by Jodi Thomas
“Oh, you can, can you?”
“I’m already collecting recipes. Stella, who works part time at the funeral home, was a home economics teacher. She knows everything about cooking.”
Martha Q raised an eyebrow. “What are you doing here if you’re not delivering mail?”
“Just looking around.” Ronny had had enough of answering questions. She began to back up.
Martha Q wasn’t finished. “Well, since you’ve looked around, do you want to rent this place or not? Mr. Winslow called me early yesterday and told me he was leaving. I told him he wouldn’t get his rent back for the month and he said you might want to move into the place. I’d have to increase the rent by twenty-five dollars what with all the repairs I’m going to have to do, but I don’t see any reason you can’t move in and have the last of the month free since he already paid.”
She looked into the apartment and saw Marty’s cookbooks still on the shelves in the kitchen. “What would I do with all the stuff he left?”
“Keep it or throw it out,” Martha Q said. “If you take this place, you take it as is. I’m not paying to have it cleaned or painted.”
“I’ll take it.”
Martha Q seemed to have second thoughts. “You do know who your neighbors are?”
“Yes.”
Martha Q gave her a look that said she was questioning her mental capacity again. “I guess I could spare a few chairs and a dresser. Come over once you move in and we’ll look in the attic.”
“All right. I’ll bring you the money for next month’s rent Monday, but could I pay you two hundred now in advance? I’d like to start cleaning up from the storm.”
Martha Q handed her the key.
Ronny paid her and walked into her new place. It needed everything—furniture, paint, a real bed—but none of that mattered. It was hers. She walked through the rooms and the memories, almost feeling Marty with her.
Border dropped by a half hour later and found her organizing the books. “Mrs. Q told me you rented the place. I think Marty will be glad to hear that when he calls.”
“If he calls,” she added.
“He’ll call. You’ll see. Besides, he promised to come hear me play, and I’ve never known him to break a promise.” He walked through to the bedroom. “I’ll get all the equipment out of the way.”
“How’s your brother this morning?”
“He’s doing great. Autumn and Willie were with him this morning. Both say he’s a real hero and I think my brother really likes hearing that.”
She helped him carry a weight bench to the porch as he continued, “You know, I don’t think I knew how many friends Bran had until last night. His room was packed. Even the boss from his construction site came.”
“I count both of you as my friends,” she said, thinking few would come to her room if she was hurt.
“Oh, you bet.” Border went back for another load. “I’ll be glad to help you out anytime you need some lifting. Bran said Marty was teaching you to drive and I should take out the Volvo and let you practice. I don’t mind. I don’t think I’ve ever taught anyone anything.”
“Fair enough,” she said as he hauled the last of the weights out.
He stopped and looked at her. “If Beau and I make too much noise for you, just bang on the wall. We’ll keep it down.”
“I don’t think I’ll mind at all.”
She went back into the house. Even with some of Marty’s things missing, she still felt him in the house. He’d liked the kitchen, and she had a feeling it would become her favorite room.
She brushed her hands along the row of cookbooks. She’d start here, learning everything he’d learned. She’d work on her classes every night on his desk, and she’d wait and hope. When he was able, he’d come back.
The book beneath the counter caught her eye. She pulled it out and opened the place where he hid his money. If he’d had any time before he left, he would have left her a message in the secret hollow book.
The white envelope lay on top. He’d written one word in a hurried hand. Hundred-dollar bills fanned out from inside as she picked the envelope up, but she barely noticed them.
One word. His last wish. His last hope for her.
Ronny ran her fingers over Marty’s writing and said the word out loud.
Grow.
She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I will,” she said. “I promise.”
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JUST DOWN THE ROAD
Coming soon from The Berkley Publishing Group!
SEPTEMBER
DR. ADDISON SPENCER STOOD BETWEEN THE EMERGENCY room doors of Harmony’s only hospital and waited for the next wave of trouble to storm the door. The reflection of her tall, slim body dressed in white appeared more ghost than human in the smoky glass. For a blink, Addison feared she might be fading away like an old photograph facing the sun. When she’d been a child with light blond hair, her father had called her his sunshine; now there seemed little sunshine left. If it weren’t for her work she’d have no anchor to hang on to in life.
Saturday night on a payday weekend always promised a full house in the ER, yet the wind just beyond the glass whispered change. She’d already been up since four A.M. delivering twins to a teen mother who yelled all the way through the birthing, but Addison’s shift wouldn’t be over tonight until the bars closed. If a fight didn’t break out in the parking lot, maybe, just maybe, she could be in bed by two.
She thought of the silence at the little place she’d rented a few miles from town. An old four-room house with hand-me-down furniture from decades past. Nothing special. Nothing grand. Only the porch wrapped all the way around, and in every direction was peace. A single neighbor’s place spotted the landscape to the south. Cornfields were to the east and rocky untamed land to the north and west. Closing her eyes, she wished she were already there.
“Dr. Spencer?” Nurse Georgia Veasey’s voice echoed behind her.
“Yes?” Addison turned, trying hard not to show any hint of the exhaustion she felt. One of her med school professors had drummed into everyone he taught that a professional gives her best until she drops and can give nothing at all. He often ranted that a career in medicine left little room for life beyond the hospital walls, and for Addison that seemed perfect. One bad marriage had taught her all she wanted to know of the world outside.
“Harley phoned in from the bar.” Georgia moved closer, as though looking through the night for trouble. “Appears we got a pickup load of roughnecks coming in all bleeding and cussing.”
A year ago she wouldn’t have known what the nurse was talking about. She’d learned that roughnecks were oil field workers. “Who’d they fight?” she asked, without any real interest. Half the time the drunks couldn’t answer that question themselves when she asked.
“One man, apparently, but the caller said it was Tinch Turner. From what I hear, he never joins in a fight unless the odds are five to one.”
Addison understood. “Get six rooms ready.” She’d be stitching up the load of roughnecks and probably operating on the fool who took them all on. “I’ll go scrub up. You know what to do.”
The head nurse nodded. She’d start the staff cleaning up blood and giving shots while their drunk patients turned from fighters to babies. The nurses and aides would comfort the boys in grown men’s bodies as they sewed them up and called someone to come get them. Addison knew Georgia would send the most seriously hurt one to the first room. She would be waiting there, ready to do her best one more time.
As she moved inside, Addison stopped long enough to pour a strong cup of black coffee. She hated coffee, but going into her twentieth hour on her feet, she needed something to keep her awake. Odds were good in a few minutes she’d be trying to save the life of some jerk who should have gone home to his wife and family after work.
Some doctors
loved the emergency room and practiced there for their entire career, but Addison knew she’d finish out her contract here in Harmony and head back east somewhere. The problem that had driven her here was over. In four months she’d pick a new town on the map, find a hospital that needed her, and get back on her career track.
TINCH TURNER WAITED IN HIS PICKUP FOR ALL THE OIL field workers to pile out and go into the ER. They’d have a few black eyes, a few stitches, but he knew from experience that none of them were hurt bad enough to be admitted. Tinch just had to break up the fight as fast as he could, and sometimes the easiest way to get trouble’s attention is to hit it between the eyes.
Next week he’d buy the boys a drink and explain to them that if they were in Harmony they needed to behave. Howard Samuels shouldn’t have started calling them oil field trash, but every one of the roughnecks had been flirting with Samuel’s wife. She was barroom beautiful and tended to forget she was married when she drank. Tinch had seen her flirt before, and he couldn’t help but wonder if she wanted Samuel to be jealous or dead.
Closing his eyes, Tinch told himself he should have stayed out of it. Several others in the bar could have stepped in to help Howard. But Tinch had tossed caution out the window about the time he gave up on caring whether he lived or died. Somehow, taking a few blows reminded him that he could still feel.
Not that he wanted to. He wanted to die and lie next to his wife in the cemetery. He just wasn’t able to kill himself. It bothered him that he was just one breath away from her. All he needed to do was not breathe and he’d be with his Lori. Only God had played a trick on them. He’d made Lori fragile and him strong as a bull. She couldn’t make it to her twenty-seventh birthday and, with his bad luck, he’d probably live to be a hundred. Maybe if he kept drinking and fighting, one night someone would get lucky and put him out of his misery.
The blood dripping off his forehead bothered him enough to make him climb out of his pickup and head for the emergency room door. He didn’t much care about the pain, but he hated bleeding all over everything. He’d get a doc to stitch up the cut and then he’d go back to his farm and drink until he washed memories away and finally slept.
Through the blood, he saw Nurse Veasey. She was frowning at him. Hell, he thought, she was always frowning at him. “Evenin’, Georgia,” he said, thinking she had that same look when she first saw him sitting next to her in the second grade more than twenty years ago.
“Shut up, Tinch. I don’t even want to talk to you.” She grabbed his shirt and pulled him toward the first little examining room. “Didn’t I tell you I’d beat you up myself if you came in here after a fight again? I swear if there were two like you in this town we’d have to build another wing onto the hospital.”
Despite a headache the size of a mustang bucking in his brain, Tinch smiled. “You did threaten me last time, Georgia, and the fear of it kept me away for weeks, I swear.”
She slapped him on the arm and he thought of suggesting that might not be protocol for nurses, but Tinch decided to wait until he could see to run before he upset her more. He’d gone to school with her and her two sisters. All three were good girls determined to make the world a better place, or at least improve Harmony. Maryland taught school, Virginia married a preacher, and Georgia became a nurse. They were women on missions. The type Tinch had spent his life avoiding.
“Sit down on the table and keep quiet,” Georgia said as she shoved his chin back and poked around the wound running the length of his forehead. “It doesn’t look all that bad. If you had any brains, they would have dribbled out a long time ago. I’ll send in the doctor.”
“Aren’t you going to give me something for the pain?”
She shook her head. “Judging from your breath, you’ve already had enough.” She tossed him a towel. “Try not to bleed on anything.”
Tinch grinned. “Thanks, darlin’.”
“Don’t you dare darlin’ me, Tinch Turner. You’re a walking one-man demolition derby. Stay here; I’ve got people who care about themselves to take care of.”
She was gone before he could bother her more. Tinch shrugged. He liked the states, as everyone called her and her sisters, but he had a feeling they were passing around a petition to have him banned from town. Maryland had told him the last time she saw him that the way he drove was a bad influence on her high school students, and Virginia had been praying for him for so long, her knees were probably calloused.
Tinch lay back on the examining table, wishing he’d brought the rest of the bottle of whiskey with him. When the door opened, he didn’t even look up. He was just about beyond caring for anything or anyone in his life.
“Mr. Turner, I’m Dr. Spencer,” someone said as she moved close to the table.
Tinch opened one eye, but he couldn’t see much through all the blood.
“Lie still and I’ll take a look at that cut.”
He didn’t move as she cleaned the blood away with a warm towel. “Any chance it’s fatal?” he mumbled.
The all-business voice answered, “Afraid not. You allergic to anything?”
He closed his eyes. “Work. Women. Hospitals.” He felt a shot poke into his arm. “Silence. Snakes. And Wednesdays. I hate Wednesdays. And kids.” He thought of more things he was allergic to, but he couldn’t seem to get the words out.
For a few moments he knew the doctor was still there. He felt her pushing his hair away from his forehead like Lori used to do. He could almost see Lori smiling at him, saying she wanted to see his beautiful blues better. She claimed she could measure his love for her in his eyes and he’d never doubted she could.
Lori’s face faded and he dropped away into blackness.
Titles by Jodi Thomas
THE COMFORTS OF HOME
SOMEWHERE ALONG THE WAY
WELCOME TO HARMONY
REWRITING MONDAY
TWISTED CREEK
TEXAS BLUE
THE LONE TEXAN
TALL, DARK, AND TEXAN
TEXAS PRINCESS
TEXAS RAIN
THE TEXAN’S REWARD
A TEXAN’S LUCK
WHEN A TEXAN GAMBLES
THE TEXAN’S WAGER
TO WED IN TEXAS
TO KISS A TEXAN
THE TENDER TEXAN
PRAIRIE SONG
THE TEXAN AND THE LADY
TO TAME A TEXAN’S HEART
FOREVER IN TEXAS
TEXAS LOVE SONG
TWO TEXAS HEARTS
THE TEXAN’S TOUCH
TWILIGHT IN TEXAS
THE TEXAN’S DREAM
