Natalie took her phone from her pocket and called her uncle Harry. “I’ve been talking to Nana, and she has a very low opinion of the doctors and the hospital here,” she said. “It doesn’t matter who the doctor is, I don’t think she’ll warm to any of them.”
“Probably not. But the way I see it, we ain’t lost nothing by trying,” Harry replied in his slow drawl.
“True, but what about Doctor Harris?”
“Let’s just see how he does.”
“He’s going to try hard, and he’s the kind of guy who’ll go down with the ship before he gives up,” she said. “If he succeeds, fine. If not, I want you to make sure he still gets that position. That’s the fair thing to do, Uncle Harry.”
“Yeah, if he’s willing to go the distance, it would only be fair. I agree. Besides, Sheldon thinks he’ll do a great job overseeing the cardiology department, so it’s a win-win.” To Uncle Harry, win-wins were always important.
“Okay. Thanks.” She put away her phone and popped open up a trunk as dust motes floated into the air.
She unfolded a layer of plastic sheeting and found a backless, dark red cocktail dress with a note written by Natalie’s mother, Susan, regarding her mother, Eva, who had been a backup singer with Sun Records in Memphis during the 1950s.
Natalie smiled as she finished reading the note and looked at the attached black-and-white photograph of her great-grandmother wearing the red dress at a party. Elvis Presley had his arm around her waist. “Oh!” she gasped. She’d found the famous Elvis dress! Yes!
Her phone chirped. She looked at the message from Brett.
If you lose tonight, are you gonna back out?
I’m not going to lose. So don’t be making plans because it’s not going to do you any good. She sent the message and lifted the red dress up to her body. It looked to be about the right size.
Her phone chirped. I’ll be driving the Road Runner.
The dress hung over her arm as she sent a reply to his text.
Game on.
* * *
Downstairs, Anna walked into her study, followed by Pharaoh.
“I wonder if my family thinks I’m totally daft.” She wore a white cardigan over her silk blouse and carried a cup of her special tea. She grew her own herbs for teas. This one was a brew of dandelion leaves. Quite delicious, if she had to say so herself. Her family would not agree.
Of course, she had thought about mixing herself a margarita. She did love a good margarita, but she tried not to indulge too often. Getting tipsy at her age was not the most brilliant thing to do.
Pharaoh climbed up his cat tree and sat like a sphinx on the top shelf. He never did anything silly like chase after toy mice. Once, Clara had bought a toy wind-up mouse, and Pharaoh had glared at her. He knew the difference between the real thing and something fake.
“So do I,” Anna said. “How odd is it that Natalie would tour the hospital?”
Anna took a seat in a brocade armchair and placed her feet on a matching footstool. The wide arched window beside the chair gave Anna an excellent view of her garden, where her fall mums and black-eyed Susans were in bloom.
“Who does that? Takes a tour of a hospital like it is a resort?” Anna frowned. “And she just happens to run into an old chum from high school who just happens to be a heart doctor. That is way too much of a coincidence.”
Anna took a sip of her tea as she looked out the window at her garden. The rose bushes needed to be pruned, and the dying plants in the small pond needed to be cut back. At one time, she had maintained the gardens herself. But over the past few years, she had employed a gardening service to help with the upkeep.
She loved working in her greenhouse with her various exotic plants and herbs, too. But as with the outdoor gardens, she had problems managing the workload. She was no longer as energetic as she’d once been. With exertion came fatigue and breathlessness.
Her heart was slowing down along with the rest of her body. At her age, it was to be expected. She had worked with nature and gardens for decades. In her opinion, humans had their seasons as well as plants. She was in the winter of her life with more of a past than a future.
That was the cycle of life, and she had the dignity to accept that.
Her family did not. Of course, she didn’t see her eldest that often. Ted was totally self-absorbed with his political career. She wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if he called and said he was going to run for president. Sometimes she sent him a text message stating they were all still alive.
Then there was her youngest, Harry, who was a mama’s boy. Harry stopped by the castle often to check on her and Clara. She did appreciate Harry’s visits, but she could do without his harping about her seeing a doctor. Her baby sister, Lorraine, who had married Sheldon, Lord of Medicine, was constantly pestering her about her blood pressure and her pulse. Yes, sometimes, her pulse was a bit low, but she hadn’t fainted, and she didn’t have any mental confusion. So there.
She had told Harry and Lorraine that she was competent enough to know when she needed to see a doctor, and she would go when she felt it necessary. Besides, what good did it do to go see a quack? The only doctor in Lafayette Falls who had known what he was doing was Dr. Gaskey, who had been her personal physician for forty years. Unfortunately, age eventually got the best of him.
She had finally banned the subject of health care, and she thought that problem was resolved. Now, by some miracle of chance, Natalie was home and had invited a heart doctor to dinner. “I have no proof I am being set up,” she said to Pharaoh, who was grooming himself. He was quite a clean cat. “And I know it’s not Natalie. Sweet child.”
Anna had a huge soft spot in her heart for her only granddaughter. “I’m quite sure Harry and Lorraine are behind this since they think I’m on my deathbed.”
Having one of his rare moments of congeniality, Pharaoh decided to join Anna in the chair. He curled up in her lap. Obviously, he had sensed her distress.
“A heart doctor.” Anna stroked the strip of white fur on Pharaoh’s back. “I’m sure there’s something in it for him. Harry is on the hospital board, and Sheldon works there, too. Between the two of them, they could appease him with whatever he wanted. Perhaps I’m letting my imagination run wild, but his name sounds familiar. Doctor Harris.”
She walked over to her desk, Pharaoh in her arms. “Here.” She put the cat on her desk and reached for her telephone. It was a white phone from the eighties, which was a time when people had lives and conversations. None of this pecking around on a something no larger than a note card.
Pharaoh started grooming himself again. He was just obsessive about that.
Anna called her longtime friend Mildred Donaldson. “Millie, I was calling to ask you about Edith Latta. God rest her soul.” Edith, age ninety-six, had died last month.
“Didn’t Gordon do an excellent job on her?” Mildred referred to the local mortician, who was quite an artist. “She looked so lovely in that pink suit. And natural,” she added. In the South, it was of great importance to look natural in one’s casket.
“It was a wonderful service. You know, the Methodists are so good at funerals,” Anna said. “I was trying to remember exactly what killed her.”
“Oh, I think she had pneumonia and diabetes, plus her age, too.”
“Wasn’t it her heart? I seem to remember that she had heart failure.”
Mildred took a moment since her memory was not the best in the world. “Yes, in the end, I’m sure.”
“Do you know who her heart doctor was?”
“It was the same doctor that Clarence sees,” Mildred said, referring to her husband. Again, she hesitated. “Doctor Harris. Are you thinking of making an appointment with him? Clarence likes him.”
“No,” Anna answered flatly. “I’m doing fine. By the way, have you heard from that dear grandson of yours? Will he be home for Thanksgiving?”
“Clarence talked to him, and he said he was working on his holiday schedule
now.”
“Excellent.” Anna smiled, thinking of the archaeologist, who was perfect for Natalie. “I know he will find Natalie exceptional.” What young man wouldn’t?
As soon as her conversation with Mildred ended, Anna went to the kitchen and made herself a margarita. She returned to the study with her drink and withdrew a couple of reference books from the bookshelf. She sat at her desk, where Pharaoh was swatting at an ink pen.
“Nothing like refreshing the mind,” she told the cat. “Especially when you have a quack coming to dinner.”
Chapter 8
Brett parked his Camaro inside the freestanding garage he’d had built after he bought his house. Shaped like a stable, the red building had three double-size white garage doors. It housed all the girls, plus a small truck and trailer that he used to haul the cars to shows. The house had an attached garage where he kept his late model BMW, which he drove on a regular basis.
As he walked from the garage to the house, he glanced at Natalie’s last text.
Game on.
He definitely felt something was on. Inside him, body chemicals churned, creating excitement and euphoria. Some doctors referred to the phenomenon as the “first flush of love,” a phase when infatuation rules the heart and common sense takes a hike.
“You’re not a teenager,” he told himself as he pocketed his phone, resisting the urge to call her for no good reason. Yet Natalie dominated his thoughts.
He walked inside the still house and wished he weren’t alone. He would have been one happy camper if Natalie had been there to smother him with more hot kisses, like she’d done at the waterfall. Natalie knew how to use her tongue. All his instincts told him she’d be great in the sack.
He got a beer out of the fridge and went to his study. He settled down at his desk, fired up his laptop, and answered a couple of emails from his stockbroker. He had the usual deluge of emails regarding medical conferences, publications, and pharmaceuticals, as well as a few female acquaintances just keeping in touch and some inquiries from other car aficionados. Above all this noise, Natalie remained in the forefront, occupying his mind.
She was fun, sexy, and probably the most compelling woman he had met in a long time. He rocked back in the chair, drank his beer, and wondered what the hell was wrong with him. Natalie Layton compelling? Man, have you lost it? Just worry about the old lady.
He leaned forward, looking at the keyboard. Don’t do it. Another warning from what was left of his common sense. She’s a Layton. She comes from a different world. Let it go.
Yet her name sang through his heart, and he wanted to know more about her. How was it that she had transformed into a remarkable woman who was contemplative and insightful? A woman who had the courage to wade into war zones with a camera. Who would have thought?
He moved his hands to the keyboard and typed in Natalie Spencer. He had noticed that was her married name when he had been looking at her photography awards. The search revealed she had a website, and he clicked on it.
The background was transparent photography of a castle, and Natalie had dedicated the website, called Journey to Camelot, to her mother, Susan, and her husband, Aidan. None of her vivid war photographs were on the landing page. Instead, there was a collage of soft photographs. A rose covered in dew. A sunrise over a rocky coast. An English cottage surrounded by mist. There was a photograph of Natalie holding hands with a dark-haired young man as they walked on a beach.
Brett clicked on the link entitled My Journey and began to read the autobiographical essay Natalie had written about the journey that had changed her life. She wrote a few sentences about her hometown in Tennessee and her family before she focused on her mother.
She loved the Arthurian legends and the time period when castles and chivalry flourished. She had dozens of books about King Arthur and Camelot. Together, we read all the stories about the Knights of the Round Table and the legends surrounding Camelot. My grandparents lived in a house that resembled a castle, and my mother loved to go there.
When I was twelve, Mom told me that the year I graduated from high school, we would spend the summer in Europe touring castles. We began collecting travel books and making lists of all the places we would go and the castles where we would stay.
Mom said it would be our special trip. Just the two of us.
She died the summer before I started high school. She had been sick for over a year, and the last thing she said to me was, “I’ll see you in Camelot, angel.”
After that, I was adrift. My mother had always been my anchor. She was always there for me. No matter what, I knew I could count on her. She picked me up every time I fell. I went on with my life, pretending I was fine, but I couldn’t make myself care. There was a boy in school who thought I was such a loser.
Brett quit reading for a moment. He’d never thought she was a loser, but he could understand why she assumed that. He had just seen what he wanted to see in her. An unattainable, spoiled, rich girl who didn’t value her advantages. He had said some shitty things, and that made him the loser.
Sometimes he hurt my feelings, but he was right most of the time. I didn’t put forth any effort when it came to class work, and most of the time, I wasn’t paying attention because I was missing my mom. Reliving memories of her. I kept my grief bottled up inside me because I was a kid and I didn’t know what else to do.
At the beginning of my senior year, my father told me my mother had set up a trust fund for me and that it would pay for the trip to Europe she had promised me. I was so thrilled that I would get to take the trip she and I had planned. I was going to Camelot. Nothing else mattered.
I boarded a jet for England in June. For the first time in years, my heart soared with joy. I felt my mother was with me in spirit and that the trip to Camelot was going to change my life.
He stopped reading again because he knew what came next. She had met a guy who hadn’t made her feel like a loser, and she had fallen in love. Brett clicked the mouse, and the next page was a memorial to her late husband.
For Aidan
Who gave me the gift of his love.
Who never let me fail. Who always held my hand and said,
“You can.”
Who was always the wind beneath my wings.
My knight in shining armor. Then, now, and always.
Brett glanced at the photographs she had posted, which included a wedding photograph taken only months after her high school graduation. She was a young bride, kissing her new husband beneath a stone archway. They had gotten married at Alnwick Castle, where they had met. Camelot.
There were several snapshots of them when they were college students. They were young and joyous. Of course, it’s easy to be carefree when you’re twenty and madly in love, he thought as if he had some insight into that experience, which he didn’t.
He reached for his beer. He had never experienced that young, carefree, and in love stuff. In college, love had not been on his agenda. In pre-med, he didn’t have time for frolicking about the campus. He had taken summer classes so he could graduate early and move on to medical school. He always had objectives to accomplish.
At the present, he was cementing his medical practice in Lafayette Falls, and things had been going well for him. He enjoyed his work, his cars, his friends, and life in general. But he had shied away from settling down and getting married.
He had never been part of a normal family who had dinners together and celebrated holidays and birthdays. After his mother had dumped him on his uncle when he was four years old, she had died less than a year later. A drinking binge at a party put an end to her life at the young age of twenty-three. He had no memory of her, and there was no father in the picture.
His family had consisted of his two uncles. Mark said very little, worked in the garage all day and went to bed early. He had provided Brett with a home and a stable environment. Tommy drank a lot, fought a lot, stayed in jail a lot, and went through four wives before his life ended one night when he
missed a curve and plowed his car into a tree.
Brett didn’t know how the family thing worked, and he’d never felt comfortable with the idea. Maybe he’d be a total failure when it came to being a family man. So he had avoided that kind of commitment for years. Apprehension nagged at his heart.
Natalie Layton. She was now and always had been the impossible dream.
He closed the laptop and pushed to his feet. When he felt edgy and doubtful, he usually did something constructive to work it off. He headed to the garage, where he spent the next couple of hours washing and waxing Rhonda, inside and out.
By the time he was finished, the Road Runner’s blue body was sparkling, and her interior was pristine. For good measure, he leaned over the bucket seat up front and squirted a little bit of light, airy car freshener on the backseat.
“Just in case we get lucky,” he told Rhonda with a grin.
At precisely quarter to seven that evening, Brett turned Rhonda into the long drive that circled the front of the large turn-of-the-century mansion, which did resemble a castle with its octagonal towers and roof spires.
Victorian lampposts stood along the drive in front of the house, and Brett parked Rhonda in the lamplight. No doubt the first thing Natalie would see when she opened the door was the Road Runner. He chuckled as he stepped out of the car and into the warm fall night.
“You’re looking way too smug.” Natalie’s voice came from above, and he looked up to see her standing on a small, shadowy balcony made of stone.
He smiled and pressed his hand against his chest. “What light through yon window breaks?” That was as much as he could remember.
“Shakespeare?” She laughed.
“Yeah.” Romeo and Juliet. She looked something like a modern-day Juliet standing on the balcony. Her hair was pinned up, and she wore a long, snug-fitting red dress with a high neckline.
“Brett, don’t mention Shakespeare in front of Nana.”
“Really?”
“Not unless you’re an authority on Shakespeare. She helped my grandfather write a dissertation on Shakespeare. She knows Shakespeare.”
Everything His Heart Desires Page 9
