He tabled the thought. Julia was safe with him and Bronwyn. And he needed to pick up more things at the home improvement store.
Business was light at the big store. Acres of asphalt soaked up every bit of the sun’s heat, making the parking lot into a burning black blanket to be crossed. The cooler weather of yesterday was clearly over. The humidity was rising. Solid-looking white towers of cumulus clouds piled together on the horizon.
In the lighting section, Garth determined that lights activated by motion detectors were the best solution to the dark stairs. He selected two, decided the front and back porch lights should be similarly equipped, and tossed two more into the cart.
When he saw packages of outlet covers, he realized they were just what he needed. Julia wasn’t quite crawling on all fours yet, but her commando-style locomotion took her where she wanted to go.
Next he thought he ought to look at fencing—just to see what was available. It would be nice to be able to send Mildred out to pee on her own.
He moved on to the power tools—having the tool you needed made all the difference. He picked up a cordless drill. It was sort of shame Bronny wouldn’t be staying. He could think of lots of projects he’d need a drill for.
“Well, hello there!” A large man in a work shirt with an air-conditioner manufacturer’s logo and Doug embroidered over the breast pocket rounded a display of circular saws. Garth recognized the volunteer EMT.
Garth returned his greeting. “How are you doing?”
“Great,” Doug answered. “Watcha buyin’?”
“Don’t know yet. Wondering if I need a cordless drill. You got any experience with this brand?”
They discussed the relative merits of drills for a few minutes until Doug said, “You handled yourself pretty good the other night getting that woman and her little boy out of that car.”
“They all right?”
“Yeah, but they wouldn’t have been if you hadn’t gone in after them. She shouldn’t have been going that fast.”
“She would have been smarter to go slower, but she wasn’t going all that fast. Only about forty-five. I was right behind her. People just don’t realize how little water it takes to hydroplane.”
They moved to the checkout. While they waited in the short line, Doug said, “You ought to think about joining the squad. We have a good time when we get together, but the real reason to join is that we look after our neighbors and our families.”
A group of men and women banded together to help people in their community handle emergencies—it sounded like something he’d like to be part of, but Garth shook his head. “I don’t know how long I’ll be here. I’m likely going to be changing jobs.”
“Well, come on by anyway.”
“Uh, listen.” Garth, conscious of his pleasure in having a guy-buddy, said as the line inched forward. “If you wanted to take a girl to a nice place without going into Wilmington, where would you go?”
“What do you want to eat?”
“Not barbecue. Something special.” Every town had a barbecue stand, a hole in the wall from which takeout barbecue was sold. Most also had a sit-down, eat-in barbecue restaurant, decorated in a pig motif, brightly lit, and shouting family atmosphere. “Something with ambience, you know? Romantic. But not just like every other nice restaurant you ever went to. Memorable.”
“How about an oyster bar?”
“An oyster bar?”
“Best oysters you ever had, and it’s an experience. Folks come from all over to go there. From Raleigh, from Virginia—I’ve heard of rich people in New York chartering a plane. My wife loves it. I take her there every year for our anniversary. It’s further away than Wilmington, though.”
“All right. I’ll put that on the list. You wouldn’t happen to know where I can find a good baby-sitter, would you? My girlfriend has a baby.”
“Sure do. My wife runs a day care. Several of her helpers also do sitting.” He pulled a wallet from his hip pocket and took a business card out. “Give her a call. She’ll put you in touch with somebody you can trust.”
The exit doors whooshed open, and they were hit by a blast of steamy air that instantly penetrated their clothes. “Whew!” Doug pantomimed wiping his brow. “Hot already. Course, that’s good news for the air-conditioning man.” The big man grinned. “A few days of this, and folks’ll be calling right and left—and none too happy to learn I can’t be in two places at once.”
“Let me ask you about a problem with an air-conditioner.”
Doug listened to the description of Bronwyn’s unit and said, “You can probably replace some parts and get another year out of it, but you’re not going to fix the real problem, which is, it’s old and inefficient.” He produced another business card, this time from his breast pocket. “Let me come look at it. I’ll quote you a good price.”
“Let me think about it. I’ll give you a call.”
Garth tucked the card into his pocket, doubting if he’d ever use it. The object was to make Bronwyn less comfortable. In his plan to detach Bronwyn from her house, he hadn’t been able to utilize the ghost, but a lack of air-conditioning would make staying in the house equally uncomfortable.
Chapter 29
Bronwyn tipped the bottle of formula to let the last couple of ounces fill the nipple. Julia’s sucking had slowed. A couple of times her long, pale lashes had come down, but when Bronwyn attempted to slip the bottle from her lips, Julia’s eyes had opened again. And so the desultory feeding continued.
Bronwyn took a deep breath and blocked from her mind the thousand chores she needed to return to as soon as Julia finished. If there was one thing Bronwyn had learned since acquiring a baby, it was that there was clock time, and then there was baby time. Baby time won. It took exactly as long to give her a bottle as it took. When they were busy, some parents of children this age put the child in the crib with the bottle propped in a holder. In other situations, Bronwyn might have done that, too, but not with Julia, not now.
Julia had been a little fussy all morning, but not like yesterday, when she’d cried unless she was being carried or rocked. Today Julia seemed fragile, easily overset by life’s vicissitudes—which for a baby were a toy out of reach, a bottle slow to come, the need of a fresh diaper.
Bronwyn blinked away the soggy, yearning guilt that threatened to submerge her. What was really wrong, she suspected, was that she wasn’t doing a good enough job. She didn’t always anticipate Julia’s needs. She wasn’t skillful with diapers or meals. She didn’t know the right songs to sing or the form of stroking that soothed.
Julia could tell Bronwyn was not her mother.
Julia had been ripped from the comfort of every familiar smell, sound, and sensation. She wouldn’t understand if Bronwyn used words to promise security, and so Bronwyn held the baby while she took her bottle. Just so that Julia would know that incomprehensible to a baby as her life had become, she was not alone.
The silicone nipple slipped from Julia’s lips. With a corner of the baby’s bib, Bronwyn carefully blotted the milky smear in the corner of her mouth. Then she noted the amount of formula Julia had taken on her chart.
After she had laid the sleeping infant in her crib, Bronwyn drew the pink blanket over her and set the little cloth doll near her head. Whether Julia recognized them as the bits she had retained of her old life, Bronwyn couldn’t tell. She hoped they helped.
She raised the crib’s side and stood, her forearms resting on it, watching Julia sleep for several minutes. Julia wasn’t hers. Bronwyn wiped at the trickle of wetness on her cheeks and swallowed the fist-sized lump in her throat. Not even the shadow of the temptation to dream of keeping Julia could be allowed to cross the threshold of her consciousness. But as inadequate and unskilled as she repeatedly felt, sometime in the past twenty-four hours she had fallen completely in love with this child.
***
&n
bsp; Mary Cole Sessoms was on the phone. “Glad I caught you.” Mary Cole had a much more Southern-sounding accent than JJ did, but she was no less commanding. “A friend just called me, and I told her to call you.”
Bronwyn’s heart skipped a beat. The house… my God, the house would have to improve to earn a grade of D-minus. With JJ’s and David’s help yesterday, they’d gotten it dusted and swept, the bathroom cleaned and disinfected, but that wasn’t even a start on what the house needed to be livable, much less presentable.
And there was a puddle on the hall floor, again.
Bronwyn dashed to the dirty-clothes basket in the kitchen for a towel to mop it up with. “I’m not ready to see patients.”
“I told her that. She’s a contractor, very exclusive, very top-of-the-line work.”
On her hands and knees, Bronwyn swabbed the dull oak boards that retained only a trace of their finish. “Oh, no! Then she really can’t see the place the way it looks.”
“She’s exactly the kind of influential person you want on board with you. She’s not only a successful businesswoman, she sits on committees of several statewide nonprofit organizations.”
“I’m sure she’s a lovely person, but—” At a loss for words, Bronwyn stopped speaking. If Mary Cole, consummate businesswoman, didn’t see that Bronwyn had nothing resembling an office, Bronwyn couldn’t think of what to tell her.
“Bronwyn. This is not the moment to go all shy and self-effacing. The woman I’m talking about could pick up the phone and talk to anybody in this state—and she wants to talk to you.”
“Because you told her to.”
“I suggested it,” Mary Cole acknowledged with wounded dignity. “One person tells another. That’s the way it works.”
“All right. But my first impression won’t be very impressive.” Bronwyn was afraid she sounded as petulant as Julia. “The air-conditioner barely functions.”
“Oh, don’t worry about a thing.” Mary Cole was suddenly all breezy cheer. She knew she had won. The woman was a magnolia-scented steamroller! “Trust me on this. She’s going to love you.”
***
Seconds after the call ended, the cell phone buzzed again. A woman named Carole Blankenship introduced herself. “Mary Cole Sessoms suggested I talk to you.”
“Mary Cole is one of my biggest boosters, but I’m afraid she may have misrepresented me. I’m not seeing patients. My office isn’t open yet.”
“She said you might say that.” Carole dismissed the objection. “But she also said you’re the one she would talk to if she were in my position. Mary Cole swears she’ll never let another doctor tell her not to worry when she is worried. I know you’re not seeing patients.”
Bronwyn looked around the kitchen. She tried to see all that had been done, instead of all there was to do. Four adults working together had been able to accomplish a lot. The rooms had been dusted, the boxes unpacked and stored away, the floors swept, the downstairs windows washed, and several layers of grime removed from the kitchen. Still, while habitable, the house was a long way from impressive. “Um—”
“I’m in my car on the way back from Durham. I can be there in twenty minutes.”
“You don’t understand. My furniture hasn’t come. I not only don’t have an office, I don’t even have a living room. Plus, I’m—um—baby-sitting the daughter of a friend. She’s down for a nap, but she might wake up.”
“Oh, I love babies. Don’t worry. Mary Cole told me you’re planning extensive remodeling, which the house is in desperate need of. My business is renovating and repurposing old structures. I understand a work in progress. I’ve seen houses in every state of debilitation and rehabilitation there is, and I’ve done many a consultation sitting on the porch steps.”
Bronwyn had just had time to change into brown slacks and a tailored, pale peach cotton blouse when she heard a car in the drive. She slipped her narrow feet into plastic jewel-studded turquoise sandals.
At the door she met a woman in her middle years and completely comfortable with it. Her wavy black hair had been allowed to gray. Dramatic silver wings framed sparkling, cobalt blue eyes. Only a little taller than Bronwyn, the woman’s round figure was perfectly complemented by a simple black cotton dress and lipstick-red patent spike heels.
“Thank you for seeing me.” She held out her hand. “I’m worried to death and I had to talk to someone, but I promise I won’t take up a lot of your time. My husband, Spud, had a lump in his groin.”
Spud? This elegant woman with the same cultured Southern accent as Mary Cole had a husband named Spud? Bronwyn hoped she kept her expression neutral. She might not have succeeded because Carole went on, “Well, his name is Thaddeus, but his daddy was Thad, and everybody has always called him Spud.”
“Let’s go out on the side porch,” Bronwyn told her. “The breeze is nice, and I’m afraid my air-conditioner is on its last legs. I’ve carried some kitchen chairs out there—we won’t have to sit on the steps.”
When they were seated, and after a quick glance at the laptop showed Julia sleeping soundly, Bronwyn asked, “What does your husband do?”
“He’s a farmer. He has three farms and rents three more. Over five thousand acres. The doctors at Lords wanted to know that, too. Spud says he’s probably been exposed to every pesticide, every weed-killer, and every defoliant there is. He’s walked in fields that have been sprayed and come out with his pants saturated, wet from the waist down.”
Nobody thought of farmers, famous for their conservatism, as daredevils, but farming was one of the most hazardous ways to make a living. Farmers had to work around cows, horses, and pigs big enough to crush a man, and operate monster-sized machinery. But even if they didn’t raise animals or crops that needed mechanical harvesting, the danger that really couldn’t be avoided, only minimized, was exposure to a huge array of dangerous chemicals.
“The lump was in his groin area, you say? Did you see it before it was removed? What did it look like?”
“The skin was red over it, and you could feel it just under the skin. He hates doctors, and it was the size of a walnut before I could get him to have it checked out. They did a biopsy and said it was cancer, so we went to Lords and had it removed.”
Bronwyn nodded for her to continue.
“The doctors came in to talk to us today. Here.” She handed over a piece of paper. “This is the official diagnosis. Now they want to do aggressive radiation. They want to radiate from his neck down—his entire torso.”
“That’s a lot of radiation.” Bronwyn said mildly, hiding her shock.
“Spud says he’s not going to do it. He says if the cancer is going to kill him, so be it, because the radiation will kill him, too.”
Carole swallowed hard. Her eyes filled, but she didn’t let tears fall. She took a deep breath and sat a little straighter. “If his time is up, I will face it. But I’m not going to let him die of something he could be treated for—just because he hates doctors. If I have to, I will make him take the treatment.” She reached for Bronwyn’s hand. “But here’s my problem. What they’re saying doesn’t make sense to me.”
It didn’t make sense to Bronwyn, either. That much radiation, particularly of the abdomen, would make Spud terribly sick. “What did they tell you?”
Gradually, with many digressions, Carole’s primary concern emerged. “When I tried to get them to explain it, they said the problem is that they are sure the tumor they removed is a metastasis, spread from somewhere else. But they don’t know where the primary site is. They can’t find it.”
“That’s not that uncommon. About forty percent of the time, the primary site can’t be established.”
“But they don’t know where any other metastases are. They x-rayed, they scanned, they biopsied. This is the only tumor they know of. And they can’t really tell what organs the tumor may have started from. It’s cancer, b
ut they don’t know what it is.” Carole looked into the distance. “I just don’t know what to do. They say radiation is his only chance. If we wait, the cancer will spread and then it will be too late.”
“But you don’t sound convinced. Have you asked for a second opinion?”
“When I asked whether we needed a second opinion, the doctor said we could go anywhere we want to but they’ll just tell us the same thing.” Carole’s eyes filled with tears again. “Spud’s a strong man, Bronwyn. A vigorous man. He farms over five thousand acres and has men working for him, but he’s not sitting in an office in a suit. He’s out there in the fields with them working every day. It’s his joy.”
Carole was beginning to repeat herself, a sign that her concern hadn’t really been addressed. “What would make you feel better?” Bronwyn asked.
“Me? I’m not worried about me.”
“I know. Your husband is the patient. But you’re the one here. You’re the person I can help right now. You say you’re worried, and I’d say with good reason. What would reassure you?”
Carole was silent for a long moment. She played with her wedding ring. The anxiety in her cobalt eyes changed to decisiveness. “If I just knew. They say radiation is his only chance, but they don’t seem to have a target—that’s why they want to radiate such a wide area. But Spud says it will kill him.”
“So you don’t feel sure of the diagnosis. What happened when you mentioned a second opinion?”
“Oh, the doctor got angry. You should have heard him—all huffy and arrogant. He told me that by even talking about any delay in starting treatment, I was risking my husband’s life. What do you think? What should I do?”
“If you want a second opinion, you should have one. The doctors at Lords might be right that radiation is his best chance, but having faith in a treatment is also important. It sounds to me like you’re not sure about the treatment because you don’t think they have enough information on which to base a treatment plan.”
“That’s right! That’s it! I tried to explain that we’re not trying to deny that Spud has cancer, and we’re not looking for the magic bullet that will guarantee a cure. If Spud has a terminal illness, we will deal with it. But every time I tried to question the doctor’s reasoning, he just got huffier and more condescending, and I felt foolish—like I was too stupid to understand.”
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