by Robyn Carr
“Join us, Sully,” Walter said. Then he looked at their surroundings. “This is a nice place. Quiet. Comfortable.”
“It’s usually quiet during the day, except on weekends when there are more than the usual boats on the lake,” Sully said. “Most folks are exploring or hiking or rock climbing. They’ll all be back, stirring up their grills and washing off the grit of the trail. Let me get my lunch. Don’t wait for me.”
Walter immediately unwrapped his sandwich and opened his bottled tea, taking a drink. “Well, I’ll give you this—you picked a good place to unwind. What a beautiful day.”
“Walter, forgive me, but I’m overcome by the strangest feeling.” He just lifted one gray brow as he bit into his sandwich. Then Sully was with them again, sitting at the table, his half-finished lunch on a tray in front of him.
“You were saying?” Walter asked.
“I said, this is strange. I can’t decide whether to be touched, grateful or scared to death. Whatever prompted this little meeting... Are you going to lecture me about leaving my job?”
“I was under the impression it was a time-out,” Walter said. “Are you actually quitting?”
“No. I don’t know,” she said. She couldn’t eat her sandwich. “The truth is, I don’t know what to do. What if I didn’t go back to it?”
“You’d hardly be the first. A good dozen of my colleagues from medical school gave up practicing. They found it wasn’t right for them for a variety of reasons. One went into business...didn’t do so well, as I recall. But another quit to write romance novels and she’s cleaning up.” He chuckled. “Another is living on a farm, growing organic vegetables and manufacturing salad dressing. Very good stuff,” he added, taking another bite. “Sully, this is a delicious sandwich.”
“We get a delivery from a greengrocer in Timberlake every couple of days. Enid makes the sandwiches and bakes all the cookies, brownies and muffins. According to Maggie, they’re going to kill us.”
“I’ll have to have one,” Walter said.
“Okay, now you’re scaring me,” Maggie said. “Why don’t you get it over with? Rip off that old bandage, Walter. Say it. Yell at me. You poured a fortune into me and now I’m threatening to walk away to bag groceries and...”
“I’ve never once raised my voice to Maggie,” Walter told Sully.
“Course not,” Sully said. “I do whenever I please, however, so she’s not being neglected in that area.”
“We’ve only had a few serious talks in my life and as I recall, they were so mild I hardly realized until afterward that you had any idea what you were doing. There was that time when I was a freshman in college that you came all the way out here from Chicago. You said you wanted to see the campus again—you’d seen it before I enrolled. But that was a ruse. You wanted me to change my major.”
“No, not exactly,” Walter corrected. “I thought you were too young to commit to a course of study. I wanted you to check a lot of different things while you had the chance. But I didn’t insist, did I?”
“No,” she relented. “But you had a good argument. And then there was that little talk we had before I married Sergei, the artist.”
“That one didn’t go as well, regrettably,” Walter said.
“You tell her to bail out while she could?” Sully asked.
“Not exactly,” Walter said. “I did suggest they had little in common and she might want to think on it a while longer. The kid was penniless. So was Maggie for that matter. But Maggie wasn’t going to stay penniless and I highly recommended a prenup. Nothing at all wrong with a prenup when one of the couple has great potential and the other doesn’t.”
“You have a prenup, Walter?” Maggie asked.
“We did,” he said. “It was Phoebe’s idea. It became null and void after a decade of marriage. That seemed reasonable. All that aside, you managed your situation very well. Sad but predictable.”
“I wasted a perfectly good marriage on him. And then there was the time right before residency—we had a very long talk about what it was going to be like, what kind of commitment I was making, how I had to be sure my personal goals matched my professional goals, that sort of thing. I’m still not sure what that means.”
“Now’s probably as good a time as any to think about what it means.”
“Listen, Walter, did you ever have second thoughts about important stuff? Like neurosurgery? Or maybe marrying a woman with a six-year-old? Or sinking all that money into a med student?”
“I’m a human being, Maggie. I’ve had second thoughts about everything. Giving important matters serious consideration and reevaluations is vital. I even have some regrets—but not about my practice, my wife or my stepdaughter. I was lucky in those areas of my life. At least, luckier than most men. Although I have to be honest—I think I’d rather have been a pilot.”
“Seriously? I never heard you say that before! But I remember your flying lessons. Didn’t you have an airplane for a while?”
“I was part owner of a Piper, but I didn’t keep it too long. Your mother wouldn’t go up with me. Such is life—we’re all different.”
Maggie took a bite of her sandwich, feeling a little more relaxed. “And, there was one other time. High school. Remember?”
“I remember,” he said, finishing off his sandwich.
She’d got a speeding ticket. She’d had girlfriends in the car and got caught annihilating the speed limit. She was going a hundred in a fifty-five. And of course lost all driving privileges for a long time. It didn’t matter that much as she was in boarding school where they weren’t allowed to have cars. But she went home some weekends. Walter was surprisingly firm in the no-driving department and even when her friends wanted to take her out, she was grounded. Then one Saturday night he said, “Come with me, Maggie. We’re going to the hospital. You’ll be out late.”
There was an accident and it involved teenagers. Walter was called to the emergency room and Maggie followed him wearing a lab coat so she looked like she belonged. There were terrible injuries, the police were at the hospital, alcohol was involved, frantic parents came running, the waiting room was a circus. Walter was one of several doctors who then went to the operating room from ER. “Stay with me, Maggie.” She remembered thinking Walter had shown her exactly what he wanted her to see, that recklessness hurt people and it could be deadly. But imagine her shock when he told his OR tech to suit her up and scrub her in.
“What?” she had asked, horrified. “What if I faint?”
“The circulating nurse will kick you to one side so you’re not in our way. But I want you to be there.”
She stood through not one but two surgeries on teenagers and watched in fascination as Walter calmly and confidently called for instruments, asked for extra hands, ordered suction while blood dripped on his shoes, drilled holes in a skull, implanted shunts, carved and stitched, even had to resuscitate one patient on the table. He never panicked; he never raised his voice. The circulating nurse mopped his sweating brow. Both patients went to recovery, Walter and Maggie following. Maggie heard a nurse say, “By the grace of God and a hair.” She heard Walter say to one of the parents, “We were very lucky.”
Maggie had been in a silent cloud of sheer wonder. It was nearly dawn when they were driving home. “Well, Maggie?” Walter said.
In a voice that sometimes rang in her ears to this day she heard herself say to her stepfather, “I have to do that.”
He pulled the car into their garage, stopped the engine and looked across the front seat at her. “You can do anything you choose to do, Maggie. But if you want to live to do it, you will not drink and drive and you will never exceed the speed limit again. Is that clear?”
“Absolutely. So, how long does it take to become a neurosurgeon?”
He was quiet a second and then said, “Forever.”
Maggie smiled and shook her head. “Walter—high school. My speeding ticket. A watershed moment.”
“Seems so,” he agreed. “I couldn’t have planned that, of course. I admit, I wanted to scare you. But it had a much bigger impact than that.”
“You didn’t think I’d be impressed with emergency surgery?”
“At that time in your life I was betting on a career in cheerleading.”
She gave a hollow little laugh. She thought for a moment. “Would you two mind if I just... I’d like to take a short walk down by the lake before we continue this conversation. If you have the time, Walter. If you can spare me, Sully.”
“We’ll just have our drinks and catch up. Go ahead,” Walter said. “I’m in no hurry to get back on the road.”
As she walked along the edge of the lake, hands in the pockets of her shorts, her sneakers getting wet and dirty, she remembered with such clarity the night in the emergency room, that night of vivid lucidity, watching Walter save lives. She followed him at three feet, listening raptly, but he only spoke to her twice. Both times he said, “All right, Maggie?” And she had replied, “All right.”
All he’d had in mind was showing her blood and fear and trauma from a car accident, but something had happened. Though a kind and gentle man, until that night she had not appreciated how strong and wise Walter was, how thoroughly competent. That night she learned a new respect for her stepfather.
Later, while in medical school, she’d scrubbed in with Walter a few times, much closer to the sterile field, watching his perfect nimble fingers work magic. That was when she learned that Walter Lancaster was a highly respected neurosurgeon. He was the one to ask for when you wanted the best. She did her fellowship in neurosurgery with him. He had since retired from his practice after a couple of small strokes, unwilling to take any chances on his health or that of his patients. He still worked now and then, taking a few days to go back to Chicago where he was licensed, where he consulted, scrubbed in with another surgeon occasionally, that sort of thing. And he continued to go to neurosurgery conferences where he was often a presenter.
It suddenly occurred to her—maybe their move to Golden wasn’t Phoebe’s idea. Maybe Walter liked the idea.
She dawdled for a half hour or so, just thinking. Then she went back to find someone had wrapped up her uneaten sandwich and Sully was showing Walter the garden. She walked over to take some credit for it—stuff was sprouting up all over.
“Pretty soon we’ll come out here to cut a few inches off the top of the lettuce for salad and it grows back in a couple of days. Tomatoes will be coming all summer. Melon vines are starting to crawl over the yard.”
“I’ve always wished we had a garden,” Walter said, bending to pet Beau. “But between me and Phoebe there was no one to take care of one. And hiring it done just wouldn’t be the same, would it?”
“Mother isn’t sinking her hands in the dirt, Walter. You know better than that,” Maggie said.
“Well, she’s good at other things,” he said.
“Like what?” Maggie asked, sounding insolent.
But Walter laughed. “She’s a genius at hiring a cleaning service and picking restaurants. And she has other gifts—she’s a great decorator. An excellent travel companion. She can entertain with great fanfare. And I think you don’t give her enough credit for being a wonderful mother.”
Maggie reserved comment on that. It might just be there were too many complications given two marriages, the separation from Sully. She was willing to give Phoebe the benefit of the doubt. Maybe under it all she was a good mother, just not that good for Maggie.
“I’m getting back to work,” Sully said. “Nice to see you, Walter.”
The men shook hands and Sully wandered off toward the store, Beau at his heels.
“And I should get back to Golden,” Walter said. “It was nice having lunch with you, Maggie. I think you picked a nice place to hole up awhile.”
“I think you came here to give me things to think about. So let me admit it—I miss my job. The patients, the surgery, some of the staff. It’s just the other forces—insurance, administrators, lawsuits, politics and Jesus, even the media. They make it so hard to help people.”
“I know. It’s very hard to find a way to do what you do on your own terms.”
“Did you? Do it on your terms?”
“Yes,” he said. “There were occasional trade-offs but I managed most of the time. But it’s obvious in one hour here that I wanted an entirely different kind of life than you do. I didn’t grow up in the country, in the mountains. I grew up in a nice house in Chicago. I didn’t play sports. I got a chemistry set when I was seven. I was in the chess club, the debate club, the science club—the old-fashioned version of a nerd. And all I wanted in a wife was everything that would drive Sully and maybe you crazy.” He smiled at her. “No one can live your life but you, Maggie. But if you find a way to use your talents to help people I think you’ll be happier.”
She couldn’t deny it. She was deeply touched that Walter would do this—ditch her mother and drive to the crossing to speak to her alone. No pressure, just a conversation. “You’re a good man, Walter. You’ve been a good father to me.”
He kissed her forehead. “I’m very proud of you. In all your incarnations.”
* * *
The store was pretty quiet so they left Jackson in charge and went to the house for dinner. Maggie grilled a couple of fish fillets and sautéed some vegetables.
Sully sat at the table. “That was good of Walter to drive down just to talk to you,” he said. “You’re a very lucky girl.”
“Yes, Walter went out of his way, didn’t he? And wouldn’t it be nice if my own father had gone out of his way? When I was growing up?”
Sully put down his fork. “How dare you say that to me,” he said, his voice very calm.
“Well, you let them take me, you let them keep me even though all of you knew I wanted to be here. And you—”
“Stop it!” he snapped. “You were a little girl! You needed some things I couldn’t give you, like a decent education! You needed a mother and don’t you dare criticize your mother again—she sacrificed so much for you. I don’t like her but she was damn good to you and she wouldn’t have married Walter if he hadn’t been the best thing for you! And before you lay that on me one more time I want you to think about the sacrifice I made—my own child, gone to another state because it was the best thing. You think you’d be a goddamn surgeon if you’d stayed here where I wanted you to be?”
She broke down. “I thought you didn’t want me. I thought you found me annoying,” she whispered.
“You are annoying! But I loved you with a father’s heart! I wanted more for you! It was terrible. And I wouldn’t change one goddamn thing!”
She put her hands over her face, covering the tears. She was probably ten the last time she cried in front of Sully.
“Maggie, don’t snivel about it. I did the best I could and I apologize if it wasn’t good enough.”
“It was good enough,” she said. “You never say you love me.”
“I just did,” he grumbled. “I’ll say one thing—you never thank me for all the years I did without you for your own damn good. If you had a child, you’d understand.”
I almost did, she thought, emotions overflowing.
“Because I’ll tell you something, Maggie—when you have a child you’ll understand how hard it is when she’s taken from you. I guess I was supposed to grieve for you so you’d be convinced it wasn’t fun for me, but I didn’t want to do that to you. I wanted you to take everything offered you in a good home and not feel the tearing inside when—”
“I just wanted to know that,” she said. “I didn’t know you were protecting me. I thought you were just as happy I was gone so much.”
“So now you have it—I wasn’t one goddamn bit happy about it. But it worked out the way I wanted it to. You made something out of yourself. If you’d stayed around here you’d be bagging groceries and cleaning up campsites.” He shook his head. “You’re welcome.”
“I just wanted to know,” she said.
“Now you know. We gonna let go of this now?”
She nodded and wiped her cheeks.
“I’ll tell you what, girl. You do make a man work hard for it.”
She gave a little huff of laughter. “About Mother,” she said. “She’s a pain in the ass.”
“I know that,” he said, picking up his fork. “At least she’s not my pain in the ass. Now, I want you to tell me something—how long are you planning to stay here and make me pay for all my parenting mistakes?”
She took a breath. “I came for a two-week break. I stayed because I knew that despite all your grumbling, you could use my help. Then my lawyer called and said we’re going to trial. Soon. In a month or so. He said it was perfectly reasonable for me to wait it out here.”
Sully lifted his bushy brows. “Trial?”
“Trial,” she said. “The lawsuit. It’s taking all my energy to keep from running scared.”
“You have nothing to be scared about,” he said. “Walter says you’re one of the best and it will all come to light. Meanwhile, I can stand it a little longer if you’re determined to stay on a bit.”
She laughed. “You certainly know how to suck up, Sully.”
“Don’t I?” he said.
He who is outside the door has already a
good part of his journey behind him.
—Dutch proverb
Chapter 9
Maggie was at peace. She knew her father loved her but what she had really wanted was to know that he had missed her, that her absence had been hard for him. And now that it was laid to rest, she’d think about showing gratitude. Sully had done his best by her and it hadn’t been easy.