by Lee McKenzie
With Chester snoring softly in his corner, she went back to work. She always welcomed an afternoon alone in the kitchen. After they’d come home from the clinic and had lunch, CJ had gone to work in the stable and their father had taken Isaac into town to pick up a few last-minute back-to-school supplies. They would be home anytime, though, and her solitude would come to an end. She loved her son’s boisterous boyishness, but she also cherished these moments of peace and quiet. There would be more of those moments once school started next week.
She could hardly believe her little boy was already in second grade. He loved school, especially reading and science and gym class, and already had a large circle of friends. He was so much like his father in so many ways, it made her heart swell with love and ache a little at the same time.
Eric would have been over-the-moon to have his two long-time friends in Riverton. With Jack about to marry Emily, he and Eric would have been brothers-in-law. He would have loved that. And now Paul was here, too. Still single and looking like a doctor on a Hollywood TV drama. What had they called that doctor on Grey’s Anatomy? McSomething. McDreamy? That was it. And that was Paul.
The shock from the way she had reacted to his embrace that morning stung again. She felt guilty, too. His relationship with her husband made these feelings inappropriate and downright disrespectful. Eric deserved better.
As she finished readying the vegetables for the pot roast, she could hear the front door swing open and Isaac barreled through the house, yelling a greeting. “Mom? Mo-om! Where are you?” He was heading straight for the kitchen because everyone knew this was the first place to look for her.
“Guess what!” He burst into the room, blue eyes alight, blond curls bouncing, grinning from ear to ear. “You’ll never guess!”
“Then you’ll have to tell me.” She pulled him close, carefully avoiding his bruised shoulder. “Using your inside voice.”
“We went to the hardware store ’cause Auntie CJ needed us to pick up a bridle for the new horse she’s boarding. And you know the dog that’s always at the store? Izzie?”
“I do,” Annie said, leery of the direction this conversation was headed.
“She has puppies! Five of ’em.”
Annie already knew this. She had gone into the hardware store earlier in the week to pick up paint for the chicken coop, and had immediately been drawn to the makeshift pen behind the sales counter, where Izzie had been sprawled on a blanket, nursing her impossibly adorable puppies. Having a soft spot for animals, especially an animal in need of a home, Annie had refused to let herself be drawn to those puppies. She already had all the strays she needed.
Isaac had other ideas. “A dog would be a good thing to get.”
“We have Chester.”
“But he’s not my dog, and he’s old.”
Both were true. Since Isaac was a toddler, Chester had tolerated him. Now he mostly ignored him. But a puppy? Puppies made messes on the floor and chewed the heels off shoes. Puppies needed to be housebroken and crate-trained.
Puppies were also a boy’s best friend. They taught kids to be considerate and compassionate and responsible.
“I need a puppy, Mom.”
“I’ll think about it,” Annie said.
“Yay!” Isaac raced back to the front door. “Gramps! We’re getting one of those puppies and we’re going to name him Beasley.”
Annie sighed. “Use your inside voice, please,” she called after him, but she knew he hadn’t heard. When it came to her son, she was a pushover, but he was all she had left of Eric and there was nothing she wouldn’t do for him.
Her father rolled into the kitchen. Isaac had climbed onboard and was sitting on his grandfather’s lap. He’d been doing this since he was a baby, but not for much longer.
“The way you’re growing, you’ll soon be too big to ride with Gramps,” she said.
Isaac flung his arms around his grandfather’s neck. “Then I’ll stop growing.”
Annie exchanged smiles with her father. “So what’s this I hear about a puppy?” he asked. His attempt at innocence didn’t fool her for a second and she immediately knew what she was up against. It wasn’t just Isaac who wanted a puppy, it was Isaac and his grandfather.
“I said I would think about it.”
The co-conspirators in the wheelchair exchanged a wink.
“So...” her father said. “Isaac tells me you saw Paul at the clinic this morning. Said the two of you have a date tomorrow.”
“It’s not a date. He’s just dropping by for coffee.” Annie felt her nose turn red as she debated which conversation was more awkward—dogs or dates.
* * *
EARLY SATURDAY MORNING, Paul fixed his father’s breakfast and served it to him at the kitchen table. Two soft-boiled eggs that Geoff Woodward deemed to be too hard, dry toast that wasn’t dry enough, coffee that was too strong. Afterward, Paul settled the cantankerous old man in his favorite chair with a newspaper, the television remote and a thermos of tea.
“I have patients I need to see this morning,” he said after he had washed the dishes and set them in the drainer to dry. Saying he was on his way to the clinic wasn’t quite true, although he did have to get there eventually. First he wanted to see Annie. He’d thought of little else since yesterday. If he was being honest, he didn’t just want to see Annie, he needed to see her.
“Fine,” the old man said. “Go ahead and leave me. You’re just like your mother.”
Paul knew better than to remind his father that Margaret Woodward had not walked out on her husband, she had died. Feeling a sense of abandonment was normal after the loss of a spouse—there was no point calling her a loved one, since he didn’t believe his father had ever experienced that emotion—and these feelings could be more pronounced in an Alzheimer’s patient.
“Walt Evans from across the street will stop by after lunch. He said he was hoping to have a cup of tea and a game of cribbage.”
“I hope he doesn’t mind me beating the pants off him.”
“I’m sure he won’t.” Their lifelong neighbor and the father of one of Paul’s oldest and best friends in the world knew as well as anyone that Geoff had always been a sore loser. Now if he lost, he was likely to toss the board across the room, pegs and all, and fling the deck of cards in its wake. Luckily for all concerned, Walt had been one of the few people who had managed to forge a genuine friendship with Geoff over the years. No surprise there. Jack’s father was always as cool as a cucumber, and Paul’s father was as approachable as a porcupine.
For now, Paul was comfortable leaving his father on his own in the house, knowing he didn’t yet have a tendency to wander. The disease would progress, though, and that day would come. Paul would deal with it when it did, but for now he could go about his day, confident that his father would still be here when he returned.
At first glance, Geoff was the same man he had always been—tall in stature, almost as tall as his son, hair not gray but silver, with the fit body and angular facial features of a man in his sixties. Of course, he was in his sixties. It was his mind that had decided to age prematurely.
It was the eyes that betrayed him. Sitting as he was now, ensconced in his recliner, remote in hand, staring vacantly at the dark TV screen...this was the man his father had become, and the speed with which the change had come about had been shocking.
Paul knew he should feel compassion for this man who was his father, but all he felt was resentment. For his entire career, Geoff had been a compassionate physician with an exemplary bedside manner. At home, he had ruled his family with a sharp tongue and an iron fist. Paul had looked forward to the day when he could flaunt his own medical successes in his father’s face and call him out on the years of verbal abuse. The Alzheimer’s had robbed him of the chance. It would have been one thing to have a mental sparring match w
ith his father while he was sharp-witted and mean. Now, sadly, the old man was just mean, and having that conversation would be pointless.
For the millionth time in the past few weeks, Paul contemplated his fate and for the first time decided the fates had been fair after all. Riverton’s clinic needed a new doctor, his father needed someone to look after him and Annie was a single woman. None of these things would be easy, he knew that. He already missed practicing medicine at a big hospital. He’d had no idea how to relate to his father when he was in his right mind, let alone like this.
As for Annie, Paul had no idea how he would stop himself from acting like a fool. He knew one thing for sure, though—his shift didn’t start for two hours and Annie had invited him to drop by for coffee, so that’s exactly what he was going to do.
CHAPTER FOUR
TEN MINUTES LATER, Paul was behind the wheel of his car and heading out of town along River Road. The drive from town to the country brought back a lot of memories, most of them bittersweet.
As kids, he and Jack and Eric had ridden their bikes out here during summer holidays. That had been before they knew about Finnegan Farm or the oldest Finnegan girl, who’d been destined to earn the love of not one but two good men. In those days, they’d been more interested in doing what boys do best when there was no adult supervision—competing to see who could ride the farthest without touching the handlebars, who could spit the farthest when they were munching on sunflower seeds and who could string together the longest series of swear words. Fortunately for the women of the world, boys eventually grew into men.
Jack had been the first to get his driver’s license, and that summer had been a blur of illicit parties. By then, Jack was dating a girl named Belinda and Eric was dating Annie, leaving Paul on the sidelines. The girls he ended up being paired with were friends of either Annie’s or Belinda’s. Sometimes there was the occasional girl he’d mustered the courage to ask out himself. None of them had turned into girlfriends, though. He’d been preoccupied with Annie and his futile hope that she would realize he was a far better catch than Eric.
She hadn’t, of course. But that was then and this was now. He knew better than to think she could miraculously stop grieving the loss of her husband and realize Paul was the second love of her life. But now that she was single and he was home, he intended to rekindle their long-time friendship. After seeing her so upset at the clinic yesterday, he could tell she was struggling a little—maybe more than a little. He would be there for her. His might even be the shoulder she leaned on when the going got rough.
Just ahead he spotted the white gazebo on the riverbank. Situated on the narrow strip of public land that ran between River Road and the Mississippi, it had been built by Annie’s grandfather. There was a small parking area where anyone passing by could stop and enjoy the view. The landmark would always be known to locals as Finnegan’s gazebo. To Paul, it would always be the place where Eric had proposed to Annie, and where Annie had said yes.
Paul signaled, slowed and swung into the driveway then drove up the sloping, fence-lined gravel drive that separated two paddocks, one of which had a series of jumps set up in it. At the house, he parked in the roundabout next to a large white van and in front of a painted wooden sign, both embellished with the Finnegan Farm Bed & Breakfast name and logo.
The two-and-a-half-story farmhouse had been built at least a hundred years ago. As a teenager, Paul had spent a fair bit of time here. After Eric had married Annie and moved in, he hadn’t set foot in the place.
The clapboard exterior was still a crisp white and the trim was barn-red, just as he remembered. The wraparound screened porch was furnished with wicker and painted wood furniture. The white lace curtains in the windows, the old yellow dog sleeping on the welcome mat at the front door—it was as if time had stood still. Even the wheelchair ramp adjacent to the front steps had been there for as long as Paul had been coming here. Everyone in Riverton knew about Thomas Finnegan’s acts of heroism during Desert Storm and about the lives he had saved while almost giving up his own. Soon after he’d come home to his family in a wheelchair, his wife had abandoned him and his daughters. Annie, the oldest of the three, had taken on the role of caregiver and Paul knew she continued to fulfill it. The big question for Paul had always been...who took care of Annie?
* * *
ANNIE LOVED WEEKEND mornings. Every Saturday, her sisters gathered around the big kitchen island for coffee and muffins and sisterly conversation. The three of them had always been close, but after Eric died, she had valued these get-togethers more than ever. This morning she was anticipating another visitor, a little too eagerly, perhaps. She was sliding a pan of lemon-cranberry muffins into the oven when she heard the knock at the front door.
Paul! She hastily set the timer and made her way to the door. She opened it and felt her breath catch in her throat.
“Paul.”
“Good morning, Annie. I hope I’m not too early. When you invited me, I might have forgotten to mention that my shift at the clinic starts at ten o’clock.”
“Not a problem, and it’s definitely not too early. Come in, please.”
He stepped inside, seemed to hesitate before he opened his arms. She stepped into the awkward hug and instantly felt the same zing of awareness she’d had yesterday. CJ’s insistence that this was a date rushed through her mind.
Paul leaned down and planted a kiss on top of her head.
Definitely not a date, she reminded herself.
“Come to the kitchen. There’s fresh coffee, and I just put a second batch of muffins in the oven.”
“Wow,” he said as he followed her. “Eric wasn’t exaggerating. You really have made some big changes in here.”
“We renovated about five years ago, after I decided to open the B and B. The old kitchen was quaint but it sure wasn’t functional. We kept the original cabinets, but we painted them, and we kept these old farmhouse-style door and drawer pulls.”
“Those are original? They look as though they could have been installed yesterday.”
“You know what they say—everything old is new again.” She often congratulated herself on that decision. Now, when she checked out design magazines, she could see they were once again in vogue. The same could be said for Great-Grandmother Finnegan’s metal canisters, still lined up along the counter, their red lids with the paint chipped from years of use, the cherry-cluster decoration on the fronts faded but still cheery. Their contents still matched the stenciled labels—flour, sugar, coffee, tea.
“I wanted modern conveniences without sacrificing family tradition,” she said. The cabinet drawers were filled with fresh linens and towels and all the modern gadgets she used every day to prepare the meals she served to her family and guests. Nestled among them, though, were the old wooden rolling pin her grandmother had used to roll countless pie crusts and strudels, and the old hand-crank eggbeater that Annie and her sisters had been allowed to use before they could be trusted with an electric appliance. She indicated the upper cabinets. “We added these glass doors because I wanted to display this vintage crockery and glassware. They’ve been in the family for generations.”
“I’m impressed. I remember Eric’s emails about the work you were doing. It was hard to imagine him in a tool belt, though, wielding a hammer.”
“Eric was...helpful,” Annie said, giving a weak laugh. “Although I’m not sure the contractor would have agreed with that statement.”
Paul laughed, too. “That sounds like Eric, all right. How’s Isaac this morning?” he asked, taking a seat at the island.
“He’s fine.” She took a mug out of the cupboard, filled it with coffee and passed it to Paul. Her hand grazed his and gave her a little jolt.
“Thanks.” His smile had the same effect on her heart.
“After we came home yesterday, I tried putting an ice pack
on his shoulder like you suggested, but he wouldn’t sit still long enough for it to do any good.”
“That’s a good sign.”
“It is. I’m sorry I was such a basket case yesterday, but I was so worried.”
“Annie, don’t apologize. Your reaction was completely understandable.”
“He’s already down at the stable with CJ. They’re saddling the horses for the kids who come every Saturday morning for riding therapy.”
“And your father?”
“He’s down there, too. He often rides with them.”
“Impressive. I’d like to come and watch sometime.”
“We can go down and check out the class this morning if you’d like.”
“Thanks. Maybe another time. I’m good right here for today.”
She was oddly pleased that he had opted to stay in the kitchen with her. “How’s your father doing?” she asked.
Paul sighed. “As sharp-tongued as ever. Now he just can’t remember why. Although, come to think of it, I’m not sure he ever had a good reason.”
“I’m sorry. I know a lot of people in town were surprised to hear that he was retiring, but everyone was shocked to hear he has Alzheimer’s. He seems too young for that.”
“Most people think of it as a geriatric condition but the truth is that as many as five percent of patients are afflicted before they turn sixty-five.”
“I had no idea,” Annie said. “That’s so sad.”
The timer pinged. She pulled the pan from the oven, dumped the muffins into a cloth-lined basket. She set out side plates and knives, butter and a small pot of her homemade strawberry-rhubarb jam, and placed the basket on the island. “Help yourself,” she said. “Lemon-cranberry, fresh from the oven, obviously, but they’ll cool quickly.”
“You won’t have to twist my arm,” Paul said. “They smell amazing, but I’ll only have one if you pour yourself a cup of coffee and sit with me.”
“Of course.” She wasn’t accustomed to sitting still in her own kitchen, but she refilled her mug and settled onto a stool, careful to leave an empty one between her and Paul.
