Coming Home For Christmas

“Too late,” Keith informed her tersely.

He was making it difficult for her to get her point across, but she pushed on. “I smugly put him in his place—or so I thought.” Her voice became more serious as she continued. “I also thought there was all the time in the world to resolve these differences between us when I was good and ready to.”

Kenzie took a breath. She and her father had had more than their share of differences, but she’d loved him, and it still hurt to think about him no longer being part of her life.

“My father died before that happened. To this day, I really regret not mending those fences. And I regret not getting off my high horse and just declaring those differences we had to be meaningless water under the bridge.” She looked up into Keith’s eyes. “So I know firsthand what it’s like to have someone die on you before you have a chance to make up.”

“I had no intentions of making up,” he informed Kenzie.

Kenzie shook her head. “You say that now, but you don’t really mean it.”

“Look—”

Kenzie wasn’t about to back down from her position. She was certain that she was right and he was in a state of stubborn denial.

“No one but the Tasmanian Devil wants to live in a state of perpetual warfare.” She looked past Keith’s shoulder toward the casket. “I’d like to pay my last respects to your mother.”

That really didn’t make any sense to him. “Why would you possibly want to look at the earthly remains of Dorothy O’Connell?”

Moving into the room, Kenzie gazed down at the woman and then at Keith before turning back to the deceased again. “I’m looking at more than that.”

“An estate sale with a side order of philosophy,” Keith said sarcastically. “Does that come as a package deal, or am I required to pay extra for it?”

“You know,” she said in a tone that was devoid of judgment and composed solely of concern, “you might do a lot better getting along with yourself if you just dropped the attitude—and the ‘philosophy,’ as you call it, is free. As for our business arrangement, I only get a percentage of the total sales once they’re final,” she pointed out. “That’s written in the contract I brought with me,” she told him before he had a chance to ask about it.

Circumventing him, Kenzie went straight to the casket for a closer look at his mother. “She was always a pretty lady,” she observed softly. Her mouth curved a little as she added, “She looks so young.”

He shrugged, telling himself he didn’t care about his mother, about any of it. “That was her goal.”

His retort was cynical. Kenzie raised her eyes to his. When had his soul become so tortured? she couldn’t help thinking.

“Everyone deals with grief in their own way.” Her comment had him eyeing her quizzically. “I heard you talking to her,” she told him, thinking it was best not to elaborate any further right now.

“Of course you did,” he responded. She could tell he struggled to curb his annoyance.

She watched his expression as she said, “I was just trying to help.”

“You want to help?” he retorted. “Don’t eavesdrop. Don’t follow me. Just sell the damn things in the house. That’s all I need or want from you.”

He needed more than that, Kenzie couldn’t help thinking, even if he didn’t consciously realize it. But for now, she pretended to go along with his instructions and nodded her head.

“I still have to go over some of the inventory with you.”

He’d hired her at the agent’s suggestion so he wouldn’t have to deal with any of that. Now she seemed determined to pull him in to do exactly what he didn’t want to do.

“Why?”

“So I can put a proper price on the items,” she replied innocently. She had more of a motive than that—she wanted to help him deal with his feelings and the past—but saying so would only accomplish the exact opposite.

“Isn’t that up to you?” he asked. “You’re supposed to be the one with the expertise in vintage clutter.”

He was hiding behind insults, but she had an idea that wasn’t how he felt about it, not really, not deep down.

“I’d need you to point out the items that have more sentimental value for you—”

Keith immediately cut her short. “Well, that’s easy enough. There aren’t any.”

The house was filled with clothes, photographs and other things. It seemed impossible to her that he didn’t have at least a few favorite items amid the rest.

“None?” she asked.

His answer was firm. “None.”

Kenzie studied him for a long moment. “I don’t believe you.”

“Believe me or not. I really don’t care what you believe. All I want from you is to deal with the facts as they exist.”

When it came to battles, Kenzie had learned that picking the time and place gave her some advantage. For now she acquiesced. “If you say so.”

His eyes narrowed. “I say so.”

His voice was firm, but Keith didn’t believe what she’d just said for an instant. This woman didn’t strike him as the type to withdraw suddenly like that. Even after only a couple of hours, she seemed a bit more of a fighter than that. If he were to put a bet on it, he’d say the woman was a great example of sneak attacks and most likely was the human personification of guerrilla warfare.

Kenzie pressed on in her own fashion. “I’d still take it as a favor if you would give me some sort of a bottom-line price on some of the things I found in your mother’s closet.”

Keith grunted something unintelligible in response as they left the funeral home. He had no desire to go through the things in his mother’s closet.

Kenzie turned toward him once they were outside in the parking lot and asked, completely out of the blue, “When’s the funeral?”

There was nothing boring about this woman, Keith thought. “In three days. My mother, according to Mrs. Anderson and confirmed by the funeral director, left very specific instructions as to what she wanted. She thought three days would give all her friends enough time to say goodbye.” He was reiterating what the director had told him.

It was obvious to Kenzie that he did not appreciate the time frame. Stepping over to the side, she tried to put what he seemed to view as an ordeal in a more flattering light.

“That was very thoughtful of her.”

He, apparently, didn’t see it that way.

“Or vain,” Keith countered. “Think what it says for her to believe she has enough friends that they would fill up three days of a calendar. I don’t know of anyone short of a Hollywood celebrity who could have that sort of a following.”

What had made him so bitter? Kenzie wondered. There had to be something else at work here, not just an estrangement between a mother and her son. Had Amy’s death been the trigger?

“Oh, I don’t know,” she told him. “I’d like to think that people who touch other people’s lives on a regular basis might get that kind of a send-off when their time comes. Your mother obviously meant a lot to many people.”

Keith studied her for a moment before turning away and going to his car.

This woman his agent had recommended was definitely a Pollyanna type, he thought disparagingly. Just his luck. The last person he wanted in his life right now was Pollyanna.

He made an attempt to set her straight, admittedly more for his sake than hers. There was just so much cheerfulness and optimism he could put up with listening to, and he was past his limit.