering.
Even as Duncan darted across the room, the sleeve began to burn. Duncan snatched Richie back from the stove, wrapping him in his arms to smother the flames, and snatching the burning rag from him without regard for his own hand or the fact that the back of his loose shirt was too close to the stove.
It was Richie's scream which alerted him to the fact that he, too, was afire, and he pushed the boy away to safety as the silk of his shirt flashed. He shouted at Richie, trying to tell him to stay away, but nothing in his wide experience of pain was so painful as burning; nothing coherent came from his mouth, and he was only vaguely aware of Richie's anguished cries of "Dad!" as he flung himself to the floor and rolled. A draught of water and roses hit him, Tessa's feet ran in, and then another draught of water spilled over him, with the potato half Richie had been trying to sprout in the window. Tessa flung something over him--his coat, he realized dimly--and rolled him. The burns were not fatal, he was sure, but the pain was beyond description. As he fought a losing battle with consciousness, he heard Richie sobbing "Dad, I'm sorry, Dad" over and over.
Awake once more, to excruciating pain and the smell of burnt flesh, silk and hair, Duncan raised his head, following sounds, needing to know his family was safe. The door and windows were open to let out the smoke and Tessa was tossing salt over the last remaining flickers of the fire. It had centered, he saw now, on the roasting pan which contained the remains of the previous night's Thanksgiving turkey. Richie must have been trying to do something with it and spilled the grease onto a lit burner. He looked around anxiously for the boy. Richie sat huddled, shirtless, against the refrigerator, sobbing into his knees. Duncan pulled himself up, his skin already healing. "Rich…" he croaked.
Tessa was beside him immediately, her hands caressing him. Richie raised a tear-streaked face.
"He…all right?" Duncan asked, and coughed, getting some of the smoke out.
"He will be," Tessa assured him shakily, helping him to his feet. "Now that you're awake."
Richie was staring, his eyes immense in a pale smoke- and tear-streaked face. "Dad?" He pushed himself up and staggered over, gulping. "You're okay? I wanted to call 9-1-1, like they taught us at school, but Mom wouldn't let me. I was afraid you were gonna die, but…but you're better already."
Blue lightning flashed over Duncan's skin. He couldn't see it, because his eyes were on his son, but he could feel it and he could see the wonder in Richie's eyes. "It's okay, Rich--the burns weren't too bad, just painful. And they're almost gone." He no longer needed to lean on Tessa, and gave her a quick squeeze before letting go. "Are you okay, tough guy? You didn't get any burns, did you?"
Richie held up his arm and looked at it, as if he hadn't even noticed before, revealing singed hairs, slight burns on his forearm, and worse spots on his hand and wrist. He stared at the arm for a moment, but didn't appear to really register the injury. "But, Dad, you were on fire!" he protested as Tessa grabbed him with a cry of dismay and pulled him to the sink.
Duncan followed them over and laid hands on Richie's shoulders both to reassure the boy and to supervise Tessa's doctoring. "I know, Richie, it's confusing," he said finally. "There are things we've been waiting to tell you until you were old enough to understand and be discreet. We meant to explain it to you, not have you learn about it this way."
"About what? Why…? Are you aliens?"
Tessa laughed, even as she broke off a piece of the aloe vera plant in the windowsill and rubbed the raw end over his burns. Duncan noted there were tears in her eyes. "Now, chou-chou, you know better than that."
"Do I?"
She lifted his hand to her lips and gave it a soft kiss. "To make it better," she told him. She wrapped his hand and wrist with a sopping paper towel and looked to Duncan. "I don't think it's too serious, but we should call the doctor to come see him. It could get infected."
Duncan nodded. "I need to sponge off and change clothes. Why don't you call?"
Richie followed Duncan, a silent figure behind him. He stopped in the doorway, and Duncan saw him as he checked himself out in the mirror. "Looks like I'm going to have to start growing that pony-tail all over again," he joked, but Richie didn't respond. Duncan realized some part of the explanation would have to be made before the doctor arrived. He headed into the bathroom, washed his face, and started toweling the grime and char from his torso. Richie had followed him and stood once more in the doorway. "Rich, if you keep staring like that, I'm liable to think you aren't glad I'm okay."
It was a mistake. Richie made a choking noise and flung himself at Duncan, sobbing an apology.
Duncan hugged the boy, thinking how easily it could have been Richie on fire, in agony, rather than himself; he patted Richie's head a few times, then pushed him back. "It's okay, tough guy. It's over." He turned from the puzzled young face to his closet. "Look, you know those comics you like to read, The Uncanny X-Men?"
"Yeah."
"Well, I'm like the X-Men. I'm human, but I was born with a difference."
"You're a mutant?"
"Maybe. That's one way to look at it."
The expression on Richie's face was something between disbelief and giddiness. "You heal fast, like Wolverine."
Duncan nodded, thanking Marvel for this shortcut in his explanation. "That's right. That's why I tried to keep you away from me--the fire couldn't really hurt me permanently, but it could have killed you."
"Wow! You're a superhero, but in real life?" Richie seemed entranced with the possibilities. "I can't believe this--a real superhero, and he's my dad."
Tessa appeared in the doorway just then. "Duncan? You told him you were a superhero?"
"Not exactly," he assured her, pulling on a loose sweatshirt soft enough not to aggravate his itchy back. Immortality sped up the healing, but he he'd have to scrub the dead skin off himself--or get Tessa to do it. He turned to Richie with a rueful smile. "There's more to it than that, Rich."
Richie eyed Tessa speculatively. "Mom, are you…?"
She laughed and gave him a hug. "No, Richie, I'm no superhero. Any more than you are. Now, enough stalling, you go to your room and wait for the doctor."
"Not till Dad tells me the story."
"I'll tell you on the way," Duncan promised, putting his arm around Richie's shoulders and drawing him along. "My full name is Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod. I was born three hundred and ninety-four years ago in the highlands of Scotland. I am Immortal and I am not alone; there are others like me. I cannot die unless my head is
separated from my body." They talked until the doctor arrived and after he'd left, about places Duncan had been, people he'd met, about Scotland, but he left out all reference to the Game or the Gathering. They didn't need to hear about that.
Saturday, December 19, 1987:
Richie actually adjusted more easily to what Duncan was than Tessa had--the resilience of youth, they supposed. After a while, he had exhausted his questions about immortality itself, and simply accepted it as a fact of life. He took to coming to Duncan with all his history homework, but otherwise didn't seem to view him any differently than he had before. They had not meant to tell him what Duncan was so early, but they had to admit that he kept the secret faithfully.
By the time another year had passed, they had settled so happily into their family life, it was hard for Tessa and Duncan to imagine they had ever contemplated living alone, just the two of them. Richie's needs and happiness had become the center of their existence; their own needs came a distant second. There were sacrifices, of course: a lack of freedom and privacy, locks on things which had once been readily accessible, chili dogs as a regular part of their diet--though Tessa discovered those were quite good, once she held her nose and tried one. There were joys, too: Richie's continuing good report cards and excellent health, the nightmares that didn't come anymore, the family activities that were more fun with him than they could ever have been without him.
*****
Richie was quite aware he was very fortunate, and the charitable work the school required of its students was something he accepted with more cheerfulness than many of his classmates. With Christmas growing near, he remembered the Christmases he had once known, and threw himself into the special project Father Andresson had suggested to the parish children.
St. Stephen's, a prosperous parish in the arty "loft" district of the city, had a special relationship with a church on the east side--St. Aloysius--which served the worst neighborhoods in the city. The children's Sunday School classes worked all through the fall raising money by selling candy, and collecting donations of clothes, toys and money. This project culminated in a Christmas party for the children of St. Aloysius, children who would be glad to have other kids' cast-offs. Duncan and Tessa, who had arrived with armloads of gifts and refreshments, found themselves wishing they had brought more. Tessa, in particular, had not imagined that so much poverty could possibly exist in their city. Richie's early life, she had thought, had been an aberration.
It was too easy to tell which children and which parents were from which parish. It made Tessa sad to see how obvious the differences were. The children overcame those differences better than the adults; after some initial shyness and suspicion, they began to mingle, playing or dancing or talking or eating, and soon they were so mixed together only their clothes differentiated them. The parents, on the other hand, mingled very little; with the best wills in the world, they didn't seem to know how to communicate with one another.
"Mom! Hey, Mom! Dad!"
It was funny, really. Tessa was reminded of a documentary she had once seen about some arctic bird, in which mothers returning from the sea immediately identified and went to their own chicks out of the hundreds of apparently identical chicks on the beach. There were dozens of kids in the gym, but whenever someone hollered "Mom!" the right mother always answered. She looked around for Richie and saw the thirteen- year-old dragging a girl about his own size, with bouncing brown braids, through the basketball game towards them. "Duncan." She tapped his shoulder. "Duncan, Richie is calling us."
"Hm?" He looked up from his attempt to assemble a dollhouse for a waiting six-year-old and looked around. "Well, he's caught himself a pretty one, but tell him he can't keep her," he chuckled.
Tessa smacked him in the head, chuckling, as Richie skidded up with his breathless friend.
"Mom, look what I found!"
"I see." She smiled down at the girl, a snub-nosed little thing with freckles and big sparkling brown eyes. "How do you do?"
The girl studied her with no trace of shyness. "I'm good. Richie said he had a beautiful mom--he was right."
"Oh! Well, thank you."
"And that's my dad," Richie said, indicating Duncan, who was having a very hard time fitting tab L into slot BB.
"He ain't bad either," the girl said, with an impish wrinkling of her nose.
Tessa met her frank gaze and smiled. "No, not very bad," she agreed.
"This is my best friend Angie," Richie announced.
"You work fast, tough guy," Duncan said with a chuckle. "That's about thirty minutes flat--I may have to change your name to Romeo."
"Huh?"
"You two made friends fast," Tessa translated.
"We've been friends a long time," Richie explained. "We're real old friends."
"Real old friends?" Duncan repeated, clearly amused.
"Since third grade. We went back-to-back against the Maguire brothers," Angie explained. "Only then Richie just disappeared and I never saw him again."
"That's when I came to live with you," Richie explained.
"I see," Tessa said. "Well, Angie, it is lovely to meet you."
"Thanks. I'm glad I found Richie--I've always worried about him." She knelt opposite the doll house and held it steady for Duncan. "Richie says you're cool," she observed.
"Does he?" the Highlander asked.
"Um-hm." She guided his efforts and tab L slid firmly into place. "You just have to be good with your hands," she explained, apparently fearing he'd be chagrined at her success.
"I see. Maybe you'd like to finish this, then?"
"Okay."
He hadn't really meant it, hadn't expected her to take him up on it, but she swept the instruction sheet out of her way and settled down to work, her little pink tongue sticking out the corner of her mouth as she concentrated. Duncan got up and brushed himself off, feeling just the slightest bit embarrassed. "Well, tough guy, you know how to pick them--decorative and useful."
Tessa smacked him again.
"Ow!"
"Male chauvinist pig!"
Richie sat down beside Angie to help, and Tessa found herself thinking how beautifully they worked together: no childish arguments, just cheerful talk and well-coordinated effort. "Well, Duncan, we are looking at the future," she observed, in French so she wouldn't embarrass Richie and Angie, should they happen to hear. "Our son is building a house with a beautiful young lady."
Duncan bit back a grin so the kids wouldn't think they were being laughed at. "It's on the small side, but at least the mortgage payments shouldn't be too high."
"Now, make yourself useful--there's still that bicycle to put together."
"You think if I look hopeless at it they'll finish that for me, too?"
"If you're lucky."
He was. Abjured by the two seventh-graders to stop before he messed something up, he merely spread out the parts and stood back; they quickly finished up the house and went to work on the bike while the six-year-old dragged off her house with shouts of "Mommy!"
"That girl is going to make some man a fine mechanic someday," Duncan whispered to Tessa.
She smacked his arm with the front and back of her hand. "You are terrible tonight. I just hope they still have time to dance once they're through doing your work."
"My work? Those were your presents, too, Madame MacLeod, and your hands aren't broken. Besides, they're more likely to want to play basketball than to dance, I'd think."
She kissed him on the nose to shut him up, since he was right. Even a blind pig could find the occasional acorn, and she didn't want his head swelling up because of it. "I just mean I hope they get a chance to play some tonight, that's all."
A small woman, much like Angie but with threads of silver in her hair and a rather timid expression, approached before the bike was more than half assembled. She gave Duncan and Tessa a rather nervous smile as she passed them. "Angie, we have to leave, now."
"Aw, Mom, no!"
"I'm sorry, honey, but your brother got into the brownies, and he's ate so many he's sick. Pop's got him out in the car already, and as soon as we can find Carla we've got to--"
"Please don't make her go, Mrs. Burke!" Richie interrupted. "We haven't finished the bike, yet, and we haven't had a chance to play basketball, and we've hardly even had a chance to talk."
Mrs. Burke appeared startled, and looked at Richie in a way which made it very clear she hadn't any idea who he was. She looked uncertainly toward Duncan and Tessa, then back at the kids. Tessa saw the woman looking at Richie's designer sneakers, and thought she understood the problem: Mrs. Burke took Richie for a new uptown acquaintance. And she perhaps was wondering if her daughter would be acceptable to his family.
It was not an unreasonable concern, in Tessa's view: there were quite a number of young people in the gymnasium with whom she was quite sure she did not want Richie making friends--and not all of them were from the east end of the city. Angie, though inelegant, was not ill-mannered. She was clean, well-fed, with bright eyes and a happy smile, and if neither her grammar nor her etiquette were the best, she did not at least show any propensity for uncouth language or behaviour.
"Mom, you remember Richie, don't you? He used to live a couple blocks up, remember, with the Pollacks? And then he lived three blocks the other way, with the Hazletons."
She took another look at Richie, dubious, then smiled. "Oh, yes, hi, Richie. We haven't seen you in a long time."
"Richie's moved uptown," Angie explained. "He's not even Richie Ryan anymore, he's adopted and he's Richie McLean, now."
"MacLeod," Duncan said, a little loudly.
Mrs. Burke smiled at them, looking remarkably like a mouse. "I'm so glad Richie's found a permanent home. I always used to worry what would become of him, and I would have liked to have him to live with us, but we don't have room for the kids we already got."
"You wanted to have me?" Richie squeaked, clearly astonished. "I thought I was always in the way."
"You were." She looked back at Tessa and Duncan. "Him and Angie were such good friends--I always felt a little better sending her and Carla off to school because I knew Richie would be walking with them. There's some bad kids in the neighborhood though, you know, and it's probably best he don't live there no more."
"It must be a very hard place to raise a family," Tessa ventured, hoping to draw her out.
"Don't suppose there's no easy places," she observed with a shrug. "S'pose there must be places that ain't so hard, o'course." She put out her hand. "I'm Sofia Burke."
Tessa shook it warmly. "Tessa. And this is Duncan," she added, indicating her husband, whose size seemed to intimidate the little woman somewhat.
"How do you do," Duncan said.
"Well, I do okay, but my little Cristoforo, he's got the bellyache something fierce," she said, shaking his hand in turn. "So I got to get my Angie and get outta here before my husband thinks I've forgot him, sitting out in the cold. But it was nice to meet you. I'm glad Richie's got hisself a family."
"Mom, please, I can walk home," Angie urged. "Come on, don't make me leave so soon."
"Not after dark, no," her mother insisted. "You know the rules, menina."
"We could drive her home after the party, couldn't we?" Richie asked.
Tessa hesitated. She wouldn't let Richie ride home with total strangers; she saw no reason to think Sofia Burke would feel otherwise. "We could, if you would allow it," she agreed. "We would be happy to."
"Oh, I couldn't…" Mrs. Burke faltered.
"Yeah, Mom, they'll bring me home."
"I couldn't put them out," the little woman told her daughter.
Tessa recognized another motive besides maternal solicitude--there was an issue of pride, too, and the Burkes might not be comfortable accepting favors from wealthy strangers. "It would be no trouble to us. It would be a shame to end the children's enjoyment so early. Besides," she added, with a sudden inspiration, "without Angie, my husband would have to assemble these things by himself, and he's a terrible sludge."
"Klutz," Duncan corrected her, then visibly gave himself a mental kick.
"Oh, well…" Mrs. Burke looked down at her daughter, whose puppy-like eyes were being batted very skillfully at her, then back at them, and Tessa could see her assessing them. "It is a shame to take her away so early," she admitted, very reluctantly. "But she has to be home by nine-thirty."
"We'll have her home in plenty of time," Duncan assured her, taking her hand in his own and giving it a little pat. "We'll take care of her just as we would Richie."
Tessa poked a hand into Duncan's pocket and withdrew one of their business cards. "Here's our address and number--the private line is the same, except 2 instead of 1 at the end. I hope you'll call sometime. I would love to get to know some of Richie's old friends."
"Oh, well…" Mrs. Burke looked down at it, somewhat bemused. "Don't think anybody's ever given me a card before," she said with a grin very like her daughter's. "Okay. I'm obliged to you."
"Not at all," Duncan assured her. "We're happy to meet a friend of Richie's."
She nodded and slipped away with final admonitions to Angie to behave herself and mind the "McLeans" and not forget her coat.