“Ostensibly.”
“What does that mean?”
“Outwardly appearing as such. Apparently.”
“I know what the word means! Why do older siblings always treat us younger ones like we’re morons? Reede, I mean what does that word mean to you?”
“That I’m on call 24/7. Half this town gets sick on the weekends.”
“Well, not this weekend. This one you’re going to the Halloween party.”
“No I’m not. I hate those things. I spent too much time in countries where they believe in witchcraft. Halloween isn’t funny.”
“You’re just making up an excuse not to go.”
“I guess you’re not dumb after all.”
“When you call Sophie, why don’t you ask her out? Break the ice at the lavish party. Listen, I have to go. But call Sophie. Do you hear me? Call Sophie.”
“I don’t have her number.”
“Call my landline. She’s staying at my house.”
“Okay,” he mumbled, then clicked off the phone.
Five
When the phone on the bedside table rang, Sophie wasn’t sure she should answer it. Maybe it was a private call for Kim. But after about the eighth ring, she picked it up. “Hello?” she asked tentatively.
“Is this Sophie?”
For a moment her heart stopped. She’d been found! She glanced at the envelope on the bed, a tire track across it. Beside it was the old cookbook, tattered and frayed. It was made of yellowing papers tied together with ribbon, each page with writing on it. But it was either written in a language she didn’t recognize or it was some sort of code.
“Yes it is,” she said, her breath held. There was no use lying.
“This is Dr. Reede. Actually, forget the doctor part. After the dinner you made you can call me any name you want.”
His voice was nice, deep and rich. Actually, it sounded a bit like melted chocolate. “I hoped you would like it.” She was trying to remember what Kim’s brother looked like.
“If it weren’t for Treeborne’s I—”
“What?!” Sophie said in alarm, then realized that he meant the frozen food she’d seen in his freezer. Opening that little door and seeing the name on the stack of boxes had given her a shock. “Oh. Sorry, I nearly spilled my drink. Yes, the frozen food people.”
“What are you drinking?” he asked in a way that was decidedly flirty.
She’d learned to believe the old saying of “Feed a man well and you’ll own him.” “You drank the whole bottle of wine, didn’t you?”
“I ate it all, drank it all. I don’t usually get . . . ” He searched for a word.
“Tipsy?”
“Spoken like a true Southern belle. Yes, tipsy, but I didn’t have lunch, and breakfast was one of those egg and muffin things.”
“Not good for you. What time do you want me to come in tomorrow? If I have the job, that is.”
“Are you kidding?” Reede said. “I’m going to double your salary. By the way, how much am I paying you?”
Sophie laughed. “I have no idea. Kim didn’t mention money.” She wondered how much Kim had told her brother about Sophie’s situation. “Didn’t she speak to you about me and the job?”
“I thought you knew my sister. She called me and said she’d hired you to be my PA, then said she had to go. I didn’t even know what day you were going to arrive.”
Thank you, Kim, Sophie mouthed. “I, uh, needed a job quickly, and Kim got me one.”
“That sounds ominous,” Reede said with sympathy in his voice. “Let me guess: boyfriend problems.”
Since what Carter had done to her, Sophie hadn’t had a chance to tell anyone. In college she and Kim and Jecca had spent a lot of time commiserating with one another about the treachery of men. Since then there’d been no one to talk to. “I . . . ” she said and felt a lump forming in her chest.
“What happened?” he asked softly.
There was so much understanding in his voice that Sophie decided to tell the truth, but she did her best to make it sound light. “It’s an old story. We had a difference of opinion. I thought we were serious, but he said we were just a summer romance. Turns out that the whole time he was engaged to someone else.”
Reede didn’t laugh. Instead, he said softly, “I know.”
“What did Kim tell you about me?” Sophie asked, alarmed.
“Nothing. Honest. I meant me. Nearly the same thing was done to me.”
Sophie tried to remember what Kim had told them about her brother, but it was a long time ago and a lot had happened since then. “Wasn’t there something with you and Jecca? Didn’t she have a crush on you?”
“Jecca? Naw. Nothing like that. She was a kid. She grew up rather nicely and I envied Tris, but there was nothing between us. Unless you count that I think she saved my life and almost drowned doing it.”
“Now you have to tell me,” Sophie said as she snuggled down in the bed.
“It’s late and you probably want to sleep.”
She’d spent the day scrubbing his dark, dingy apartment and was exhausted, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. Maybe hearing someone else’s problems would make What Carter Did to Me stop screaming in her head. “I’d like to hear of someone else’s misery,” she said.
“I know the feeling.” Reede stretched out on the couch, his cell phone to his ear. “Okay, so Once Upon a Time,” he said and began telling about him and Laura. Maybe his need to talk was from his frustration that day at not being able to get anyone to take over for him, or maybe it was because he was sick of keeping everything inside him. He could complain to his male friends about his patient load, but he couldn’t tell them about how he hated being compared to Tristan. Nor could he tell the truth about him and Laura. For one thing, everyone in town was waiting to say “I told you so.” They’d all known he and Laura were incompatible.
But Sophie hadn’t been there. She wasn’t a patient or even someone who knew him. She was a stranger, it was night—he could see the moon through the window—and he’d had too much wine. When he began to talk, the story flowed out of him. It took a while to tell.
“From what I’ve heard you’ve always liked to rescue people,” Sophie said about Laura’s shyness.
“I do, rather,” he said. She was making him feel better.
“Kim is such an achiever and that’s what she values in others. Sometimes I was intimidated by her.”
“Yeah?” Reede asked. “I’ve sometimes thought that I liked Laura because she was the polar opposite of my mother and sister. It was relaxing to be around Laura, as she didn’t order me around or give me her opinion on everything.”
“What about now?” Sophie asked.
“I think I’ve learned to stand up to them, although that isn’t always good. Mom wanted to send food over and get cleaners for me. I told her I was a grown man and could do it myself. You see how that turned out.”
“No,” Sophie said. “I meant, what if you had married Laura and stayed in Edilean? You’d be working where you do now. But it wouldn’t be for two more years. It would be forever.”
“Wow!” Reede said. “I never thought of it that way. I think . . . ”
“What?”
“This summer Jecca and Kim made me face Laura, and they said that she may have done me a favor.” He told Sophie how his childhood bedroom had been covered in travel posters. “I told Mom that Laura would go with me and that we’d . . . It wouldn’t have worked, would it?”
“I guess not,” Sophie said. “From what I’ve heard of you, you’re needed by the world, not just Edilean.”
“You know how to make a man feel good, don’t you?”
“That’s just what . . . ” She didn’t want to say Carter’s real name. “Earl said right before he dropped me flat. He also said—” She broke off.
“He said what?” Reede asked softly.
“It’s too new for me to repeat all that.” She glanced at the cookbook on the bed. What she needed more
than anything in the world was to talk to someone about what she’d done. A lawyer maybe? But she knew that a lawyer would advise her to give herself up. Tomorrow, she thought, she’d return the book. She’d send it from another state so the postmark wouldn’t be Virginia. She’d—
“Are you still there?” Reede asked.
“Yes. I was just thinking about what you told me.”
“And how to get revenge on Earl?”
“I . . . ” She hesitated. How much could she trust this man? She took a breath. “I came away with something that belongs to him and I’d like to return it, but I don’t want him to see that it was sent from Virginia.”
“Where do you want it sent from? I have friends all over the world. We’ll package it, send it overseas, and my friends will send it back to the U.S. They won’t even look at it. How does that sound?”
“Won’t that take a long time?”
“Express shipping goes everywhere.”
Sophie had to blink back tears of relief. Except for the jerk who nearly ran over her, everyone in Edilean had been so very nice. She wanted to help make Reede’s life easier. “There are some unpaid bills on your kitchen counter. Mind if I pay them? You could sign some blank checks for me—if you can trust me, that is. How’s your online banking?”
Reede grinned. “Sophie, I’ve never set up online banking, but I hear it’s very handy. How about if tomorrow I meet you at the office at nine and we set it up together?”
“I’d like that,” she said, smiling.
“Okay, so now I’m the doctor, it’s about midnight, and we both need to go to bed.”
Sophie had to suppress a laugh at the way he said it, but he caught his error.
“Foot in mouth. So you go to bed and I go to bed. I mean . . . ”
“I got it,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“And bring your package to send to the very stupid Earl.”
“I will,” she said, smiling. “Good night and thank you.”
“You’re the one deserving of the thanks. What was that orange soup?”
“Butternut squash.”
“And the mashed stuff?”
“Parsnips.”
“That’s what Kim said it was. All right. Go to bed. I’ll see you in the morning.”
She said good night again and hung up.
Sophie lay in the bed for a while, looking up at the ceiling and smiling. Maybe things were going to be all right, after all. If she returned the cookbook to Carter’s family they might not pursue her. And if it were postmarked from another country they might not find her.
For the first time since she left her stepfather standing on the sidewalk, Sophie thought she might possibly have a shot at a life. It was possible that the past was done with and that today, this night, was the beginning.
And maybe, she thought as she turned out the light, this moonlit stranger was part of her future.
Six
“Good morning,” Dr. Aldredge said to the three women who worked for him.
Heather was so startled by his pleasant tone that she dropped her folders to the floor. Betsy choked on her coffee, and Alice’s chin dropped by inches.
“Beautiful day, isn’t it?” he said. When no one answered, he picked up the appointment book. When he saw that it was blank it took him a moment to remember that he’d been planning to spend the day in Richmond. He looked back at the staring women. “Sophie, my new assistant, is meeting me here at nine and we’re going to go over her duties. I want to thank you ladies for making her welcome yesterday. In fact, after you say hello, why don’t you take today off?”
They were staring at him so hard and in such deep silence that it was difficult for him to maintain his good humor. But then he remembered Sophie and smiled. She was the first person he’d ever told the whole story of him and Laura. He’d made jokes about the breakup to other people and he’d repeatedly said he was over her, but last night he’d realized that he hadn’t been. Over her personally, yes, but not over the pain of it all. He’d never fully understood why Laura had wanted a man who was so . . . well, less than Reede. His ego, his masculinity, his belief in himself, had been crushed.
But last night it was as though a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. As Sophie had so wisely pointed out, if he’d married Laura he’d now be trapped in Edilean forever.
“Sophie?” Betsy said at last.
Reede couldn’t help himself as he frowned at her. “Yes, Sophie—” He couldn’t remember her last name, if Kim had told him, that is.
“Did you like her?” Alice asked tentatively. None of them ever dared to ask Dr. Reede a personal question—at least not after the first time. Scalpels didn’t cut as sharply as his replies.
“Yeah, I did,” he said, and again there was that smile. “She’s interesting to talk to.”
“Talk to?” Betsy asked. “You met her? In person?”
Reede put the appointment book down on the counter and took a deep breath. What in the world was wrong with these women? “No, I haven’t met her in person, but I had a lengthy talk with her on the phone. I would like to know what’s going on with you three. Why are you looking at me as though I’ve met a ghost? Is Sophie not real? Did I make her up?”
The women looked from one to the other, then seemed to settle on Heather to tell him the truth.
But when Heather just stood there, Reede had to refrain from snapping at her, but then she was such a timid person. His least little comment that could be construed as less than loving-and-caring and she lost it. But Reede’s eyes bore down on the young woman with the intensity of a hawk’s. It was the look he’d often used in the field to make people get off their behinds and do something.
“She threw beer on you,” Heather blurted, then fell into a chair, as though all the energy had left her.
Everything came to Reede at once. The pretty girl in the tavern, beer running down his face, Kim’s friend showing up in Edilean at the same time. He’d not thought about it much, but he’d assumed the girl with the beer had been passing through on her way to somewhere else. The tavern was off the main highway; it led to places other than Edilean.
The women were looking at Reede with wide-open eyes, waiting to see what he was going to do. But he had no idea what to say. Without a word, he turned and went down the hall to his office.
Sophie would quit, was his first thought. She’d take one look at him, see who he was, and walk out. Yesterday Russell had called and explained what had happened on the highway.
“You nearly ran over her,” Russell said.
“I did no such thing.”
“Yes, you did,” Russ said. “You came around that long curve, the one five miles east of the tavern, and you were looking down at your papers. The poor girl had to dive into the scrub oaks to keep from being hit.”
“God!” Reede whispered.
“You have the right person,” Russell said. “He must have been looking after both of you.”
“The crunch under my tire . . . ?”
“Her phone. And she had something in an envelope too. You ran over it.”
“And all she did was dump beer over my head,” Reede said. “A shotgun would have been more appropriate. You don’t have her name and address, do you? I’d like to send her my apologies—and a new phone.” That’s when Russell said he had to go.
Reede sat down in the big leather chair and closed his eyes for a moment. When it came to women he didn’t seem able to do anything right. He’d had two serious relationships since Laura, and they’d both—
He ran his hands over his face. This wasn’t the time for more wallowing in self-pity. No wonder he felt better when he was swinging from a cable out of a helicopter. Angry oceans were easier to understand than women.
So what was he going to do now? The best thing, the most honorable action, would be to meet Sophie at the door and try to explain himself.
And just how would he do that? Play on her sympathy? Talk of his lack of sleep? Say t
hat he’s such a busy doctor that he has to read files while he’s driving?
There was no way she’d forgive him—and she shouldn’t. He didn’t deserve it.
But then, what would be the result of his doing the right thing? At the end of today there’d be no delicious cooked food, the bills would still be waiting for him to pay, and worst of all, there’d be no one to talk to tonight.
Talk, he thought and sat up straighter in the chair. He could still talk to her. If she didn’t see him, that is, and if some blabbermouth in Edilean didn’t run to tell Sophie who had nearly killed her.
He knew that if he spent another ten seconds thinking about this utterly ridiculous, absurd idea that he’d come to his senses. He’d back out. He’d do the heroic thing and wait for Sophie to show up and he’d take the consequences. He’d be a good employer and write her a severance check, and—Oh hell!
He practically ran to the front office. It was fifteen minutes to nine. “Don’t tell her,” he said to the staring women. “And don’t let anyone else in this town tell her. I need time to . . . to . . . ” He couldn’t think what he was going to do. “Got it?”
They silently nodded in unison and Reede ran out the back door. He had to get his infamous car out of the parking lot before Sophie arrived. His first stop this morning would be Frazier Motors in Richmond to see if he could get a loaner for a while. The BMW would have too many bad memories for Sophie. As he drove he couldn’t help but wish he’d listened to his sister when she’d told him about her roommates. Maybe she’d know of a way to appease Sophie.
But first he had to call his mother and get the gossip line started—or rather stopped. He called her by using the hands-free phone—no more looking down to punch in numbers while driving! “Mom?” he said when she answered.
“Well, well, if it isn’t the Beer Boy of Edilean.”
Reede grimaced and wished he were back in Namibia, but he said nothing. It was better to let her get it out of her system.
“Kim said her friend Sophie wouldn’t last long with you,” Ellen Aldredge said. “Between your bad temper and your attempt at murdering the poor girl, Kim was more right than even she imagined. So what did Sophie say when she found out her employer was the hit-and-run driver?”
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