by Lexi Eddings
“Mom seems to be doing fine.”
“Seems to be?”
Even if there was good news, trust Marjorie to latch on to the slightest ambiguity about it.
“She’s fine,” Michael assured her. “Happy to be home. The physical therapist has given her some exercises she can do to strengthen her left side.”
He’d stood beside his mother while she walked her fingers up the kitchen doorjamb to increase the range of motion of her left arm. There, dug into the layers of white paint, were marks showing how tall he and his sisters had been at various times during their growing up. The year he shot up past Crystal had been a banner year. Height was the only thing he’d ever excelled at.
Michael had added to the family-legend wall by marking the spot where his mom’s reach ended each day. After she managed to stretch a little higher on Wednesday than she had on Tuesday, she’d shot him a tremulous smile. When he praised her efforts, the smile bloomed across her face. It was as if he’d handed her an Oscar or something. In that slice of a moment, their roles had reversed. After years of making his lunches and cleaning up after his messes and praising his meager accomplishments, his mother needed someone to encourage and lift her up now.
“She’s getting stronger each day,” Michael told Marjorie. If the prayer captain feels the need to “share” Mom’s progress with her minions, she can share that.
“Well, bless her heart.” Marjorie leaned toward him confidingly and whispered, “Has she lost her hair yet?”
Shirley Evans’s hair was her crowning glory. It was pure white. Like cotton or paper or snow or swan’s down—Mike ran out of worthy descriptions pretty fast. Even at her age, his mom could be mistaken for the Frozen Disney princess with that hair of hers. There wasn’t a single strand of her original warm brown. Not even a hint of silver. The shocking whiteness of it was so beautiful even total strangers stopped her to ask who colored her hair.
“God,” she’d say with a mischievous smile.
“Mom hasn’t started chemo yet. Her hair is fine.” Michael was glad he’d already put a plan into motion to deal with that indignity when the time came. “Well, I’d better find a seat.”
He edged around Marjorie and moved on up to sit next to Jake in the bass section. He didn’t see Heather anywhere yet. If he remembered right from high school, she was a soprano.
The soprano section was located in front of the lucky tenors. He wished he could give the tenor line a try just to find a seat closer to her, but there hadn’t been a high note in him since his voice dropped when he was twelve. He slid into the seat next to his future brother-in-law.
“See you made it through the Marjorie gauntlet,” Jake said, handing him a three-ring notebook full of anthems they’d be expected to learn.
“The woman’s a ghoul,” Michael said.
“She means well.”
“Yeah, like a wrecking ball means well.”
Jake shrugged. “Marjorie may say the wrong things, but she also does plenty of good. I happen to know she took supper to your dad every night while your mom was in the hospital. And she organized a group of volunteers to rotate coming in to clean for your folks once a week until your mom’s done with her treatments.”
Why hadn’t he thought of that? Michael wished he could kick his own butt up between his shoulder blades.With his resources, there were plenty of things he could do to help his mom and dad. Yard work, paying bills, laundry . . . all the things that have to get done whether there’s illness in the family or not. Of course, they might not accept the help if they knew it was from him.
He’d have to give that some thought.
A loud jangling filled the sanctuary, and Michael jerked at the sudden clashing racket. From up in the loft, a bell choir of about a dozen people was ringing for all they were worth.
“Bell practice is just finishing up. Last time through the introit for Sunday,” Jake explained. “They’ll be done in a minute.”
“The noise is . . .”
“Excruciating. Yeah, I agree.” Jake opened his choir folder and looked over one of the pieces. “That’s why they need to practice.”
Mr. Mariano waved his arms in front of the bell choir and shouted something at the top of his lungs, trying to be heard over the clamor. He repeated the phrase over and over. Michael strained to make sense of it, but he couldn’t believe his ears.
I’m willing to believe church has changed a lot since I was here last, but not that much.
“Um, what’s he saying?”
Jake looked up at the loft and cocked his head. “Given the way the sound’s bouncing around, he’s probably shouting ‘Damp those bells!’They forget to do that a lot.”
From his short time in bell choir as a kid, Michael remembered damping required the ringer to touch the rim of the bell to the cushioned table or their shoulder to stop the sound. Nobody seemed to be doing it. One chord bled into the next, with very unpleasant results.
“Hmph.” Michael nudged Jake. “Somebody should probably tell Mr. M that nobody can hear the p when he shouts ‘Damp those bells’ over all that noise.”
“You think he cares? The man’s Sicilian, for Pete’s sake.”
Whether it was true or not, the rumor that Don Mariano had mafia connections persisted in Coldwater Cove. Despite that, he was not only the Methodists’ director of music, he’d also headed up the high school band and choir program for the last twenty-five years. Mr. Mariano whipped the marching band into crisp formations for halftime at every football game. And the varsity choir consistently rated high in state contests. So the good townsfolk were willing to overlook the gossip about Mr. M’s dubious past.
But nearly all of them believed it.
Not Michael.
When he was in school, he’d suspected Mr. M had spread those rumors himself. Cross a mafia don in class? Not a healthy choice if you believed your director might make you an offer you couldn’t refuse. Was there a better way to corral a rowdy bunch of teenagers on risers or get them to blow their clarinets while marching in straight lines?
“Basta!” Mr. Mariano shouted at the bell choir after the piece clanged to its noisy conclusion. He swiped his face with a white handkerchief. Evidently, captive audiences like high school kids were less work to control than church volunteers. “Basta” didn’t mean what Michael had originally thought it meant. Mr. M wasn’t calling anyone’s parentage into question. He was simply saying “Enough, already” in his own unique, un-Coldwater Cove-like way. The director shouted it a few more times when a bell or two continued to toll away after the rest of the group had stopped abusing their instruments.
His head must still be ringing, standing right in front of them like that.
“Be here at eight on Sunday morning so we can run through it again,” Mr. M told the bell choir in a more normal tone. “Now, before you put away your instruments, are there any prayer requests?”
Several hands slipped up, and after a few minutes, Mr. Mariano led them in prayer.
If anyone was surprised at a suspected wiseguy praying, they’d remind themselves of how often the Godfather went to church in the movies. When Mr. Mariano left the loft and joined the assembling choir at the front of the sanctuary, Michael noticed that Mr. M had put on quite a few pounds.
Looks like he’s more “fries guy” than “wiseguy.”
Michael chuckled to himself.
“What’s so funny, man?” Jake asked.
“Nothing.” He sobered immediately. At one time, Mike would have made sure everybody heard that little joke. If he couldn’t be a good student, he’d settle for class clown. If that didn’t work, he was happy to be thought bad instead of stupid.
But now he had nothing to prove. He knew who he was. And he didn’t need to poke fun at anyone else to feel better about himself.
Jake’s younger brothers, Steven and Mark, filed in and plopped down in front of Mike. Steve turned around and slapped Mike on the knee.
“So we hear you’re going to be ou
r brother’s best man,” he said.
“Guess so.” Mike still wasn’t sure how he’d been roped into the whole wedding business. Usually, he avoided such occasions as if the cake afterward were laced with the Ebola virus.
“Better him than one of us,” Mark said.
“Got that right,” Steven agreed. “Being a groomsman means we don’t have to do anything but show up and look pretty for the pictures.”
Jake snorted. “In that case, the wedding is totally fubar already. Your ugly mugs are guaranteed to break the camera.”
“Whatever.” Mark leered at Jake, making an L on his forehead. Then he turned to Mike. “What are we doing for the bachelor party?”
“I don’t know. Haven’t thought about it yet.” Michael didn’t remember much about the few bachelor parties he’d attended in the past. Probably had something to do with the vast quantities of liquor he’d consumed, but he vaguely remembered there’d been strippers. And any number of risky decisions by the bridegroom-to-be that totally would have blown the wedding if any of them had remembered exactly what happened well enough to bring it to light.
Jake was marrying Michael’s sister. His favorite sister. He didn’t want to see the guy stuffing dollar bills down some bimbette’s G-string or falling down drunk.
“What did you have in mind?” he asked Jake. He’d better give the right answer or I’ll knock him into next week.
“Poker, beer, and pizza at my place would be fine. It doesn’t have to be anything complicated,” Jake said as the choir loft continued to fill with latecomers. “I just want to marry your sister, Mike. The rest is a bunch of hoops I have to jump through to be able to do that.”
Right answer.
Michael scanned the soprano section. Lacy had wandered in and, after blowing a kiss to Jake, took a seat in the front row of the alto section.
Heather’s still not here.
Mike heaved a sigh. The time-suck known as choir practice would last an hour and a half.
If it ever gets started.
He’d almost forgotten how laid-back folks in Coldwater Cove were about pesky little things like time. He had a tight schedule to keep if he was going to make that breakfast meeting in Manhattan tomorrow and shoot back here like a rocket for his first official date with Heather.
Jake shifted in the seat beside him. “Lacy’s mom—well, your mom, too—was asking me about the bachelor party this afternoon. She seems to think everything connected with this wedding has to be over-the-top.”
“That’s my mom. Excess is better than success in her book. Actually, it’s sort of the Evans family motto. I’m surprised Lacy hasn’t told you. If a little is good—”
“A lot is a whole bunch better,” Jake finished for him.
“I see you’ve been initiated.”
“Any other Evans family quirks I should be aware of?”
“I think I’ll let Lacy handle that. Some things are better if they’re a surprise. You haven’t signed a prenup, have you?”
Jake rolled his eyes.
Michael glanced down at his sister, who’d been cornered by Marjorie Chubb and had no chance of escape unless Mr. Mariano called the choir to order.
Still no Heather among the gaggle of sopranos.
Mr. Mariano climbed on the orange crate he called his “podium” and signaled the rehearsal to begin.
The gathered Methodists belted out “What Child Is This?” at a volume level guaranteed to wake sleeping babies for several blocks in any direction. Michael kept one eye on the door.
What was the point of living up to his side of the bargain if Heather wasn’t there to see him do it?
Chapter 9
I tried bein’ open-minded once, but I decided to give
it up. If a feller ain’t careful, his brains could fall out.
—Junior Bugtussle, after the sushi at the
reunion dance went to war with his colon
Heather kicked off her ScrubZones as soon as she closed the door to her apartment behind herself. She flexed and curled her toes, wishing she could slough off the tension in the rest of her body as easily.
She was strung as tight as a piano wire, and she knew why. When she was a student nurse in Tulsa, working her first week on the pediatric floor, they’d lost a nine-year-old. The nursing team had done all they could, but it wasn’t enough. Since then, she’d avoided peds like the plague.
But she hadn’t been anywhere near pediatrics today.
She’d pulled a shift and a half because her young surgery patient, Aaron Bugtussle, was returned to the emergency room by his frantic parents. Darlene was almost incoherent as Heather tried to draw out a quick history of the onset of the problem.
“The trouble started yesterday, ’cuz my husband don’t know when to say when.” Mrs. Bugtussle shot Junior an accusing glare. She’d been tending to Junior, who was still suffering from the aftereffects of too much sushi. Left to their own devices, the Bugtussles’ rowdy brood had run amok. Darlene had to break up a scuffle between Aaron’s younger brothers that resulted in bloody noses and black eyes all around before she separated them.
The bored, recuperating twelve-year-old, who couldn’t take part in the fight, took advantage of the distraction. Aaron had decided the weather was warm enough for one more dip in the pond near his house.
A pond that was regularly swelled by runoff from the hog pen and cow pasture.
His unhealed incision was an open invitation to every stray bacterium that wanted to hitch a ride. By the time his terrified parents could get Aaron back to the hospital, his temperature was 106 degrees and climbing. The boy was a shivering, sweating, hallucinating mess.
And his mother was almost worse. Junior was too green around the gills to be much trouble, but Darlene was so hysterical, she was a disruption to her son’s care. She and the uncooperative patient both had to be physically restrained while the team inserted an IV.
Doc Warner prescribed the most virulent antibiotic the hospital had in its arsenal. Heather was burdened with the miserable task of getting the Bugtussles to sign a release. After convincing them the infection was more dangerous than the cure, they agreed to remove the hospital from all legal liability if the antibiotic should happen to destroy the boy’s bone marrow while it killed the bad bugs.
Then as the meds dripped into Aaron’s system at a maddeningly slow pace, Heather and her nursing staff fought the fever. If it rose to 107.6 and stayed there for any length of time, the boy could suffer permanent brain damage. But the fever was also doing its part to fight the infection, so Heather had a narrow path to walk. She and her staff had to keep the fever from continuing to climb, but not let it sink much below 105, so it could continue to cook the infection.
When Aaron’s fever finally stabilized at around 104, Heather clocked out with the knowledge that her staff would keep a close eye on the boy through the night. Aaron wasn’t out of the woods yet. Such a virulent infection could take an unexpected turn.
Heather felt for all those under her care. She had to. Empathy was what made a good nurse, but when the patient was very young, it hurt her heart more.
Her phone made a tinkly sound, so she checked for a text as she flopped onto her couch. It was from her mother:
Levi is worse.
“Trust Mom to be the bearer of bad tidings,” Heather muttered. Like the old saw about Siberians enjoying bad weather, her mom seemed energized by negative news and couldn’t wait to pass it along.
This has been the crappiest of crappy days.
First, her patient. Then, her cousin. And to top it off, she’d missed choir, so she had no idea whether Michael Evans had kept his word and added his voice to the bass section. True, the choir had plenty of willing men, but they were like sheep without a shepherd. Mike’s sister Lacy was the best alto of the lot. If there was anything to genetics, Michael could help lead the bass section. If he’d bothered to show.
Probably didn’t.
He wasn’t the sort of guy a girl coul
d depend on. Everything in her that screamed for self-preservation urged her to walk wary around him.
Too bad another part of me urges something else entirely.
A knock on her door dragged her out of her dark thoughts. Heather lived in an apartment on the upper floor of a building on the Town Square, above Gewgaws & Gizzwickies, a consignment shop for bargain hunters who thought of other people’s trash as their treasure.
The G & G shoppers also had far more tolerance for clutter than Heather possessed.
But the location, while central to everywhere Heather wanted to be, also offered her a great deal of privacy. Hardly anyone who didn’t live in one of the upper-story apartments bothered to climb the wrought-iron stairs at the back of the building to reach the long deck she shared with her neighbors.
The knock became more insistent.
Though she didn’t take money from her parents, she did come from money. Her folks lectured her constantly that if she wouldn’t live at home, where the security system was state of the art, she ought not to make herself a target. Granted, Coldwater Cove wasn’t exactly teeming with potential kidnappers, but the repeated warnings had made her cautious.
She checked the peephole and was surprised to see Michael’s handsome face distorted by the fish-eye lens. She opened the door.
“I never told you where I live.”
“I know,” he said, one hand on her doorjamb, the other in his jeans pocket. He looked long and lean and delicious. Heather tried hard to remind herself she didn’t need his brand of trouble. And failed miserably. She found herself grinning at him like a starstruck freshman.
“Your address is more closely guarded than a state secret,” he said. “But I’m not above a little blackmail.”
Heather glanced along the deck she shared with her neighbor to see Lacy unlocking the door to her apartment. Her friend waved and grinned sheepishly before darting into her own place.
“Don’t blame Lacy,” Michael said. “She wouldn’t spill at first. Not until I reminded her how often I’d taken the blame for things we’d done together when we were kids.”
