“People change,” she said. Thinking about it now, it did seem very peculiar.
“If you say so,” he mumbled, looking just a little embarrassed.
Ned had been a good neighbor in the two years she’d been here. But his sister was in a whole other league when it came to minding other people’s business. If she were a betting woman, she’d bet that Lisa had pressed Ned to ask questions about her relationship with Bill Cassidy.
Ned headed off along the road, disappearing into his house a few minutes later. Peggy breathed a sigh of relief. She shouldn’t have gotten angry with Ned. Although he was nosy, he had been helpful and kind to her over the years. When she moved in, he’d helped her fix the fencing, clean out the stalls. When she told him she’d pay him, he refused, saying that he was happy to have someone living on the road.
This was the first time he’d behaved so strangely. Maybe he was genuinely concerned about her reputation. She went into the house and turned on the TV for company as she organized her dinner before heading out to feed the horses. She loved the routine of her day, especially looking after her horses. Sherri Brandon, one of Peggy’s other friends at work, had stopped her today to ask about giving her stepdaughter, Morgan Brandon, riding lessons. She was looking forward to the opportunity, wondering at the same time what day of the week she should offer Sherri.
She had a volleyball game this evening and was looking forward to it. She loved the game, something she had shared with her mother, Ellen. When she was a teenager, she and her mother used to practice around a net her father had put up in the backyard of the Craftsman house they lived in during her father’s time in Canada. Her favorite place of all the places they’d lived.
When she got to the gym, everyone was there, ready to play. The game was fast and exciting, during which she scored four times, a record for her. Coach Cassidy had been generous with his praise, reminding her of Ned’s inappropriate comments.
She was determined not to let Ned and his dreadful sister influence how she behaved around the coach and agreed to join the team for a drink to celebrate the win. She showered and dressed, ready for a fun evening.
She hadn’t thought of the sore spot on her right breast since she’d been out on the court, and she didn’t plan to think about it now. Tomorrow would be time enough. She had a routine physical in the morning, and she’d talk to Dr. Brandon about it then. She’d looked on the internet, and what she had near her underarm didn’t look like any of the pictures she saw, some of them really awful.
Once at the pub, they pulled a couple of tables together.
“That was a great game,” Tina Sullivan, a nurse from the hospital, said as she settled in next to Peggy.
“It was. And we have our coach to thank for most of it,” Peggy said, feeling generous toward the man who had been pretty tough on all of them these past months. “To you,” she said, holding up her beer to the man sitting across the table from her.
“Hey! This isn’t about me. It’s about you ladies. You deserved to win tonight.” He raised his beer and clicked her bottle. “To all of you.” But he seemed to be saying the words to her. Or was it her imagination? Had Ned’s insinuations changed how she saw her coach? She hoped not. She’d learned more about playing volleyball since joining this team a year ago than she’d ever learned during all her high school years.
She sipped her beer, acutely aware that Coach Cassidy was watching her. Did any of her teammates notice? Or had this extra attention always been there, and she was the last to see it? She’d always played as hard as any of her team members because of his good coaching and because she loved the game. And of course, the coach had spent hours encouraging, teaching and sometimes cajoling them to try harder, to do better. It was only natural that he’d be paying attention to each of them.
Yet she couldn’t completely block out Ned’s words, and it made her feel sad and angry at the same time. She didn’t know much about Bill Cassidy aside from the fact that he was the coach at the high school and the kids he coached all seemed to like him. The only negative thing she’d ever heard about him was from Gayle. It seemed that her son, Adam, hadn’t made the basketball team, and Gayle believed he should have. Gayle was very proud of her son and believed in him. It only made sense that she would want Adam to succeed in whatever he did. Lots of kids don’t make teams, so it was hardly a negative where the coach was concerned.
One thing was certain: neither she nor Coach Cassidy deserved to be gossiped about in the way Lisa Sherwood had done to her brother. She glanced across the table to see Lisa staring at her. She gave the woman a determined smile. It wasn’t fair to her or Bill Cassidy, this feeling that somehow there was something going on between them.
Yet each time she looked in the coach’s direction, he was glancing her way. She was beginning to feel vaguely creeped out. Whatever was going on, she didn’t need any more trouble. Disheartened, she decided to leave when her beer was finished. As she got up, so did Coach Cassidy, and he followed her toward the door.
“I need to talk to you when you have a minute,” he said, over the din of the bar.
“Can it wait?” she asked without stopping. When he didn’t answer, she turned around to face him.
He rubbed his face, looked her up and down. “Something... I need to discuss something with you,” he said, his voice low and anxious.
What could be so wrong that he would suddenly get upset about? Coach Cassidy was always cool and in control. Whatever it was, she couldn’t handle it right now. Not until she knew what the funny mark on her breast was. “I’m sorry, but I have to go.”
“See you next Wednesday,” he called to her as she strode purposefully toward the door leading to the parking lot.
She didn’t know if she’d be at the practice next week or not. She didn’t need anyone talking the way Ned had earlier. She didn’t need any more stuff to worry about. She had enough on her mind.
DR. BRANDON FOCUSED on her right breast, the spot Peggy described. He did a physical exam, probing the area. It didn’t hurt anymore, which was a huge relief. Maybe the spot had hurt because she’d been wearing a new push-up bra. She was really embarrassed that she had to show him her breast. Yeah, she knew it was a physical exam that was very important, and Dr. Brandon was very professional, yet she still felt kind of strange...
“When did you last have a mammogram?”
She glanced quickly at him. “I can’t remember.”
He went to the computer and tapped a few keys. “Not since you moved here, correct?”
She tried to match his professional tone, afraid that he would say something to her about not having the test done all these years. “Correct.”
She’d thought the spot on the right side of her breast was a pimple. In fact, she had been certain. Did he think she had something else?
“I want you to go this afternoon to the X-ray department and have a mammogram done. I’ll be in touch with you as soon as I see the results of the test.”
“I don’t understand. It’s just a pimple, isn’t it?”
“Probably, but let’s be sure.”
She didn’t hear another word he said after that. He did her pap test and finished the rest of the physical examination. All the while she had only one thought on her mind. Her mother had had breast cancer years ago. As her daughter, she’d been advised to have regular mammograms but had ignored the advice. Had it been in defiance of her mother’s harping about it? Or had it simply been that she didn’t believe it could happen to her?
When the doctor finished the exam, he left her with a requisition for a mammogram and one for routine blood