His Best Friend's Wife

by Lee McKenzie

  “Is it snowing?”

  He half turned and glanced through the window behind him. Sure enough. Huge, thick flakes floated to the ground. It would have been a pretty scene—a photo-worthy one—if they didn’t have a two-hour drive ahead of them.

  “It sure is.”

  Worry lines appeared on Annie’s forehead. She hastily pulled on her gloves and picked up her purse. “I hate driving in the snow. Maybe we shouldn’t have come all the way into the city, or maybe we shouldn’t have stayed for lunch.”

  Not wanting the day ruined by unnecessary concern, he steered her between the tables to the door. “We’ll be fine. My car has good snow tires, and the roads won’t be too bad yet.”

  He had plenty of experience driving in winter conditions far worse than this. In Chicago, he’d had his fair share of late night calls when he’d had to get to the hospital, regardless of the weather and road conditions. A patient had taken a turn for the worse, another doctor was ill and Paul needed to cover. And then there’d been the time when a loaded school bus had been hit by a semi on the interstate. What had started as a light snowfall had unexpectedly turned into a full-on blizzard by midafternoon, and although he’d been having a rare day off, he’d had to drive to the hospital as soon as the call came through.

  Telling Annie these things now would not alleviate her concerns so he kept them to himself. Even for his own peace of mind, he wished he hadn’t remembered the school-bus incident.

  Outside the restaurant, afternoon shoppers were scurrying to their cars. He was glad he’d found parking nearby and as he opened the door for Annie, he briefly held her gloved hand in his.

  “Don’t worry, okay?” This was like telling a mother bear not to protect her cubs. “I’ll get us home in one piece.”

  By the time he started the car, she had her phone out. “I’m calling Rose to let her know we’re on our way.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Hmm. No one’s answering at the house.” She paused, then left a message. “Dad. CJ. It’s Annie. Paul and I are leaving the city now and it’s snowing. We’ll be home as soon as we can.”

  Paul eased into traffic. The snow was melting the instant it hit the ground, so the streets were wet but not slippery.

  “I’ll try Rose’s cell phone.” There was a touch of panic in her voice, reminding him of the morning she’d brought Isaac to the clinic after he had fallen off his horse. And given the way Eric had died, Paul completely understood her overprotectiveness.

  “She isn’t answering her phone, either. What if—”

  “Annie. They’re probably outside, taking the dog for a walk, maybe.”

  But the message she left in Rose’s voice mail was a little more agitated. “Rose. Why aren’t you picking up? It’s snowing really heavily here.”

  Actually, no, it isn’t.

  “Give me a call as soon as you get this. By then I should be able to give you an idea of when we’ll be home.” She ended the call and lowered her hands to her lap with the phone clasped between them.

  Paul could tell her exactly when they’d be home—the roads were clear and traffic was moving along nicely—but he knew they’d both be better off if he could keep her distracted.

  “Do you have more ideas about the church and food article you’re thinking about writing for the blog?”

  “Well...”

  Her response was hesitant at first but he listened and asked the occasional question as he maneuvered onto the freeway and out of the city. To his dismay, the snow was falling heavier as they drove east and traffic was starting to slow. If Annie noticed—and of course she did—she didn’t say anything. Instead she kept talking about her next story, which then segued into another subject.

  About twenty minutes outside of Riverton, they encountered a bad stretch of highway and he had to slow down because the car ahead of them fishtailed on an icy patch. Although Paul slowed and kept a safe distance before it was safe to pass, Annie stopped talking and focused on the road ahead while periodically sneaking peeks at her phone to see if she had missed a call or text message. Every time she looked up again, he could tell she hadn’t and he knew it was killing her.

  * * *

  THIS WAS IT, Libby thought. This thing with Thomas was the real deal. This was love. After more decades than she cared to acknowledge, she was ridiculously, crazily, madly in love with her high-school crush. The surreal part was this time her feelings were reciprocated. He was a thoughtful man in the broadest sense, with ideas and views about society and politics and world events, and yet he wasn’t opinionated. What’s more, he valued and respected her thoughts on those topics. And he made her feel young again, the way he’d pulled her onto his lap and kissed her.

  After their brief make-out session, she had poured more coffee and they had settled in the living room to watch a documentary on Iceland—a place that, oddly enough, interested both of them.

  The phone rang as the credits rolled, and as she got up to answer it, the scene outside the living room window caught her attention.

  “Oh, my goodness. Look, Thomas. It’s snowing.”

  “So it is,” he said. “I should probably get home.”

  In the kitchen, Libby picked up the phone. “Hello?”

  “Libby. Hi, it’s Emily. Is my dad still there?” There was no mistaking the concern in his daughter’s voice.

  “He is. We just realized it’s snowing so he’ll be on his way home right away. Would you like to talk to him?”

  “Sure...no... I mean...could you please tell him to meet me at the hospital? There’s been an accident.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  THE WHOLE FAMILY was assembled in the waiting room when Annie burst through the entrance doors with Paul a step behind her. “What happened?” she asked. “Where is he?”

  CJ was the first to jump up and meet her with an embrace. “He’ll be okay, Annie. The doctor is checking him out now.”

  Emily appeared on her other side, hugging her as close as her expanding belly allowed. “Isaac’s going to be all right. Dad’s in there with him.”

  “What about Rose?”

  “They have her in another room,” CJ said.

  “She’s a little more banged up but she’s going to be okay, too,” Emily said. “Isaac was wearing a seat belt but Rose wasn’t.”

  Not wearing a seat belt? What on earth had she been thinking? “My poor little boy. He must be terrified. Where is he? I need to see him.”

  Stacey McGregor, dressed in crisp green scrubs, came into the waiting room from the small ER at the back of the health center. Relieved to see someone she knew and trusted was here to look after her son, Annie rushed up to her. “How is he? Can you take me to him?”

  “Of course.” Stacey put her arm around Annie’s shoulders, led her away. “He’s been asking for you. You, too, Dr. Woodward.”

  Annie turned back, extended a hand. “Please come with us?” She knew his colleague, Alyssa Cameron, was an excellent physician, but right now she needed someone she would trust with her life, and Paul was that someone.

  “Do you know what happened?” Annie asked. None of this made any sense. “Did my sister say why she took Isaac out in her car?”

  Stacey shook her head. “I haven’t spoken to her. All I know is that they were on River Road on their way back to the farm. I guess they hit an icy patch and her car slid off the road.”

  Annie’s breath caught in her chest and it took some effort for her to exhale. Paul squeezed her hand. Stacey led them into an examining room.

 
; “Mom! Look! I got a new stuffy.” Isaac lay in a hospital bed clutching a fuzzy brown teddy bear that had its arm in a gauzy white sling. Annie’s father sat next to him. “An’ I’m getting a cast on my arm.”

  “A cast?” Annie rushed to him.

  “He’s a brave little boy,” Thomas said.

  His arm was broken? Rose had taken her son out in that broken-down car of hers, driven off the road and broken Isaac’s arm? “Oh, baby. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have left you. I should have stayed home today. Does your arm hurt?”

  Isaac shook his head against the pillow. “Melissa’s mom gave me some medicine to make the hurting go away, an’ Dr. Cameron says my cast can be whatever color I want so I’m going to have a blue one.”

  Thomas wheeled himself out of the way to give Annie more room. “I’ll head on back to the waiting room.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  Annie gently ran her hand over her son’s curls, noticed the bandage on his forehead as she did. “What happened here? Did you bump your head?|

  “It’s just a scrape,” Stacey said. “Isn’t that right, Isaac?”

  “Yup. I’m going to call this bear Henry.”

  Stacey patted his curls. “That’s a good name.”

  Paul joined Alyssa Cameron in front of a light panel on the wall, quietly discussing the X-ray clipped there.

  Annie swayed a little, her panic almost getting the best of her. Her son had been in a car accident and brought here to the hospital. Had he come in an ambulance? He had been X-rayed and who knew what else, and she hadn’t been here for him. No, she had been in the city, flattering herself into believing she might actually be a photographer, daring to imagine having another man in her life, fantasizing about a life beyond her family. What was she thinking? Her family was her life. Isaac was the most important person in her world, the one person who fully depended on her...and she had let him down.

  “I’m so sorry, honey. I shouldn’t have left you on your own.”

  “I wasn’t by myself. Auntie Rose was there. She’s funny. This morning she put the music on real loud and we danced in the living room and then we ate lunch and then she broke one of your dishes—” He clamped the hand of his good arm over his mouth. “Oops. I promised I wouldn’t tell.”

  “It’s okay. I don’t care about the dish.” She wanted to mean what she said, but she knew herself well enough to know that when she went home she would check the trash can and inspect the cupboards to figure out what was missing. “I only care about you.”

  Paul and Dr. Cameron crossed the small space and stood together on the opposite side of Isaac’s bed. Annie looked up at them, fearing the worst.

  “Isaac, you are one lucky little boy,” Alyssa said. “Paul, Dr. Woodward, has looked at the picture we took of your arm and he agrees you have a tiny, and I mean the tiniest, hairline fracture in your radius.”

  “What’s a radius?”

  “It’s one of the two long bones in your arm that extend between your wrist and your elbow,” she said.

  Paul stroked Isaac’s head, and Annie thought he leaned a little closer as he detected the bandage on his forehead. “The good thing about a kid’s bones...”

  Annie was pretty sure this last bit was aimed at her.

  Paul moved his hand to Annie’s shoulder, gave it a squeeze. “Kids’ bones are soft, so they fracture easily, but it also means they heal very quickly and with few to no complications.”

  Dr. Cameron nodded in agreement. “So we’re going to get Nurse Stacey to take you to the cast room.”

  Isaac held up his teddy bear. “Can Henry come, too?”

  “He sure can. Henry knows all about casts.”

  While sitting in the cast room, Annie fretted with the strap of her handbag while a technician distracted Isaac with idle chitchat about teddy bears and digging up dinosaurs and building snow forts now that winter appeared to be here. Half an hour later, she led her son into the waiting room, his bear securely tucked under his good arm, his newly blue-casted arm supported by a matching sling and his pain medication tucked in Annie’s purse.

  Everyone rushed to gather around him—her father and Libby, Emily and CJ, and Paul. For the first time since she’d arrived at the clinic, Annie realized she hadn’t seen her half sister.

  “What about Rose?” she asked. “How is she doing?”

  Everyone looked at everyone else while they avoided looking at Annie.

  “She’s going to be fine, but there’s a chance she’ll need surgery we’re not equipped to perform here,” Paul said. “We had an ambulance take her to the hospital in Rochester.”

  “Surgery? So this accident...” It must have been bad. She glanced at her precious boy, smoothed his hair. She needed more details, but she didn’t want him to have to relive the nightmare. The details would have to wait. “I think it’s time we went home, don’t you? I’ll fix some dinner.”

  “I’m going to stay here and give Alyssa a hand,” Paul said. “Then I need to get home and check on my father. I’ll call you later to see how Isaac’s doing. Call me if you need anything, okay?”

  “I will.” She watched him walk away and wished she could ask him to stay.

  “I’ll run Libby home and meet you all at the house.”

  “You and Isaac can ride home with me,” CJ said. “Emily’s coming with us. Jack had to swing by the police station and then he’ll come and pick her up.”

  “Sounds good.” Annie let her sisters shepherd her to the parking lot. The snow had stopped and as dusk dimmed the sky, the blanket of white made everything seem a little brighter.

  Settled in the backseat with Isaac, Annie was suddenly overcome with bone-deep exhaustion. “I don’t know if I’ll have enough energy to make dinner.”

  Emily glanced into the backseat. “CJ and I will fix something while you get Isaac settled in.”

  Annie yawned. Her sisters’ idea of fixing something ran along the lines of canned soup, maybe hot dogs. Tonight she was too tired to care.

  * * *

  ANNIE WAS STARTLED awake when CJ stuck her head into Isaac’s room and quietly called her name. She had lain down next to her son, thinking she would close her eyes for a few minutes until he fell asleep.

  “I’m sorry, I must have dozed off.” She blinked and rubbed her eyes. “What time is it?”

  “Dinnertime.”

  She looked at Isaac, saw his eyes were closed, his long lashes fanned adorably across his cheekbones, the rise and fall of his chest slow and even.

  Her sweet little man. She decided not to wake him.

  “How long was I asleep?”

  “Forty-five minutes, maybe?”

  She stood, stretched and followed CJ downstairs to the kitchen.

  Her father, Emily and Jack were already seated at the table. To her surprise, they had made a salad, defrosted a container of meatballs in tomato sauce, cooked pasta, set out a basket with thick slabs of the sourdough bread she’d baked yesterday, along with tall glasses of water with ice and sliced lemon.

  “We made one of Isaac’s favorites in case he decided to get up for dinner,” Emily said.

  “He’s worn out and the meds made him sleepy. I think it’s best he get some rest.” She and CJ joined the others and everyone dug in. Annie filled her plate, surprised to find herself famished.

  For a few minutes they ate in companionable silence. She had questions, plenty of them, but it was easier to eat and pretend this was like any other dinner. Normal.

  “How was your date with Libby, Dad?”

  Thomas grinned. “We had a fine time. The folks at the retirement home loved her. How was yours?”

  “It wasn’t a...” Who was she kidding? The outing with Paul had most definitely been a date. “He took me to an art gallery in the city. And a boo
kstore, and then we had lunch.” She realized the photograph he’d bought for her and the books she’d chosen were still in his car.

  “What did you think of the exhibit?” Emily asked.

  “I loved it. But I wish I had stayed home.”

  CJ slathered herbed garlic butter onto a slice of bread. “The accident wasn’t your fault.”

  “Of course it was. If I had stayed home, Isaac wouldn’t have been in Rose’s car and none of this would have happened.” But it had. “I need to know the details,” she said. “And I need to know how Rose is doing.”

  Her sisters both looked to Jack. “The call came in just before two o’clock,” he said. “Isaac used Rose’s phone to call 911.”

  “He...what?”

  “As close as we can tell, they went into town right after lunch. Rose did a little...shopping. It started snowing around one, and by the time they were headed home, the conditions were already getting bad. The snow was freezing as soon as it hit the pavement and Rose was driving on bald tires.”

  Anger roiled in Annie’s gut. “What was she thinking? And what was so important she needed to risk my son’s life by driving into town in a blizzard in that old junker?”

  “In all fairness, it wasn’t snowing when they left.”

  “My point is, she had no business leaving. What was she shopping for?”

  Everyone at the table exchanged looks. Jack answered her question.

  “Rose had been drinking. We think she ran out of booze around lunchtime and decided to risk the drive into town to get more. She had an unopened bottle of vodka in her trunk with a receipt showing she had just purchased it.”

  Annie covered her face with her hands. Rose had been drinking, in the morning, while she was supposed to be looking after Isaac. She didn’t have a drinking problem. She was an alcoholic. Everyone had tried to tell Annie, and she had refused to listen. She had felt sorry for Rose, had even convinced herself that as soon as the girl realized someone believed in her, she would turn her life around. Instead she had turned Annie’s upside down. She lowered her hands and immediately picked up on everyone’s concern.