In a Doctor's Arms

by Lisa Mondello

  “Or Washington, D.C.?”

  He thought a second. “D.C. was never really an option for me. My relationship with Donna was already too distant for it to be a real consideration. What about you?”

  She untangled her legs from his lap and dropped them to the floor, suddenly uncomfortable with the change of direction. “Hartford isn’t D.C., but it’s not Stockington Falls, either.”

  “You seem to like it here.”

  “What’s not to like? It’s beautiful.”

  He thought a second. “It has a different rhythm. That’s not for everyone.”

  “True enough. Vanessa has said as much.”

  Dennis’s face showed amusement. “Ah, Vanessa. I forgot you two have become quick friends.”

  Teresa chuckled. “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing, other than the fact that you are like night and day.”

  “Yeah, my dark hair and her bleached blond hair. She’s nice, though. Easy to talk to.”

  “She stays for Hal.”

  “Maybe she loves it here. Or am I trampling on doctor/patient privilege?”

  Dennis chuckled quietly. “Nothing about Vanessa is ever kept privileged. She’s an open book. But she has a good heart. She and Hal never had any kids of their own, so she donates some time down at the community center with the little ones. She makes it sound like it’s no big deal when she talks about it. But I think it’s more important to her than she lets on.”

  Teresa thought about it a second. “I can see that about her.”

  “You could do the same thing. Make a difference here in Stockington Falls.”

  “Working at the community center and at the clinic?”

  Teresa stared at him thoughtfully, afraid of seeing any more meaning in what he was saying. He didn’t elaborate further.

  “I guess I don’t see myself in either extreme on a permanent basis,” she finally said. “Not anymore, anyway.”

  Dennis remained quiet a few moments before he added, “Benny is going to need a lot of looking after. He’s going to fight you on it. And Frank will, too.”

  “I know. And I’ll do my best. But I won’t be the one to give Benny everything he needs. Or what your sister needs either, for that matter. I’m here for the time being, Dennis, to help Benny get on the right track—get him thinking about his future in a positive way. But in the long run they’re all going to need family counseling. Benny and Karen are going to need to find strength.”

  “My sister has a strong faith in God.” Dennis eased out a slow breath. “I guess I’ll just have to be satisfied with that for now and take things one day at a time.”

  It was good to know that Karen had her faith to get her through these troubled times in her family. Before long, Teresa would be going back to Hartford. She wasn’t going to be here to make sure that Benny didn’t suffer the same fate as Mariah.

  Teresa spent her first night in the guesthouse mulling over her conversation with Dennis. She woke the next morning to a cold floor and frost on the windows.

  Putting her wool socks on, she made her way down the spiral staircase to the woodstove. Embers were still glowing when she opened the woodstove door, but there was no flame. Hopefully, putting a log or two on top of the embers would make the fire burn to life. Dennis had been right about how quickly the cottage heated up once the fire got going. She got to work with the stove and then traipsed across the cold floor to check out the cabinet situation.

  Empty. She was going to need to make a grocery store run before she did anything. There wasn’t a donut shop on every corner in Stockington Falls, so she couldn’t just run out for a cup of coffee and then come back home. She quickly jotted down a few items on a piece of paper to remember to get later when she was at the store.

  The stove started pumping out heat, and Teresa took advantage of that warmth to rub her hands together. That was when she smelled the smoke. Looking down, Teresa panicked as smoke seeped out through the stove door and into the small space.

  The smoke filled the room, making her cough as she made her way to the window to open it and get some fresh air in the cottage. As she pushed the curtains back, she panicked once again.

  Dennis’s SUV was gone. That discovery was met with a mixture of relief and distress. She liked Dennis’s company, and she found herself at ease in a way she hadn’t felt in the presence of a man in a long time. She certainly could get used to having him around.

  But right now, Dennis wasn’t here, and she had no idea how to get the smoke out of the cottage. She wasn’t a country girl. She’d never even been a Girl Scout. She picked up her cell phone and used the one survival skill she knew. She called 911.

  Stockington Falls fire chief, Carlos Garcia, still had a smile on his face when he walked out of the cottage and came up to the window of her sedan. Teresa had spent the past thirty minutes sitting in her heated car in her pajamas and a ski parka while Carlos and his crew checked the woodstove and chimney pipe to see if she’d had a chimney fire.

  “It’s all set, Ms. Morales. You just put too much wood in the stove and didn’t give the pipe enough time to heat the air before the stove heated up.”

  “But the smoke is supposed to rise,” she said, feeling like an idiot when Carlos’s face widened into a bigger smile.

  “It will. But a fire has to build gradually or it gets too hot in the stove too quick.”

  Dressed in his fireman gear, Carlos used his hands to demonstrate how smoke should flow through the chimney.

  “You see, the smoke will only rise if there’s hot air in the pipe to suck it out. It’s like a vacuum really. If there is too much cold air in the pipe and too much heat in the stove, the smoke won’t get sucked up the pipe, and will take whatever path it can to escape. In this case, it seeped out of the stove and into the cottage. Some kindling or a smaller log would have prevented it from happening.”

  “So there’s no chimney fire.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  She covered her face with her hand as humiliation flooded her. “I can’t believe I did that on the first morning here.”

  Carlos laughed. “I’m pretty sure Dennis likes that woodsy smell you’re going to have in there for a while until things air out.”

  Teresa couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m going to look like an idiot when I tell Dennis about this.”

  “Don’t worry. Dennis has a sense of humor.”

  “Thank you, Carlos. I really appreciate you coming out here this morning.”

  “Anytime. Dennis must have been up at the crack of dawn. He’s already shoveled you a path and cleared the driveway. It made it easier to get the fire truck up his driveway. Tell him I said thanks.”

  “I will.”

  She got out of her car and waved as the firemen pulled out of the driveway, already dreading her conversation with Dennis.

  Glancing at her watch, she saw that it was quarter past nine. Dennis must have been up early in order to shovel.

  Strange. She hadn’t heard him. He had to have left early for the clinic.

  She went inside the guesthouse and took in a deep breath.

  “Yep. Woodsy smell. You’re in Vermont, Teresa, not Hartford.”

  Shaking her head as she pulled the curtains shut, Teresa abandoned the idea of getting the stove going again until Dennis was home to show her how to use it properly. The sun was rising in the east, showing a beautiful day on the way. She opened the curtains in an effort to let the sun in and hopefully give some heat to the cottage during the day while she was gone.

  She needed to get moving so she could tell Dennis about her mishap.

  Yeah, right. She’d like to say that she was seeking him out to tell him about the stove fire, but she was drawn to him, and it didn’t take much of an excuse on her part to find a reason to see him.

  It had been a long time since she’d been interested in any man at all. Most of the men she’d met in her life were full of ambition. Of course, there was nothing wrong with a healthy dose
of ambition, and Teresa could certainly see that in Dennis as well. He’d made quite a showing here in Stockington Falls, filling in a gap that was much needed in a community that made its living on tourism.

  But this was…different.

  She looked up at the ceiling. “How’s that for clarity, Lord?” The space she’d craved when she left Hartford only brought her more turmoil.

  She’d only been in Vermont for a little over a month, but already Teresa could tell the difference between those who were just passing through and those who had dug in their roots. It was evident that even when Dennis had been away at med school and served in Iraq, that his feet had been firmly planted here where there were people he loved.

  She envied Dennis for that. The slow pace with which he took in life around him was something she didn’t see in Hartford and had never felt herself. Everything was larger than life where she’d come from—fast and immediate, much like a flash fire. It burned bright, and then it was gone.

  She wondered what it would be like to be in a relationship with someone who’d grown up and lived in a world so vastly different from her own. Opposites attracted, but could that attraction, coupled with the differences, be long lasting? Would it grow into something more?

  Regardless, being with Dennis had already proven to be a learning experience. It had begun to open her eyes about just how closed off she was in seeing simple everyday things, like Dennis throwing sand on the ground when it was icy.

  Sure, she knew they did those winter tasks back in Hartford. But that simple chore was already complete by the time she’d make her way to the front door of the condo and out to school.

  Living like she had, it was hard to notice the little things. She hadn’t. But she had noticed them last night. Dennis liked to walk around the house in his bare feet with no socks, even in this unbelievable cold weather. It had to be a hair above freezing outside. Wiggling her toes, she recalled how she’d put on a heavy pair of wool socks herself when she’d climbed out of bed this morning and realized just how cold the floor could be.

  Teresa had been so busy with her life in Hartford that she probably would have missed something simple like that before. She couldn’t help but wonder if she would have noticed what was going on with Mariah if what had happened in Hartford had instead happened here in Stockington Falls.

  There wasn’t time to dwell on it. She couldn’t right the wrongs of her past, and no amount of turning it over in her mind was going to change it. She had an early appointment with Benny at the clinic. Since the family was down to one car, Karen Dulton was going to drop Benny off at the clinic, and Dennis would drive him home when the session was done. The high school students were still on Christmas vacation. Benny hadn’t had a chance to talk to many of the other kids at school since the accident. But all that would change on Monday, and she wanted to make sure he was prepared.

  After a quick shower and change into something more appropriate than blue jeans, Teresa made her way to town. Vermont was ready for inclement weather. The roads were plowed and mostly bare of snow, but the snowbanks on the side of the road made navigating narrow roads nerve-racking. She took her time on the winding turns where she knew black ice could catch her off guard.

  It had been black ice that had caused the accident that killed Mariah’s boyfriend, David. Teresa gripped the steering wheel and kept her eyes peeled on the road ahead, knowing that attentiveness alone wouldn’t be enough if she hit a patch of ice or if a deer ran in front of her car.

  Dennis drove a four-wheel-drive vehicle. Now she understood why. Her little sedan didn’t handle these side roads quite the same what they did on I-95 in Connecticut.

  She slowed as she reached Abbey Bridge, being careful to check to make sure another vehicle hadn’t already gone into the covered bridge. There was barely enough room for two small cars to pass each other while going over the bridge on dry pavement, let alone an SUV and larger sedan. Benny had said the roads were slippery and that Molly’s car had careened off the inside barrier. The angry scar of splintered wood had been patched over enough with fresh boards to prevent anyone else from breaking through and plunging to the water below. The sight of it gave Teresa a chill.

  The road on the bridge was dry. Even with the heavy snowfall New Year’s Eve, surely inside the bridge the road should have been free of snow. She’d have to remember to ask Dennis about the conditions of the road and whether ice buildup inside the bridge was normal when the temperature dropped.

  As she came through the other side, she was startled by a man walking onto the bridge on foot. She pumped her brakes, afraid she’d slide on the snow buildup the wind was blowing into the mouth of the bridge. She caught her breath as she recognized the person walking.

  Rolling down her window, she said, “Daniel MacKenzie, you scared the daylights out of me.”

  Teresa had met the Stockington Falls chief of police on several occasions while staying at the resort. He was still new to the area by Vermont standards. For that matter, so was Vanessa, and she’d been at the resort nearly twenty years. Only people born and raised here were considered native.

  “Sorry, Teresa. I was just making sure the patch on the bridge was finished. I don’t want anyone to accidentally fall through.”

  “I appreciate that. The thought had crossed my mind.”

  “Where are you headed?”

  “Over to the clinic. I need to talk to Dennis.”

  He nodded, and although questions crossed his face, he chose to keep them silent.

  “She’s doing fine,” Teresa offered, knowing he was thinking of Cammie.

  Mac shrugged. “She’s always fine. I’d like to see for myself.”

  “Then why don’t you come with me? I’m sure she’s there.”

  He shook his head and stood tall. Teresa had to crane her neck to look at him as she sat in the car.

  “Of course she’s there. But Cammie’s a stubborn woman. She won’t take my calls. She doesn’t think she needs anyone but will be there for anyone else who’s in need.”

  He drew in a deep breath, clearly frustrated.

  “I’ll keep an eye on her,” Teresa said, smiling warmly.

  A gust of wind that had gotten caught in the tunnel of the bridge whipped against her car, chilling her. Her heater was on full blast, but the hot air escaped as soon as it blew out of the front vents.

  Mac tapped the roof of her car and said, “You’d better get going. There’s going to be a shift change at the resort soon, which means a lot of traffic down here.”

  “I certainly don’t want to get caught in that. There’s enough traffic with the skiers. When you have some time, though, I’d like to talk to you a little about the accident.”

  “What about?”

  “Just some details. I’m trying to figure out a timeline of events. I’m hoping it will help Benny.”

  “Dennis’s nephew?”

  “Yes. If there is anything you can add to what he told me about the accident, I’d appreciate hearing it.”

  “I’ll be interested in hearing more about what he has to say, too. He wasn’t too forthcoming the night of the accident, although that’s to be expected. He was worried about his friend. I’ll be in my office later today if you want to drop by. I have the police report back from the state police. We can have a look at it together.”

  They said their goodbyes, and Teresa rolled up her window. Enclosed in the car, her heater was quicker to warm the air around her. She made a mental note of Mac’s comment about the shift change. The accident on New Year’s Eve happened just before midnight. Perhaps the added traffic along with the road conditions were what caused the accident.

  Molly Peterson was dead. It was too easy to blame the accident on someone who wasn’t there to tell their side of the story or at least contribute to the facts. She just wished Molly were alive now to help clear things up for all of them.

  Chapter Eight

  Louise was full of questions for Teresa when she arrived at the café
to get a cup of coffee and a donut before heading over to the clinic. Her sudden move and her part-time employment at the clinic, in particular, were hot topics of conversation. But as Dennis had informed her, the Stockington Falls Medical Clinic had several per diem staffers who only worked when needed, and this type of arrangement seemed to fit Teresa well while she was still taking time off from school. That seemed to satisfy Louise’s curiosity.

  The more she thought about it as she made her way across the street to the clinic, the more Teresa was glad she’d decided to work with the clinic, particularly on a part-time basis. The opportunity gave her a little spending money for what she needed, while not overloading herself with a full-time job in order to keep from draining her bank account until March when she could move back into her condo.

  She said her hellos as she walked the hallway toward what was now going to be her office while she was in Stockington Falls. She’d meet with Benny there. Her heart raced with every step. Her first meeting with Benny had been in his room at the clinic. Yesterday’s meeting had been in Dennis’s office since her office was full of boxes. Today was the first day she’d been counseling in her own space. She passed right by Dennis’s office and went into her own and sat down.

  The office was empty. There were no pictures or little personal items that made it hers. But it would do. There were two comfortable chairs opposite the desk that would do nicely for her and Benny. It was a start.

  She was surprised at how much more settled she felt here in her own office rather than in the other two arrangements. Having an office gave a sense of permanency to her stay here.

  It didn’t really matter. No matter how permanent it felt today, she was only going to be here a few months, so there was no sense making the place feel homey. Someone else would move in when she left. Until then, the office would do nicely for everyone involved.