The doctor bowed his head, murmuring, “Ladies, I’m so sorry. Our acquaintance has been short. She’s my patient. I never dreamed she’d be so difficult. I just didn’t know what else to do with her.”
They all started talking at once.
“No, no.”
“It’s all right.”
“You always do what’s best, dear boy.”
“It’ll be fine. You’ll see. God has a purpose.”
“It’s just that she hit her head while I was in the grocery store and while I was stitching her up her van was repossessed, and she’s so broke that she hasn’t even been eating.” He shook his head. “She won’t stay in the hospital. She wouldn’t even tell me her name. I had to find out from the police.”
“Are you done?” Eva demanded indignantly.
“I am,” Leland retorted, shooting to his feet. “I absolutely am.” Bending, he placed his teacup and saucer on the large ornate silver tray and straightened. “Hypatia, Magnolia, Odelia, Kent, my apologies, but I’m leaving now.”
Hypatia came to her feet. She might have reached Eva’s shoulder, but her dignity stood very tall indeed, regally so. “I’ll walk you out.”
Odelia and Kent looked at each other and hauled themselves up.
“We’ll just make sure Hilda is aware we’ll be adding another place for meals,” Kent said.
“The, um, bed-sit should be ready,” Odelia said to her sister.
Magnolia smiled a slow, challenging smile. “I’ll show up our guest.”
The Monroes beat a hasty, if colorful, retreat.
Eva smiled at her remaining hostess, quipping, “I wasn’t entirely sure I’d be staying.”
Magnolia rose, still smiling, and said, “Oh, you’re perfectly welcome. Unless you hurt our beloved Brooks. If that happens, I’ll put you out myself.” With that, she turned and walked across the room.
After a moment, Eva rose and followed.
“I won’t even ask,” Morgan said, handing Brooks a steaming mug of something hot, “because you wouldn’t tell me anyway.”
“Medical emergencies,” Brooks murmured, sniffing the mug suspiciously, “cannot be discussed.”
“My point exactly,” said Morgan, saluting Brooks with his own drink before sipping delicately.
“What is it this time?” Morgan asked, unable to identify the dark liquid in his mug.
“Cranberry punch. I like it.”
“You liked the birch bark tea.”
Morgan liked anything his lovely, feverishly domestic wife invented.
“Bri loves the stuff,” Morgan said in his own defense.
Morgan’s thirteen-month-old daughter Brigitte, named for Brooks’s late wife, had a cast-iron stomach, a hearty constitution and a wonderfully cheerful disposition. Brooks adored her, and would have even if Morgan and Lyla hadn’t named her after his Brigitte. He sipped the cranberry punch and found it palatable.
Bri came into the wood-paneled room perched on her mother’s slim hip. After her cancer, Lyla Simone had barely had enough hair to cover her head, but now her light reddish brown hair had grown to chin length, sleekly framing her oval face with its big, gray eyes. Nearly two decades his wife’s senior, Morgan’s nut-brown hair showed specks of silver, and he had the distinctive cinnamon brown Chatam eyes, as well as the Chatam cleft chin. Bri’s thin, pale blond hair and bright blue eyes contrasted with the coloring of both of her parents, but then Bri was adopted, the biological child of a teenager whom Lyla had rescued from an abusive relationship.
The thought struck Brooks that Bri looked more like Eva Belle Russell than Morgan and Lyla. Just the thought of his difficult patient irritated him.
“I’m sorry I missed dinner,” he told Lyla, pushing away thoughts of Eva.
Chuckling, Lyla bent and placed a plate on the coffee table between the comfy leather sofa where he sat and the overstuffed armchair where her husband lounged. “No worries. Bri and I went ahead and ate. Now you and Morgan can enjoy yourselves.” She handed Bri to her father, and left the library.
“God bless that woman,” Brooks said with heartfelt gratitude, helping himself to a thick ham and cheese sandwich.
“Your mommy is a wonder,” Morgan told his daughter in a silly voice. “Uncle Brooks is a jealous man.”
“Green with envy,” Brooks admitted, biting into the sandwich. The time had been when it was the other way around, but Brooks was happy to see his friend happy now, and he loved Lyla and Bri for being the agents of that happiness. He prayed that Morgan’s happiness would last many, many years longer than his own had.
Lyla returned to take up her daughter again and cart her off to bed. Bri roused but didn’t protest, a child so well loved that she felt no reason to fear. This, too, made Brooks smile. As soon as mother and daughter left the room, however, he frowned, knowing that he had to speak of a subject he’d rather not broach.
“I have imposed upon your aunts again.”
Morgan sat up straight in his chair and leaned forward. “Oh? How so? Another celebrity patient?”
The last “celebrity patient” had been the goalie for a professional Fort Worth hockey team injured in an accident and needing to recuperate away from the limelight. He was now Morgan’s brother-in-law.
“Just the opposite, I’m afraid,” Brooks admitted. “This one is something of an itinerant, too broke to eat, let alone provide shelter for herself until she’s healed, so...”
“So it’s the aunties to the rescue once again.”
“What would we do without them?” Brooks asked.
“I shudder to think.”
“Just thought I should let you know,” Brooks said, realizing the time had come to go. Lyla would be waiting for her husband to join her.
He got up from the sofa and reached for his overcoat. Morgan didn’t try to stop him. He rose, too, and walked around the coffee table, sliding his hands into the pockets of his slacks.
“What’s her name?” he asked. “This itinerant patient of yours.”
“Eva Belle Russell.”
They walked together out of the library and across the terra cotta tile floor of the expansive living room of Morgan’s graceful 1928 house.
“Older lady?” he mused. “Eva Belle.”
“Not particularly,” Brooks hedged.
“No? How old is she then?” Morgan wanted to know.
Brooks shrugged into his coat. “Oh, mid-thirties.”
“Really?” Morgan tilted his head. “What does she look like?”
Brooks fiddled with his collar. “Tall, thin.”
They reached the small foyer and went down the two steps to the arched front door.
“Blonde, brunette, redhead?” Morgan ventured dryly.
Brooks sighed. “She has blond hair.”
“Long? Short?”
“Long.”
“Blue eyes?”