Second Opinion

by Alexander, Hannah

  Grant stifled a laugh. “She isn’t ditzy, we’re not rich, and—”

  “Fine, have it your way. But when you wake up tomorrow morning with Beau and me hanging lifeless on hooks outside some hillbilly shack with bars on the windows and she’s—”

  Grant grasped her chin and forced her to look into his eyes. “I happen to know who she’s interested in and it isn’t me, so don’t you dare embarrass me. How would you like it if I teased you about a guy you liked and—”

  Her eyes widened. He took a sharp breath. He’d made a fatal slip.

  She disengaged her chin from his grasp. “You like this female John Boy?”

  He ignored the question. “If this woman were trying to snag me, don’t you think she’d at least have dressed up a little and put on a little makeup?”

  As the first touch of doubt entered Brooke’s eyes, the doorbell rang.

  Grant raised a hand for silence. “Shh! Zip your lips.”

  Brooke lowered her voice less than half a decibel. “So that’s what you were talking about when you said you were lonely! I thought you said you didn’t have anybody in mind to—”

  “Brooke!”

  “I’m just glad you cooked the food. Don’t accept anything—”

  He placed his hands on her shoulders and shushed her again. She grimaced. He opened the door.

  Sure enough, Lauren did not look like her usual professional self, although her smile was still in place. It didn’t even waver when Brooke issued a long heartfelt groan and slumped out of the room calling to her brother, “Hey Beau, it’s time to hunt some fish!”

  Lauren’s long blond hair was pulled back from her face as usual and she wore baggy, comfortable looking bib overalls with a long-sleeved oversized T-shirt. Oh yeah, everything about her shouted siren. Where was Brooke’s brain?

  The annoyed voice of his daughter continued its harangue from halfway down the hall.

  Grant cringed. “Sorry.”

  Lauren’s grin widened. “I take it they’re still not happy about the move.”

  “Beau’s doing fine. Brooke’s willingness to go on this fishing trip is a testament to the fact that she is bored silly. They’ve both been looking for jobs the past week and there’s nothing available, which could mean they won’t get the car Brooke wants, which would mean the end of life as we know it—not necessarily for Brooke but for everyone who lives with her.”

  “They might find something if they keep trying. I think the hospital cafeteria was hiring a couple of weeks ago.”

  “I’ll have them fill out applications on Monday. Speaking of the cafeteria, I’ve packed food as promised. Are you ready for me to carry the cooler out?”

  “Sure, let’s get everything loaded and head to the woods. Archer will meet us there with Evan at about two.” She glanced at her watch. “It’ll take us about fifteen minutes to get there and then we’ll have fifteen minutes to set up before they arrive. Isn’t it great to be off on Friday? We should have the spot all to ourselves for at least a couple of hours, maybe longer.”

  Ten minutes later Grant found himself sitting behind the driver’s side in the back seat of a gray Chevy Crew Cab pickup with a few years on it.

  Grant had hunted down the fishing poles he and Annette had used years ago and after introducing his teenage twins to Lauren, he’d manipulated the seating so that Beau rode in front with Lauren. Grant was confident his son wouldn’t cause any trouble; he would just sit with his nose buried in today’s reading of choice, The Merck Manual of Medical Information. With a stranger in their midst, he had retreated into his customary shell. Judging by the way Brooke was behaving she was not to be trusted and Grant felt a need to hover.

  “Hicktown, population seven thousand three hundred and seventeen.” Brooke’s deadpan voice broke the peaceful silence as they drove west out of town. “Does that count the cows?” She grinned at her twin brother in the front seat as she poked him on the shoulder. Her eyes darkened with disappointment when she didn’t get a reaction. She pursed her highly glossed lips together and fell silent as Lauren picked up speed along Highway Z.

  The city of Dogwood Springs, like many small towns of southern Missouri, sat in a patchwork square between checkerboard properties of the Mark Twain National Forest. Grant had visited this area years ago when he and Annette took one of their rare vacations. They’d dared to dream that someday, maybe when he retired, they would move here.

  “What’s Branson like now, Lauren?” he asked. “I haven’t been there since before the kids were born.”

  “It’s fun. It can get crowded,” Lauren said. “Traffic’s moving better than it used to since they built all those bypasses but I think they still sell souvenir T-shirts that say, ‘I survived Highway 76 traffic.’ I go about every month to a show or just to shop.”

  Brooke sat forward, eyes alert. “Do you ever go with… you know… a date or anything?”

  Grant tensed and glared.

  Lauren rounded a curve then glanced at Brooke in her rearview mirror, her expression casual. “I usually just go with friends or a church group. Branson has a lot of good shows. And they’re not just country anymore. I think you might like Silver Dollar City. We take a group of high schoolers a couple times a year.”

  “Silver Dollar City?” Brooke’s voice mimicked Lauren’s slight Ozark accent. “Isn’t that some glorified theme park? St. Louis has Six Flags.”

  Grant tapped her on the arm. “Be nice.”

  She rolled her eyes and gave a long-suffering sigh.

  He glared at her. The stubborn set of her chin and the tension in her neck told him that his little girl was still resisting the move, resisting Dogwood Springs, and resisting any possibility that he might be able to enjoy the company of another woman.

  It was times like this he missed Annette the most. Brooke needed a woman to talk to and to gripe at. He didn’t feel up to the challenge of fielding pointed sarcasm the rest of the day. He seldom felt ill at ease with people but when Brooke was feeling irritable he never knew what to expect.

  She was just like he had been when he was younger. Nowadays he tempered his words with some of the wisdom he’d learned the hard way. But Brooke was still learning. She occasionally behaved like a brat. What hurt him the most was that when she acted that way it gave people the wrong impression of who she truly was.

  He must have gotten through to her, because for the next few minutes she was silent and peace reigned in the cab of the truck.

  ***

  “Pastor, don’t take this personal.”

  Archer braced himself. When someone said that, it was going to be personal.

  “We’ve been praying about this.”

  Archer stared at sixty-eight-year-old Dwight Hahnfeld, swallowed hard, and gritted his teeth.

  “Under the circumstances, we feel it would be best if you stepped down from your position.” The deacon, who served this year as chairman of the personnel committee, did not sit down on the sofa as Archer had casually directed him but instead perched on one of the chairs in front of Archer’s desk.

  Dwight looked everywhere but at the object of his declaration. His two buddies rustled up their own chairs and pulled them forward to sit beside him. None of them looked Archer in the face.

  As Archer sank into his desk chair and stared at the committee of three he felt the numbness of shock travel down his spine—almost the same kind of shock he’d felt when Jessica broke their engagement seven weeks ago.

  “What are you talking about?” he finally asked when he could manage to speak without betraying his shock.

  “I know this might come as a bit of a surprise,” Dwight said, “but our best interests need to be with the corporate integrity of the church.”

  Archer felt as if he was listening to this man trying to speak a foreign language. Had the church taken a vote behind his back? “Let me make sure I have this straight. Am I being fired?”

  “No no, nothing like that.” Mr. John Netz, the most outspoken and ac
tive deacon in the church, waved his hand irritably. “We just think you might want to check out other jobs. Maybe other positions. Now that you’re not getting married we don’t think it looks proper for you…” He cleared his throat.

  “A single man should not be leading a congregation,” Hahnfeld declared. “According to Scripture, a pastor is supposed to be the husband of one wife. And he’s supposed to be able to keep his children under control. How can you do that if you don’t even have a wife? And as for children…” He shifted uncomfortably. “Well, you’d obviously need a wife.”

  Archer said a quick, desperate prayer for God to control his thoughts, his temper, his tongue. He waited, allowing the silence to lengthen enough that he could see the tension grow in the men facing him.

  “You might consider a certain apostle named Paul.”

  Netz cleared his throat. No one replied.

  “Not only was he a single man,” Archer said, “but he was audacious enough to advise some people against marriage. He warned that having a spouse would draw a person’s loyalties from God.” He heard the force of his own words clipped into tight little knots of anger. He hated the sound of it. Archer seldom gave in to anger these days. Still, the words were true.

  “That advice was directed toward those who could keep their bodies under control,” Hahnfeld snapped. “Something you don’t seem to be—”

  “Dwight!” John Netz gave his buddy a quick, hard look.

  Hahnfeld grunted and looked at his folded hands.

  Archer studied them for a moment, wondering at some unspoken secret that blazed through the room. “What piece of gossip is it this time?”

  The three men avoided looking at each other. They particularly avoided meeting Archer’s gaze.

  He didn’t need this today. He shouldn’t have even come into the office. This was his day off.

  Besides that, Evan was waiting for a ride and Lauren and the Sheldons were probably already at the fishing spot.

  But something was going on here. The community grapevine had obviously struck Dogwood Springs Baptist once again. Archer knew the signs; gossip was a nasty little sin that nobody wanted to admit to but was so hard to resist. Like a bag of chocolate chips—what would it hurt to eat just one little chip? And then another? As the three men continued to avert their eyes, the guilt stained their faces.

  Archer sat back in his chair and sighed. “At least have the decency to tell me what the busybodies are saying I’ve done this time.”

  Silence screamed through the office.

  “Maybe I can help prompt your memory.” Archer tried to keep his voice gentle. “Let me see…I shouted too loudly at the softball game the other night.”

  The continued silence and averted eyes said no.

  “Okay then, I forgot to visit someone in the hospital.”

  Gene Thomas cleared his throat and looked at Hahnfeld and Netz. He was the youngest and newest member of the committee. Judging by his obvious discomfort, Archer guessed he’d been coerced into this.

  “He needs to know what’s being said,” Gene told them.

  Netz stared out the window. Hahnfeld shifted in his seat and favored Archer with a brief look of sadness before shaking his head and averting his eyes once more.

  “I’m not saying this is true, Brother Archer,” Gene blurted, “but we feel that a pastor should be living such a pure life that ideas like this wouldn’t take root in the first place.”

  “Ideas like what?”

  More silence. Shifting in the chairs.

  Netz finally straightened and looked Archer in the face, though he still couldn’t quite make eye contact. “Brother Archer, I know you probably didn’t do what they’re saying.”

  “What are they saying?”

  He dropped his gaze. “Well, when some pretty woman comes to town and joins the church and then you start spending all that time with her and then your engagement gets broken and then that pretty woman turns up pregnant, people—”

  “What?” Archer nearly came out of his chair.

  Netz looked back out the window.

  “The only single young woman who has joined our church in the past few months is Lauren McCaffrey,” Archer said.

  Netz nodded. “That’s right.”

  “Lauren McCaffrey is not pregnant. Where did you hear such a lie?”

  Gene shrunk farther down in his seat. “They’re talking about it over at the hospital.”

  “Don’t you work at the hospital?” Archer asked.

  “Yeah, I’m in Medical Records. One of the techs said she overheard Lauren telling somebody about it and then Lauren was sick the other night.”

  “Somebody lied.” Archer would not listen to this any longer. He pushed back from his desk and stood. “If you’ll excuse me.” He nodded to them, too afraid of his growing anger to say more. He walked out of his office, leaving the committee sitting there like three stone statues.

  ***

  When Lauren turned from the highway onto a rough potholed gravel road, Brooke seemed unable to keep her mouth shut any longer. “Hello? Where are we going? I thought we were going to a lake or something, you know, where there are, like, people and boats and swimming?” She turned her insistent gaze on Grant, her eyes widening in a very expressive unspoken plea for him to protest.

  Grant laid his arm across the back of the seat and held his hand up for silence. “I guess you also expected a yacht with a pool and a waiter and maybe a movie screen with the latest releases? It wouldn’t hurt you to be flexible for once.”

  He caught Lauren’s quick glance of concern in the rearview mirror and was suddenly chagrined by the sharpness she must have heard in his voice. This outing was probably a bad idea but the kids couldn’t just sit at home the whole summer.

  “It’s a neat place, Brooke,” Lauren said. “Give it a chance, okay? The creek is fed by Honey Spring. The water is pure and sweet. This spot has the best fishing in the county. It’s where all the old fishermen come to catch their limit.”

  “Limit of what?”

  “Rainbow trout.” Lauren seemed unoffended by Brooke’s continued bratty attitude. “They stock it from the fish hatchery in Knolls County.”

  “There wouldn’t happen to be any cabins out here would there?” Brooke cast Grant a wide-eyed stare. “You know, with, like, bars on the windows or something?”

  Lauren gave her a quick glance in the mirror and shrugged. “None I know about. But sometimes I find empty beer cans and cigarette butts along the road leading to the creek, so it’s obviously a weekend party spot. I avoid it then. Beau, have you ever gone fishing before?”

  Beau glanced at Lauren then quickly turned away. “Yeah.” His baritone voice barely reached the backseat. “Mom and Dad used to take us to the Mississippi River on Dad’s days off when we were out of school.” There was no missing the melancholy in his voice.

  “Lauren,” Grant said, “Archer tells me you’re an excellent fisherman.”

  A wide grin lit her face. “He said that?”

  “Just a couple of days ago.” He glanced sideways at his daughter and was not convinced by her expression of disinterest. In matters of the heart Brooke was uncomfortably astute. “He told me you’re quite an athlete.”

  “Fishing’s been my favorite pastime for a long time.” Her voice filled the cab with a lilt of pleasure. “As soon as I arrived here in February I started going down to the barbershop where the old fishermen hang out. They always know where the fishing’s the best. The barber got tired of me after a couple of days and finally divulged the location of his favorite spot so I’d leave him alone. I’ve been coming here since trout season opened the first of March.”

  “So this is, like, what you do for fun?” Brooke caught Grant’s attention and rolled her eyes.

  Grant reached across the seat to catch his daughter’s hand in a firm grip. “Lauren, it’s hard to believe you’ve only been in Dogwood Springs a few months. You seem like such a part of the community.”

 
; “It’s a lot like my hometown.”

  “Why did you decide to come here?”

  Lauren’s typically open expression suddenly closed. Intriguing. “It’s a pretty town. Since the emergency department was expanding they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

  “And that would mean, then, that you weren’t happy with your former job.” Grant couldn’t curb his own curiosity.

  Yes, there was definitely some resistance in Lauren’s attitude. “Knolls is a great town. I grew up there and I know everybody.”

  “So you moved here to get away from them?” Brooke asked. “Or maybe to meet more people.”

  “The hospital was the best. Last fall we had an explosion that leveled the ER. While that department of the hospital was out of commission I covered a few shifts here. Something clicked for me. When I decided to leave Knolls this was the first hospital that offered me a contract.”

  “That still doesn’t explain why you decided to leave Knolls in the first place.” Brooke said.

  “I guess I felt like I was missing something.”

  “You mean like a man?” Brooke asked. “And you came here?” She lowered her voice to a bare whisper and leaned toward Grant. “Not exactly a rational decision.”

  Grant knew there were laws against passengers riding in the bed of a pickup truck but he wondered if the police might make an exception in certain cases.

  “So why do you come way out here in the middle of nowhere to go fishing?” Brooke asked. “We’re not doing anything illegal are we?” She gave her dad a teasing wink.

  Lauren laughed. “Last time I checked my fishing license it was up to date.” She looked at the book Beau held open in his lap. “Medicine? You planning to follow in your father’s footsteps and become a doctor?”

  Beau didn’t look up. He just shrugged and nodded, his typical escape when in the presence of strangers—especially attractive ones of the female persuasion.

  “Emergency medicine?” Lauren continued to prompt.

  Beau looked at her then. Unlike Brooke, there was no mischief in his expression, just a self-conscious awkwardness. “I’d love to be a doctor.”