Suddenly (27 page)

Paige got him to the bathroom just in time. After he had lost the contents of his stomach, she helped him clean up. Then she walked him to the kitchen, sat him on a chair, and made a pot of coffee, caffeinated and strong, which she proceeded to force into him until he was marginally sobered.

“Better?” she asked finally.

He had his head in his palms. His hair was sticking out every which way. “Hardly,” he grumbled. “I can think now.” He was silent for another little while, then, “Did I say much?”

“Nah.”

“No damning confessions?”

She smiled and shook her head. There seemed no point in kicking the man when he was down. “Just that you did like Mara, and that you miss her, which makes me feel a little more normal. I think about her so much.”

“That’s your own fault,” he grunted. “You’re stalling on hiring another doctor.”

“No, I put an ad in the journals, but they don’t come out for another week. We’ll get someone.”

“And you wake up and see her little girl every day.”

“But I like that.”

“She reminds you of Mara.”

“She helps me over the hump. By the time they find an adoptive family for her, I’ll be better.” She was in the process of pouring him a final cup of coffee when she thought of the bottles of Scotch that should, under no conditions, be found.

“Drink up. I’ll be right back.”

She returned to his office and was taking the bottles by the neck when something on the credenza caught her eye. It was a letter, handwritten on fine pink vellum that had a familiar scent to it. When she tried to place it, she conjured up a picture of Mount Court.

Uneasy, she raised the letter. Center top was an embossed monogram so swirly it was indecipherable. The handwriting was not, though. It was neat and pretty, the kind of script that lacked the character of maturity.

“Dear Dr. Grace,” she read:

Paige didn’t read further. Furious, she stalked back to the kitchen and tossed the letter onto the table before Peter.

“What’s this?” she demanded.

He frowned, studied the paper, mumbled, “A letter from Julie Engel.”

“Obviously. But what does it mean?”

He held his head. “Don’t shout.”

“You said you didn’t have a problem,” she shouted.

He winced. “I don’t.”

“Then why is Julie Engel sending you scented letters?”

“Because she has a warped imagination. She came on to me, not the other way around. I walked away from her. The letter is an apology.”

“And a thanks for the pictures you took. What pictures, Peter?”

“Pictures of her. For her stepmother’s birthday.”

“Oh, please,” Paige said, rolling her eyes. After listening to Peter’s drunken sobbing, after cleaning him when he was sick and sobering him up, she felt betrayed.

“They were,” he muttered. “At least, that was what she told me. And the pictures I took were innocent. The minute she unbuttoned her blouse, I walked away. When I got home, I exposed the film.” He braced the coffee cup between both hands, but it still shook on its way to his mouth.

Paige sighed. “I hope so, Peter, because, while I’m at it, it will be just as easy to fill two MD spots as one. I’m asking you a final time. Do you have a problem?”

“Ask Julie,” he grumbled.

“I’m asking you. I need your word. For the sake of all the children we see in the course of a year, I want to know whether there is any reason, any reason at all, why you shouldn’t be practicing here.”

He pushed himself to his feet, looking tired but steady. “There’s no reason.” He tossed his chin at the half-empty coffee cup, murmured, “Thanks for nothing,” and left.

She watched him walk a straight line down the hall before turning back to clean up the kitchen.

S
ATURDAY NIGHT, SHORTLY AFTER TEN, PETER
turned onto the cemetery road and gave the car enough gas to make the top of the hill. He parked and climbed out, then reached back in for a small bouquet of flowers and crossed the grass to Mara’s grave.

A crescent moon hung low in the sky, too slim to cast a shadow, but the darkness didn’t frighten him. Nor did the field of headstones marking this the land of the dead. He had been living with a ghost for weeks. Nothing he found here could be worse.

He was stone-cold sober. Nothing stronger than V-8 juice had passed his lips since the night he had made a fool of himself in front of Paige. The details of that night blurred, leaving only frayed bits of conversation, but they were enough to confirm his worst suspicions. It had been all he could do to look Paige in the eye the next morning and assure her that he was more than capable of seeing his patients.

Mara’s headstone was a solid slab of local granite, left raw and natural for all but the polished square on which had been carved her name, the dates of her life, and the epithet “Dear friend and healer, once loved, never forgotten.”

He brushed several leaves from the top of the stone, then from the ground at its base. After tossing aside the bouquet he had left the week before, he set down the fresh one. The flowers were yellow and red, vibrant, as Mara would have liked, and though he knew that they wouldn’t last long, he felt good bringing her something.

Better late than never, he thought, and sat down on the mound of leaves that he’d made. “Just visiting,” he told her. “Life is lonely.”

He hadn’t seen Lacey and wasn’t about to. Their relationship had run its course and died a death that was, ironically, more permanent than this one. That relationship had been less substantial than this one. He had admitted it to Paige, could certainly admit it to Mara.

“There aren’t many women around like you.” He missed her in a visceral way. “So I don’t know what I’ll do now.”

You could date someone local
, he heard her say.

“I’ve never done that in my life, and you know it.”

You could start
.

“Why should I? They didn’t want me when I was growing up, so I don’t need them now. Besides,” he added, “they know too much. They know my brothers.”

And they’d make comparisons? That’s bullshit, Peter. No one compares you to your brothers anymore. It’s all in your mind
.

“Maybe, but it’s just as real. And don’t tell me I’m insecure. Did you write about that in your letters?”

I didn’t have to. Anyone who knows you can see it
.

“Gee, thanks. You always had a way of making me feel great. Would it have been so awful to say glowing things for once?”

I did
.

“You did? About what?”

What do you think?”

“About that? Really?” The thought of it pleased him. “Wonder if Paige was impressed. I could use a little boost in her eyes. Right now she’s thinking I have a thing for little girls. I told her that I only like adult women, but she doesn’t believe me. She doesn’t think I should be practicing medicine at all.

Bear with her, Peter. She’s under a strain
.

“Well, damn it, so am I. She’s dragging her tail about hiring someone new, even though you’d be the first one to tell her to do it.”

So if she’s dragging her tail, you do it
.

“Me? Nah. That’s Paige’s job. She’ll interview people, then present them to me for approval. That way I don’t have to waste time on the dregs.”

There’s a flip side to that line of reasoning.

“Yeah?”

Yeah. You don’t get half as much a say as to whom you hire. Paige may rule someone out—like a gorgeous young female—with whom you’d enjoy working
.

She had a point.

“I suppose. Paige makes too many decisions herself. She has too much power. It gets to making her feel too important, like she could take unfounded allegations against me to the medical board and have my licensed revoked. If she ever tries to do that, she’s in for a fight. My license to practice means as much to me as it does to you.” Quietly he corrected, “Did to you. I’d be dead without it.”

A siren wailed in the distance. “Uh-oh. Car crash. Wonder where it is this time.” He pulled up the collar of his coat against the chill of the night. “Probably one of the good ole boys driving his pickup into a tree.”

You’re awful.

“Nah. Factual.” He shivered and shot a look at trees that were growing skeletal. “Winter’s coming. We’ll have snow within the month.” He wondered if she’d be warm enough six feet under. Then he caught himself. If factual was what he was, then he had to accept that she wouldn’t be feeling anything at all, not this winter or the winter after, or one ten years down the road, or a hundred. She was dead. D-e-a-d.

He hoisted himself to his feet before the finality of it all got him down. “Gotta run. I can hear another siren coming our way. Somethin’s goin’ on. Could be they’ll need a doc.”

He started to leave, then did an about-face and returned. Kneeling at the very base of the stone, he moved the flowers closer, touched his fingertips to the letters of her name, and whispered, “I’ll be back.”

Feeling a huge throbbing in his chest where his feelings for Mara had been, he crossed the grass, climbed in his car, and cruised back down the hill in search of diversion.

With the canoe strapped to the top of the Explorer, their camping gear piled in the back, and Tucker less than half an hour away, Noah felt the kind of exhausted satisfaction that came from physical exertion and emotional reward.

Sara was asleep on the seat beside him, leaning against the door, pushing the limits of her shoulder harness. He checked—for the tenth time—to make sure the lock was down and even then would have given anything to shift her so that she was leaning toward him. Body language spoke volumes. But he could be patient.

They had come a ways together in the past few days, not talking as much as he would like but cooperating nicely. Sara hadn’t complained, not about portaging the canoe, or setting up camp the night before, or waking up to a brief and unexpected snow squall that morning. Sure, he would have loved it if she had showed enthusiasm. He would have loved it if she’d said “Wow, Dad, this is
great!”
or “You’re so
good
at this!” or “I’ll bet none of my friends are doing anything this cool on
their
fall breaks!”

The flashing lights of an ambulance appeared in his rearview mirror, followed soon after by the rise of its siren. He pulled as far to the right as he could without ramming the guardrail that bordered the two-lane road. He didn’t care to know what was beyond the rail; the topography of the area suggested a thirty-foot drop past trees and boulders to a stream; he checked Sara’s door for the eleventh time.

The ambulance flew by. He pulled back onto the road and returned to speed. It was ten-fifteen. They had been awake since dawn, warming up, having breakfast, breaking camp before putting into the water. By midmorning the sun had brought a warmth that made the snow squall seem a joke.

He was glad they had come canoeing now. Another few weeks and a snow squall would escalate into something more. He loved the thought of that—nature was beautiful cloaked in white, reduced to the basics of size and shape and therein more bold—but he wasn’t sure Sara was up to it. Maybe in a few years. They might go farther north. Make three or four days of it. Even shoot the rapids.

A crescent moon poked through the bare arms of the trees. A month before, it would have been kept out by the leaves. A shame. With the ghost of its entirety holding it there in the sky, it was a testament to the stalwart source of its light.

His rearview mirror flashed with the approach of another ambulance, and again he squeezed right. It wasn’t one this time, but three in succession, whipping past with a speed he would have judged unsafe had he not known that everything was relative. Three ambulances meant serious trouble. He wondered where.

Sara stirred. She raised her head as the last of the flashing lights disappeared around a curve in the road. “What happened?”

“I don’t know, but something must have. They’re bringing them in from all over.”

She righted herself on the seat. “Maybe it’s a car crash.”

“That’s a lot of ambulances for a car crash.”

“Or a bus crash. Or a madman opening fire in the Tucker Tavern.”

He shot her a humorous look. “Good God, sweetie, you have a vivid imagination.”

She shrugged. “It happened back home. At a fast food place, with families and kids all around.”

“That was urban violence. Chances of something like that happening in quiet little Tucker are more remote.” But he saw another ambulance coming up behind them. There were two in this group. When they had passed, he said, “Maybe you’re right.”

“Can we follow?”

“No. We’d only be in the way.” And he had no intention of letting Sara see blood and gore. “We’ll go home. If it’s something big, we’ll hear about it pretty fast.”

“At Mount Court?” she asked. The dashboard illuminated her “get-real” expression. “We’re as far as you can get from Tucker and still be within the town limits.”

“That,” he said with a sigh, “is an astute observation. It’s true on more levels than you’d want to count.”

“They hate us.”

“No. They don’t know us. They have a preconceived notion of who we are, what we stand for, and how we behave, and unfortunately the blatant misbehavior of a small group of students in recent years has fed into it. We’re off to a better start this year.”

Another ambulance approached, passed, and whizzed off. By Noah’s count, that made seven. He was beginning to think that Sara’s vivid imagination might not be far off the mark when she asked, “Do you think Dr. Pfeiffer’s involved?”

Paige hurt? “God, I hope not!”

“But if there are enough injuries to fill all these ambulances, wouldn’t they need her help?”

He corraled his runaway heart. “As a doctor. You’re right. They would.”

“Only she’s away this weekend. She went to her grandmother’s. I heard her telling the baby-sitter that, the night I had dinner at her house.”

Noah was relieved that she was out of harm’s way. “Well, if they need her, I’m sure someone knows where to reach her.”

“That must be awful.”

“What?”

“Being on call all the time. You can be having a nice dinner, even at a restaurant, and you get a call and have to stop eating and leave whoever you’re with and race to the hospital.”

“That’s part of being a doctor.”

“Well, I’m sure glad she’s not
my
mom,” Sara said so pointedly that Noah would have had to be totally ignorant of the workings of children’s minds not to get the message.

Angie was feeling better about herself and her life than she had felt in weeks. She and Ben had taken Dougie to Montpelier, had spent several hours wandering through town before having an early dinner. Then they had returned to Tucker, rented two movies at Reels, and were now done with one and starting on the other.

The best part was that she hadn’t arranged a thing. The day had been Ben’s doing from start to finish—except for the popcorn, which she had just air-popped and over which, as a splurge, she was in the process of dribbling melted butter.

She didn’t splurge often. Dribblng melted butter on popcorn defeated the purpose of the air popping, but she wanted to do things differently. She was determined to pull herself out of the rut she had settled into in recent years, and if that meant dribbling melted butter on popcorn, or overlooking the fact that the late show had been Ben’s choice and was R-rated, or ignoring the sound of the sirens that had been wailing in the distance, on and off, for the last ten minutes, she would do it.

“Wonder what’s going on,” Ben remarked when she returned to the den with the popcorn.

“Beats me,” she said with determined nonchalance. “Peter’s on call tonight. He’ll handle whatever comes up.” She didn’t look at Ben to see whether he was pleased. He had to be. Her statement said that her family came first, which was at least part of what he wanted. “Sit here, Mom.” Dougie moved over to make a place for her between Ben and himself. “The movie’s starting. This is a good one.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I’ve seen it before.”

Angie dared a glance at Ben. “When?”

“At school. Some of the kids have rented it.”

“But it’s R-rated.”

“They’re old enough.”

“Ahhhh,” she said.

“There isn’t much difference if he sees it with them or with us,” Ben pointed out, though gently. He was trying. Angie could tell. That made it easier.

“Better with us,” she said lightly. “That way we can answer any questions he might have. Or give a blow-by-blow commentary on what’s happening,” she teased, “or cover his eyes at the explicit spots.”

“The R isn’t for sexually explicit,” Dougie informed her. “It’s for violent.”

“Violent. Lovely.” Another siren wailed in the distance. “What with the sound effects out there, and the violence you say is in here, I may be the one who’ll have nightmares,” she quipped, but the truth was that she didn’t care. Sitting between her husband and her son, with a warm bowl of buttered popcorn floating back and forth along with an atmosphere of goodwill, she couldn’t have cared if she had nighmares for days. The moment was worth it.

Ben reached back and hit the light switch, plunging them into a darkness broken only by the flicker of the television. Just as the opening credits of the movie filled the screen, the phone rang.

Reflex brought Angie forward, but second thoughts had her elbowing Dougie. “It’s been for you most of the weekend. Go on. We’ll pause the movie.” She thought it was a brainstorm. After all, Ben said she smothered the boy. What better way to ease her grip than by letting him answer his own calls. It wasn’t asking much, just a short walk cross the room.

From across the room a minute later, he called, “It’s for you, Mom.”