Totally Spellbound by Kristine Grayson

good,” Zoe said. “But
it wouldn’t hurt to give family and friends a day or two to get
here. Then maybe we could find someone to care for Kyle if Megan
can’t. I mean, you didn’t really ask her. You sort of demanded, and
she has a job, right, Megan?”
    “Actually.” Megan poured herself a cup
of coffee. “Not exactly. Not anymore.”
    “You finally shut down the practice?”
Travers asked.
    She nodded. She didn’t even feel sad
about it, even though she should have. She just had a few loose
ends to wrap up, and those wouldn’t take much effort.
    “Good,” he said. “Those rich kids
weren’t your style anyway.”
    “Those rich kids need good
old-fashioned discipline, and parents who are home most of the
time,” Megan said. “They are overindulged and
underloved.”
    Then she realized how harsh she
sounded. Everyone stared at her with surprise. Except Travers, who
was smiling at her. Fondly.
    Where was all this fondness coming
from?
    “Guess you could say I’m burned out,”
Megan said.
    “I’m a rich kid,” Kyle said, “and I’m
not overindulged.”
    “Or underloved,” Travers
said.
    “And you’re not taking Ritalin or
Prozac or a host of other psychotropic medications for conditions
that have nothing to do with medicine and everything to do with
convenience,” Megan said. “You should have heard some parents when
I suggested taking their kid off antidepressants, and figuring out
what was really going on. It was like I’d suggested shooting them
or something.”
    “Sounds like they need you,” Zoe said
softly.
    Megan shook her head. “I didn’t make a
difference. They’d just take the poor child elsewhere.”
    “That’s what you want?” Zoe asked. “To
make a difference?”
    “Isn’t that what we all want?” Megan
asked.
    “Not in the same way, Aunt Meg,” Kyle
said. “You want to save the world.”
    “One child at a time,” Travers added.
“Mind starting with mine? He’s gonna need company for a week, maybe
more. How’s a week, Zoe?”
    She grinned at him. “I think it’ll
do.”
     

 
     
Seven
     
    “Do you know how impossible it will be
to find this woman?” John Little asked over lunch.
    Rob sat across from him,
two plates loaded with meats and breads and salads spread before
him. He had loved buffets since learning about them in Vegas in the
1940s. He’d been one of the first and best customers of Beldon
Katleman’s Midnight Chuck Wagon Buffet at the original El Rancho
Vegas Hotel. Now, of course, buffets cost more than a dollar, they
were open for 24 hours instead of the few hours after the last
entertainment show, and they had a wide variety of cuisines—not
just steak and mashed potatoes and the occasional
carrot.
    But the food made him
nostalgic for the Vegas he had lost, a place of clear skies and
such corruption that no one realized honest businessmen could
thrive here, too.
    This buffet, in one of the downtown
hotels, looked nothing like that old one. There were plants
everywhere that blocked the patrons from each other. The only time
you saw someone else was when you got up to stand in
line.
    “I’m not talking about the woman
anymore.” Rob had two different kinds of mashed potatoes on his
plate: regular (with lumps) and garlic. Maybe he hadn’t changed as
much as he thought.
    John had three plates, all
of them covered with various meats—steak, brisket, roast beef,
chicken, ham, and several things that Rob couldn’t immediately
identify.
    He wondered if the Atkins Diet meant
you could eat as much meat as you wanted all the time or if John
was ignoring some of the more important precepts.
    “Listen, my friend,” John said.
“You’ve been getting more and more morose as the years have gone
on, and you were never a happy-go-lucky guy in the first
place.”
    “My friends were called merry.” Rob
ate a cherry tomato, surprised at its freshness.
    “In marked contrast to
you. If you’d have had your way, you’d have talked about poverty
and