01_Gift from the Heart (2 page)

Hope Creek, North Carolina

D
r. Adam Wright wearily reached for the stack of messages on his desk and glanced at the clock, then to the early November darkness outside his window. He was already late picking up Nicole, and he knew he’d hear about it. Neither his wife nor his daughter had ever had much patience with the demands of his family practice. And things had gone from bad to worse with Nicole since she’d come to live with him a year ago. Toss awakening hormones into the mix, and it was a recipe for disaster. Which just about described his relationship with his eleven-year-old daughter, he thought with a sigh.

Adam rapidly scanned the messages. Janice had taken care of all but the most urgent in her usual efficient manner, he noted gratefully. Those that remained were from patients who really did need to speak with him. Except for the last one.

Adam frowned at the unfamiliar name and the out-of-state area code. The message was from a woman named Clare Randall and contained just one word—
Personal.
His frown deepened. Janice usually intercepted sales-people, so he assumed this Clare Randall had convinced Janice that she had a legitimate reason for wanting to speak with him. But the message wasn’t marked urgent, so it could wait until tomorrow, he decided. The other calls he’d return from home, after he picked up Nicole.

It would help pass the long evening ahead, in which he assumed his daughter would once again give him the silent treatment for his latest transgression of tardiness.

Nicole was out the door of Mrs. Scott’s house even before Adam’s car came to a stop. The older woman appeared a moment later, and even from a distance Adam could see her frown. Not a good sign. He summoned up a smile and waved to his temporary babysitter, then steeled himself for the coming encounter with his daughter. His stomach clenched, and he forced himself to take a deep breath as she climbed into the car and slammed the door.

“Did you thank Mrs. Scott?” he asked.

Nicole didn’t look at him, and when she spoke her voice was surly—and accusatory. “Why should I? You pay her to watch me. And you’re late. Again.”

A muscle clenched in his jaw even as he told himself to cut his daughter some slack. She’d lost her mother just over a year ago, been forced to live with a father she’d never quite connected with, then been uprooted from her home and friends in St. Louis and plopped down in this small North Carolina town. At the time, Adam had thought the move back to his home state was for the best. He didn’t like the crowd of friends Nicole hung out with, nor the fact that she often seemed to be eleven going on thirty. Day by day he’d felt his authority slipping away as his daughter spun out of control. So when he’d heard of the need for a doctor in Hope Creek, it had seemed like the answer to his prayers. He’d hoped that the wholesome atmosphere of small-town living would straighten Nicole out and help them bond.

Unfortunately, things hadn’t worked out that way. If anything, Nicole resented him more than ever, and the gulf between them had widened. She had also become a master at evading questions and putting him on the defensive, he realized. But the ploy wasn’t going to work tonight.

“The issue isn’t whether or not I pay Mrs. Scott. The issue is politeness,” he said firmly.

She ignored his comment. “So why were you late?”

He wasn’t going to be sidetracked. He’d already been through half a dozen sitters. He was grateful that Mrs. Scott from church had taken pity on him and offered to watch Nicole until he found someone on a more permanent basis. But he hadn’t had any luck on that score yet. So he couldn’t afford to alienate his Good Samaritan.

“Did you thank Mrs. Scott?” he repeated more firmly.

Her jaw settled into a stubborn line, and she glared at him defiantly. “Yes.”

He knew she was lying. And she knew he knew it. She was calling his bluff. And he couldn’t back down. “That’s good. I think I’ll just go have a word with Mrs. Scott myself,” he said evenly as he reached for the door handle. He was halfway out of the car before she spoke.

“Okay, so I didn’t thank her,” Nicole said sullenly.

Adam paused, then settled back in the car. “There’s still time. She hasn’t gone in yet.”

Nicole gave him a venomous look, then rolled down her window. “Thanks,” she called unenthusiastically. The woman acknowledged the comment with a wave, then closed the door. Nicole rolled her window back up, folded her arms across her chest and stared straight ahead.

Adam stifled a sigh. Nicole’s response had hardly been gracious. But at least she had complied with his instruction. He supposed that was something.

“So why were you late again?” Nicole asked as they made the short drive to the house Adam had purchased the year before.

“A couple of last-minute emergencies came up.” Adam had done his best to maintain a more moderate workload than he had in St. Louis, but he still rarely got out of the office before five-thirty or six. “Do you want to stop and pick up dinner at the Bluebird? It’s meat loaf night.” The Bluebird Café’s offerings had become a staple of their diet, and meat loaf was one of Nicole’s favorites. Adam’s culinary skills were marginal at best, and while he could manage breakfast and lunch, dinner stretched his abilities to the limit. So they frequented the Bluebird or resorted to microwave dinners. Only rarely did he indulge Nicole’s preference for fast food.

“Whatever.”

He cast a sideways glance in her direction. She was sitting as far away from him as the seat belt would allow, hugging her books to her chest, her posture stiff and unyielding. As distant and unreachable as the stars that were beginning to appear in the night sky. Just like Elaine had been by the time their marriage fell apart four years ago. Now, as then, he felt isolated. And utterly alone. He didn’t blame Elaine for his feelings. Or Nicole. His loneliness was a consequence of his own failings. Of his inability to connect emotionally to the people he loved. That was the legacy his own father had left him.

Adam made a quick stop at the Bluebird, and a few minutes later pulled into the detached garage next to his two-story frame house, ending the silent ride home. Nicole got out of the car immediately, leaving him alone in the dark. The savory aroma of their meal filled the car, but even though he’d skipped lunch, he had no appetite. Because he knew what was ahead.

He and Nicole would eat mostly in silence. Any questions he asked would be met with one-word answers. Then she would disappear to her room on the pretense of doing homework. A few minutes later he’d hear the music from a CD. Though they shared a house, they’d each spend the evening alone, in solitary pursuits.

Adam desperately wished he knew how to connect with his daughter, who was as lonely as he was, according to the school counselor. Apparently she’d made virtually no friends in the year they’d been in Hope Creek.
Standoffish
and
prickly
were the words the counselor had used to describe his daughter. At the woman’s suggestion, they’d actually gone for a few sessions of joint counseling. But Nicole had been so unresponsive that it had seemed a waste of time.

He rested his forearms on the steering wheel and lowered his forehead to his hands, struggling to ward off the despair that threatened to overwhelm him. And, as always in these dark moments, he turned to God for comfort and assistance.

Dear Lord, I need your help,
he prayed silently.
I know I’m not doing a good job as a father. And I know Nicole is unhappy. But I don’t know how to get past the wall she’s built between us. She hates me, and she shuts me out every time I try to reach out to her. I know I failed with Elaine. I don’t want to fail with Nicole, too. Please give me strength to carry on and guidance on how to proceed. I can’t do this on my own. I’m so afraid that time is running out for us. I love my daughter, Lord. Please help me find a way to make her understand that before it’s too late.

Slowly Adam raised his head, then tiredly reached for their dinner. But when he stepped into the kitchen a few moments later, Nicole was already nuking a frozen dinner. She turned to him defiantly, daring him to comment.

Adam said nothing. He just set the food he no longer wanted on the table, put her meat loaf in the refrigerator and prepared for another silent, strained dinner.

It was going to be a very long night.

Clare added the column of figures again and frowned. Not good. Even with scrupulous budgeting, six months with no income would be rough. But she could make it. She had to. Because she needed Aunt Jo’s legacy.

Clare rose and set a kettle to boil on the stove in her tiny efficiency apartment. She could use the microwave, but she preferred boiling water the old-fashioned way. There was something about a whistling kettle that she found comforting. It brought back happy memories of growing up on the farm in Ohio with her parents and two sisters. Though they hadn’t been wealthy in a material sense, they’d been rich in love and faith. It was the kind of family she’d always hoped to create for herself.

And she’d succeeded. Up until two years ago. Then her own selfishness had destroyed both of those precious gifts—faith and family.

Clare swallowed past the sudden lump in her throat. She wasn’t going to cry. She didn’t believe in such indulgences. She’d made a tragic mistake, and now she’d have to live with the results. Her family was gone. And her faith…it wasn’t gone, exactly. It was too deeply ingrained to just disappear. But it had languished to the point that she no longer found any comfort in it or felt any connection to God.

Of course, she still had A.J. and Morgan. She wasn’t sure what she would have done without their moral support these past two years. But while they were close emotionally, geographically they were scattered. Besides, her sisters had their own lives, their own challenges to deal with. Clare didn’t want to unduly burden them with her problems. Especially her financial ones.

She hadn’t communicated the sad state of her finances to Aunt Jo, either. Though she’d written to her great-aunt on a regular basis, she’d always tried to be upbeat. Aunt Jo knew that Clare and Dennis had always lived a good life, enjoying the best of everything. When Clare had moved from a lavish home to an apartment after the accident, she’d simply said she needed a change of scenery. And when she’d reentered the teaching world, she’d explained that she just needed to fill her time. So Aunt Jo had had no idea how precarious her situation was. Otherwise, Clare was sure her aunt would have made some income provision for the six months of the nanny stipulation in her will.

That reminded her—Dr. Wright still hadn’t returned her call from yesterday. Clare frowned and glanced again at the figures on the sheet in front of her. It was time for another call to the good doctor.

“Adam, I’ve got Clare Randall on the phone again. She says it’s urgent, and she’s willing to hold until you have a few minutes.”

Adam stopped writing on the chart in front of him and glanced distractedly at Janice. “Clare Randall?”

“She called yesterday. I left the message on your desk.”

Adam frowned. “That was the one marked personal, right?”

“Bingo.”

“Do you have any idea who she is?”

“Not a clue.”

Adam glanced at his watch. “Do I have a few minutes?”

“Mr. Sanders is in room one, but he’s telling Mary Beth about his fishing trip, so I expect he wouldn’t mind if you take a couple of minutes. I can’t speak for Mary Beth, though. Last time I went by, her eyes were starting to glaze over and she was trying to edge out the door,” Janice said with a grin.

Adam chuckled. “You could relieve her.”

“No way. Last time he cornered me I had to listen to a twenty-minute soliloquy about the newest hand-tied trout flies he’d discovered.”

Adam chuckled again. “Okay. We’ll let Mary Beth handle him this time. Go ahead and put the call through.”

Adam made a few more notes on the chart, then set it aside as the phone on his desk rang. “This is Adam Wright.”

“Dr. Wright, this is Clare Randall. I’m Jo Williams’s great-niece. I believe you and my aunt were friends?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, I’m very sorry to tell you that my aunt passed away two weeks ago.”

Adam felt a shock wave pass through him. He and Jo had met at church when he’d first arrived in St. Louis to do his residency, and they’d been friends ever since. Even after his move to North Carolina, they’d kept in touch. In many ways, she had become a mother figure for him, and he had always been grateful for her support and sympathetic ear. He’d had no idea she was even ill. But then, that didn’t surprise him. Jo had never been one to burden others with her problems.

“Dr. Wright? Are you still there?”

He cleared his throat, but when he spoke there was a husky quality to his voice. “Yes. I’m just…shocked. I’m so sorry for your loss. Jo was a great lady.”

She could hear the emotion in his voice, and her tone softened in response. “Yes, she was.”

“What happened?”

She told him of the fast-acting cancer that had taken Jo’s life, and then offered her own condolences. It was obvious that Adam Wright had great affection for her aunt. “Did you know her well?”

“We met more than fifteen years ago, and she became a good friend. We attended the same church when I lived in St. Louis. She was a woman of deep faith. And great generosity.”

Clare took a deep breath. “As a matter of fact, her generosity is the reason I’m calling you today. As you may know, Aunt Jo didn’t have much family. Just me and my two sisters. And she was very generous to us in her will. However, there is a rather unusual stipulation attached to my bequest.”

When Clare hesitated, Adam frowned and glanced at his watch. He had no idea what this had to do with him, and he couldn’t keep Mr. Sanders waiting much longer. He pulled the man’s chart toward him and flipped it open, his attention already shifting to his next patient.