The Doctor's Perfect Match. Arlene James

do that?” Hypatia asked, sounding tired. She tugged the collar of her navy blue silk robe closer about her throat. Magnolia noted idly that its white piping looked very like her skin, which seemed unusually pale tonight.

      “Leave Eva to me,” Magnolia said, waving a hand. “Are you cold, sister?”

      “This winter has seemed interminable,” Hypatia complained. “I’m off to my warm bed.” She heaved herself out of the armchair where she customarily sat for these late evening chats. The sisters routinely spoke and prayed together at the end of the day, and Magnolia was glad that hadn’t changed with Odelia’s marriage a couple years ago.

      “Good night, dear,” Odelia said, uncurling from the corner of the sofa.

      “Good night.”

      “Kent thinks she needs a good multivitamin,” Odelia whispered as soon as the door closed behind their sister’s back.

      Magnolia blinked. She hadn’t noticed that Hypatia needed anything, though perhaps she had seemed to suffer more from the cold this winter than in years past. Kent, being a pharmacist, would know about these things, though.

      “Getting her the vitamins and getting her to take them are two different things,” Magnolia murmured. “Maybe we should speak to Brooks about it.”

      “Hmm,” Odelia considered. “Perhaps so, though perhaps not just now.”

      Magnolia smiled. “I suspect the right time will come.”

      “It always does,” Odelia said with a giggle, hurrying toward her private suite and her waiting husband.

      Magnolia sighed and shook her head. It had come for Odelia after fifty years, and the result seemed to be one long honeymoon. She prayed that Eva Russell’s time for joy would come before it was too late. Hers and dear Brooks’s.