He had his own problems right now. The biggest one was reminding himself to take life one day at a time, like his counselor told him.
As he came up the stairs of his mother’s house, she met him at the door, her arms open, her smile even wider. She wore her usual velour jogging suit and running shoes even though the fastest he’d ever seen his mother move was a casual stroll. Her hair, however, was immaculately coiffed, each strand positioned and shellacked so not a hair could shift until the spray was washed off.
“Here you are,” she said, reaching her arms out to hug him. “I wondered when you were coming.”
“I told you, Mother, four o’clock.” He returned her hug with one arm, balancing the box of books with the other. “And here I am.”
Sophie Brouwer reached up and stroked his cheek, then glanced past him to the large house beside hers. “Was that Shannon Deacon you were talking to? What is she doing here?”
“I think her grandmother might buy that house next door.” Ben tossed the words out as if he wasn’t bothered by the idea that he might see Shannon while he stayed here.
Right now he didn’t need any distractions in his life. He wasn’t looking any further than the two-month plan he had laid out when he’d asked for a leave of absence. His plans were simple. Help his mother finish the few odd jobs she wanted done in the house and on the yard. Give himself some space to reflect. Then decide what he would do.
“I’m sure Eloise Beck will make a lovely neighbor.” Sophie took Ben by the arm and ushered him inside. “Though I can’t imagine what she would want with such a big house.”
Ben couldn’t, either, but that was none of his business. “So where should I put my stuff?” he asked, shifting the increasingly heavy box in his arms.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” his mother said with a quick clap of her hands. “Let me show you where you’ll be staying. I don’t know if you remember this house, but it will be the same room you were in when…” His mother let the words fade away and Ben knew she referred to Arthur’s nonwedding. She fluttered her fingers as if erasing the memory. “Well, never mind that. You’ll know where it is.”
She ambled down the hallway toward the back of the house past a wall holding various pictures of Ben and Arthur over time.
Ben’s steps slowed as he walked past a picture of his graduation from medical school. Such dreams he’d held then. Such plans to save the world.
Such a crock.
He followed his mother into the room she had prepared for him and looked around. “Looks good, Mom,” he said, dropping his books on the bed. He walked to the window and gazed out over the expanse of yard and the work that lay ahead of him.
Downed trees lay in a crisscrossed mess at the back of the large property. The grass was overgrown and the hedge between his mother’s house and the property beside hers looked like something out of a frightening fairy tale. The pond was a sludge of green overgrown with lilacs and weeds.
When his mother first moved here, Arthur had promised he would get it shipshape. Then Arthur shipped out and Ben hadn’t had the time to come help.
“I know it looks like a lot of work, but you did say you’d be here a month,” his mother said from behind him.
“That’s the plan,” Ben said, giving her a reassuring smile.
“And you’ll be going back to Ottawa after that?”
Ben felt the steady beam of his mother’s gaze and the weight of expectation behind it. His parents had invested heavily in his education. Not just monetarily but in terms of support and encouragement. He had been their shining star. The son who had made good and had become a doctor.
As opposed to Arthur, who, last he heard, was still working as a car salesman at yet another dealership.
Ben’s gaze slid away from his mother’s questioning one, and the sigh he released was heavy and ragged around the edges. “I’m not sure what’s happening after this, Mother. I’m here to help you out and that’s all I want to think of for now.”
His mother laid her hand on his shoulder. “You’ve taken too much on,” she said quietly. “You are a good doctor. You were doing your job. Saskia always asked too much of you.”
Ben stretched out his clenched hands as if releasing the burdens he’d repeatedly picked up.
“I should have been there for her, Mother. She called me and I couldn’t come. She was my wife.”
“She was your wife,” his mother reiterated. “You were divorced. She had no right to ask you to leave your work to go get her. You were busy. You were doing an important job.”
His mind slipped back to the place he’d been avoiding for the past month.
“I was setting the broken arm of a murderer, Mother,” he said, his voice bitter with regret and anger. “And because of that, my wife, my ex-wife, died.”
Ben rested his hand against the cool glass of the window. As he did he saw Shannon leaving the house with her grandmother. The sun caught auburn highlights in her hair, making it shimmer.
She was as beautiful as he remembered.
He checked his admiration.
Shannon was off-limits to him. Even if she and her grandmother did move next door, Shannon might as well be living on Mars.
He was a worn-out divorcee who had blown his chance at a relationship and she was his brother’s ex-fiancée.
No way was anything ever possible between them.
Chapter Two
“This is not good.” Shannon pulled a face as she looked up at the two-foot-wide gap in the wall of the living room. Pieces of old insulation spilled out of the hole and onto the carpet. She saw the edges of the shiplap covering the outside of the house.
The hole had been conveniently covered up with a picture the previous owners had left behind. Shannon and Nana had only just discovered the hole when they pulled the hideous velvet painting down.
When they had toured the house, Shannon had assumed the previous owners had forgotten about the picture. Because Nana was in such a hurry to buy the house, and because she didn’t need a bank loan, she hadn’t bothered getting an inspector to check it out.
The sale had been rushed. Now her grandmother owned this place and they were finding a few issues the real-estate agent conveniently hadn’t mentioned.
This hole was in addition to a huge hole in the wall behind the stove. Nana had found that one when she set a trap to catch a mouse that had skittered across the floor when they moved in.
“You’ll have to get Carter to have a look at this.”
“He’s too busy.” Nana Beck’s frown deepened as she tapped her manicured fingers against her lips. “I tried phoning some of the local contractors, but they’re all booked up.”
“What about Hailey’s Dan? He sells building supplies, surely he would know something about fixing holes in walls?”
Nana just sighed. “I don’t know how much of a carpenter he is. I don’t even know how much work this would be.”
“I wish you’d gotten an inspector to at least go over the house. He would have found these holes and the loose railing at the top of the stairs.” And who knows what else.
“Thank goodness it’s still spring and we don’t have to worry too much about the cold weather for a while,” Nana said, brightening, surprisingly upbeat about the whole debacle.
“We do have to worry about rain,” Shannon grumbled, thinking about the roof shingles that had ended up on the lawn that morning after a nasty storm last night.
Nana gave Shannon a reassuring pat on her shoulder. “I’m sure it will all work out,” she said. “Now let’s get you moved into your room.”
Shannon picked up one of her boxes and followed her grandmother, who carried some of Shannon’s clothes, up the stairs. Nana opened the door and stepped into the room.
�
��I love how the sunshine comes in here,” Nana said as she made a half turn in the beam of light spilling through the fly-specked window onto the wooden floor. “I think you’ll be happy here,” she said with a note of satisfaction. Shannon smiled at her grandmother’s optimism as she ripped open the box she’d taped up only a couple of days ago.
“Even with the holes in the walls?”
“Those can be fixed,” Nana said, her voice muffled as she hung Shannon’s clothes up in the huge closet. She emerged, still smiling. “Even with the holes I still think this is better than you having to live in some stuffy apartment.”
“Well, there wasn’t a single stuffy apartment I could rent, anyway, and moving into Hailey’s shoebox apartment wasn’t an option.” This was Shannon’s best choice, which had seemed reasonable enough until she’d run into Ben. Shannon pulled her duvet out of the box and tossed it on the bed that Carter and Dan had already moved into the house.
All day yesterday, while Shannon was working at the hospital, her cousin Carter and his fiancée, Emma; Shannon’s sister Hailey and her boyfriend, Dan; and Carter’s hired hand, Wade, had moved her and Nana’s earthly goods into the house.
For the most part, all her stuff was here. Only a few more boxes and she’d be done. It seemed pointless knowing she was moving in a couple of months again, but Shannon preferred to think of this move as a stopover in the process. A way to spend some time with her grandmother.
“In spite of all the other stuff, this house is so perfect for me,” Nana Beck said, clasping her hands in front of her.
Shannon had to admit that much. Though it was large, as Ben Brouwer had so helpfully pointed out the last time she’d seen him, it was close enough to the hospital to give the family peace of mind. The doctor had warned Nana to be more careful after her heart attack over half a year ago. At the time, Nana Beck had been living out on Shannon’s cousin Carter’s ranch. Shannon felt that was too far from town and the hospital and had been pushing her to move into Hartley Creek. Thankfully Nana had agreed.
And now that Shannon’s sister Hailey was settling down in Hartley Creek, as well, this house could serve as a central meeting place for the family.
For the most part it was a good choice, the only exceptions being the holes and the neighbors who were a visible reminder of Arthur and the past.
Two months after getting Ben to deliver the news about the canceled wedding, Arthur had finally called Shannon. In halting words and incomplete sentences he’d told her their engagement had happened too quickly and had been a mistake. For the last months of their relationship he had felt as if he was going through the motions of love. He didn’t feel like they were in sync anymore. She was always so solemn. So serious. As if she had taken on the weight of the world. He had foolishly thought getting engaged would ignite a spark he thought was missing from their relationship. But it hadn’t. Then the wedding plans created a momentum he couldn’t stop until just before the wedding.
Shannon jerked open the flaps on the top and bottom of the box, pushing away the memory. She shoved the box under the bed to join the other boxes she’d already emptied. She’d thought she had put all those old feelings away.
But now Arthur’s brother and mother lived next door and it was as if all the ground she had gained had been swept away.
“Why don’t you throw those moving boxes away?” Nana asked with a frown. “You won’t need them again.”
Shannon tried not to roll her eyes. It was as if her nana thought ignoring the job in Chicago would make it mysteriously disappear.
Instead, Shannon brushed the dust off her pants and walked to the door. “Let’s organize the kitchen and then I can finish unpacking my car.”
Her nana didn’t reply and Shannon glanced over her shoulder to see her grandmother looking out the window down at the street below.
“Nana? What do you think about doing the kitchen? Or are you too tired?”
Nana spun around, then waved her hands at Shannon in a shooing motion. “Oh, no. I’m not too tired at all. You go and get the boxes out of your car. I’ll take care of the kitchen myself.”
“I don’t mind helping you.”
Nana frowned. “I would just as soon do it on my own. Then I know where everything is.” She flapped her hands again in Shannon’s direction. “You run along. Hurry and get those boxes out of your car and then you don’t have to think about that anymore. Just go.”
Shannon nodded, puzzled at her grandmother’s insistence, but shrugged it off as she headed down the hall to the wide stairs. As she had the first time she had toured this house, she paused at the landing halfway down, tracing the intricate lines of the stained-glass window set in the wall.
Naomi would love this, she thought, her heart contracting at the thought of her sister sitting vigil at her dying fiancé’s bedside. Naomi had called a couple of days ago telling them it was a matter of weeks until Billy was gone.
Then she, too, would be returning to Hartley Creek.
One by one the family was coming together. First Carter, then Hailey. Soon Naomi. Garret, possibly.
But she, the one who had always stayed, the one who had never wanted to move away, would be leaving town shortly after Carter and Emma’s wedding.
Melancholy brushed her soul as she fingered the necklace Nana had given her after her heart attack. A rough gold nugget in a setting hung from a thin gold chain. The nugget was a visible reminder of her and her cousins’ past and of choices made by their ancestor, August Klauer. He had gone looking for gold but had come back looking for love.
Shannon shook the feeling aside, then walked the rest of the way down the stairs, trailing her hand over the wide banister of the stair. The stained-glass panels of the double doors at the end of the front hall were as dusty as the rest of the windows in this house, but they would show their true beauty once they were cleaned.
The living room off to the right side of the wide hallway held a jumble of furniture and boxes belonging to her grandmother, but the room on the other side was empty. The walls of this room held remnants of crayon marks and numerous dents and scuffs. Shannon guessed it had been, at one time, a playroom.
She cocked her head to one side, as if evoking the voices of the children who might have played here. The thought created a dull ache deep in her soul.
Would she ever have children? She pressed her hand to her abdomen as if imagining a child there. If she and Arthur had gotten married, they might have had a baby by now.
“Aren’t you getting those boxes?” Nana’s voice broke into her depressing thoughts and pulled her back from the brink of self-pity.
“Yeah. Sure,” Shannon called back, puzzled at the urgency in her nana’s voice. “Going right now.”
She stepped out of the cool of the house into the heat of the afternoon. A welcome heat, she thought, looking up at the mountains that still held a generous cap of snow. This year winter had hung around like an unwelcome guest hoping to tell another joke that no one wanted to hear.
But now it was gone and leaves had burst into glorious green, softening the branches of the birch and poplar trees lining the street.
She opened her car and was greeted by a blast of trapped heat. The tape on the largest box had curled away from the top and she carefully pulled it out, hoping it would hold together until she got it up to her bedroom.
She set it on the sidewalk, piled another box on top, hooked a couple of bags over her arm, bent over and lifted the whole business up.
“Need a hand?”
The deep voice behind her sent her heart into her throat and the boxes onto the ground. The curling tape released its precarious hold, the bottom box split open and its contents slithered out onto the sidewalk.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you,” Ben was saying as he knelt down to gather up the c
ontents.
Please, Lord, don’t let that box be holding my undergarments, Shannon prayed as she shot an agonized look over her shoulder. Then her heart flopped again when she saw Ben.
Ben’s snug T-shirt enhanced the breadth of his shoulders and the muscles in his upper arms. His blue jeans were dusty and caked with dirt at the bottom and a bead of sweat tracked through the dust on his cheeks, yet he still looked very appealing.
“That’s okay,” she said, wishing her voice hadn’t taken on that breathy tone it always did when she felt ill at ease. Right now, Ben’s nearness created an unwelcome awkwardness.
He set the box aside and then looked down at his hands as she gathered up the shirts and pants. “I guess I shouldn’t pick up any of your clothes.”
“I don’t need any help. It’s okay.” Thankfully most of the items were innocent. Shirts. Pants. A dress or two.
Then Ben retrieved the clear garment bag that had lain in the bottom of the box.
“At least this one is protected from my hands,” he said.
The heavy plastic crinkled as he raised it up from the sidewalk, a frown creasing his forehead as he looked it over.
Folds of white satin, trimmed with lace, shone and shimmered behind the plastic.
“Is this…” His sentence faded away as he held it up.
“My wedding dress,” she finished for him, trying not to cringe at the concrete evidence of the broken places of her life, reflecting the afternoon sun.
“Why do you still have it?”
Shannon sat back on her heels, dredging up the anger she’d clung to after Ben had delivered his horrible news a scant year ago. “I keep it as a reminder.”
A reminder of the perfidy of men. A reminder to guard her heart.
Ben carefully laid the bag over his arm, thankfully asking no more questions. Then he caught the handles of the bags she had dropped, picked up another of her boxes and tucked it under his arm. “I imagine you want this brought to the house” was all he said.
Healing the Doctor's Heart Page 2
