Another snort from Matthew. Laughter definitely.
“You really think you can pay off those student loans in a few more years, Jay?” Charles reeled in for another cast.
“Shouldn’t be a problem. I’m good with budgeting, and I don’t live beyond my means like others I won’t mention.”
“You general docs must not run up loans like we specialists do.” Henry laughed. “But I don’t think you’re going anywhere soon. You’d miss us too much.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” Charles said. “Jay can always watch the videos if he gets lonely. Or did you miss that he brought the camcorder again?”
Henry glanced up from his line and followed Charles’s gaze to the photographic equipment in question, packed in pricey waterproof gear for the boat ride. Jay and his camcorder were also becoming a tradition.
“He didn’t notice because he never gives Jay anything to record and put on YouTube,” Matthew weighed in, earning a scowl from Henry.
“I am a man with a plan.” Jay dragged his line. “Angling Amateurs is getting quite the following on the internet, thank you very much. And when it grows up, I’m changing the name to Accomplished Anglers and spending my early retirement charging clowns like you big bucks to be taken to the best spots on every river and stream in the Catskills.”
“You go, Captain Jay.” Charles didn’t doubt the man would eventually accomplish mission objective. “But you might need a bigger boat.”
“I’ll have one. Or two. Or a whole damned fleet.”
“If you want footage to show your fan base, then you’d better grab your camcorder,” Matthew said. “I got one.”
It would be Matthew who scored first today, and with a quiet precision not unlike they used at the hospital when ambulances pulled into the E.R. and lives were on the line, they moved into action.
Jay grabbed the camcorder. Henry grabbed the net. Charles headed toward the gear as Matthew waged an exquisite battle with what appeared to be a sizeable catch.
“Brown,” Henry said, the first to spot the struggling fish on the end of the line.
“Henry called it,” Jay said. “Got a big brown here.” He was recording everything while narrating with educational, amusing declarations as he mocked Henry for his efforts while trying to net the twisting fish before it broke away.
Matthew cursed, and Jay howled with laughter as Henry fought to net the trout—a dozen pounder if an ounce.
“Watch closely, fellow anglers,” Jay’s radio-personality voice continued. “And see the amazing Henry net without netting. Looks like he’s tangling that fish. There you go—tangling. A brand-new technique and you saw it first on Angling Amateurs.”
He kept up the steady chatter while zooming in to watch Matthew work the brown free. Charles stepped in with the pliers and the gloves to assist.
Then came the display footage. They all knew the drill by now and Matthew stood in the official pose and held up the brown, who gasped obligingly for future viewers.
“A keeper,” Jay said.
Matthew agreed. “A worthy adversary.”
Since they were only allowed five catches a day by law, anything less worthy got tossed back to survive another day.
“Tangling.” Jay laughed after he stopped recording. “Tangling. Do you get it? Angling means fishing with a line and tangling means Henry got the whole thing tangled up in the net. Damn, I’m good. Any more questions about early retirement?”
Jay was talking to hear himself because no one else cared. Charles broke into the beer cooler to start the celebration.
“All hail Captain Jay.” Jay caught the icy beer Charles tossed his way and raised it high. “Another reminder of why I continue to sacrifice the comforts of a good woman and a home filled with little mouths to feed.”
“Sacrifice?” Charles winced. “That picket-fence lifestyle will drain you worse than the loans, dude.”
“And your ass would be eating beanie wienie from a can if not for my wife, I should remind you.” Henry pointed out before drawing deeply from the bottle of Bass Ale.
“Don’t waste your breath.” Matthew leaned against the bench seat and slanted an approving glance Henry’s way. “Playboy Charles here has commitment issues. He won’t hear a word you say. Trust me on this.”
“Like I even have time for a life anymore.” Not everyone was cut out to be a married man, and Charles had already learned the hard way that he wasn’t one of them. He wasn’t about to make apologies. Especially not to Matthew, who’d fared no better in the marriage arena with an ugly divorce behind him.
“Where you been, chief?” Charles said. “Just so happens I’ve finished my eighth month at New Hope, and if you haven’t heard, we’re launched and hosting families already.”
Matthew tipped the neck of the beer bottle in acknowledgement. “I’ve heard.”
“Impressed yet?”
“That you’re still at St. Joseph’s all these years later.”
Charles laughed. “And you doubt my ability to commit.”
Any less commitment and he would have run out the back door when he’d spotted Karan at New Hope. Now there was a real sacrifice—being forced to put up with his ex-wife for the term of her community service.
But St. Joseph’s chief of staff didn’t need any reminders about Charles’s commitments gone bad. Neither did Charles for that matter, because he resented that Karan was inside his head again, turning up like a bad penny as his grandmother always said—whatever the hell that meant—and disrupting his peaceful weekend.
Setting aside the bottle with a clatter, he reached for his fishing rod. He wanted his fifteen seconds of fame on YouTube. He wanted to commune with nature the way the Native Americans had when they’d used these streams and rivers to travel. This was his time to take a break from reality, to step away from the constant demands of the O.R., from New Hope, from the pressure of Matthew dangling the appointment in front of his nose like a worm on a hook.
He cast the line and projected the same focus he used in surgery onto the sound of the stream, on the wildlife in the trees and the shore, on the absence of demands on his time. Today was his. To relax.
And he did. Charles cleared his head into restful emptiness. The beer cooled his throat. He shed another layer of clothing as the sun rose, glinting off the gunwale as the boat rode with the current.
Then a phone vibrated.
All gazes swiveled toward the gear, toward the insistent tremor of sound that intruded on the quiet.
“Henry, you have any babies coming?” Matthew asked.
Henry shook his head. “Lawrence is on call. I’m not expecting anything he can’t handle.”
“It’s mine.” Charles reached for his BlackBerry and glanced at the display. New Hope’s main switchboard. With a sinking feeling, he depressed the talk button, knowing he wouldn’t be getting this call unless there was trouble. “Steinberg.”
“It’s Deputy Doug, Dr. Steinberg. Sorry to bother you, but we need a director.”
Charles could practically feel the gazes on him. He covered the receiver and whispered, “New Hope.”
Matthew nodded. Jay cast his fly. Henry went back to making knots.
Charles asked, “What’s up?”
“Smoke detection system went off. Security company called the fire department.”
“Is there a fire?”
More curious gazes. Jay mumbled something under his breath that sounded like: “To hell with real.”
“No, no fire.”
Charles exhaled a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Then what triggered the system?”
Deputy Doug hesitated long enough that Charles knew he wasn’t going to like the answer. “Burned popcorn.”
“Come again?”
“Burned popcorn. One of the volunteers didn’t know microwaves have popcorn buttons. She set the timer and got distracted. Place smells godawful.”
The adrenaline began to ebb like the boat’s wake behind
them. “Any damage?”
That would be about the last thing New Hope needed.
“Microwave took a hit, and the place is going to smell for a while unless you’ve got money in the budget to call one of those disaster recovery services to air out the drapes and carpets. But maybe we can keep the windows open long enough.”
Which was good considering they’d almost broken the bank getting the place up and running, and he hadn’t budgeted much for maintenance repairs on a newly renovated house.
Instead, Charles had sunk the bulk of their assets into handling the monthly expenses until they reached out to the community to secure more funding. It had been a sound plan, but obviously he should have budgeted for stupidity.
“Who puts a bag of popcorn in the microwave and walks off?” he asked. But the instant the words were out of his mouth, Charles knew.
“The new volunteer with the Jag.” Deputy Doug didn’t sound amused. “One of the kids wanted a snack.”
Charles stared at the river ahead, an entirely different world, one where ex-wives weren’t lurking beneath trees that dipped leafy boughs into the water. “What do you need from me?”
“The fire chief is conducting an inspection now, but we’ve got everyone outside. The fire escape procedures all worked like a charm, too, so you know. Got everyone out safely and quickly, but the fire chief won’t let everyone inside until a director signs off on the incident report.”
“For burned popcorn?”
“It’s the emergency status of the shelter, fire chief says. Standard procedure.”
“Have you tried Dr. Camden?” Charles asked.
“Called her first, but she’s in the middle of some crisis at the center. Can’t get through, but I’ll keep trying.”
As director of the crisis center, Rhonda could very well be talking someone off a roof. Unfortunately, by the time Charles got ashore and to the cabin where his Jeep was parked… “I’m going to be an hour no matter how I cut it.”
“Then I’d get a move on. Got a bunch of little kids here who are going to start asking for drinks and bathrooms soon.”
Charles scowled.
CHAPTER SEVEN
KARAN WATCHED THE FIRE CHIEF vanish inside the building again, leaving her in the parking lot, baking in the rising summer sun, surrounded by a group of equally inconvenienced people.
An annoyed fire chief. Several amused volunteer firefighters, one of whom had carried out the smoking remains of the popcorn bag and pronounced a time of death. He’d earned a round of laughter at Karan’s expense.
Two Bluestone Mountain police officers. Add the staff and volunteers from New Hope, who’d all dutifully banded around the residents. Three one-parent families. All mothers with children ranging in all ages from unborn up. Each and every one of them understood the fire chief couldn’t let them back inside the house until a director arrived to sign off on the incident report.
Not a one of them had been unkind although this situation had been entirely Karan’s fault.
Deputy Doug slipped the cell phone into a case on his utility belt and directed the nurse. “Let’s move everyone over to the gazebo where there’s shade. The kids can run around and entertain themselves in the play yard.”
“It’s going to be a while,” the nurse said. Not a question.
“Afraid so, but he’s on his way.”
He. Charles.
Wasn’t the man supposed to be on a fishing trip?
Charles didn’t want her at New Hope. He’d made that apparent, loud and clear. Karan didn’t want to be here, either, or around him for that matter.
Common ground. Imagine that.
But why the man would be so nasty…he’d been the one who couldn’t be bothered to show up to live their life together. She’d tried everything she could think of to get him to address the problem—because until they knew what the trouble was they couldn’t resolve it. There had even been that horrible time when she’d been convinced he’d met someone new. He swore that wasn’t the case, and everyone she’d known who worked at the hospital had corroborated his story.
So he’d continued to withdraw further and further from her until he barely came home from the hospital anymore. When he did, he felt like a stranger. She’d talked to her married friends, read every book she could find on the subject. All to no avail. She couldn’t make him address the issue. Eventually, she’d finally been forced to accept that their marriage was irretrievably broken. The worst part was that she had no idea why he’d gone into full-fledged retreat mode. She still didn’t.
So why he would behave as if he was the wronged party made no sense whatsoever.
And now he was on his way here.
She should have gone home the minute she’d logged onto the duty roster to find that Rhonda hadn’t yet assigned her a duty. Trying to fit in on her own had turned out to be a bad, bad idea.
“Why don’t we start a game of kickball?” Elizabeth the shift therapist suggested. “There’s sports gear in the shed. Keep the kids engaged for as long as we can.”
The nurse nodded. “Great idea. The exercise will do us good. Except you, LaShanna. You can keep score.”
LaShanna, a mother of two, was so pregnant she looked as if she might pop at any second. “Fine by me.”
Elizabeth withdrew keys from her belt and headed toward the shed. “Be right back.”
Kickball? Karan wanted to know when her life had degenerated into a bad sitcom.
“I’m so sorry,” Amy whispered.
It took Karan a second to register that the woman, one of the shelter residents, was speaking to her. “For what?”
“For this…mess.” She waved a hand around, looked genuinely distressed.
Amy had to be close to Karan’s age. Well spoken. A few pounds wouldn’t have hurt, but otherwise pretty in a natural, earthy way. Her boys weren’t little. Not teenagers yet but not that far away. Middle school, maybe. She didn’t know kids. “This mess isn’t your fault, Amy.”
“If Cody hadn’t been bothering you for a snack—”
“I was hungry, Mom.” Cody looked at Karan with unhappy eyes. “Thanks for trying though.”
If the kid had been hungry before, he must be starving by now. “Accidents happen. Next time you can show me how to make the popcorn,” she said to lighten the mood.
It worked. The boy smiled. “Okay. It’s not hard if you know what button to push.”
Which presupposed the microwave still functioned. With all the smoke that had been billowing out of it, Karan wouldn’t be surprised if the firefighter called another time of death.
“I’ll look forward to the lesson.”
Balls and plastic bases appeared and Cody took off toward the action, leaving Karan to walk over with his mother.
“Kickball is a good idea,” Amy commented. “Get the kids to interact. I don’t know about the others here, but mine miss their friends a lot.”
Karan supposed kickball could be viewed as a bit of a silver lining in this storm cloud. “That must be hard.”
“This whole situation is a nightmare. They haven’t seen their friends or any of my family. With all the moaning and complaining they did about school and homework, they never had a clue they would actually miss it.”
“Aren’t they on summer break?”
A ghost of a smile crossed Amy’s face. “They wish. They’re taking a few virtual classes to keep in practice, since we’ve dropped out of our life completely. New Hope is affiliated with a great online school, so no complaints there. But I’m a teacher. They couldn’t get out of school if they tried.”
“I guess not. So you’re out of work then, too?”
Amy nodded. “I was teaching at the elementary school they attended, but I don’t think I’ll be going back. I keep telling myself it’s a good time to make a change. Cody starts middle school in September and Bryce is only a year behind him. I’m just hoping we can get everything settled by then.”
“I hope it all works out.” What e
lse could she say?
They caught up with the rest of the group, so the conversation ended. But Karan couldn’t deny her surprise. Not only by Amy’s frankness, but her occupation. A teacher. She seemed like a perfectly normal soccer mom, no different than Susanna, who spent half her life driving her kids from school and sports practices to friends’ houses and the mall.
Yet here was Amy in an emergency shelter. Karan had no clue about the details of the woman’s situation, but it wasn’t much of a stretch to guess it must have been bad for her to uproot her kids and drop out of her life completely, as she’d said.
Karan didn’t know much about domestic violence, but for some reason she hadn’t expected to run into a mother who reminded her of Susanna. Karan made a mental note to glance at the paperwork Wannabe Jenny had loaded her down with during sentencing. She’d tossed it into a pile in her office, but her assistant wouldn’t have thrown it away.
Elizabeth appointed Cody and LaShanna’s oldest son, D’Marcus, as team captains, which clearly thrilled them to no end. She also directed them to choose a mix of kids and adults for each of their teams so the adults wouldn’t feel left out.
That got a smile from Amy.
Not Karan, though. She was mentally preparing a reason why she should assist LaShanna with the score-keeping when Cody pointed to her as his first pick. His younger brother looked crushed. Karan was, too, truth be told, but she couldn’t toss that little boy’s effort back at him. So, forcing a smile, she went to stand beside him. Hopefully, he wouldn’t live to regret his kindness, since she’d never actually played kickball before. But she’d been watching sports all her life. Her father had been a fan of anything, college and professional, that could get him on the sidelines to watch games.
“Might be good to run down on the rules,” she suggested after the teams were chosen.
Cody, who had chosen his brother as a third round pick, looked a bit crushed himself now, but she winked reassuringly.
The rules were simple enough. Kick the ball. Run to base. When her turn did finally come, she nailed the ball and took off for first base to cheers of encouragement.
The Husband Lesson Page 6