Bonnie was only repeating the same point Zach had made. J.R. would have warned her if he himself had known. “It’s okay, Bonnie. It’s just a shock finding out this way, that’s all.”
“I’m sorry, Zach,” Bonnie said. “I should have come to one of you right away. It’s just been so busy with the high-school physicals all scheduled this week. I was proud of myself for being able to squeeze Eno in.”
“It’s fine, Bonnie. We’re bound to have some miscommunication now and then.”
Callie nodded her agreement to Zach’s remark. After all, Bonnie was only following office procedures, doing her best to accommodate patients in a timely manner. “He’s right. No harm done.”
“You’re sure?” Bonnie’s still sounded as if she expected to be fired on the spot even after two decades of exemplary service.
“I’m sure.”
“It won’t happen again, Dr. Layman.”
“I prefer Dr. Callie,” she said with a smile.
The peace offering was accepted. “I put Gerry Seamann and the baby in exam room two.”
“I’ll be there as quickly as I can.”
Bonnie closed the door and left her alone with her PA once more.
“I owe you an apology,” Callie said through stiff lips.
“For the ‘call me Dr. Layman’ crack?” he asked. He had relaxed slightly but it was obvious he was still angry.
“For accusing you of trying to make me look bad. That was unforgiveable.”
“Yes,” he said. “It was.”
“You’re not going to make this easy, are you?” She took a couple of steps closer but kept the corner of her desk between them. She rested one hand on the surface, shoved the other into the pocket of her lab coat. “This is exactly why I didn’t want to practice in White Pine Lake.”
“Dying is a part of life.”
“Yes, but when you care for someone, you don’t always make the best decisions. You open yourself up to an inevitable failure.”
“You might not. But then again you probably will. How would you counsel Eno if he wasn’t a family friend?”
“Is this a test?”
“It’s a question, that’s all. Are you afraid to answer it?”
“I would tell him he should continue treatments only as long as he feels they are worth it. If and when he is ready to let go we...I...will do everything in my power to make sure he’s comfortable.”
“Which is exactly the conversation I had with him three months ago. Eno has had a good, long life. He’s not ready to stop treatments just yet, but when the time comes, he will be at peace. You passed the test.”
She sighed. “Did I? I should have been prepared for something like this. I’ve known these people all my life. It was bound to happen sooner or later.” The shock of believing she’d been betrayed by Zach had faded, but the strength of her reaction left her vulnerable and off balance.
“It’s real. It’s life. It happens no matter what we do, no matter how well prepared we are.” He lifted his hand as though he might touch her cheek, then stopped himself and curled his fingers around the bell of the stethoscope hanging from his neck, as she’d seen him do so often. But she wished he had finished the movement, longed to feel his comforting touch. “I hope your practice is a long and successful one, but I also hope you never become distanced enough from the rest of humanity to deny your own pain.”
Burning out, just going through the motions, treating only the symptoms and not the whole person—it was a fate suffered by too many physicians. They both knew it was a real risk in their chosen specialty and needed to be watched for and guarded against.
Callie took a deep breath, willing herself back to calm. “I truly am sorry for what I said. I know you wouldn’t do anything so underhanded and unprofessional. It seems I’m always apologizing.” This time
she
was the one who had to restrain herself from reaching out to touch him, to connect as she apologized. It worried her, this sudden urge to be so close. She had been steeling herself from it ever since the night he’d kissed her, but her defenses were rapidly weakening.
“Apology accepted.” Their eyes caught and held. She might have misjudged his motives toward her a few minutes ago, but physically she was beginning to be able to read him much better. He wanted to touch her, too, and was working to control himself. They were playing with fire, had been for days. It was why she had spent so many hours away from the tiny duplex—to remove herself from temptation.
“I’d better go,” she said, though she didn’t move. He was just on the other side of her desk, blocking her path to the door. “Gerry and the baby are waiting for me.”
He moved out of her way, but he didn’t free her gaze . “You’ll handle the cases like Eno’s just fine if you stay on in White Pine Lake. No one ever said it would be easy or that you’d be able to cure everyone, but it’s worth it, what we do.”
“I know.”
“Don’t ever let yourself forget it.” He turned on his heel and left.
CHAPTER TEN
T
HE
STORMS
that had threatened all afternoon came in the night. Callie had been dozing off and on but the thunder and lightning finally became too heavy to ignore. She glanced at the bedside clock, a battery-operated travel clock she’d had for years. White Pine Lake suffered a lot of power interruptions for all kinds of reasons, from squirrels and birds in the wires, to falling tree branches and high winds. Some of them lasted for only a few seconds, others for several hours, but all of them played havoc with digital clocks. She hated waking to a set of blinking numerals that bore no relation to the actual hour of the day or night.
She squinted at the luminous dial. Not quite 3:00 a.m. She sat up. No use trying to sleep. Even with the door to her tiny bedroom closed, the storm couldn’t be shut out. She got out of bed and put on her robe, though she couldn’t find her slippers. The wooden floor was cool on her bare feet as she stood up and went to the kitchen sink for a glass of water. She was awake. She might as well stay up and watch the light show. Years ago, if Gerry or another of her girlfriends had been sleeping over, they might have snuck up into the widow’s walk, or if she was alone in her room, she would have wrapped herself in a blanket and climbed onto her narrow window seat to watch the dark clouds and sheets of wind and rain move in off the lake. She wondered if Becca might do the same thing tonight.
If it didn’t stop raining soon, tomorrow’s expedition to pick market vegetables from Karen’s garden with the twins wouldn’t be pleasant. The project had been conceived when she had run into Ginger and her children at Kilroy’s Ice Cream Parlor a block down the street from the White Pine. Visiting the ice-cream parlor had been one more attempt to spend as much time as possible away from the cabin, away from Zach. It had been another very long week. They had sat on the elevated deck of the former general store that still retained much of its rustic charm, from high tin ceilings to whitewashed bead-board paneling and wide-planked polished wood floors. From the deck they could look out over the lake, where the storm clouds had been beginning to pile up over the dunes. Becca and Brandon had had double-scoop cones, Brandon’s bubblegum flavored and bright blue, Becca’s chocolate, filled with peanuts and caramel, with the not-so-appetizing name of “Moose Tracks.” Callie ordered a single dip of her favorite, black walnut in a dish, while Ginger settled for a glass of fresh lemonade.
“The baby’s taking up all the space in her stomach,” Brandon said, running his tongue around the top of the cone to catch the drips. “It’s like a little alien, sucking up all the food she eats so it can grow big enough to split her stomach and get out.” He raised the arm not holding his cone and waved it over his head while making a terrible grimace.
“Brandon, careful of your cone,” Ginger said, sipping lemonade. She looked tired but not as strained and anxious as she had the day Callie and Zach had spoken with her at the clinic. Callie suspected her father had insisted Ginger keep to the reduced work schedule and increased rest breaks Zach had prescribed for her. She would also be seeing the obstetrician in Petoskey early the next week. Ginger was close to her due date now and very big. Her blood pressure had remained within normal levels, though— information Ginger had offered to Callie herself, and Callie was cautiously optimistic that her stepmother could carry the baby to term and deliver him or her safely without further complications.
“Brandon, stop being gross,” Becca said disgustedly. “That’s not how babies are born.” Callie held her breath, wondering just how involved the subject was going to get. For the moment they were alone on the deck, but it was Friday evening and business would be picking up soon as tourists and locals both came to enjoy an after-dinner treat.
Was Ginger the kind of mother who informed her children in vivid detail of all kinds of biological processes they might not be emotionally equipped to deal with at eleven? Or was she the kind that would cling to the storybook fantasies of finding babies under cabbage leaves or delivered by a giant stork in a top hat, until one day she would discover in dismay they had already figured out much of it for themselves?
“Sometimes it
does
feel the way Brandon described it when the baby is moving around a lot,” she admitted, laughing a little as she regarded her son with a mixture of exasperation and affection. “But that is not how babies grow or how they’re born.”
“The baby gets nourishment from Mom’s blood. I told you that, dummy. There’s a cord attached to her stomach and the baby’s. When the baby comes out, they cut it,” Becca said with all the authority of her fifteen minutes’ seniority.
“And that’s how you get a belly button.” Brandon smirked. “I watched the same video you did in health class.” Callie relaxed a little. The White Pine school system was fairly conservative in its curriculum. Reproductive lectures for fifth graders were pretty low-key.
“If you want we can discuss it later,” Ginger said, appearing unalarmed by the prospect, “but not now when Callie is trying to eat her ice cream.”
Ginger was a good mother. Her little brother or sister would be well loved and well taken care of by both his or her parents.
“Thank you,” Callie said faintly.
“I don’t want to talk about it at all. It’s gross,” Becca said. “I don’t want to have anything to do with it.” She gave her mother a defiant stare and then bent her head to her cone.
Ginger closed her eyes for a moment as if gathering her patience. Blissfully unaware of the tension between his twin and their mother, Brandon kept right on talking. “I wouldn’t mind a baby brother who was an alien,” he mumbled around the edge of his ice-cream cone. “It would be better than another sister.”
Becca stuck out her tongue but didn’t dignify the remark with a response.
A family of tourists three generations strong came out the door of the ice-cream parlor just then, their hands full of treats, and made their way out to the deck. They arranged themselves at a table behind where Callie and the others were sitting, and the smallest of the trio of children promptly dropped his ice cream onto the floor and began to wail. By the time the ice-cream cone had been replaced and the commotion behind them had died down, the subject of where babies came from had blessedly been forgotten.
A long, low roll of thunder came from far out on the lake. “Not much chance of a sunset tonight. The clouds are thickening up too quickly.” Callie followed her stepmother’s gaze. Off in the distance, huge cumulus clouds towered over the dunes, their whipped-cream tops and dark underbellies reflected in the glassy surface of the lake. The sun had already disappeared into the mass, and only stray orange-red rays broke out here and there to gild one of the big thunderheads with coppery highlights.
“If it rains enough I won’t have to water the flowers tomorrow,” Callie said, taking a last bite of her ice cream.
“We’ve missed you this week.”
“Fall sports physicals,” Callie said. “We’ve been busy.”
“It’s hard to believe school starts in less than two weeks. The kids are coming with me to Petoskey to shop for school clothes and shoes. It is impossible to keep them in shoes.”
“Brandon ruins his by dragging his feet as he rides his bike down the hill. I keep telling him not to do it but he won’t listen,” Becca scolded. “I’m just outgrowing mine.” She regarded her feet with a scowl as if willing them to stay small.
“Sorry, honey. You come from a long line of women with big feet,” Ginger sympathized.
“Ugh. Don’t talk about school.” Brandon shoved the last inch of his ice-cream cone into his mouth and chewed noisily. “I’m still hungry.”
“You can’t possibly be. You had two hamburgers, French fries and a salad not two hours ago.”
“I’m still hungry.” He folded his arms over his chest.
“Brandon,” Ginger said warningly. He uncrossed his arms. “You can have some carrot sticks when we get home but no more ice cream.”
“I’m not hungry for carrots,” he muttered under his breath, “unless I can dip them in ranch dressing.”
Ginger rolled her eyes and sighed. Callie repressed a smile. She was enjoying herself with Ginger and the twins; something she wouldn’t have believed possible a month earlier.
“Hey, there’s Karen,” Brandon said, pointing to the street below the elevated deck.
Sure enough her mother was wheeling her vintage Schwinn Corvette with its oversize whitewall tires and big wire basket to a stop in front of the ice-cream parlor. Karen owned a Volkswagen Beetle but she seldom drove it during the summer months, preferring the bike. Karen disappeared from view for a moment while she parked her bike and then mounted the steps to where they were sitting. “Hello, everyone,” she said. She was wearing heavy shoes, denim capris and a loose white peasant shirt with the sleeves rolled to below her elbows. She looked cool despite what must have been a warm ride in from the farm.
The temperature had reached into the eighties during the afternoon and the humidity was high enough to make it uncomfortable to sit outside. A floppy straw hat, which served to protect Karen’s long, braided hair from road dust, was tied under her chin with a loosely woven rainbow-striped scarf. She took off the hat as she walked toward them, dangling it and the scarf from her fingertips.
“What brings you to town this late in the day?” Callie asked.
“Actually, I’m trying to find someone to help me harvest my tomatoes and cucumbers,” she said, leaning against the waist-high railing that protected patrons from the eight-foot drop to the sidewalk. “I have a stand reserved at the farmer’s market for this coming Sunday, as well as keeping my little stand at the end of my lane supplied. I can usually count on the farmer next door sending one of his sons over to help, but they’re busy haying and he can’t spare any of them.”
“I’m not busy Saturday,” Callie offered, she hoped not too grudgingly. “I’ll come help you.”
“I’ll do it,” Brandon said eagerly, raising his hand. “I’m saving up for the new edition of ‘Zombie Wars’ for my PlayStation. It’s gonna be awesome. It’s coming out real soon.”
“I’ll come, too,” Becca said, surprisingly. “I’d like to see the goats again. I’ll help pick tomatoes and maybe we can do some more carding if you have any fiber ready.”
Karen looked slightly taken aback, then shrugged. “Why not? But only if it’s okay with your mother.”
“Are you guys sure?” Ginger cautioned. “It isn’t as easy as it sounds. You have to know which vegetables are ripe enough to pick and be careful not to bruise them.”
“We had never bused tables, either, but now Mac says I’m one of the best she’s ever worked with,” Brandon boasted.
“It will be hot if you don’t start early in the morning. And you both like to sleep in on Saturday.”
“Yes, the earlier we start the better,” Karen agreed. “And you should wear old clothes. It might be muddy.”
“I’ll get up without you having to keep calling me,” Brandon promised his mother. “Is it okay?”
Ginger seemed conflicted, as if her agreeing to the twins spending time with J.R.’s ex might be getting a little out of control. Callie felt a pang of guilt. She had set this in motion when she’d taken the children out to the farm in the first place. Once more she was reminded that good intentions had all kinds of unforeseen consequences. Introducing Karen into the weaving of her new family was producing a very complicated pattern.
Callie gave her stepmother a slightly apologetic glance. “Is it okay with you, Ginger? I’d be glad to take them.” Visions of a quiet Saturday spent sleeping in and maybe driving into the park to hike one of the dune trails was replaced with visions of washing garden dirt off bushels of tomatoes and cukes before hauling them into town in her Jeep. But it would also guarantee she wouldn’t have to keep looking over her shoulder to avoid being alone with Zach at the cottage all the next day.
“If Callie’s going to be there, I guess it will be okay.” Ginger said, giving in with grace. Callie smiled her thanks and Ginger smiled back. Then she looked sternly from one child to another. “You have agreed to do this job for Callie’s mom. That means you will do it, understand? You have both given your word. It is important to keep it. You are not to start whining and complaining if it isn’t as much fun as you both imagine it’s going to be.”
“We’ll do it,” Brandon said. “Won’t we, Becca?”
“We always finish our jobs at the White Pine. We’ll do a good job for Karen, too.”
“All right, then.” Ginger smiled, although it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Karen, I guess you have yourself a pair of vegetable pickers.”
Karen leaned forward and shook hands with both children. “It’s settled, then. Don’t worry about feeding them breakfast,” she said to Ginger. “I’ll make oatmeal and blueberry muffins.” Brandon had wrinkled up his nose at the mention of oatmeal but brightened again when the words
blueberry muffins
were added. “I’d better be getting home. It’s going to be dark earlier than usual tonight because of the clouds. Goodbye,” she said and started down the steps of the deck...just as J.R. started up them.
Beside Callie, Ginger tensed. Becca was gathering up their garbage to drop it in the trash receptacle disguised as a rain barrel and Brandon was hanging over the railing, having spied something of interest in the massed hostas hiding the foundation. They didn’t notice the quick look of distress that crossed their mother’s expressive features as she watched J.R. and Karen exchange stilted greetings. But Callie did. Again a spurt of anxiety assailed Callie. Was she doing the right thing attempting to build bridges between her two families?
Karen continued down the steps to her bicycle, while J.R. came toward them with long strides, waving a greeting through the parlor’s big plateglass windows to people he recognized inside. He wasn’t smiling and there was a furrow between his eyebrows, but when he spoke his tone was jovial. “Hey, I wondered where everyone had gotten to.”
“I told Mac we were coming here for ice cream,” Ginger responded. “We met Callie at the counter and she joined us.”
J.R. gave Callie a quick smile. “Hey, sweetheart. I’ve missed you around the White Pine this week.”