"Hello gentlemen. Pastor Ruel, I am just passing by. I have to cancel our meeting today."
"Oh." Ruel was disappointed. There was his excuse not to go and see Regina, out of the window.
"Well then, that frees you up to come with me," Nolan grinned. "It's like the Lord is working on the timing on this case."
Ruel groaned inwardly.
"Well then, I guess it is a good thing I stopped by then," Norma said. "Where are you going?"
"To visit Regina Tharwick." Ruel looked at her and raised his eyebrow.
Norma's hands tightened on the door. "Really. Why are you visiting her?"
"She's ailing from food allergies," Nolan said, "so we are going to pray for her..."
"Food allergies?" Norma was trying to be casual but even Nolan picked up on her tension. "What sort of food allergies?"
"She doesn't know." Nolan looked between Norma and Ruel. "It's curious how you two reacted when I mentioned her."
Ruel got up. "Well, she is an, er, visitor. We don't want her to be sick on our watch."
"Yes." Nolan nodded, still looking doubtful. "Right."
"Well," Norma forced a smile on her face, "maybe you should encourage her to visit a hospital, far away from here."
Ruel nodded. "Hear that, Pastor Nolan? Isn't that an excellent suggestion?"
"Well, yes." Nolan looked confused. "Couldn't she just check Nurse Allen at the clinic?"
"No," Norma said eagerly, "it's obvious that this is not the place to be for her to remain healthy. Gently nudge her to a better environment—after you pray for her, of course."
"Of course." Nolan got up too but he was wondering why Norma Kincaid and pastor Ruel suddenly looked so happy after he mentioned that Regina Tharwick was sick. Especially Pastor Ruel, who had walked in this morning like a cloud was hanging over his head.
*****
"She's swollen and blotchy and doesn't look like herself." Regina heard Lyn itemizing her symptoms one by one to some visitor on the veranda. "I told her that I had my daughter prayed for and she was healed but she is not into that sort of thing but I can't sit back and watch her decline right before my face."
"Yes, you can and you will," Regina garbled. Her tongue was slightly swollen too, a recent development, and her words were not as clear at it should be.
She pulled herself up on the sofa, her fingers were normal this morning but now they were almost twice their regular size. She had gotten worse over the past three days. She had stopped eating all processed foods in an attempt to mitigate this abnormal reaction of hers but it had only gotten worse.
She widened her eyes as far as her swollen lids would go when she saw Ruel Dennison and the young pastor step into the house behind Lyn, who was wringing her hands as hard as she could.
"I don't want him here." Regina pointed at Ruel. Her stupid voice was weak and didn't have the sort of conviction that it should. "He killed his wife. Don't let him kill me too."
Lyn sighed. "Apparently she is hallucinating too. Sorry, Pastor Nolan. She doesn't realize that you don't have a wife."
Ruel stiffened when he heard Regina and he stared at her, willing her to shut up.
"Not the young one." Regina's tongue was heavy and it sounded like she said natheyounun.
Lyn looked at her in pity.
"Ruel the cruel." Regina tried again to put her point across.
Lyn sighed, "Regina just accept the prayers and get some relief."
"No prayers from murderers," Regina said, inhaling breathily. "No prayers from him."
Nolan moved closer to Ruel. "Sis Ashley is fine, isn't she?"
"Of course," Ruel murmured back. "When I left home she was very much alive. Regina looks terrible. She is swelling up right before our very eyes. We have to get her to the clinic."
Lyn overheard them and looked back. "You are right, pastor. Let me grab my bag."
She headed for the closet in the hallway.
"I'll call Honey," Ruel said, "and tell her what's happening."
"Everybody up here has secrets," Regina said. Her eyes were now swollen in a slit. "I remember where I heard the name Nolan Ramsey from."
"Shush Regina." Lyn got her bag and helped her from the settee. Nolan moved to her left to help her up.
"You. Nolan Ramsey. Shot your brother when you were younger. You were playing with your father's gun. Did he die?"
Nolan put her hands around his shoulders and sighed. "My father never owned a gun. I don't have any brothers."
"Yes, you do." Regina's voice was slurring even worse than before. "You are just like the rest of them up here. You're a liar. Norma Kincaid liar. Owen Kincaid liar. Ruel Dennison liar. Honey Allen liar."
They put her half-slumping body in the back of Ruel's car and Nolan and Lyn got in, propping her up between them.
"Okay." Ruel started the car and chuckled. "If I didn't see how swollen she is and the red rashes I'd say she was drunk."
Lyn nodded. "Maybe she is. She has these little bottles of vodka lined up in her room. They are all empty."
"It eases the pain," Regina slurred. "Ruel stole my Ash from me."
Nolan sighed. "I hope the clinic can also help her to come to her senses."
"You know, she is right about your name," Lyn said after a short silence. "There was a little boy that shot his brother named Ramsey, I can't remember if his first name was Nolan. It was all over the news a couple years ago. The father was a police inspector or something like that."
"Wasn't me," Nolan said. "As I said, no brothers or sisters and I never lived with either of my parents. I lived with my grandmother for most of my life until college."
"Oh." Lyn sighed. "Well then..."
"She jumps to conclusions a lot, doesn't she?" Nolan asked grimly. "She assumes that there is a conspiracy everywhere."
"I don't know," Lyn murmured.
"She just called Pastor Ruel a murderer," Nolan sputtered. "And all the other persons on our church board—she called them liars. Sick or not, that is unacceptable."
"He is a murderer and they are all liars," Regina muttered. "I have the proof."
She then slumped down, struggling to breathe.
Ruel sighed. "Ashley is quite fine. You will see her in church tomorrow, hale and hearty. I am no murderer."
Regina roused herself from her crouched slumber to murmur, "Liar. All of them liars!"
*****
It was a slower than usual morning at the clinic for Honey. It was usually so at this time of the year when school was out and most of the small population of Primrose Hill citizens were gone on vacation elsewhere.
When she got the call from Ruel she was more than ready to receive Regina. The clinic boasted a complement of three nurses, with her included, and a few doctors who were rostered for one day per week. They always had a doctor in-house from nine in the morning to four in the evening. Today it was Dr. Ying. She was the doctor in residence.
She told Honey to knock on her door when the patient arrived.
Honey had no problem with that. She felt nervy this morning, though. She was almost twitching with it. She went to her office and glanced at her cell phone periodically, picking it up and putting it down.
Conroy had told her last night after the Bible study had finished that she needed to give him an answer today re his proposal or he would not be asking again. He had been proposing on and off for the past seven years, since they had both moved back to Primrose Hill. He wanted her to find her husband and get a divorce, so that she could move on with her life. Easier said than done.
She picked up the phone and then put it down.
"Lord, I am in trouble," she mumbled to herself feverishly. "I am in deep trouble. Deep, deep trouble. I should marry Conroy, it’s long overdue, but that means I would have to come clean to both him and Oliver."
She pictured Oliver if she ever told him the truth and her heart quaked. He was the most precious person in the world to her. If she lost him, her life wouldn't be worth living. Everything
up to now was done for her darling son.
These past few days, though, he was acting strange. Really strange. She stopped thinking about her dilemma and thought about him. He was mumbling when he spoke to her and acting surly and unhappy. Very unlike the Oliver of the week before and if she wasn't so caught up in her drama with Conroy Coke she would have realized sooner that her son was not the same.
He started working with Conroy today and he had left the house without even telling her goodbye. She needed to focus on him before she thought about marriages or confessions or any of that stuff.
"Nurse Allen." One of the nursing assistants popped her head through the office door. "The patient is here. Her face looks almost purple and her tongue is swollen."
Honey pulled on her efficient nurse persona and went to greet them at the clinic door. She indicated for them to come to the outpatient office and then she got Dr. Ying.
"Inflated tongue," Dr. Ying said, looking into Regina's mouth. "Food allergies, you said?"
Regina nodded. Her eyes were swollen shut and her nose was puffy and distended. She was breathing shallowly.
Honey looked at her from across the room. She looked totally different from the woman who had walked by her house almost a week ago. Then she had looked almost attractive, with her low-cut spiky hair and her light brown skin.
Despite the hideous tattoos decorating her body she didn't look too bad. Today, though, she was an inflated version of herself. Her face looked like a swollen frog.
The doctor gave her an injection and told her rest.
"Call me when the swelling is down," Dr. Ying said, heading back to her office. "Her breathing has to be monitored."
Honey nodded and sat down across from Regina.
She glanced at her watch. She should take the rest of the day off after Regina was stabilized and call Conroy over and tell him everything.
Get it over and done with. They had been dancing around each other for years now. It was time she stopped dancing. He wouldn't be around forever.
But if she told him she would have to tell her son. And when she told her son, he'd lose respect for her.
She would lose all sense of moral authority when people found out. They'd know she was a liar. Everybody would know. And they would mock her for it. She couldn't hold her head up high again, at church, or at home, or around Oliver.
Thirty minutes passed and Honey attended to two patients, helping them with their paperwork. She spoke to Pastor Ruel and Nolan and Lyn Skinner, assuring them that Regina would be fine. When she went back into the room Regina was sitting up in the bed. Her swelling had gone down significantly but vestiges of the rash were still in evidence.
"This place is killing me." Regina's voice was low.
"Welcome back to the land of the living," Honey said brightly, stepping into the room.
Regina snorted. "You!"
"Yes me, the lady whose flowers you like down the hill."
Regina groaned. "Oliver's mother. He is a nice boy. Pity he has you for a mother."
"What?" Honey froze mid-step. She was advancing toward Regina and was completely unprepared for that charge.
"You don't know who his father is, do you?"
Honey opened her mouth and then closed it. The question slammed into her like a jab. "Pardon me?"
"Surely that is God's duty, not mine." Regina hopped from the bed and wriggled her fingers. "Almost back to normal. I am not sure that I should stay up here anymore. Y'all are toxic."
"The doctor said I should call when you are awake," Honey stammered.
"No thanks." Regina yawned and stretched. "I am going back to Kingston. I will get a doctor who is unbiased and not a part of your little soap opera up here. How much do I owe you for the injection?"
"Well, this is a free clinic," Honey said, "but you should stay and hear what the doctor has to say."
"Nah." Regina pulled on her slippers. "Word of advice for you, nurse. You should tell your son the truth about his parentage. He's a nice boy."
"I don't know what on earth you are talking about." Honey could barely get her mouth to form the words, and the righteous indignation she was hoping for fell flat.
Regina rubbed her eyes and swayed a little. "Stop lying. If it makes you feel better, you are not the only liar at your church. Your pastor is a liar, Norma Kincaid is a liar and who knows who else."
She stumped out of the room, leaving Honey to stare at the swinging door.
Chapter Ten
"And then she came into the clinic, her face looking like meat that has been battered, and as soon as she got better she got out…said she didn't trust us up here, the place was toxic and that she was going back home. All I have to say is good riddance."
Oliver listened as his mother held center court around her captive audience. She came by to take him shopping for school supplies in the afternoon but she was stuck in the front office recounting the same story for everyone who would listen.
Today, it was Owen Kincaid. He was waiting in the front office to take Jorja to piano classes in the town after work. Everybody thought it was a brilliant idea, but Oliver wasn't too sure about that.
There was something about Jorja and how flirty she was to the men around her that made him uncomfortable.
He had told her not to try it with him, but then she had turned her attention to Josiah and Uncle Conroy and any man who had come through the front door of the office. He didn't know if anybody else was registering how inappropriate it was for her to be so friendly and touchy with men, but for the past four weeks since she started working at Rose Hill farms she was the opposite of appropriate.
She rarely spoke to him anymore.
He watched as she walked past the office Josiah had assigned him and into Conroy's. As usual she was in one of her tight white t-shirts that outlined her full, high breasts pretty well and tight blue jeans. It seemed as if she deliberately stuck out her pert butt to emphasize its proportions.
She had a new vampish walk that she adapted when she passed the office where he was stuck filing for the past couple of weeks. Josiah might be a genius at accounting but he sucked at secretarial work. He needed a secretary.
Jorja passed the office and flipped her braids over her shoulder, giving him one of her red-lipped pouts.
"Hey Oliver."
"Hey Jorja." He looked back down at the files in his hand and pretended that he hadn't been watching out for her.
He reminded himself that there were only two weeks left and Charlotte would come back. Nice, solid old Charlotte, who reminded him of his mother's grand-aunt Myrtle.
He had tried to talk to Josiah about Jorja and her over-sexualized appearance and actions but Josiah had misinterpreted his concern as him having some form of crush on her and being afraid to talk to her.
Ridiculous.
It was ridiculous. He wasn't afraid to talk to her, nor was he jealous. He didn't even like Jorja. At least he wasn't sure.
But how did one explain his sudden fascination with all that she did? So far this week he had caught her in Uncle Conroy's office, her hand resting on his shoulder as they looked over a purchase order together.
Somehow the pose hadn't looked innocent to him and he had been filled with a kind of uneasiness that hadn't left him for the whole day, especially when Conroy had looked up at her, a softening in his eyes. It looked too intimate. Too wrong somehow.
And last week when Uncle Owen had come to pick her up he could have sworn that when he opened the door for her to precede him his hand had rested too close to her butt instead of her mid-back.
He was suspicious of every man she came into contact with, including his honorary uncles, who were pillars among the faithful Christian men.
He didn't like feeling this way, suspicious and distrustful of them, and he had Regina to thank for that.
Since the day that she had blurted out that everybody in the place had secrets, he had been hyperaware of everyone, including his own mother.
Regina chang
ed him. She had torn off his rose-colored glasses and showed him that the world was not all innocent and hunky-dory; that was when he started watching Jorja.
He heard his mother's shoes clicking on the floor as she walked toward his office. She waved to him, a smile on her face.
"Hey you. What's going on? Ready for our afternoon date?"
"Yes." He nodded to her. "Let me just finish up here."
"I am going to say hi to Conroy." Her smile dimmed a bit. She and Conroy must have had some kind of fight or something because they were not on very friendly terms anymore.
It was nothing overt, just a hint of frost between them. Conroy didn’t come around for breakfast anymore and when they had lunch at the Kincaids’ after church these days he was conspicuously absent.
He had tried to ask his mother about his father on about five occasions since Regina had planted doubts in his head but every time he did, his mother managed to change the subject.
And she didn't even do it well. He had allowed her to do it because he had a sense of panic that he wasn't going to like what he heard. But this evening he had made up his mind that she would tell him something on their drive to May Pen. They would have to talk; she would have no escape.
****
They drove out after Owen Kincaid and Jorja. His mother's old Camry sputtered before it started.
And she cursed under her breath.
"I heard you." Oliver grinned at her. "You swore. Whatever will your Christian friends say, Sister Honey?"
"They would say I understand wholeheartedly, Honey, that your car would make a Christian curse. This car is acting up again." Honey sighed. She finally got it to start after several tries. "Maybe I should just take it to the garage when we get to May Pen and let George have a look at it."
"I don't think George knows much about what he is doing," Oliver muttered. "I can have a look at it."
"Nope." Honey smiled at him lovingly. "Those hands are doctor’s hands. Designed to save the world. You will need them when you go to Africa for your mission trip.
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