Family Practice

by Marisa Carroll

  Her hesitation must have showed on her face. Mac sniffed. “She is planning on twigs and berries, isn’t she? I’ll fix a little something for the kids, just in case.”

  Callie smiled her thanks. “You’re a treasure, Mac.”

  “Your mother’s sure changed her tune. She couldn’t even wait for you to grow up enough to take care of yourself before she hightailed it out of here,” Mac grumbled on, shaking a large metal spoon in the air for emphasis. “I can’t get my head around the idea of her warming up to the second wife’s children.”

  “Hush, Mac, someone will hear you.” Mac didn’t have children of her own. She’d arrived on the scene when Callie’s grandparents retired to Arizona when Callie was thirteen. Soon after, Callie’s aunt and uncle—her father’s only sister—and their three children had followed her grandparents to Arizona, and Callie, bereft, had spent even more time with the gruff middle-aged chef. Mac had watched Callie grow up, watched J.R. and Karen’s marriage crumble and fall apart. She’d done her best to comfort both Callie and her dad after Karen left, but she had never forgiven the younger woman for abandoning her family. Callie suspected she never would. Most of the time Mac just pretended Karen was a thousand miles away from White Pine Lake, but now and then she couldn’t help herself and let her acid tongue get the better of her.

  “Not saying anything but the plain truth.”

  Callie glanced away. One of the summer college kids who made up the waitstaff and kitchen gofers was prepping vegetables on the far side of the room. Two more were manning the dishwasher, so there was enough background noise to make their conversation private. The breakfast crowd had thinned out and the early lunch crowd hadn’t yet arrived. It was as quiet as the White Pine kitchen ever got. “What can I do to help you, Mac?”

  “Not a thing. Just making sure the chicken will be rested and ready for the early lunch crowd. The Catholics are up at the crack of dawn and walk through the front doors right on the dot of eleven-thirty for the baked-chicken special. Then comes the Methodists, and then the slugabeds and the all-night partiers.” Mac raised her eyes to the ceiling. “May they see the error of their ways, Lord.”

  “Amen,” Callie said, trying not to smile. “Don’t forget the tourists.”

  “Never do,” Mac said. “Pray for them every night to be fruitful and multiply and keep our four-tops filled, or at least to go home and give us fantastic word of mouth.”

  “Amen,” Callie repeated, grinning irreverently. Tourists were what kept the White Pine in the black eight months out of the year.

  “So how was your night out with the handsome Doc Gibson on Friday? Heard you ended up back here after the barbecue at the Koslowskis’.”

  “You don’t miss much around here, do you?”

  “When I do it’ll be time to hang up my spatula and head for Florida.”

  “You’d really move to Florida?”

  “In a heartbeat. Well, for March and April, anyway. Lousiest weather of the year then.”

  “We did come in for a nightcap. With Ron and Gerry, Rudy and Jen, and a couple of the guys who work for Rudy. Their wives took their kids home so they’d be ready for church this morning. But I was home and asleep by midnight. Cross my heart. Yesterday I slept in—the first morning since I returned. Then after lunch I drove to Petoskey, got my hair cut, got a manicure and bought myself a bathing suit and some new sunglasses.”

  “A bathing suit?”

  “It’s been really hot. I like to swim when the water’s warm.”

  “When was the last time you went swimming in this lake, warm water or no?”

  Callie laughed. “You’re right. I haven’t even bought a new bathing suit in years. But I haven’t gone native yet. Ask me that when I show up in a new snowmobile suit.” She closed her mouth abruptly. When snowmobile weather rolled around, she would be sailing the Caribbean.

  “Since they’re singing the Benediction hymn about now, I’ll go out on a limb and say you didn’t make it to church this morning.”

  “Next week, I promise.”

  “I’m off next Sunday, I’ll pick you up at nine forty-five. We’ll sit together. Now, back to Friday night. You’re not giving me the slip that easy. What all’d you do?”

  “Rudy’s parents offered to babysit so we could all come down and have grown-up talk, that’s all. The porch wasn’t crowded so we sat outside, talked about sports and the plans for the Labor Day fireworks, and tried not to get eaten alive by mosquitoes.”

  “Shirley Koslowski is a braver woman than I gave her credit for, for offering to babysit six little ones,” Mac said, referring to Rudy’s mother. It might seem as if Mac had finished her interrogation, but Callie didn’t dare relax. It was probably a feint.

  “Well, she did raise five of her own.”

  “True.” Mac eyed Callie from beneath her white paper chef’s cap. She only wore the cap on Sundays when she deigned to leave her kitchen and make a couple ceremonial rounds of the dining room. “Sounds as if you enjoyed yourself. Especially being all cozied up to Doc Heartthrob like you were.”

  Here it comes, Callie thought, be ready. “It was a pleasant evening out with a group of friends. That’s all.” And a man who, if she was honest with herself, she had already started thinking of as more than just a friend.

  “You could have evenings like that whenever you wanted if you took the committee’s offer and stayed here where you belong.”

  Callie’s mouth flopped open. She shut it with a snap, taking a moment to absorb Mac’s bombshell. “The committee hasn’t offered me anything.”

  “They will,” Mac insisted, waving a wooden spoon she’d been using to stir gravy in a huge cast-iron skillet that took both hands to lift. “They’ve wanted to since the day you graduated from medical school. Your dad wouldn’t let them. He’s afraid you’d say yes because you felt you had to, being a Layman and all. Sun wouldn’t rise in the east every morning if there wasn’t a Layman looking after this town one way or another.”

  “Are you sure of that?” Though, now that she thought about it, J.R. had never in all these years tried to influence her to practice in White Pine Lake. Whenever the subject came up, which it had in the early days but not so much lately, he had always said he would leave the decision up to her.

  “If you mean have I been eavesdropping on the committee’s doings when they meet in the small dining room—no. If you mean do I figure that’s what’s going on in those meetings—yes. You’d best be ready with your answer when they do ask. Especially if you’re going to be having more of those friendly nights out with Dr. Heartthrob in tow.”

  Callie ignored the jibe about Zach. “I will think about it, Mac.” How naive had she been? She’d been so exhausted and stressed out for the past year and a half she’d let herself be swept along by events without really examining the repercussions. She’d been willfully blind. Of course, she couldn’t just come home, hang out her shingle, start treating friends and neighbors, then pull up stakes in three months and go sailing off to the far corners of the earth without explanation or hard feelings. She needed some advice. Now. “Where’s Dad?”

  “He’s working the front. Marcie Butler’s got the bug everyone else had last week.” Marcie was one of the year-round waitresses that had been at the White Pine almost as many years as Mac and usually worked the early Sunday shift and took over the kitchen on Mac’s one Sunday a month off. “Evidently Ginger’s sleeping in this morning. Becca and Brandon are busing tables for your dad. They should be in here any minute. I just sent the eleven o’clock shift out onto the floor.” Mac had barely closed her lips on the words when her dad and the twins came through the swinging double doors that led to the dining room.

  “Hi, Callie,” J.R. said. He was lean and handsome in his green White Pine polo and khakis. It seemed the bar and grill’s signature color suited the whole family excep
t for Becca—and herself, Callie thought with a little smile. Pine-green was not in her color palette, either.

  “Hi, Dad.” She gave him a little wave, hoping she didn’t seem as off balance as she felt right now.

  “Hi, Callie,” Brandon said, bounding up like an eager puppy. “I got tips! Ten dollars!”

  “I’m impressed. You must have really hustled.”

  “We were slammed,” Becca said, pulling off her apron and going to the sink to wash her hands. Neither one of the twins were in uniform. Brandon was wearing jeans and a Green Bay Packers T-shirt, and Becca was dressed in white capris and a floaty top in a mixture of blue and taupe that suited her far better than the restaurant’s signature color.

  “Your dad shared his tips with us. He says the owner never accepts gratuities. That’s a fancy word for tips, in case you’re wondering.”

  “Thanks for telling me.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Brandon. She’s a doctor and ultrasmart. Besides, she used to work here. She doesn’t need to be told what gratuities means.” Becca leaned her hip against the deep stainless-steel sink, where the big pans were washed, and crossed her arms across her flat chest, distancing herself from the group around the prep table. “We were shorthanded because my mom’s sleeping in.” Her expression was fiercely disapproving, but Callie sensed fear lurking deep in her blue-gray eyes.

  “Do you want me to go check on her?” Callie asked her father as he stood with his hands on Brandon’s shoulders. He used to do that with Callie, making her feel special and safe and protected with him standing tall and strong behind her. But she wasn’t eleven anymore. She was a grown woman and capable of taking care of herself and making her own life decisions. Still, right now she wished for those long-ago days so she could ask him to tell her what to do with her future.

  J.R. shook his head. “She’s fine, just couldn’t sleep. The heat’s getting to her. I’ve been meaning to upgrade the air conditioner in our bedroom but haven’t had a spare minute.” He’d spent a couple evenings working at the clinic, Callie recalled, giving of himself for the betterment of White Pine Lake. The way Zach had done.

  The way she had done, too.

  “If it doesn’t cool off pretty soon, I’m going to sleep in the widow’s walk room,” Becca said defiantly. “I bet there’s always a breeze up there. You went up there a lot when you were living here, didn’t you, Callie?”

  “I did,” Callie agreed, “but I haven’t been in years.”

  Callie had found the small glassed-in room at the top of the building a magical place as a child. She’d spent hours and hours, reading and stargazing and dreaming a young girl’s dreams—and crying her eyes out the summer Karen left. But the stairs to the widow’s walk room were steep and narrow and warped from years of temperature change and leaks in the roof. With so much maintenance to be done in a building the age of the White Pine, J.R. hadn’t gotten around to repairing the room.

  “It’s hot up there, too,” J.R. said with his usual patience. “Not nearly as nice as you imagine. But mostly I don’t want either of you going through a rotten floorboard or missing a step and breaking your leg.”

  “Or worse,” Mac said, rolling her eyes. “Okay. That’s settled. The boss has spoken. No sneaking into the widow’s walk room. Now, listen up! Everyone out of my kitchen. It’s 11:17. In ten minutes this place will be crawling with the early bird lunch crowd. Shoo.”

  “C’mon, guys,” Callie said, suddenly nervous as she prepared to head out with her stepsiblings alone. “My mother’s expecting us for lunch at noon.”

  “We’re ready. We can still go with Callie, can’t we?” Brandon asked J.R.

  “That’s up to Callie,” her father said noncommittally, glancing across the room at her. “Your mother gave her permission.” J.R.’s disapproval of Callie’s scheme, though, was evident in the furrow drawing his eyebrows together above his hazel eyes. He clearly wasn’t in agreement with Ginger in allowing her children to be brought into his ex-wife’s orbit. Callie suffered a momentary stab of disloyalty, but she pushed it aside. She was trying to forge her own bonds with the twins, and Karen was her mother; there was no getting around that.

  “Yes, she did.”

  If J.R. thought it through with his usual clearheadedness, he would understand Callie’s reasoning. But he wasn’t entirely clearheaded when it came to Karen. Callie would have to take this blending business slowly. Still, White Pine Lake was just too small a town to try to keep the twins strangers from their stepfather’s ex-wife. Ginger understood that, and despite their differences, Callie appreciated her stepmother’s support.

  “We really should be going. We don’t want to be late.” Callie smiled, hoping he could read her mind as he’d seemed to be able to do when she was small.

  J.R.’s expression softened as though he indeed knew exactly what she was thinking. He nodded slightly before giving Brandon a little shove. “Get going, then,” he said, “and have fun. All of you.”

  “Thanks, Dad. You go spend some time with Ginger, okay? It will be good for both of you,” Callie urged.

  J.R.’s expression lightened a little and he smiled. “I plan to do just that.”

  Though she wished she could take J.R. aside and beg for his advice on what she should do about staying in White Pine Lake, now was not the time or place. For the moment at least, their roles were reversed. It was her dad who needed someone to take some of the burden from his shoulders. The possibility of her staying in White Pine Lake for longer than she had originally planned could be dealt with later.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CALLIE WATCHED ZACH come up the path from the dock as she rocked lazily on the porch. On the table beside her, Karen’s natural citronella candles cast flickering shadows in the darkness. It was a little past ten, but there was enough light out on the water for Zach to dock his boat. He’d been fishing again but he wasn’t carrying a stringer, nor had he paused to drop any fish into the wire cage beneath the dock that served as a live well for those awaiting the fillet knife and frying pan. Either the fish hadn’t been biting or he hadn’t landed any he wanted to keep. He’d used the electric trolling motor to come in off the lake, so there was no sound to disturb the quiet of the summer evening. No wash of waves on the shore. The night was warm, the water still and calm. There was no breeze rustling through the branches of the pine trees next door, only the buzzing of mosquitoes waiting in ambush just beyond the range of the candles’ scent.

  “Catch anything?” she asked. He was wearing a Detroit Tigers baseball cap and a Ski Michigan T-shirt that portrayed a man wearing a snowmobile suit waterskiing behind a powerboat in a snowstorm with the Sleeping Bear Dunes in the background. Her dad had had a shirt like that when she was a kid. It had always made her laugh when he wore it. Zach’s appeared worn and faded enough to be from the same time period.

  “There’s probably a cave painting in France somewhere of a woman asking her man that same question forty thousand years ago,” he said, lifting the baseball cap to run his fingers through his short blond hair. The cut wasn’t precisely military but it was certainly one that didn’t require much fussing in front of the mirror. Whatever the reason he’d chosen it, the style suited his rugged features and broad-shouldered build.

  Callie laughed but her pulse ticked up at the thought of having a man like Zach come home to her each night, to call her own. She’d felt a similar little shiver of longing when she’d held Gerry’s baby at the barbecue. She wanted all the things other women did: a husband, children, a home of her own. She just hadn’t let herself think about those things too much during medical school. But since she’d been home again, they were more often on her mind. “Well, did you catch anything?”

  “Nope. The only things biting tonight were mosquitoes.”

  She tilted her head to one side, listening. “I can hear them out there in the darknes
s, waiting for me to put out the candles so they can swoop in when I open the screen door and torment me for the rest of the night.”

  “And at least a half dozen of them will manage the feat.”

  “Bloodthirsty beasts.” She shivered and hugged herself in mock terror. “I used to call them vampire mosquitoes when I was a kid.”

  “Rudy calls them Michigan’s state bird.” He grinned and leaned one hip on the porch railing. “How was your day?”

  “Very nice,” she said. “Would you care for a glass of wine?” she asked, lifting her own to her lips.

  “No, thanks,” he said. “I’m not much of a wine drinker.”

  “I’ve noticed. Sorry, I don’t have any beer. The fridge is too small to keep them both cold at the same time.”

  “What all did you do today?” he asked, leaning against the porch railing, hands outstretched on either side.

  “I spent most of it bonding with my stepsiblings.”

  “And?” he asked. She couldn’t read his expression in the faint light of the candles, but she sensed he might be smiling a little.

  “It wasn’t a complete failure, considering I took them out to the farm to visit my mother.”

  Zach whistled through his teeth. “Gutsy move for a first attempt.”

  “I was nervous, I’ll admit,” she confessed. He was a good listener. And she knew him well enough now to trust his discretion. It was no wonder his patients thought the world of him. “I can’t say that Becca and I are going to be BFFs, but she didn’t demand to be returned to town fifteen minutes after we got out there. I doubt she’ll admit it, but I think she truly enjoyed watching my mother spin. Karen’s spinning wheel is an antique. She found it in a corner of the attic when she moved out to the farm. She says it was a sign from Gaia—the earth goddess, you know—that she was supposed to buy the Angoras. I’m not sure what sign pointed her to the Orpingtons but the omelets she fixed were excellent. Ham and cheese for Brandon and me, fresh tomato and cheese for Becca. She also served creamed kale and new potatoes.”