A Family for Christmas

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  Whether she admitted to being in pain or not, he was going to insist that she take a pain reliever with her antibiotic.

  “It’s your last one,” he said when he handed her the antibiotic. “Today was day ten.”

  She wanted to act as though nothing had happened; he was fine with that.

  She nodded. Took both pills. Swallowed them.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Good night.”

  Turning, she walked with straight shoulders across the cabin, entered her room and quietly shut the door. Closing herself in with whatever hell lived inside her.

  He should have told her he knocked the bottle off the table because he’d been forcing his right eye to know exactly where she’d placed it. Damned fool. He should have emphasized that the accident had had nothing to do with her. And everything to do with the fact that while he’d heard her set the bottle down, had seen part of her arm as she’d placed it on the table between them, he hadn’t been able to see it and had been too proud to turn his head and make that obvious.

  He considered a light knock on her door to quickly confess, but decided her distress at his invasion wouldn’t be worth it.

  Cara was a smart woman. A rational one. Once she calmed down, thought back over the incident, she’d know the bottle on the floor had been just what it was. An accident.

  What remained to be seen was how she treated him now that he’d seen her inner struggle. Now that he’d met her demons.

  Simon had a feeling that, in some ways, his seeing that was going to bother her more than if he’d done what she’d first feared and hit her.

  * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING, Simon had breakfast prepared and waiting, as usual, the second Cara opened her door. She wished him good morning, as usual. Said, in answer to his normal question, that she’d slept well. She ate everything in front of her. Took her pills. Administered his drops and did the dishes—as though nothing had happened the night before. Not trusting himself to just let it lie there, to let her deal with her trauma all alone—to not try to help somehow—Simon fled.

  Outside and out of sight of the cabin, patch on, walking stick in his right hand and his left arm extended in front of him, he proceeded to face the challenge he knew he could master. Getting his right eye to see what was right in front of him.

  * * *

  SHOWERED, DRESSED AND too restless to sit, Cara spent the morning cleaning. She swept the cabin. Washed the linoleum floor on her hands and knees. Made chicken soup for lunch—homemade, not canned. It wouldn’t be as good as what she made at home, but she boiled frozen chicken for broth, cut the chicken off the bone and put it in the broth she’d skimmed. And remembered Joy standing in the kitchen...between the stove and the back door. Mary had been with her. Just that. A flash. But she knew it was from their last day together. Before she and Shawn had had to leave.

  When tears plopped into the pot, she brushed at her cheeks. Her pain might be real, it might even tear her apart, but it didn’t make up for what she’d done. Adding dehydrated onions to the water, she stirred, alternately trying to avoid any more flashbacks and trying to recall any moments she could find that included her precious baby girl.

  Joy’s presence had changed Cara. Had made her life meaningful—given her purpose.

  Adding frozen peas to the soup, sparingly because the doctor had far more canned goods than frozen, she stirred. Shied away from the memories that haunted her but searched desperately for them, too.

  For the rest of the morning, she waited, on edge, for anything else that might come to her, but by the time the doctor returned to the cabin for lunch, she had nothing but frustration to show for it.

  Afraid he’d bring up the night before over lunch, she was pleasantly surprised to find that he was just as willing as he had been at breakfast to let her eat in peace.

  She tried to read while he cleaned up. To appear engrossed so he wouldn’t talk to her. But the second he left for his afternoon time outside, she missed him.

  Or rather, dreaded the idea of another set of hours stretching ahead of her with nothing but mental torment to offer.

  She might never remember all of the details of the day that had virtually ended her life. Might never know how she’d felt as she’d crossed the line from worthy human being to criminal. But one thing was for certain, she couldn’t just sit in a one-room cabin with a book on her lap for another afternoon.

  From the moment the doctor had carried her into the cabin eleven days before, Cara had not ventured back outside. He’d suggested she might like some fresh air. Assured her he trusted her not to run off—as if she would. He’d call the cops and what chance would she have—a beach and city woman—against mountain men who not only knew the terrain, but probably knew all of its hiding places, too?

  The doctor had suggested that she go outside while he was actually at the cabin, as opposed to when he was outside himself. In case she felt faint or had a problem, she could call out to him. She figured he also wanted his time alone. But the desert was vast enough, the mountain ranges forever enough, that they could both be out without her impinging on his private sabbatical.

  Zipping on her sweater jacket over the doctor’s blue T-shirt, she turned down the propane on the room heater and took her first breath of fresh air in eleven days. And then took another. Its cool touch filled her lungs as she lifted her face to the warmth of the October sun. At home it would be in the seventies. Up here—northern Nevada, the doctor had told her once when she’d asked where she was—the temperature wasn’t all that different. Sixties, maybe.

  Studying the road that led away from the cabin, seeing, for the first time, the dark SUV that the doctor must have driven up here—the vehicle he’d said he’d take her to town in, she supposed—she turned in the opposite direction. No sense in taking a chance on reaching the end of that drive and ending up on a real road where someone might see her.

  She’d seen the doctor come from the east side of the property—that morning and once before, too—so she headed west. She wouldn’t go far. Just enough to get some real exercise. To clear her mind of the garbage invading it.

  To rid herself of the panic that had been with her since the night before.

  At some point the doctor was going to want to talk to her about it. She knew him well enough to know that. He wasn’t the type to just leave well enough alone.

  She didn’t want to talk about it. Partially because she hated the person she was around Shawn. Partially because she hated that she’d become a woman who instinctively cowered when her own mother had been so brave.

  And partially because she knew the doctor would want to fix her, and there was simply no point.

  Cara walked without purpose and yet felt good to be doing something. The exercise felt good. Being outside felt good. Was she wrong to enjoy some moments in a condemned life?

  Filled with confusion, she decided she wasn’t hurting anyone and kept walking. The landscape was odd—desert and yet, up here in the mountains, she crossed patches of straggly grass along with rocks and packed dirt. The trees weren’t anything she’d have imagined, either. While there was a lot of openness and sagebrush, there were also areas of pine trees and, over in the distance, some odd-looking oak kind of trees, too.

  She had been captivated by a huge oak in the middle of the several-acre property of the Savannah bed-and-breakfast her family had visited for a week when she was a child. The oak had had a low-slung branch and she’d spent an hour or two each afternoon just sitting on that branch reading her heart out.

  She remembered her mom and dad tempting her away with a railroad museum, a tour of some historic fort, a wildlife center, even a ghost tour. She’d been about twelve and hooked on a series of books about babysitters. She’d loved that old tree, the solitude she’d found there. The romantic feel of it all.

  She’d done all of th
e other things, of course. Her folks couldn’t leave her at the bed-and-breakfast alone, but each afternoon, before dinner, she’d been allowed to go out to that tree.

  Almost upon the grouping of trees now, she stopped when she heard a sound. What kind of wildlife even lived out there? She hadn’t thought to ask the doctor. She’d just figured that since he went out twice a day every day that being out was safe.

  The sound came again, seemingly from the trees just ahead. Rustling. And...a grunt? More curious than anything now, she continued forward.

  What did she have to lose?

  Even as the thought entered her mind, she shook her head. She knew she was in a no-win situation, a no-win life because of choices she’d made, but that didn’t mean she relished the thought of being eaten by a bear. If there were even bears out there.

  The sun’s warmth comforted her face as she pressed on. She couldn’t hear any birds, but the silence encompassing such vastness was, in itself, a kind of comfort to her.

  The rustling came again. Definitely ahead and just to her right.

  What if it was a deer?

  She’d love to see one up close.

  Deer were more afraid of her than she’d ever be of them. From what she remembered her father saying once, that was true of most wildlife. With the exception of maybe alligators.

  A worry when she was growing up. But not in the northern Nevada mountains.

  Progressing slowly, she continued to watch in front of her. The minute she sensed danger, she’d turn and, just as surreptitiously, walk away.

  Were there mountain lions out here?

  Again, if she didn’t corner it or it was a cub, she should be okay.

  Filled with an odd sense of adventure, of discovery, she took another step. It had been so long since she’d been free to just...do. To reach out. To explore.

  Catching a flash of movement, Cara stilled, assessing the landscape. Yes, a flash of...color. Not brown. Not fur. Blue and red. Plaid.

  Exactly like the shirt the doctor had worn to the table for lunch.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CARA CONSIDERED HER OPTIONS.

  Should she let him know she was there?

  Probably better that she just turn quietly and leave. He was being so generous to her, not only in providing medical care but in feeding her. Giving her a place to sleep. Hot water in which to shower. Everything she touched every day—the soap she used, the toothpaste—all of it was coming from his pocket, not her own.

  The least she could do was leave him some privacy.

  She hadn’t moved, afraid to do so in case she alerted him to her presence. In case he was angry to have his solitude impinged upon.

  No...the doctor wasn’t the get-angry type. Or rather, if he did get angry, which surely he did—everyone did, even little Joy had had her temper tantrums—he would have the ability to control himself.

  As she did now. As she’d taught Joy. As her mother had tried so hard to teach her. Even when your anger was justified, losing control of it, spewing it, was wrong.

  He’d taken enough steps that she could see more of him now—an arm out in front of himself. His left leg. Feeling guilty, and yet curious, too, she watched from her frozen stance. He was walking like a zombie. One stilted step at a time. A stick appeared, then his right leg and the rest of his body. He had a patch over one eye.

  What the heck? Was he weirder than she thought?

  Nothing like she’d thought?

  A guy who liked to play pirate games with imaginary friends? Fascinated, and horrified, too, she stood there and watched as his left arm moved directly into an oak tree branch. The force of the branch stopped him.

  Waiting to see what would happen next, she wondered if she should take this time to disappear from his life, remembered the authorities, and came up with nothing else. She really started to worry when the man who’d been so proficient, so precise, with her care, took a step back. Threw down his walking stick, dropped his left arm to his side. And walked straight for the branch.

  Had he lost his mind? He’d seemed so...normal—more laid-back than usual, even—at lunch.

  She waited for him to stop and stared as he drew closer to the branch. It was big enough to break his nose and if he didn’t stop soon...

  Her heart pounded and her breathing got short, but six inches before his nose hit that damned tree he stopped. Just...stopped.

  He didn’t reach out for anything. Didn’t do anything once he’d reached his destination. He just stood there.

  And then, with no warning, the crazy man let out a hellacious yell, jumped up with his fist in the air, hit his fist on the branch up above and started laughing. Bent over with laughter.

  Unless... Was he hurt?

  Cara sprinted forward...realizing too late that she was outing herself, and saw, as she drew closer, that her first assessment had been the correct one. He was laughing.

  Like a damned fool.

  Did he keep some kind of peyote out there? Was that why he was on sabbatical? Because he had a substance-abuse problem?

  It was the only thing that made sense. He’d said his problem was personal. And...

  She was almost upon him.

  “What on earth are you doing?”

  She wasn’t passing judgment on him. Operating on the hearts of children had to take a lot out of a man. No one could blame him for succumbing to something that would help him deal with the stress that had to come with his job.

  But if he was there to get better, he was doing a lousy job of it.

  So...maybe as he was helping her she could help him...

  He hadn’t answered her. Hadn’t even straightened up yet.

  She was almost upon him. “I’m sorry for trespassing. I know I shouldn’t be here. I’ll go...just...are you okay?”

  If he wanted to fry his brain it was none of her business. Lord knew what she’d done was far worse.

  Slowly rising, he pulled the patch off his right eye, spun almost as if on military command and faced her.

  “I am on a mission.”

  The words made no sense. Unless... Were they playing soldiers now?

  “Okay.” She took a step back. “As long as you’re all right, I’ll just head back this way...”

  She turned. Took a couple of steps. Wondering if someone could be high enough to be hallucinating without showing any other physical signs, and then come back down again by dinner...

  “Cara.”

  She turned, but hesitantly.

  “The soy sauce bottle last night. It wasn’t your fault.”

  So, not quite hallucinatory.

  An odd time to bring up the subject she’d been hoping they were going to avoid like the plague. She should have stayed inside.

  Or turned back when she had the chance.

  He seemed to be waiting for a response, still sans eye patch, so she nodded. Not quite sure what she was dealing with, and knowing what she didn’t want to deal with, she just stood there.

  “I mean it,” he said.

  Yeah, she got that. She’d overreacted. Maybe she’d placed the bottle too close to the edge of the table. Maybe he’d just missed when he’d tried to grab it. Didn’t really matter.

  No use crying over spilled milk, Mom used to say.

  Though this wasn’t quite the same thing. She got that. Recognized that her mind was babbling. She even knew why. He was making her uncomfortable.

  She had no idea what to expect. Who she was dealing with. She felt powerless and helpless and was getting closer to a panic attack by the second. She nodded again.

  “I’m temporarily blind in one eye.”

  Cara stared. Dumbfounded. Of anything she’d expected, even giving her wildest imagination free rein, that hadn’t been even clos
e.

  “I can’t see out of my right eye. That’s why I knocked the bottle off the table last night. I couldn’t see it.”

  He couldn’t see...

  The eye patch had been on his left eye. The arm out in front of him. The stick. The daily treks.

  A surgeon with only one eye...

  Temporarily.

  “Did it just happen?”

  “Right before I came up here.”

  Wow. She tried to imagine it...dedicating your life to repairing the hearts of little children and then suddenly being unable to do so. She felt the threat of tears.

  Had a feeling he wouldn’t want any shed on his behalf. She didn’t know how she knew that, or why she thought she knew it, but...

  “That’s why you’re here.”

  “Yes.”

  She nodded. “Thank you for telling me.”

  She should go. Still, she stood there. Taking it all in. Maybe the laughter had been hysterical. Because he’d walked smack-dab into a tree and then had been able to get there without hurting himself.

  Was he doing some kind of blind training, then?

  Learning to live with what he had left?

  She remembered something else.

  “Sometimes when we’re, you know, both in the...cabin...reading...you look at me and say nothing. It’s because I’m in the line of vision on your right side and you don’t see me.”

  “I look at you?” He frowned.

  Tilting her head, she smiled. “Obviously not, but it looks as though you are.” If she were him, she’d want this whole thing to go over with as much ease, as much lightness, as possible. Without her being insensitive.

  “All this time, you’ve been thinking I’m watching you?”

  “Not all the time, but, sometimes, yeah.” She shrugged. Grinned again. “It’s been kind of eerie, actually.”

  “And you didn’t say anything.”

  As she’d seen it, she really hadn’t been in any position to say anything. Would rather avoid a possibility than forge headlong into something she couldn’t handle.