Authors: Sherryl Woods
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Romance, #Contemporary
When the door to her room opened, she half hoped it would be her mom, but it was the shrink, right on time.
“Good morning, Annie,” Dr. McDaniels said in the same cheerful tone that always grated on Annie’s nerves. “You look better this morning.”
Annie regarded her with a shy smile. “The nurse helped me wash my hair and blow it dry.”
“It looks good. You have some color back in your cheeks, too.”
“Blush,” she admitted.
“Nothing wrong with a little makeup,” Dr. McDaniels said. “And it shows me you’re starting to take an interest in your appearance again. Any particular reason?”
“Ty—he’s my friend—was here yesterday and he made me start looking at some things in a different way,” Annie told her.
“How so?”
“He kinda yelled at me for being so dumb and not caring enough about myself.”
Dr. McDaniels tried to hold back a grin. Annie could see her struggle with it, but the corners of her mouth turned up.
“He yelled, huh? Maybe
I
should have tried that.”
Annie shook her head. “I think I had to hear it from him. Ty’s, like, this really great guy. He’s the star of the baseball team. We’ve known each other forever. When he told me how scared he was for me, it made me look at everything from his perspective, not just mine. I mean, I’d heard that from my folks and Sarah and Raylene—they’re my best friends—but this time I really got it.”
“Ty made you realize that your actions affect all the people who care about you,” Dr. McDaniels suggested.
Annie nodded. “He did something else, too. He held up a mirror and made me look in it.”
“And?”
“I didn’t like what I saw, because I saw myself through his eyes. He didn’t see the fat person I do. He made me realize I don’t look so good.”
“Sounds like you had quite a breakthrough,” Dr. McDaniels said, obviously pleased. “You ready to get to work to change the behavior that brought you here?”
Annie knew exactly what the woman wanted to hear. She wanted more than an agreement to change. She wanted an admission that Annie recognized she had a problem.
She forced herself to look the psychologist in the eye. “You mean my being anorexic?”
Dr. McDaniels beamed. “That is exactly what I mean.”
Annie swallowed hard. “What if I can’t change it?”
“You can,” she said emphatically. “I believe that. So should you. The biggest step is admitting the problem. I’m not saying it won’t be hard and there won’t be days when you hate me and Lacy and every nurse monitoring your food intake. There will be times when you’ll think it would be easier just to bag the sessions, or days when you look at food and the idea of putting one single bite in your mouth makes you sick. But you can do this, Annie. I’m here to help you. Lacy’s on your side, too. Your folks will do anything in the world to support you. And it sounds as if your friends Ty, Sarah and Raylene will help you, as well.”
Annie grinned. “Ty said he was going to stick to me like white on rice to make sure I eat.”
“Good for him. Now here’s what I want you to think about for tomorrow,” Dr. McDaniels said. “The only way to be sure you don’t go back to your old pattern is to figure out how you ended up there in the first place. I want you to think back to how all of this started. Maybe you wanted to lose a couple of pounds before a big dance. Maybe it was something bigger than that. Think really hard and see if you can isolate the turning point when food suddenly became the enemy. Can you do that?”
Annie nodded. She could have answered the question right now, but she didn’t feel like talking about it. She didn’t even like thinking about it.
Dr. McDaniels regarded her intently. “Annie, do you already know the answer to that? Do you want to get into this now? I can stay longer.”
“No,” she said hurriedly. “I don’t.”
The shrink looked vaguely disappointed, but she didn’t press her. “Fine. We’ll talk more tomorrow,” she said, just as the door to Annie’s room started to open.
Seeing her mom in the doorway, Annie breathed a sigh of relief. Now she was off the hook for sure. Of course, the downside was that she had almost twenty-four hours to dread her next session.
When Dana Sue found Dr. McDaniels in Annie’s room, she immediately felt guilty for interrupting.
“Sorry. I didn’t realize you were having a session,” she said, trying to gauge from the psychologist’s expression how the session was going. “I’ll be in the waiting room when you’re finished.”
“No need,” Dr. McDaniels said. “Why don’t you come in now? We’ve just finished.”
“Are you sure?” Dana Sue asked. “Don’t cut it short on my account.”
“I’m not. Annie and I have been chatting for a while,” the doctor told her with a warm smile. “We’ve made some progress this morning, right, Annie?”
The teen nodded, though she didn’t look quite as cheerful as the psychologist.
“That’s wonderful,” Dana Sue said.
“In fact, we’ve made enough progress in the right direction,” McDaniels announced, “that I think we can release Annie from the hospital tomorrow, as long as she agrees to continue seeing me every day in my office.”
Annie’s expression brightened. Obviously, this was the first time she’d heard the news. “Really? I can go home?”
“If Lacy and Dr. Lane agree, you can leave right after our session tomorrow,” Dr. McDaniels told her.
She turned to Dana Sue. “And then I’d like to schedule a family session for the next day, if that’s okay with you. Can you and Mr. Sullivan be there?”
Dana Sue nodded at once. “Absolutely.”
“We’ll use that time to go over all the guidelines you’ll need for Annie’s recovery, and maybe talk a little bit about what each of you can do to help her stay on the right track,” she told them. “I think I’ll ask the nutritionist to be there for that session, as well.”
“What about her first day home?” Dana Sue asked. “Is there anything we need to do then?”
Dr. McDaniels glanced at Annie. “Do you want to fill your mom in after Lacy and I go over everything tomorrow?”
Annie nodded eagerly, clearly pleased that the doctor trusted her to be honest about the rules.
Dr. McDaniels stood up. “You did good work today, Annie. I’m proud of you.”
“It wasn’t as hard as I thought it was going to be.”
“It’ll get harder,” the doctor warned her. “And there will be setbacks. You need to understand that, so you don’t just throw up your hands and give up.”
Annie nodded. “Okay.”
“Then I’ll see you in the morning,” she said.
After she’d gone, Dana Sue crossed to Annie to give her a hug. “I’m so proud of you, sweetie. And I cannot wait to have you home again. I don’t think I’ve slept the whole time you’ve been gone.”
“Even though my music hasn’t been blasting?”
Dana Sue shrugged and admitted ruefully, “I guess I’ve missed that, too.”
She sat down beside Annie on the bed. “You want to have a little homecoming celebration? Just Maddie, Helen, your dad and maybe Ty, Sarah and Raylene?”
“That would be awesome,” Annie said. “But, Mom, not a lot of food, okay? Could you just invite them to stop by after dinner? I’ll feel weird if everybody’s watching to see what I put in my mouth.”
“If that’s what you want,” Dana Sue agreed. Maybe it was too soon to expect Annie to be comfortable around any occasion involving food.
Or maybe, Dana Sue thought with concern, it was a sign that she was already thinking of ways to slip back into her pattern of avoiding meals with other people, so no one would notice that she wasn’t eating at all.
Hating that she didn’t trust her daughter’s motives, Dana Sue resolved to check with Dr. McDaniels about what her own expectations ought to be regarding her daughter’s behavior, and about the warning signs that would tell her that Annie was regressing. This time Dana Sue didn’t intend to ignore anything.
R
onnie had just spent an hour on the phone with Butch Thompson, who’d agreed to come to Serenity in the morning to look over the hardware store and Ronnie’s business plan.
“Then I want that meal you promised me at your wife’s restaurant,” Butch had told him.
“You bringing
your
wife along?”
“Not this time. We’ll set that up once we have all the paperwork finished and signed. Shouldn’t take longer than a week or two.”
Having Butch respond as if their deal were a foregone conclusion had left Ronnie elated, so when the phone rang again he was more cheerful than he’d been in a while.
“Ronnie?” Dana Sue asked, as if she wasn’t quite sure it was him.
“Hey, sugar. How are you?”
“Good,” she said. “You sound pretty chipper yourself. Something going on?”
“I’ll tell you about it later,” he promised, then remembered he’d gone to the restaurant the night before specifically to fill her in. Once he’d gotten caught up in her staffing crisis, he’d forgotten all about it. He didn’t dare put it off much longer, but he wanted to tell her face-to-face so he could gauge her reaction.
“Why’d you call?” he asked.
“Can you meet me at the house in an hour?”
“Sure,” he said, though he was surprised by the invitation. It must be important if she was willing to let him cross that threshold again. “You want to tell me why?”
Dana Sue hesitated, but she’d never been any good at keeping secrets. Ronnie gave her time to reach the bursting point.
“Annie’s coming home tomorrow!” she said at last. “Isn’t that fantastic?”
Relief flooded through him, along with a bit of caution. “Fantastic doesn’t even begin to describe it,” he said. “The doctors are sure she’s ready?”
“I saw Dr. McDaniels myself just a few minutes ago. She seems to think Annie’s finally turned a corner. She’s set up a family counseling session for all of us day after tomorrow.”
“It must have been the visit from Ty,” Ronnie speculated.
“What visit was that?” Dana Sue asked, sounding puzzled. “I mean, Annie mentioned he’d been by yesterday, but with everything going on at the restaurant last night I completely forgot about it.”
“And I forgot to mention it for the same reason,” he said. “I’ll tell you everything when I see you at the house.”
“Yes, you will,” she said, sounding grimly determined all of a sudden. “I expect to be told everything you know that concerns our daughter.”
“I wasn’t deliberately keeping it from you,” he said, knowing how her mind worked. She could turn this into some major slight at the drop of a hat, just as she could his failure to mention his plans for the hardware store.
“Okay, if you say so,” she conceded eventually, though her tone was still cool. “I know I’m probably overreacting. I’ll see you in an hour and we’ll settle this then.”
It wasn’t until Ronnie had hung up that he remembered his appointment tomorrow with Butch. A couple of years ago he would have tried to juggle it all. Now, with his priorities where they belonged, he knew that as critical as that meeting was, Annie’s homecoming was more important. He called the man on his cell phone.
“Butch, it’s me again. Can we postpone for a couple of days? I just found out my daughter’s getting out of the hospital tomorrow. I want to be with her. And the following day we’re supposed to meet with her doctor. Since I don’t have the details yet, it might be easier if we just rescheduled for the end of the week.”
“Not a problem,” Butch said at once. “I’ll see you Friday, same time. How does that sound?”
“Perfect. Thanks.”
“No need to thank me. The way you care about that girl is one of the reasons I like you so much.”
Relieved that he’d done the right thing and it had turned out okay, Ronnie whistled as he showered and changed into clean clothes, before heading over to the house that had been his home for nearly twenty years. He wasn’t entirely sure how he was going to feel crossing the threshold again after all this time. He was just glad that Dana Sue was finally willing to let him inside, instead of greeting him on the lawn with a cast-iron skillet in her hand.
Dana Sue figured she had ten minutes to make the house look reasonably presentable before Ronnie saw it again. Since Annie had been in the hospital, she’d kicked her shoes off just inside the front door and left them there. Plates and glasses from late-night snacks were strewn around. There was a layer of dust over everything. She wasn’t the most attentive housekeeper under the best of conditions, but even by her low standards, it was a mess.
She’d managed to toss her shoes into the closet and get the dishes into the kitchen and in the dishwasher before she heard Ronnie’s pickup pull into the driveway. To avoid any awkwardness over whether he should just walk in or knock and wait at the door of the house he’d once lived in, she met him at the entry.
“Thanks for coming over,” she said, standing aside to let him in.
As he brushed past her, he dropped a quick kiss on her forehead that left her feeling completely disconcerted. It had been so innocent, so casual, he could have been kissing a distant cousin. It was nothing like the soul-searing kisses they’d once engaged in the second he came through the door. The lack of passion in this kiss stirred the daredevil in her, the woman who’d once grabbed what she wanted and held on for dear life.
Apparently puzzled by the fact that she hadn’t followed him inside, Ronnie turned around and stared at her. “You okay?”
Was she? she wondered. Was it okay for her to be struggling with the desire to bunch his shirt in her fist and drag his face down to lock lips with him? Or was that insanity?
Even as heat and need rushed through her, she convinced herself it
was
crazy. It was nothing more than an instinctive reaction to having him back under this roof, back in this room where they’d made love more times than she could count, both of them too eager and frantic to wait to climb the stairs to their bedroom. They’d been more circumspect once Annie had come along, but this room still held an astounding number of tantalizing memories.
“Dana Sue?” he asked, still watching her with a bemused expression.
She shook off the memories and forced a bright smile. “Sorry. Just a momentary lapse.”
She started to breeze past him and take refuge in the kitchen, but he snagged her arm and met her gaze. “I remember, too,” he said softly.
“Remember what?” she said, a false note of cheer in her voice.
He grinned at her attempt to pretend they hadn’t been thinking about the exact same thing. “Everything,” he said succinctly, his gaze locked with hers. “I used to lie awake at night in my motel room and think about the way we were together, the way it didn’t take more than a look or a casual touch to set us on fire.”
“Don’t,” she pleaded.
“Don’t tell you or don’t remember?” he asked.
“Either one,” she whispered. “We can’t go back, Ronnie.”
“No,” he agreed, still holding her gaze. “But we can start fresh, make new memories.”
“How? The image in my mind, the one I can’t shake, isn’t so pretty.”
“The affair,” he said bluntly.
“Yes, the affair.”
“It was a meaningless one-night stand,” he told her. “That doesn’t make it okay, but is that enough reason to give up on us forever?”
“I thought so,” she said, then realized she’d used the past tense, which might be just enough to give him the encouragement he was obviously seeking. “I still do,” she added. “Apparently you did, too, since you left town.”
“You really do not want to go there,” he told her quietly. “I left because you didn’t give me much of a choice.”
“Oh, please, I hardly banished you.”
“No, you just made it very clear how miserable you’d be if I stayed. I went because I already felt guilty for the pain I’d put you through. The last thing I wanted to do was prolong it and make it harder for you and Annie.”
“Then why are you so insistent about staying now?”
“Because I’ve finally seen what a mistake it was for me to go,” he said, then grinned. “And despite what you’ve said, I don’t think you want me gone.”
“I do,” she said, but her answer was halfhearted.
“Do you really?” he asked. “Aren’t you beginning to mellow just a little bit? Didn’t you notice how well we worked together last night, as if we could read each other’s minds? Haven’t you noticed how well we’ve worked together to present a united front to Annie? Individually, we’re both pretty good parents, but together we’re awesome.”
She’d noticed all of that, but she didn’t trust it. She couldn’t. “I won’t have this conversation with you,” she said, jerking her gaze away before she could fall under his spell and into his arms. “You’re only here right now because of Annie. I thought you could help me plan her homecoming.”
He backed down at once, clearly sensing that she was reaching the end of her patience. “I’d love to do that. And there’s something I’d like to tell you about if there’s time.”
“Let’s sit in the kitchen,” she said, hoping there would be fewer memories in there since it had always been her domain. “Let’s focus on Annie’s homecoming, okay? I’ll fix us some sweet tea.”
His narrowed gaze suggested he knew it was the last thing she ought to be drinking. “I’ll use sugar substitute,” she said.
“Did you hear me say a word?” he asked.
“No, but we both know you know something, or think you do. Since I don’t want to discuss it, you’ll just have to take my word that I know what I should and shouldn’t put in my mouth.”
“I’m sure you do,” he said placatingly. “And you’re smart enough to follow the doctor’s orders, I’m sure.”
“I am,” she said. At least when she remembered, or wasn’t driven to indulge in comfort food to suppress her exasperation with this man.
She put water on to boil, pulled tea bags from the cupboard, then grabbed a handful of sweetener packets. “Satisfied?” she asked as she tore them open and dumped the contents in the water, then added the tea bags.
“Thrilled,” he commented wryly.
Scowling, she looked him in the eye. “One thing about you I’ve noticed hasn’t changed.”
“Oh?”
“You’re still annoying as hell.”
He grinned. “I prefer to think of myself as a good jump-start to your metabolism.”
“You wish,” she scoffed, but she had to bite back a chuckle.
There were times, though she would rather eat dirt than admit it, when having Ronnie around again reminded her of what she’d felt like when she was totally and completely alive. To her chagrin she hadn’t felt that way—not even once—since he’d left.
She put such thoughts out of her mind.
Annie wasn’t sure what made her happier, being home again or seeing her mom and dad under the same roof and making a genuine attempt to get along, even if they were only doing it for her sake.
They’d gotten home just before lunchtime, and her mom had insisted they all sit down together for sandwiches and tea. She’d made turkey on whole-grain bread, then cut them diagonally into quarters, the way Annie had liked them when she was little. Instinctively, she’d known to put the sections on a plate in the middle of the table, rather than placing a huge sandwich in front of Annie.
Annie knew both of her parents were watching her like a hawk as she took one little section and put it on her plate, then added a tiny scoop of her mom’s potato salad. There had been a time when she could have eaten the whole bowl, but a taste was about all she could manage now without wanting to run from the table and hurl. Still, it was progress, and she guessed from their expressions that her mom and dad got that. To her chagrin, Annie also knew that Lacy had given them a very precise list of what she was to eat and at what time, every single day. The regimen wasn’t going to change just because she was out from under the watchful eye of the nurses at the hospital.
“Erik sent over some of his cinnamon ice cream for later,” her mom told her. “He thought maybe we could have that when everyone drops by.”
“Awesome,” Annie said, surprised that the idea actually held some appeal. Erik’s homemade ice cream was amazing. When he’d been working on getting the recipe down pat at the restaurant, Annie had only tasted it, but she bet her mom had eaten five gallons. “You didn’t invite a lot of people, did you?”
“Just the ones we talked about,” her mom assured her. “And they won’t stay long. They’re coming around seven, after dinner, just the way you wanted.”
“Thanks.” She took a bite of the sandwich and forced herself to swallow. To her surprise, it tasted pretty good, better than the sandwiches in the hospital, somehow. Maybe because her mom had made it. Annie took another bite.
“You should get some rest after lunch,” her dad said. “You don’t want to overdo things on your first day home.”
Annie frowned at him. “All I did was walk in from the car,” she protested. “Even at the hospital, they made me go in a stupid wheelchair. It was totally lame.”
Her dad grinned. “You didn’t seem to complain much at the time. I noticed the orderly was pretty cute.”
Annie rolled her eyes as she ate another bite of the sandwich, finishing off the little section. “Puh-leeze. Kenny’s, like, twenty-three. I’m pretty sure he flunked out of high school. That’s probably the best job he’ll ever have.”
“Nice to know you have high standards,” Ronnie teased. “Just don’t be too quick to judge people. You never know what hidden talents they might possess.”
“If Kenny has any talents, believe me, they’re hidden so deep no one will ever discover them,” she scoffed, then noticed that she’d absent-mindedly put another section of sandwich on her plate. Shrugging, she went ahead and took a bite.
“You sure about Kenny’s lack of talents?” her dad asked.
Annie studied him. “What do you know about him that I don’t?”
“Just that he’s a talented carpenter,” her dad said. “He’s been making furniture most of his life and selling it on consignment in a few galleries that specialize in hand-crafted pieces by local artisans. I predict you’ll hear big things about Kenny one of these days.”