Excerpt
Thursday, December 22nd
Regan Reilly sighed for the hundredth time as she looked down at her mother,
Nora, a brand-new patient in Manhattan's Hospital for Special Surgery. "And to
think I bought you that dopey crocheted rug you tripped on," she said.
"You only bought it. I caught my heel in it," the well-known mystery writer said
wanly. "It wasn't your fault I was wearing those idiotic stilts."
Nora attempted to shift her body, which was anchored by a heavy plaster cast
that reached from her toes to her thigh.
"I'll leave you two to assess the blame for the broken leg," Luke Reilly, owner
of three funeral homes, husband and father, observed as he hoisted his long,
lean body from the low bedside armchair. "I've got a funeral to go to, a
dentist's appointment, and then, since our Christmas plans are somewhat altered,
I guess I'd better see about buying a tree."
He bent over and kissed his wife. "Look at it this way: you may not be gazing at
the Pacific Ocean, but you've got a good view of the East River." He and Nora
and their only child, thirty-one-year-old Regan, had been planning to spend the
Christmas holiday on Maui.
... read full excerpt from Deck the Halls ebook
