How the Heart Runs

by Anne Marie Rodgers

  Kate groaned. “Oh, Anna, no.”

  The little girl could just reach the top of the sink when standing on her tiptoes. Her tiny fingers clearly had grasped at anything she could reach and, with unerring accuracy, had tossed the item into the toilet.

  Kate rushed across the bathroom floor and tugged Anna away from the sink. Anna, predictably, began to scream. Kate set her down on her bottom in the far corner near the cabinet and said, “You are in time-out. Do. Not. Move.”

  Returning to the sink, she saw with relief that Anna hadn’t been able to reach Emmaline’s toothbrush holder or toothpaste. Kate peered into the toilet. Anna had, however, gotten hold of a number of other items. In the toilet bowl, the things Kate could see included a bar of white soap, a plastic dental-floss dispenser, and a bottle of some kind of over-the-counter medication. Floating merrily on top of the water were three tiny paper cups of the type people kept in bathrooms.

  Kate glanced at Anna. She was still sitting in the corner, but the howling already had diminished, and she was watching to see what would happen next. Kate sighed and rolled up her shirt sleeve.

  Just then, Adam entered the bathroom, followed a moment later by Emmaline. “Alaina’s asleep,” she said quickly. “I buckled her in her carrier.” Then she glanced around, taking in the scene. “Oh!” she said.

  “I’m so sorry,” Kate said. “There are several things in here. I’m going to take them out.”

  Emmaline chuckled. “At least I just cleaned the toilet bowl this morning.”

  “Thank heavens she isn’t strong enough to flush yet,” Kate said with a small laugh.

  “I’ll take them downstairs and give them a snack, if you like,” Emmaline said.

  “That would be great.” Kate knelt and began fishing things out of the toilet as the threesome disappeared. As she brought up the dripping items, she tossed the replaceable ones into the trash. The bottle of medication, thankfully, looked empty. But as Kate glanced at it, she noticed a warning pasted vertically on the bottle, although the print had been partially erased by the water. The warning mentioned something about chest pain and shortness of breath, which Kate assumed were side effects of the medication.

  Kate peered at the bottle. Could it be Emmaline’s? She turned the bottle right side up again and tried to read the label. Unfortunately, it had gotten a little too wet, and the name of the medication was incomplete. All Kate could see was “P-l-a-g-r-i.” And the patient’s first name was completely washed away, as was the last, except for three letters: A-s and what looked like the remnants of an h.

  Kate wondered if it was anxiety medication. While she still wasn’t convinced that Emmaline was having panic attacks, she hadn’t come up with a more likely explanation. The day of the incident at the store, Emmaline had popped a small white pill, which seemed to act very quickly. Had it been for angina rather than some kind of panic disorder? She felt as if she was growing more confused by the minute.

  KATE DROPPED OFF the Miller children and chatted with Frank’s mother for a few moments, telling her about Adam’s near miss with the boxes in the store. Then Kate headed for the library.

  “Hey, Livvy,” she greeted her friend as she breezed past the front desk.

  “Hey, yourself,” Livvy said. “You look...purposeful. Hot on the trail of an idea? And, hey, I have your scarf in the car. Remind me to get it before you leave.”

  Kate stopped for a moment. “Okay. Don’t forget to get my scarf before I leave.” She snickered when Livvy gave her a narrow-eyed stare. “I need to look up information on a medication,” she said. “Try to, anyway. Do you have an up-to-date medicine index?”

  “Prescription or over-the-counter?” Livvy asked.

  “Prescription, I think.”

  Livvy pointed a finger toward the ceiling. “I think your best bet, in that case, is to use the comprehensive indices upstairs.”

  “Thanks.” Kate made a beeline for the stairs. At the top, she headed for the reference section and located the huge tomes of medical information.

  Quickly, she looked up “plagri” and found that Plagridyll was the only one that fit. It appeared to be one of the brand names for a common allergy medication. There was absolutely nothing for any other medications with a similar spelling.

  Kate looked up “panic attacks” in a different book of diseases and perused the information. There were several extensive lists of medications that were used to treat panic disorder. But nothing with “plagri” anywhere.

  She returned to the book in which she had found the drug. The warnings for Plagridyll included instructions to call a doctor if the patient experienced any myriad of symptoms, including chest pain and shortness of breath. the description in the book said not one word about anxiety.

  She snapped her fingers in chagrin and said, “Rats.”

  Three other people around her lifted their heads and glared at her. One girl said, “Shhh!”

  Kate mouthed “Sorry.” She closed the book and wandered back down the steps much more slowly than she had come up them.

  Livvy saw her coming. She said something to Morty Robertson, and he nodded, then slid into the seat at the circulation desk as Livvy beckoned Kate to her office.

  Kate followed Livvy, closing the office door behind her.

  “No luck?” Livvy asked sympathetically. She handed Kate her scarf, which she apparently had retrieved from her car.

  “Thanks.” Kate shook her head in answer to the question. “I thought I might really have a clue, but I was shot down in flames.” She grinned. “And then several people fussed at me for making noise.”

  Livvy laughed out loud. “Problem child.” Then her amusement faded as she gave Kate a serious look. “So, what’s the latest on your investigation of the perplexing Emmaline Ashford?”

  Kate sighed. “She wasn’t very pleasant to you, was she? If it’s any comfort, she treats Paul the same way.”

  Livvy’s eyebrows shot up. “Really? So we’re the dogs, and you’re the bone.”

  Kate blinked. “That’s one way to put it.”

  She told Livvy about the hospital bracelets and the earlier finding of the enormous hospital bill.

  “And, oh, I forgot to tell you I went fishing in Emmaline’s toilet this afternoon.” She described Anna’s adventure, and Livvy laughed.

  Kate went on to describe finding the medication bottle and seeing the warnings about chest pain and shortness of breath.

  “But as I researched it, I found out that this medication treats common allergy symptoms. Some of its side effects include chest pain and shortness of breath.”

  Livvy’s eyebrows rose. “Yikes. If I were taking a medication and it gave me chest pain or shortness of breath, I’d quit taking it and go back to the doctor.”

  “Me too.” Kate rubbed her temples. “I need to think about what to do next.”

  Livvy patted her arm. “Hang in there. There will be an answer at the end of this adventure.”

  After leaving the library, Kate went home, exhausted from her long day but anxious to tell Paul about everything that happened. But when she got there, she remembered that he had a dinner meeting in Pine Ridge with all the other area pastors. He wouldn’t be home until late, if the meeting followed its usual course. And by then, she was quite likely to be sound asleep.

  LATE THE NEXT AFTERNOON, Kate returned home from an almost full day of running Faith Freezer meals to shut-ins and the elderly in town. When she walked in to find that Paul had made chili for dinner, she smiled.

  “Oh, bless you,” she said. “I was looking forward to cooking about as much as I would having a cavity filled.” She hurried off to the bedroom to change into more casual clothes and wash her hands.

  Paul had just called her to the table when the telephone rang. Kate reached for the receiver. “Hello?”

  “Kate, the strangest thing just happened.”

  It was Renee. Half the time she didn’t even bother to identify herself when she phoned. She didn’t seem to th
ink it was necessary. Kate suspected it never occurred to Renee that Kate might receive other calls.

  “Hello, Renee,” Kate said mildly.

  The unspoken rebuke went right over Renee’s head. She took a deep, dramatic breath that was audible over the phone in preparation for her story. “This afternoon I took Mother to an audiologist in Pine Ridge. She’s certain her hearing aid isn’t working properly, although I told her she’s just getting older and therefore more deaf.”

  And Kate just bet the older woman had loved hearing that blunt assessment. Which, doubtless, was exactly the way Renee had said it to her mother. Kate couldn’t help grinning. Renee definitely was an original.

  To steer Renee back to the topic of interest, she prompted, “So you were driving...?”

  “We were coming home when I saw Emmaline. I was near that gym on Pine Ridge Road when I saw her pulling into the parking lot. I would have stopped, but Mother was in a mood after the doctor told her she needed to turn up her hearing aid.”

  Kate’s attention had sharpened the moment Renee mentioned the gym. “Are you sure it was her?” Although in her heart, she was sure Renee was right.

  “I never forget a face,” Renee said grandly. “Or that hairstyle. It’s rather modern for Copper Mill, don’t you think? There was someone else in the car with her, but I couldn’t see who it was.”

  Her sister had been scheduled to arrive that morning, Kate thought instantly. Most gyms offered guest passes, so Emmaline could have taken her sister with her.

  Before Kate could respond, Renee said, “Besides, Kisses saw her too.”

  Kate had to cough to disguise the laughter that nearly burst out. Renee wouldn’t have been at all amused. Kate simply had to ask. “How do you know?”

  “He was sitting on Mother’s lap. He puts his paws on the windowsill, you know, and then he’s just tall enough to see out. He started to bark when we passed the gym, and I’m certain he saw Emmaline too. Why else would he have barked?”

  Why else, indeed? Kate was afraid to wonder what it meant that she actually understood Renee’s logic. “Thanks for telling me, Renee,” she said. “I must go. We’re about to eat.”

  “Wait,” Renee said. “How have you been doing?”

  Kate frowned. “Fine. Why?”

  “No reason,” Renee said hastily. “I was just checking.”

  As conversations went, that one couldn’t have gotten much more bizarre, Kate thought.

  Thinking back to the primary reason for Renee’s call, she wondered why Emmaline had denied visiting the gym the previous morning. Well, strictly speaking, she hadn’t denied it. But she had very carefully avoided answering when Kate had asked her about it flat out.

  “As you surely heard, that was Renee,” she said to Paul as she returned to the table. “She saw Emmaline at the gym today.”

  “Huh. So I’m not crazy.”

  “I never thought you were.” She went on to tell him how Emmaline had danced around the question the previous day and about her suspicions regarding panic attacks.

  “That’s very plausible,” Paul told her. “Good work. Are you ready to eat?”

  “Sorry,” she said, “I’ve delayed dinner.”

  “That’s all right. My chili only gets better the longer it cooks.”

  Kate laughed. “Is that so?”

  Paul had already set the table and added salad and warm bread. She took her seat and gratefully allowed him to serve her and offer the prayer.

  Since they hadn’t had a chance to have any extended conversation during the day or the night before, Kate recounted the events of the previous afternoon from start to finish as they ate. By the end of her monologue about the incident with the toilet, Paul was laughing out loud.

  “Oh, Katie,” he said, wiping tears from his eyes, “You always get yourself into the wildest adventures.”

  Kate was laughing too, but then she sobered as she told him about finding the allergy medication and being disappointed that it had nothing to do with treating anxiety or panic attacks. “In fact,” she told Paul, “some of the major side effects of this medication include chest pain and shortness of breath. So now I’m wondering if that could be the cause of her problems. It might explain why Dr. McLaughlin told me she would be fine.”

  “It might. At least now you have another clue to work with in trying to find out what’s wrong with Emmaline,” he said, clearly attempting to be encouraging.

  “At this point, what is less important than why,” she responded. “Listen to all these facts and tell me if they fit any health problem you’ve ever heard of. Dr. McLaughlin says she’s just fine, but her in-patient doctor tells her to limit physical activity. She has episodes of chest pain and shortness of breath, she has hospital-admission bracelets, though she claims they belong to her sister, and she takes different kinds of medication. Yet she exercises and looks healthier than I do. She’s temperamental. And she stonewalls me every time I attempt to find out what’s really going on. I just know, Paul, that Emmaline is wrestling with some kind of major problem that goes beyond health struggles. I guess I need to do some research into anxiety.”

  “Panic disorder is sounding less and less likely,” Paul told her. “Exercise is a recommended treatment for that, so it doesn’t make sense for her doctor to tell her to limit her physical activity.” He frowned. “Although after Renee and I both saw her at the gym, you’re pretty sure she is indeed exercising. That’s contradictory to the doctor’s instructions.”

  “She has told me several stories that contradict each other, but when I try to ask her about them, she always manages to wriggle out of telling me the truth. It’s clear that she values and desires my friendship—maybe too much,” she added wryly. “But on the other hand, she won’t be vulnerable with me. My intuition tells me she’s definitely hiding something—several somethings, perhaps—that have to do not only with her physical health but also with her well-being in general.”

  “Well, Katie, far be it from me to argue with your intuition,” Paul said. “I’m convinced that your intuition has a direct pipeline to heaven.” He smiled to lighten the atmosphere. “Don’t give up. Continue to befriend Emmaline, and don’t give up getting to know her. Of course, keep maintaining healthy boundaries too. There may be a reason Emmaline has been such a tough nut to crack.” Kate smiled as he continued. “I think God is testing your GSR.”

  “My GSR...gunshot residue?” Kate asked in bewilderment. She was familiar with the term only because it was so widely used in both fictional television.

  Paul chuckled. “No. Your Good Samaritan Rating.”

  Chapter Twelve

  The following morning, Kate was out and about early. She had made several apple pies earlier in the week, and she decided to take one to Joshua Parsons. Livvy had told her that the old man had come down with a bad cold. Since he was ninety-three years old, Kate was concerned and wanted to check on him herself.

  To her relief, Mr. Parsons—referred to around town as Old Man Parsons—answered the door himself. He was coughing, but his color was good, and his delight when Kate handed him the pie made her glad she’d brought it.

  “Well, isn’t this fine,” he said over and over again. “You know I love your pies, Kate Hanlon.”

  “I know you do,” Kate said in a teasing tone. “You try to weasel them out of me often enough.”

  Parsons’ eyes brightened. “Come on in.”

  Kate entered the house. It was stifling hot, as Kate had often noticed was the case in older folks’ homes. But as she glanced around, she saw the home was neat as a pin, an afghan folded carefully over the back of the sagging couch, and books and newspapers stacked in precise piles all over the living room.

  The sheer quantity of newspapers that Parsons kept around was always a bit astounding to Kate. There were at least four sizable stacks on the coffee table alone, from big-city papers in Chicago, New York, Atlanta, and Memphis.

  “Have you read all these newspapers?” Kate asked with a
n incredulous chuckle.

  “Yup.” He beamed proudly. “Need a magnifying glass, but I manage. Don’t read ’em cover to cover anymore, ’course, but I still get all the headlines.”

  “I bet you do.”

  “Think I could try a bit of this pie right now, if you don’t mind,” the old man said. He shuffled toward the kitchen. Kate followed, holding her breath as his ancient arms trembled beneath the slight weight of the pie.

  She breathed a sigh of relief when he reached the small counter in his kitchen and set down the pie. “Would you like me to cut it?” she asked.

  “That would be nice,” he responded.

  He moved to the tiny card table in the corner of the room and sat down slowly on one of the folding chairs while Kate found a plate and a knife and cut him a slice of pie. She set it before him with a fork. “There you go.”

  “Thank you kindly.” He grinned as he dug into the dessert.

  There were more stacks of newspapers in the kitchen, neatly separated by publication. These, she saw, included Los Angeles and Philadelphia.

  “Joshua,” Kate said, taking the visit with Old Man Parsons as an opportunity to do some sleuthing, “I’d like to pick your brain about someone who once lived in the area. Do you remember a pair of little girls who visited their grandmother on Barnhill Street? The grandmother’s last name was Hemp.”

  Mr. Parsons snorted. “Remember her? How could anybody forget her? That old woman could complain louder and longer than anybody in the whole town. Lena Hemp was her name. She inherited that house from her folks. Her husband was killed in the war and left her a widow with one little girl. She never married again.”

  “The war?” Kate asked.

  Joshua scratched his chin. “Well, lemme think. Musta been World War Two. Yes, yes, that’s right. I recollect her husband volunteered right off. He died at Guadalcanal.”

  Kate nodded, making a mental note in case the story warranted research. “So she had the one little girl?”

  “Yup, just the one. Lena weren’t too bad back then. My wife, Alma, was on some Independence Day committee with her for a coupla years, and I recollect she was a hard worker. It wasn’t till after her girl grew up and moved away real young that Lena got testy. ”