His Best Friend's Wife

by Lee McKenzie

  “I’m okay.”

  “No, you’re not.” Emily squeezed her hand.

  “And no one expects you to be,” CJ said.

  Annie looked to her father, who so far was keeping quiet.

  “The important thing is to keep everything in perspective,” he said. “Isaac is okay.”

  Annie wished she could be sure. Eric had broken his leg on a ski trip and seemed to be doing fine. But then he had developed a blood clot as a result, and six weeks after the accident he was gone. What if...?

  “Don’t go there,” her father said. “You heard what the doctors said. It’s a hairline fracture and they don’t anticipate any complications.”

  “What about Rose?” Annie still didn’t know the full extent of her injuries.

  “If she’d been wearing her seat belt, her injuries would have been minimal,” Emily said. “Apparently, she hit the steering wheel pretty hard, and then hit her head on the side window when the car veered into the ditch.”

  Annie closed her eyes, trying not to picture it, trying not to think about how terrified Isaac must have been.

  Emily helped herself to another slice of bread. “She has a couple of fractured ribs and Dr. Cameron was worried about the possibility of a collapsed lung. That’s why the decision was made to send her to a bigger hospital.”

  Just as well, Annie decided. If Rose had been kept at the health center in Riverton, Annie might have felt obliged to see her. Now was not a good time. Like her dad said, she needed some perspective. For that to happen, she needed some distance, too.

  She sipped her water, sighing as she set the glass on the table. “Here’s what I don’t understand. I trusted her. I tried to help her. And this is the thanks I get? There are stretches of River Road where her car could have ended up in the river. They could both be—” Her voice broke but it wouldn’t have mattered. She couldn’t have said the unthinkable out loud.

  There was no missing the looks exchanged around the table.

  “What?” she asked. “This could have been a lot worse.”

  Jack pushed his plate away and rested his forearms on the table. “Annie, I wish I could say cops seldom see this sort of thing but the truth is, it happens far too often.”

  “And we’ve tried to tell you what’s been going on with Rose,” CJ said. “I guess you weren’t ready to hear it.”

  Emily shot their younger sister a look and reached for Annie’s hand again. “But we understand why you wanted to help her.”

  “It takes a professional to treat alcoholism,” Jack said. “It’s a disease and like any disease, it requires professional treatment. Counseling, detox, maybe even a stint in residential rehab. But unlike a lot of other diseases, treatment is rarely successful if the patient isn’t cooperative. Rose has been to the clinic a few times and I’m sure Paul has encouraged her to get professional help. Rose probably hasn’t been willing to listen.”

  “Wait...what?” A sick feeling pooled in her gut. “You’re saying Paul knew about this? He’s her doctor and he’s known about this problem all along? He let me leave her here to look after Isaac?”

  Jack ran a hand through his hair, blew out a breath. “Okay, I was out of line. Paul didn’t tell me this in so many words. He couldn’t.”

  Emily was quick to defend her husband and his friend. “There’s a little thing called doctor-patient confidentiality, Annie. Paul could lose his license to practice if he ran around town talking about his patients. We’re just speculating.”

  “But we’re not just anyone. We’re family.” Even as she said it, she knew she was being unreasonable. But seriously, how could he have let this happen?

  CJ chimed in. “Annie, you’re not being reasonable. Would you want your doctor to discuss your medical appointments with one of us?”

  “Of course not.” She pushed away from the table and carried her dishes to the counter, started loading the dishwasher. “But Paul was here this morning. He knew Rose would be on her own with Isaac. He could have done something. He could have changed our plans, made up an excuse to stay in town, or better yet stay at home. He had no right to risk my son’s well-being.”

  Emily and CJ looked at each other, shrugged and started to clear the table. Their father backed his chair away.

  “Dad?” Annie always valued his opinion, and he’d been awfully quiet through this. “What do you think?”

  “I still say you need some perspective, and I can see you’re not going to get any tonight. For now I think we should count our blessings our little boy is okay and Rose is going to make a full recovery. We can save the rest of this discussion for tomorrow, when calmer, cooler heads will prevail.”

  He rolled out of the room without giving her a chance to say there was nothing wrong with her perspective. Nothing. Nothing at all.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  IN SPITE OF being up and down at least a half dozen times to check on Isaac during the night, Annie was up long before the sun. With anger and resentment all tangled up with lack of sleep, she knew that lying here awake replaying the previous day’s events would only make her angrier and more resentful. Better to keep busy, she decided, so she slid out of bed, put on a sweatshirt, her favorite old jeans and a pair of thick wool socks.

  She checked on Isaac again—still sleeping—before she went downstairs to put on coffee. She let the dogs out, half smiled as Chester gingerly padded out into the white blanket of snow. Beasley let out a yip and leaped across the yard, paws barely touching the ground until he flipped onto his side, then his back, making the equivalent of doggy angels in the snow. In spite of her mood, watching his pure enjoyment had her full-on grinning. Silly pup.

  In the utility room, she started a load of laundry, and then in the kitchen she poured herself a mug of coffee, inhaled the scent as she sipped it. She pulled on a jacket and boots and let herself out into the crisp early-morning air. The eastern sky was light enough for her to see the clouds had cleared overnight and they were in for a glorious sunrise. She would have to come out with her camera, she thought. And then she felt guilty for thinking about herself when she should be thinking about Isaac.

  She flipped on the yard light, grabbed a broom and swept snow off the steps. Later, she would go in search of the snow shovel. For now, she made her way through the ankle-deep white to the chicken coop. The inside was warm and the chickens were happy. Even happier after she fed them. She had forgotten to grab a basket on her way out so she tucked eggs in her jacket pocket.

  When she returned to the kitchen, she emptied her pockets into the egg basket on the counter, then ran upstairs to check on Isaac. His eyelids fluttered open as she entered his room.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked. “Did you sleep well?”

  He nodded groggily. “My arm feels heavy.” He lifted it and let it drop onto the comforter.

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Nope. Can I watch TV?”

  “Do you want to come downstairs?”

  He shook his head. “Can I watch it in your room?”

  “Sure you can.” She seldom used the television tucked away in the armoire, but anytime Isaac was sick, this was where he wanted to be. This morning she was happy to tuck him into her bed, cozy beneath her down duvet, his arm supported on a plump pillow, the remote in his good hand. “I’ll be right back with some juice and fruit. That should keep you going till breakfast.”

  “And the walkie-talkies?” he asked.

  “And I’ll bring the walkie-talkies.” Those were part of the tradition. Annie could work downstairs or even out in the yard. Isaac could recuperate upstairs and call her if he needed anything.

  After she had him settled, she went to her kitchen, took out ingredients and went to work. An hour later she had made a dozen each of her family’s favorite muffins—lemon-cranberry and carrot-pineap
ple—and started on an apple strudel. Throughout the process, she had radioed Isaac twice to make sure he was okay and made two more trips up and down the stairs to check on him and cart his dishes down. On the second trip she’d found Beasley on the bed with him and hadn’t had the heart to admonish either of them for breaking the no-dogs-on-the-furniture rule.

  In the midst of it all, she had also caught a glimpse of the early morning sky and slipped outside to take a few shots as deep purple-blue faded to mauve and then warmed to coral and rose as the sun inched toward the horizon.

  After everything that had happened yesterday, making the time now to take the photographs seemed unnecessarily self-indulgent, and yet she hadn’t been able to stop herself. Yesterday Paul had flattered her into thinking she was someone she wasn’t, and she had been vain enough to believe him. And after the second batch of muffins went into the oven, she took out her phone, and while she sipped a second cup of coffee, looked through the pictures she had taken at the restaurant yesterday. She was not an artist. She was a mother who enjoyed taking pictures. There was a difference, she reminded herself.

  Still...she scanned the images on her phone one more time. From a technical standpoint, they were probably amateurish. She had no idea and no way of judging for herself. The composition was interesting, even she could see that. But that wasn’t the point.

  She was the mother of a young boy who needed her to look after him. Yesterday she had let them both down. As for his father, she didn’t even want to go there.

  * * *

  PAUL SETTLED HIS father at the kitchen table with his tea, toast and soft-boiled egg.

  “I need to make a call, Dad. Check in with the clinic. I’ll be right back.”

  He took the phone into the living room and sat at his mother’s old writing desk by the stairs, but instead of calling the clinic, he dialed the number of the hospital in Rochester. He introduced himself and asked to be connected to the nursing station in the ward Rose had been admitted to.

  Relieved to learn her vitals were good and she had come through the night without the need for surgery, he asked that she not be discharged until he came by to see her later in the morning. Before he made the drive there, he wanted to run out to the farm, see how Isaac was doing, drop off the print and Annie’s books and make sure she was okay, too. If he played his cards right, he would find a way to get her alone and pick up where they’d left off yesterday, before Jack had called to tell her about the accident.

  Next, he made a call to a colleague from medical school who was now in Madison, practicing psychiatry with a specialty in addictions and substance abuse. Encouraged by the outcome of that call, he returned to the kitchen to check on his father.

  The old man was staring out the window into the neighbor’s backyard, watching two young children tumbling in the fresh snow, shrieking as they tossed handfuls of the white stuff at one another, laughing with their dad as he showed them how to roll snowballs and stack them to build a snowman.

  “Do you still play with that Evans boy?” his dad asked.

  Momentarily taken aback until he realized his father had slipped fully into the past, Paul poured himself a cup of tea from the pot on the table and took a seat.

  “Sure I do,” he said. “Jack and I see each other all the time.”

  “Good kid, that Evans boy.”

  Right. He had grown up hearing his father talk about what “good kids” other parents had and how Paul would be so much better off he would emulate them.

  “Never as smart as you, though.”

  Startled, Paul waited to see if his father would elaborate.

  “Remember your first bicycle? The one with the training wheels?”

  “I sure do.” He’d loved that bike. It was too big for him when his parents bought it, but it was bright, shiny blue, tricked out with training wheels and the seat lowered as far as it would go so he could reach the pedals.

  “You were the first kid on the block to learn to ride a two-wheeler. I was proud of you.”

  Paul was stunned. There were no other words. Just stunned. Somehow he felt as though the disjointed pieces of his life had suddenly, miraculously slid into place. The one woman he had always loved was finally within his reach. That, he had hoped for. This? Never. His father might be living in the past, but he was also making up for it.

  “Thanks, Dad. I had a good teacher.” At this point, what was the harm in one little lie?

  Or was it a lie? He had a vague memory of learning to ride the two-wheeler. It was a milestone in every kid’s life, and at the time it had felt like a monumental achievement. Every time he had wavered, he remembered his father’s words.

  “Don’t look down. Keep your eye on the sidewalk ahead of you, at least two houses ahead. If you want to succeed, you need to keep your eye on where you’re going, not on where you are right now.”

  That kind of advice had been all but lost on an almost five-year-old, but it must have resonated because it had become the force that had guided him through high school to college, from college to medical school, and from there to a fast-tracked career at one of the top hospitals in the country. Coming home had always been his father’s expectation but never part of Paul’s plan. Now that he was in Riverton, he knew he’d made the right decision at exactly the right time.

  His father had already forgotten about the bike. His breakfast now had his undivided attention as he scooped soft egg out of the shell by carefully coordinating his spoon in one hand, with toast in the other.

  I was proud of you.

  As Paul watched his father and heard the echo of those words, he experienced something akin to affection. And he promised himself if he was fortunate enough to become a father, he wouldn’t make his child wait thirty years to hear those words from him.

  * * *

  PAUL STOMPED THE snow off his boots before he climbed the freshly swept front steps of the farmhouse. In town, the snow on the streets was already turning to brown slush, but out here, the blanket of white was largely untouched, except for the occasional tracks left by birds in search of a meal.

  He knocked on the door and noticed he wasn’t greeted by barking. Maybe the new puppy was out in the backyard. The house seemed unusually quiet but finally he heard footsteps. The door swung open and there was Annie, dressed in dark jeans, an off-white turtleneck sweater and a salmon-colored zip-front hoodie that made her skin glow.

  Her eyes told a different story. These were angry eyes, which were bewildering enough, and then even more so when he realized her anger was directed at him. The anticipation of seeing her that had filled him since waking that morning now left in a rush, leaving him deflated. Something was not right.

  “Good morning.” He held out the wrapped photographic print and the package of books she had left in his car yesterday.

  Silently, she took them, held them close to her chest, like a shield, and wrapped her arms around them.

  “Annie? Is everything okay?”

  She shook her head, blinked back the tears that suddenly filled her eyes. He reached for her but she retreated.

  “What is it?”

  “You knew.”

  “I knew...?” What he could he have possibly known that would cause her to be this angry?

  “You knew Rose had a serious drinking problem.”

  This was true. It was also true that Rose’s problem was no secret. He assumed everyone knew, including Annie. “Are you saying you didn’t?” he asked, choosing his words carefully.

  “How could I?” she asked. “I mean, it’s obvious the poor kid has problems, and I know she had too much to drink at Emily and Jack’s wedding.” She shrugged. “I figured her behavior that night was just one of those things. A one-off. I never dreamed she would drink and drive, and I never would have left Isaac with her if I thought, if I knew, if you’d told m
e...” The rest of her words seemed to catch in her throat.

  What was she saying? That the accident was his fault?

  “I’m not sure what I could have told you that you couldn’t already see for yourself. I can tell you that Rose is a patient of mine, although to be honest, I’m not sure I should even be telling you that. I definitely can’t tell you anything about her medical history. I could lose my license.”

  “What about me? What about Isaac? Are you saying you care more about Rose than you do about us?”

  Proceed with caution, he warned himself. Annie, usually the voice of reason, wasn’t herself. She was worried about her son, especially in light of the way her husband had died. She was scared. She was likely even a little angry with herself for leaving Isaac with her irresponsible half sister.

  “My feelings for Rose are strictly professional. My feelings for you and Isaac...” Sensing it was now or never, he took the plunge. “I love you, Annie. I love Isaac, too. I would never do anything to hurt either of you.”

  Eyes wide, a little fearful even, she moved farther into the house, one hand on the door as though she was about to close it. Not the reaction he had hoped for. In fact, pretty much the exact opposite. She slowly shook her head and he felt his world implode. This was it. This thing between them had hardly had a chance to get started, and now it was over.

  “I can’t do this,” she said. “I shouldn’t have let myself get involved with a friend of Eric’s. I shouldn’t have let you think this—” She waved her hand back and forth. “This thing between us was going someplace. I’m sorry.”

  “Annie, wait. Let’s talk about this.”

  But she was still shaking her head as the door clicked shut. He lifted his hand, considered knocking again, but he knew it was futile. It was just a door but it might as well have been a ten-foot-thick wall of brick.

  He went to his car, sat and stared at the house for several minutes while he considered his options. He was certain of one thing. Annie had feelings for him. He’d known from the way she looked at him, laughed with him and responded to his touch that she felt the same way he did. She could deny it six ways from Sunday, but those feelings of hers were as real as his. He would give her some time, some space. She would come around, he was sure of it. Good thing he was a patient man. Speaking of patients, he needed to check on Rose.