URGENT CARE

by Alexander, Hannah

  Brooke joined her on the porch. “We’ll come with you.”

  “Not this time, Brooke.” The last thing Jessica needed right now was a crowd. And besides, what if someone had been obnoxious enough to suggest to Jessica that her husband might have taken off with someone?

  “I’m sure she’ll need some quiet time,” Lauren said. And it was never quiet with the Sheldon family nearby.

  Lauren ignored Brooke’s feminine sputter of offended pride. “Y’all can come into the kitchen and have a soda while I clean up if you want,” she called over her shoulder as she stepped through the front door. “I didn’t catch enough fish to save but there’s some chips in the cabinet—”

  “I think we’ll take off now,” came Grant’s quiet reply from the sidewalk.

  Lauren turned to find the three of them standing together, watching her in silence. Brooke’s expression was one of hurt confusion. Even Grant’s brows drew together in concern.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that you aren’t welcome,” she said. “You always are. But if I was in Jessica’s position I think I’d need a friend to hold on to about now and if I can be that friend I will. First, however, we might need to clear the air about a few things and she isn’t going to feel comfortable about that in mixed company.” How much had Grant told the kids about the rumor at the hospital?

  Jessica had only been in the Dogwood Springs community since Christmas, when she and Archer were married. There’d been little time for her to make friends here. Behind that dazzling public image was a woman who had not grown up in church. She didn’t seem to know what Dogwood Springs Baptist expected of their pastor’s wife. Would she even feel comfortable asking the church for emotional support?

  For a few moments the night of the tornado, Lauren had noticed a bond between the two of them—a sort of silent communication and a link to friendship.

  “I think we’ll go grab a bite to eat,” Grant said at last. “We could wait for you if you want to go with us after you see Jessica.”

  “Thanks but I had my fill.” Lauren patted her stomach.

  There was a feminine snort, the hurt still obvious on Brooke’s face

  “I may even go prepared to stay the night if Jessica needs me,” Lauren said, then hesitated, suddenly feeling guilty for something, though she couldn’t quite put her finger on the cause. She would love to go with them to eat, would love to spend time with them, even though she did feel a little crowded all of a sudden after the day of peaceful solitude. “I’ll... uh... talk to you all later, okay?”

  “Of course, Lauren,” Grant said. He didn’t quite pull off the casual reply. “I’ll see you in the morning at work.” He and Brooke turned and walked away.

  Beau hesitated. “Be sure to tell Jessica we’re praying for her.”

  “I will, Beau.”

  He looked over his shoulder at Grant and Brooke, then back at Lauren. “I guess you know you’ll have some fences to mend with Brooke.”

  “It looks that way. Maybe even with your dad.”

  He nodded and turned to leave, then hesitated, turned back. “You’re still thinking about marrying Dad?”

  Lauren smiled. Sometimes Beau could be as bold as his sister. “Yes, I’m still thinking.”

  ***

  Grant hadn’t seen his daughter this upset since his announcement last spring that they were moving away from St. Louis and his later announcement that he was thinking about dating again.

  “Dad, I can’t believe she did that,” she said when they reached the Volvo.

  He wasn’t in the mood to do battle with her emotional roller coaster when he had one of his own to keep in balance. “She didn’t do anything wrong.” Even if he did feel as if he’d been slapped in the face. Probably an overreaction. He hoped.

  Still, she could have given him a call or—as Brooke had mentioned—left a note on her door. Anything to keep them from worrying.

  “She didn’t even want us with her,” Brooke said. “She didn’t even ask me to go fishing with her. I thought she liked it when we went together. Dad, I don’t think she loves us anymore.”

  Beau joined them at the car. “She’s preoccupied. We should be too.”

  “But we’ve been looking for Archer all day,” Brooke said. “It isn’t as if we don’t care.”

  “Lauren just found out, though,” Grant said. “She’s understandably upset, shocked—scared. Don’t forget she’s been friends with Archer since they were kids.”

  Brooke leaned her posterior against the front fender of the Volvo, arms crossed. “What if that isn’t the only reason—”

  “Shut up, Brooke,” Beau said. “You know her better than that.”

  “I’m not saying she’s guilty of anything, dummy. I’m saying maybe she really does care more for Archer than—”

  “I said shut up.” Beau rolled his eyes at his sister and jerked his head in their father’s direction.

  Brooke crossed her arms and huffed. “She could have at least let me go with her. She said she didn’t want mixed company. I’m not mixed.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “Beau, I’m not joking.”

  “Lauren feels that Jessica needs some privacy,” Grant said. “Think about it, Brooke. If you were a pastor’s wife and—”

  “Never.”

  “But if you were, how would you feel if your husband disappeared and some people were less interested in finding him than they were in starting rumors about him?” Grant could identify with Jessica far too well.

  “I don’t think Jessica would believe that about Archer,” Brooke said.

  “Why not?” Beau asked. “You seem to.”

  “I do not! I just—”

  Grant put an arm around his daughter’s tense shoulders. “Give Lauren some room, Brooke. All of us need to.”

  “Fine, let her go by herself.” Brooke jerked open the driver’s door of the Volvo. “I still don’t understand why she couldn’t have at least left a note when she left to go fishing by herself.”

  Beau caught the door, nudged her away, and slid behind the wheel. “Simple. She didn’t even think about it. She’s lived alone all these years and she’s never had to answer to anyone but herself. She’s never had anyone but her parents looking out for her.”

  Grant studied the mature lines of his son’s face, saw the faint reflection of the dash light on his glasses, the way his shoulders filled out the thick shirt he wore, and felt a gentle pride. “You’re right, Beau. For us it’s a habit.”

  Brooke stalked around the front of the car, jerked open the door, slumped to the seat. “If she loved us she’d learn the habit, too.”

  “Give her time,” Beau said.

  ***

  Mitchell studied Trisha’s pale skin and haunted eyes while he defrosted frozen dinners from the home delivery service. It amazed him that she would even want to stay in the same room with him but she was here. Today she had taken two showers and had soaked in the Jacuzzi for nearly an hour before he called her to eat. Her dark hair was still dull and lifeless, but it was clean. She smelled better.

  All Mitchell had been able to do today—when Trisha wasn’t sleeping or taking a shower—was ask questions. Where had she been? How had she gotten here from Springfield? Had she heard from her mother? The monosyllable replies had served to either frustrate him or scare him.

  Hitchhiking?

  Why couldn’t he just tell her he’d missed her? Why couldn’t he show tenderness?

  But he couldn’t. For so long he’d wanted to just call and say he loved her but hadn’t been able to do it.

  The reason Darla gave for leaving him was that he never showed tenderness, that he was to blame for their daughter’s drug addiction. Because she had a father who didn’t love her.

  So where was Darla now if she loved Trisha so much?

  She obviously lacked the stamina to stick it out.

  “I bet Mom’s bled your bank account dry.”

  He winced at the cynical sound of
his daughter’s bitter words but he refused to let her see how she could shock him. “Your mother has given you enough money this past year to feed you and your lover for ten years. I don’t think you need another—”

  “My lover is dead!” Venom cut through her voice.

  Mitchell winced again. But at least something still managed to affect her emotions. He studied the pallor of her face, the too-bright eyes, the rigid posture.

  Hers was just like the countless other faces he had seen over the years, faces that should be smooth and clear with youth but were hurtling toward death at an accelerated rate.

  “Yes, he’s dead.” Mitchell attempted to contain his satisfaction at that statement. “His drugs killed him. Just like they’re killing you.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest and slouched to the table where she sat down and stared out the window. “Nobody ever gave him a chance. Nobody ever listened. His parents didn’t care about him. Nobody did. Except me. I listened.” She sniffed and reached for a napkin.

  The timer beeped on the oven and Mitchell turned from her with relief. At least she was talking. It was better than the short, tense answers of the past few hours.

  He watched her wipe her face and nose with the napkin and resisted the urge to tell her to use a facial tissue. How could he be so lacking in human warmth? Had he slipped so far that he didn’t even care about his own daughter’s despair?

  But she didn’t seem like his daughter. Had it been too long—too painful—for them ever to reconnect? Why was it that all he could manage to feel right now was...distaste?

  He took the dinners from the oven and carried them to the table. He set Trisha’s in front of her. “Maybe it would be a good idea if we changed the subject so we can at least digest our meal.”

  She blew her nose on the napkin and looked up. “Sure, change the subject. It’s what you do best.” She grabbed a fork and stabbed the slice of turkey in its entirety.

  “Since we’ve barely spoken in four years, I don’t think you have any idea what I do best.”

  She nibbled the turkey around the edges, giving Mitchell a look that dared him to call her on her lack of table etiquette. Like a prepubescent child.

  He knew better than to say a word about it. She’d used the same ploy fifteen years ago whenever she wanted to rebel. When they had called her on it her behavior had become more and more immature.

  He sat down across the table from her. “Okay, then, suppose I don’t change the subject. Suppose we get everything out in the open.” He nudged his meal a few inches forward, concentrating on the placement of the plate, on the setting of spoon and knife, neither of which was necessary if they were going to eat like Neanderthals. “Did you know that Oakley Brisco, an eighth grader, dropped dead at school last December after an overdose of methamphetamine?”

  She shrugged. “What’s that got to do—?”

  “The police have pictures of an exchange between Simon and Oakley that took place shortly before Oakley’s death.”

  She dropped the turkey back onto her plate and watched him, waiting.

  “The point is that Simon killed Oakley by selling him—or giving him—the meth.”

  She looked at her plate. “The boy didn’t have to take it.”

  His temper flared at her callousness but for that brief moment, she sounded like him. Was she just taking after her own father? “Right, and Simon didn’t have to become a drug addict just because he didn’t get a good start in life. And even if he did, what is your excuse? You had everything you could ever possibly have wanted.”

  She turned to stare out the window again. He studied her profile—the sharply arched eyebrows that were so much like his own, the hard blue eyes, the shadows beneath them. Yes, she looked a lot like him—except she had her mother’s dark hair.

  “Trisha.” He swallowed and shoved his plate farther away.

  She didn’t look at him. “What?”

  “When did you last see Simon?”

  Her lips pressed together for a moment in a forbidding line—that, too, was a habit of his. “I don’t know for sure.” This hesitance was a sudden contrast to the tears and belligerence. It was just one more sign of a confused, damaged mind. “It was maybe about a year ago.”

  Mitchell hid his surprise.

  “He wasn’t my...I didn’t know he’d come back down here until...until I heard he’d died.”

  “And still you grieve his death?”

  She looked at him then and the stiletto steel of her eyes pierced deeply enough to touch his conscience. “Somebody has to. I bet nobody else did.”

  “No.” He leaned back from the table and braced himself. Did he want to do this? “So you didn’t know that he’d threatened the lives of three teenagers at school on the night he died.”

  She swallowed. “I read about it in the paper. He held them at gunpoint.” If possible, her face grew more pale, her eyes more feverishly bright. “That wasn’t the Simon I knew,” she murmured. “It was...the meth.”

  “I gather, then, that you had seen him that way in the past, before he left?”

  She hunched forward and stared into her plate.

  And the baby. What about the baby? Mitchell felt the flick of a blade in his heart at the memory of that tiny little girl struggling so hard for life. Had it been two years already? Born prematurely, already affected by the poison Simon had fed Trisha, the baby hadn’t been able to endure the fight for long, and she’d died without a name. Except for the one he’d given her. Angela. In his heart she was still his little angel, the only grandchild he would probably ever have.

  “You saw the changes in him, Trisha. You knew what was happening. When did you last take the drug?”

  She appeared to shrink within herself more deeply. “Been a while.”

  “Weeks? Months?”

  “Months. Maybe three. The last binge was...not long after I heard about Simon.”

  He wanted to believe her. It could be true. She looked like someone who was desperate for another fix. He allowed himself to wonder briefly what it might be like to have had a different child—perhaps someone like Beau Sheldon, who was responsible, eager to help out wherever he could when he worked in the emergency department, whose passion for medicine far outdistanced anything Mitchell had ever felt for the profession. Did Grant Sheldon realize how lucky he was to have a son like that?

  “I’m trying to stop for good this time.” Trisha’s statement brought him back to reality. “You might not believe it but I tried to quit a couple of times this year.”

  How badly he wanted to believe her. “As long as you stay clean you can stay here.”

  She gave a soft huff of disdain. “Sure, Dad. As long as I’m good you’ll accept me but as soon as I do something you don’t like I’m out the door.”

  “You have a problem with the rules?”

  She rubbed her arms as if she was cold. “Guess I’ll see how long I can be good.” She picked up her fork and without looking at him again she cut the turkey into pieces and devoured the food.

  Mitchell put his in the refrigerator for later. He didn’t have an appetite.

  In the silence after the meal, after Trisha had gone to bed, Mitchell wandered through the dark house. Another memory of this morning’s nightmare flashed through his mind—red eyes blinking in darkness. He shuddered the memory away.

  But he still had the lump high on his forehead near his hairline, covered by his hair. How had it happened? For most of the day he’d been so preoccupied by Trisha’s arrival that he hadn’t taken the time to wonder. Even the slight headache could have been caused by the tension with Trisha. He doubted he would be able to recall what had caused the lump, especially after a double dose of the Tranquen. Since he had bumped his head he might even be suffering from a slight concussion.

  Once again he saw the mud at the garage door. Where did that come from?

  He opened the door and peered into the garage.

  The Envoy was parked slightly askew. Mud spatt
ered the shining black finish. The front brush guard was dented in two places.

  How had he gotten the dents? Had he damaged the garage door pulling in last night?

  He stepped down into the garage and studied the dents, then pressed the overhead opener. He checked the doorframe, the door itself, the concrete planters that Darla had placed on either side of the drive.

  He would need to get the dents fixed, of course, but at the moment that wasn’t on the top of his list of priorities. He had the Audi in the other garage. He would just drive the car for a while—after all, he could leave it in the garage at the clinic—he wouldn’t have to leave it out in the weather.

  Something rocked his memory. Those red eyes he’d seen in the darkness blinked at him again. It had to be an effect of the double doses of Tranquen. He refused to compare his legal drugs to Trisha’s dependence but he needed to get a better handle on the situation and stop depending on those little pills to calm his nerves.

  Later. There would be time for all that later. Right now he needed to come to grips with Trisha’s arrival and he had to figure out what to do.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The ghostly sound of moaning awakened Archer and the torture of pain caught him in its grip once again. The voice was his and for a moment he could not stop as he heard it echo back at him. The roar of the river had not abated.

  He gritted his teeth and opened his eyes to the same darkness he had left countless hours ago. Was this still Friday night?

  He didn’t see the beam of headlights above him any longer. Had that been his imagination?

  He closed his eyes again to block out the mocking darkness for a few seconds. His thoughts were clearer than they had been earlier.

  Tentatively, moving his head with caution, he glanced around. He remembered hearing his car splash into the water just before everything went black.