and one day I was able to do it as well. We'll see if you can learn it, too.”
“Sure beats using the telephone,” Kayla said around a mouthful of scrambled eggs. “Once you get used to it,” she added.
“You have to be discreet about that kind of thing, though,” Elizabet said. “Gram taught me that, telling me a story about how some folks tried to burn her out of her house in Georgia, back in the thirties. That's the first thing I'd like to teach you, how to help people without them realizing it. So you can stay out of trouble, child.”
“I'd—I'd like that,” Kayla said hesitantly, and was rewarded by another of Elizabet's warm smiles.
“Well, we'd better start moving,” the woman said, standing up and carrying the dirty plates to the kitchen sink. “We have a lot to do today.”
She wasn't kidding about that, as Kayla found out over the next few hours. The first stop was at a shopping mall in West Hollywood, where Elizabet wielded a credit card like a medieval knight with a sword, buying Kayla a new pair of jeans, several T‑shirts and sweatshirts, underwear and socks, and a new pair of high‑top sneakers. The new sneakers squeaked on the linoleum floor as they walked through the mall.
Kayla was uncertain how to react to all of this generosity on Elizabet's part, but that didn't stop her from looking wistfully at a pair of silver hoop earrings in one window display. She had the plain steel stud earrings that the lady in the shop had used to pierce her ears last year, but she'd never owned another pair of earrings. Elizabet only laughed, out came the credit card again, and Kayla left the shop with her stud earrings in her pocket and the new silver hoop earrings dangling from her ears.
Their next stop was Cedars Sinai Hospital, only a few blocks away from the shopping mall. Elizabet parked the convertible in the garage. Kayla followed her into the lobby of the hospital, and stopped just inside the entrance as a wave of dizziness and nausea hit her like a fist. “Elizabet—” she managed to say, as everything whirled around her. The older woman caught her as she nearly stumbled and helped her to a nearby chair.
“Take a few deep breaths, child,” she said quietly.
Kayla buried her face in her hands, afraid she was going to faint. Beyond the dizziness, she