Threads of Steel (Bayou Cove) (5 page)

“I know, but if the circumstances were different, I just might try it. I haven’t let myself go in years.”

“Well, this isn’t the day to try catching up.”

Anna Marie chuckled under her breath.

“Now, tell me about your father.”

Anna Marie tried to remember everything about him, from his thin hair to the wrinkles on his
face .
“It was hard to see what he looked like with the bandages and all those tubes taped to his face. It was him though.” She tried to laugh, but a weird sound came out of her mouth. “I didn’t know whether to kiss him, choke him, curse him, or cry. So I just stood there and tried to answer the nurse’s questions. It was like I was seeing a stranger.”

“You were.”

“Yeah, I guess I was. I tried to remember how bad he was and how I was scared of him so I could hate him.” Her voice dropped. “It didn’t work. I only felt sorry for him.”

She held the phone and listened to Nancy breathe.

“And I’m sorry for you,” Nancy said. “No one deserves to have to do this. First, Miss Ellie and now your dad.”

“Nancy, since I’m his next of kin, it’s up to me to make some decisions.”

“What decisions?”

“The nurse has me scheduled to talk to someone about donating his organs, which means I have to decide when to take him off life-support.”

“Oh, Anna, I had no idea you’d have to do that. Have you talked with the doctors?”

“No, but I will tomorrow morning.”

“Is there, you know, is there any chance that he might recover?”

Anna Marie inhaled deeply. “The nurse didn’t think so, but I’ll have a better idea after I talk with the doctors.”

“Are you still going to the visitation tomorrow night?”

Leave it to Nancy to come straight to the point.

“Yes. I have to. For Miss Ellie, I have to go. I think I’ll wait until it’s almost over though. You know how the entire town gets there as soon as the doors open. Maybe I’ll get lucky and no one will be there.”

“If you’ll give me a time, I’ll meet you there. Later is better for me. I can make sure the kids are fed, bathed and doing homework. Harry can do the rest.”

“You’re a true friend, Nancy, and I love you for it.”

“Yeah, I know. Now, take something to sleep and go to bed.”

Anna Maria ended the call and wished she did have something to help her sleep. She didn’t
and she wasn’t about to head out to the local supermarket now that she’d made it back to the hotel in one piece. Instead, she put on a pair of sandals and headed out to the veranda on the back of the hotel. It overlooked a small section of the bayou. If anything would help her sleep tonight, she knew the calm waters would help ease her mind.

She loved evenings on the coast, even in October. It was a strange month, cold one day and
warm
the next. Tonight, she’d lucked up. The temperature hovered in the seventies.

Inhaling the acrid scent of the marsh grass, she wished she could sit out all night, but, of course, that couldn’t be done. Her day had started well before five in New Orleans, and who knew how much sleep she’d get tonight. She was exhausted, but even knowing she’d be up early to go to the hospital, she thought a few minutes alone in the open air would do her good.

The sky was clear, giving way to the reflections of the stars and the moon on the bayou. Surely that would take away the knots of stress in her neck.

For a long time she stared at the water. But after a while Mother Nature quit doing what she was supposed to do
.
Instead of relaxing her, the view made her heart ache. This was an evening to be shared with someone you loved or maybe with a group of friends, not by someone alone thinking about funeral homes and hospitals.

She watched several couples holding hands in dimly lit places, talking softly, and looking at each other with eyes of love. Two tables had groups of women and men enjoying each other’s company.

That’s the way it was when she and Nancy and
Doti
and their dates ran together years ago.

“
Tight as honey on light bread.
Yep, that’s what you three girls are
.” Miss Ellie’s words describing
Doti
, Nancy, and herself reverberated in Anna Marie’s ears. But things were different now.

They might have been tight as honey on light bread at one time, but betrayal cut bone-deep and severed the thread that had held the three girls together.

Miss Ellie had a way of smoothing over their problems when they were girls. Now, her death would bring them back together, maybe to smooth out the hard feelings from a decade ago.

Or maybe that was too much to ask.

The only thing Anna Marie
knew tonight was that her father lay in ICU, Miss Ellie was in the funeral home, and her three oldest friends were no longer together.

“How can life get so damned screwed up?”

CHAPTER
3

With the curtains drawn in her hotel room, it was hard for Anna Marie to know what time it was. A tiny stream of light sneaked through the edge of the curtains, but she wasn’t sure if it was from the outside porch light or the sun.

Had it not been for her cell phone singing on the nightstand she would’ve closed her eyes and gone back to sleep.

“Hello,” her voice was scratchy and hoarse.

The voice on the other end of the call was Stephen’s with sounds of morning traffic in New Orleans in the background. For a moment, guilt swept over her. Instead of lying in bed, she should’ve been on Canal Street getting ready to turn into her familiar garage to get her day started just as her partner Stephen was doing.

But then she only had to remember why she was lying in a hotel bed, and she wished she’d be anywhere but here.

“Stephen, I understand.”

After an almost non-extent good morning, he’d lapsed into his schedule for the day, one that neglected to have a meeting scheduled with anyone from the
McEntire
family whose daughter was getting married in June. Fleur de
Lis
Creations was in the running to design and make all the dresses for a wedding that would be the social event of the season. Getting the account would add prestige to their company name and lots of revenue to their bank account.

“I called Barbara
McEntire
yesterday,” she tried to explain. “She understands my situation.”

Stephen didn’t agree and went on to tell her so. Anna Marie patiently listened to him complain about his schedule and lack of commitment on the wedding. In the background she continued to hear the sounds of traffic through which he was navigating.

She glanced at the clock.
Seven-forty-five.
He was early, but then both of them were usually the first two people in their building.

“I’ll call her again this afternoon if it’ll make you feel better.”

“What would make me feel better,” he spat out, “would be for you to have simply sent flowers like everyone else does and for you to be here helping me.”

“Stephen, Miss Ellie wasn’t just anyone to me. I needed to come. We’ll get all of our commitments met.”

She let his answer pull up a smile. No one on the Gulf Coast could make curse words sound so eloquent. After she was sure he’d settled down, she refreshed his memory on a couple of other accounts.

Now came the hard part. She’d put off telling him about her father long enough. “Stephen, I might have to stay a few extra days. Now don’t get mad until you hear me out.”

He continued to rant and rave into the phone.

“Stephen, please listen.” She took a deep breath, let him calm down,
then
told him about the accident.

Even from over the phone she could picture his face. Rarely did Stephen listen to someone’s sob story. He never missed an appointment, never reneged on a promise, never neglected to do anything that was required of him so when anyone tried to make excuses he turned a deaf ear.

Not today. When she finished her story, he said nothing. Dead silence.

“Stephen, are you still there?”

“I’m here. I’m so sorry. I can’t believe this is happening to you. Do you need me there with you?”

His question took her off guard. Had he actually offered to leave the company to be with her?

She swallowed hard. “Thank you, Stephen, but one of us needs to be at the office to keep things going. My good friend Nancy is here, but you have to know how much your offer means to me.”

“I do mean it. You stay as long as you need to.”

She hung up before she started to cry.

Deciding she had a little time before she had to shower and dress, she pulled on a jogging suit, tennis shoes and a baseball cap and headed for the complimentary breakfast. As she stepped into the lobby, the first thing she spotted was the boldface headline on the front page of newspaper in the rack. “Drunken Driver Identified as Local Prison Parolee.”

Anna Marie wanted to escape to her room and hide from the all-too-real horror of the day, but instead she stood frozen to the spot just inside the door. Unable to pull her gaze away from the story, she saw her father’s name in smaller letters underneath the headline, but she refused to take a copy of the paper. She knew the gory details already.

Finally, she pulled herself together enough to look around. Several people in the lobby casually stood around with coffee cups in their hands. They chatted with one another, some laughing,
some
obviously getting ready for their tee times for the tournament. No one paid attention to her.

Relieved that no one recognized her or associated her with the headline, she made her feet move and headed toward the food tables at the breakfast buffet.

With a large cup of coffee in one hand and a croissant in the other, she found a sunny table out on the back veranda. The morning air had a nip, but the sun sparkling off the surface of the bayou offered a little reprieve.

She positioned a patio chair so she could see the water. Blocking out the others who made their way to the back deck to eat breakfast, she watched several orange butterflies feast on the wildflowers scattered throughout the marsh.

“Good morning. Mind if I share your table? That is, if you’re not expecting anyone.”

Anna Marie looked up to find Doug McCall standing next to her chair, holding his cup of coffee and croissant, with a folded newspaper stuck under his arm.

She pulled her gaze away from the newspaper. “I’d love to have the company especially since we seem to have the same tastes for breakfast.”

Dressed in a pair of khaki shorts and a bright yellow shirt, he looked fresh and ready to attack the course. She wished she would’ve spent a little more time in front of a mirror before coming out of her room.

He pulled out a chair and sat down, placing the newspaper with her father’s story face down on the table. “How did things go at the hospital?”

“As bad as I expected. Just as they said, it is my father, and he’s on life-support.”

“I’m sorry. I know this is nothing like what you were coming home for. I realize coming to a funeral is bad enough, but having this on top of it is horrible.”

“Thank you for your concern.” She took a bite of her croissant and a sip of coffee. “I’m talking with a doctor this morning. Since I’m the next of kin, they want me to make some decisions.”

The crease in his brow showed his concern. “That can’t be good. I know what it feels like to
make decisions about someone else’s life. Since he’s on life-support, I guess they want you to tell them when to take him off.”

She nodded. “If there’s no hope for his recovery, I’ll have them do it. The only good thing to come of this is if any of his organs are good, I can have them donated.”

“Now, that’s a wonderful thing. Still, it won’t be easy for you.”

The morning sun caught the gold specks in his brown eyes. Normally she wouldn’t notice the color of anyone’s eyes unless she was trying to find her patron a flattering fabric color for a costume or gown, but Doug’s eyes caught her attention. They gave him a warm, caring look. Maybe she noticed them because she desperately needed the warmth of another person this morning.

They both sat in deep thought. Anna Marie wondered if he’d had to make life and death decisions for someone, but she didn’t ask
.

“Why aren’t you on the golf course?”

“I have a tee time about nine. I’m playing with some of those old guys in the tournament. He took another sip of his coffee, looked up and winked. “It won’t be nearly as much fun as we could’ve had yesterday.”

An unexpected streak of joy shot through Anna Marie. “That’s sweet of you to say, but you didn’t get to see me play. If you play as much as you seem to, I’m sure my game won’t be much of a challenge for you. I’m pretty much an amateur.”

He grinned big and his smile went up all the way to his eyes. “That’s what’s so great about the game of golf. You’re not playing against anyone but yourself. It’s nice to beat your partner for the day, but it’s even better to beat your personal best. That’s the important thing.”