by Knupp, Amy
“Love it. Next time, I get to surprise you.”
“Next time, huh?” Noah sat on the bench beside her and stuck a straw in his milkshake.
“I’m hard to resist. What kind did you get?”
“Berry mix, which is blueberry, raspberry...”
“And blackberry.” She laughed.
“You know your milkshake flavors.”
“A girl’s gotta have expertise in something.” She took a drink. “I have to admit, I’m surprised. I’d pegged you for the vanilla type.”
“That should teach you.”
“I’ll consider myself taught. Or something.”
“Every time I see you, I notice a new scar. What’s this from?” He ran his finger lightly over her left shoulder blade. Her thin-strapped tank revealed most of the mark, but parts of it, she knew, were hidden under the pink cotton.
“That,” she said, trying to see it over her shoulder, “was lucky. I wiped out on a surfboard and rammed into some coral with my shoulder.”
“That’s lucky, is it?”
“It beat ramming my head against it and ending up with a concussion or worse.”
He took several sips of his shake, then nodded. “I guess if you look at it that way.”
“That way is much better than worrying about what could’ve happened.”
“So tell me,” Noah said, “when did you start with all the daredevil stunts?” He seemed a little uneasy, as if it was a strain to make idle conversation.
“When I was born.”
He raised his eyebrows doubtfully.
“Really. My mom used to tell stories about me climbing on top of the refrigerator before I was three years old.”
“The poor woman.”
“Yeah. I probably put her through a lot.”
“Don’t we all?”
“You? No way.”
“I was nothing like you, I’m sure.”
“I didn’t start the really fun stuff until after my mom died.”
“What kind of ‘stuff’?” he asked. He looked as if he might not really want to know. “The climbing up on the roof?”
“I guess that was when I first made it up there.” She nodded, impressed he’d picked up on that. “As for sports, I started out easy. Snowboarding, skiing, skateboarding. A couple years later, I started white-water rafting.”
“Lots of rapids around these parts.”
“A sarcastic side,” Katie said, studying him in surprise. “I like.” She rotated her cup on the table. “I went to Colorado with a friend’s family.”
“How old were you?”
“Probably sixteen.”
He frowned. “Anything else you tried before starting at the magazine?”
“Hang-gliding. Bungee jumping. My dad nearly had a stroke when he found out about that one. Storm chasing.”
Noah shook his head slowly, looking puzzled. The kidding mood that had lasted for all of five seconds was gone. “I don’t get it. Why would you want to risk your life on a regular basis?”
Katie stared at him, sipping her shake. Now she put it down. “Don’t tell me volunteering in Africa was a risk-free endeavor.” She sensed he was really bothered by her tendency toward adventure, but she couldn’t figure out why.
“That was different. The purpose wasn’t to risk my life, it was to accomplish something.”
“Who’s to say I’m not accomplishing something when I’m flying off the side of a mountain?”
“And what would that be?”
“Living.”
Katie slid her shake to the side and leaned her elbows on the table, clenching her fists together. “I learned long ago, you never know what might happen tomorrow.”
“Why does living have to involve physical risk?”
“That’s what I like to do. I like to feel the fear. Better yet, I like to overcome that fear.”
He tossed his shake—which he’d barely started—into a nearby trash barrel. “What about the people who care about you? Your family? Do you ever think how much you worry them? What would happen to them if you got yourself killed?”
There was anger in his words and Katie couldn’t for the life of her see why he was mad at her. Hadn’t they just been having a semi-philosophical conversation? This felt personal.
“Should I live my life in a safe little box, maybe in a sleepy small town like Lone Oak, just to keep my family happy?”
“Life here doesn’t have to be dull.”
“You’ve already had your fun. You went out and did what you wanted to in Africa and wherever else your noble cause took you. Now you’re ready to settle down and hide. Some of us are still into living life to the fullest.”
“Like I said, my dangerous work had a purpose.”
“I suppose your family worried less, since you were saving lives and all.”
Noah ran his hand over the stubble on his face. His eyes were dull with fatigue, but that wasn’t Katie’s fault. He was the one who’d started attacking her lifestyle.
“Why do you act as if the way I live will affect you, anyway? It has nothing to do with you.”
His jaw tensed and he looked away. “You’re absolutely right. We should get going.”
Katie stood. “We should.” She stalked off to his Tahoe and waited for him to unlock her door.
They rode the short distance back to the Salingers’ house in silence. Katie sat wondering what had just happened. When he pulled into her dad’s driveway, she wasted no time. “Thanks for the shake.”
She got out and shut the door before Noah could say a word.
* * *
SHE RATTLED HIM, plain and simple. And Noah didn’t know if he was angry primarily at himself or primarily at Katie. Himself, because he’d let her see how bothered he could be if he thought about what she did for a living. Or for fun. Katie, because she lived on the edge in a way that scared him to death, made him worry. For her, for her family, for anyone who cared about her.
Why should he care? He wasn’t part of her life. There might be a slight attraction to her, but that meant nothing. It was just that he understood the grief she lived with and he knew how hard it was. Wanted to help her through it.
But he sure couldn’t afford to get involved with someone like Katie again. Not romantically. Love with an adventurous soul wasn’t for the faint of heart. He’d learned that lesson far too well.
It didn’t matter what he felt in his heart. This time, he was listening to his head, and his head said stay away.
* * *
“STAND BACK, DAD. Let me do this part,” Noah said. He fought with the crank on the lift to lower the two-year-old boat into the water.
“I’ve let you do everything other than hold the door open. What’s with you? You’re treating me like some delicate woman.”
“You don’t need to do the heavy stuff. Once we get the boat in the water, you can take over.”
His father glared at him and Noah knew he’d offended him. Tough. It was better than having him strain a muscle or overwork his heart—or worse.
“If we’re going to fish together, you better set aside the dictatorship. You forget who taught you to do all this,” Ivan said grumpily.
“I remember perfectly well. That’s why I invited you. One of the reasons,” Noah added quickly.
This experiment had two purposes. First, he was at a loss when it came to the subject of things to do for fun, as Katie had suggested. He wouldn’t normally follow advice from such a person, but this made sense. He had nothing in his life, right now, except work, reading up on research, taking care of his parents and preparing to move into his own home. Oh, and jogging. He did enjoy that, to an extent, but he wouldn’t exactly call it fun. So why not try fishing. He’d done it lots when he was growing
up.
The second reason for taking his dad on this outing was that getting him back into fishing might slow him down a little, get him to relax. Lower his blood pressure, if it needed to come down. Noah actually didn’t know much about the fine points of his dad’s health, because his dad never shared such information. Most likely so that Noah wouldn’t intervene.
If they could enjoy some time together out on the water, it’d be a bonus.
The boat touched the surface of the water and Noah kept on turning the crank until it completely cleared the platform.
“You going to let me get in now?” his dad asked.
Noah stifled a chuckle. “Just be careful. Take it slowly.”
“Yes, Mama,” his dad said this with another glare.
So maybe enjoying some time together out on the water wasn’t going to happen, after all.
The older man climbed in and pulled his keys out of his pocket.
“Think it’ll start?” Noah asked.
“Yes, I do. It’s in perfect condition.”
Noah waited, knowing his dad hadn’t been out in it since the summer he’d bought it. It started right up, though. The noise of the motor echoed off the walls of the small boathouse.
“Meet you at the dock,” Noah hollered. He shut the garage door and headed outside through the regular door.
His dad guided the boat up to the dock and Noah climbed in.
“Let’s see how this thing moves,” his father said.
“I have no doubt it can move.”
They motored along at a good pace and Noah tried to pick out familiar landmarks on the shore. It’d been years since he’d been on the river—since he was in high school, in fact, and now nothing looked the same. Of course, then he’d just had a canoe.
“Why don’t you fish more often?” he asked his father.
“Time, mostly. It gets away from you.”
“I don’t know how you’ve been handling the workload at the clinic, to be honest.”
“Long hours. A patient wife.”
“I’ve been thinking,” Noah began, though he hadn’t planned to have this conversation just yet. “Maybe it’d be wise for us to look at bringing a third doctor on board.”
There was no response to this, and Noah wasn’t sure he’d heard. Then his father looked at him, straight on.
“You’ve got lots of plans, don’t you?”
“What’s that supposed to mean? All I’m getting at is, we could use some help.”
“You’re my help. We’re doing fine.”
“We’re doing fine, if an hour wait is acceptable for our patients.”
“That’s the worst-case scenario, and you know it.”
“We could build the practice to be the best in the area, Dad.”
“We’re the only practice in town.”
“You’ve been resting on that for too long. People won’t hesitate to drive ten miles down the road to see a Layton doctor.”
“They will if they know anything about him. He’s a quack. Acupuncture, Chinese herbs... I don’t even know what all he’s passing off as medical care over there.”
Noah tapped his fingers on the edge of the boat, trying to summon extra patience. “You might be surprised how popular alternative health care is becoming. We could stand to open our minds a bit on the subject.”
His dad gave him a horrified grunt. “What are they teaching these days at med school?”
“Same things they were teaching in your day, Dad.” This wasn’t the time to argue medical philosophy. “Back to our practice, though. We’re booked. Every day.”
“And I’m thankful for it.”
The discussion was going nowhere. Plus, it was defeating the whole purpose of being out on the water. They hadn’t brought any fishing gear today. This was just to see how the boat did after two years off—a test run of sorts.
“This isn’t the end of our discussion,” Noah said. “We need to do something so you won’t have to spend ten hours a day at the office.”
“Whatever you’re trying to pull, you can stop anytime. Try to remember, I did just fine all those years you were away.”
“But you’re older now.”
“You’re worse than your mother. Where did you learn to nag?”
Noah shook his head and faced the water, making a mental note that in order to relax, he was probably going to have to fish alone.
CHAPTER NINE
KATIE WATCHED THE movers roll the last load of boxes, stacked three high, out to the truck.
It was done. The house was empty.
Her footsteps echoed as she walked from room to room over the bare floors. Her dad and Claudia were at the new place already, unpacking things delivered in the first truckload and waiting to tell the movers where to put the rest of their stuff once it arrived. Katie was glad, now, that she’d volunteered for this end of the job. She couldn’t do much in the way of lifting and loading with her arm in a cast, so she’d just directed the movers when they needed instructions. Watched them empty out her home of twenty-some years and turn it into a “pile of wood and bricks,” as Savannah had described it.
Katie took the stairs up to the top floor, her limbs aching with bone-deep emotional fatigue. She couldn’t bring herself to walk out the door just yet.
She went directly to the master bedroom and walked across it to a window seat in the dormer.
This had been one of her favorite places when she’d been young. She’d ask her mom to read to her, and then lead her here. Back then, there’d been overstuffed pillows lining the seat, but now nothing softened it. There was only a wooden bench with thinly cushioned upholstery on the surface. Nothing like the special place she’d shared with her mom so long ago.
Perhaps she was torturing herself, trying to hoard as many memories as she could. Hoping to file them away, somehow, so she wouldn’t lose them.
She made a quick check through all the upstairs rooms, to make certain they hadn’t left anything behind. Her closet door was open now and she smiled through her tears at the organizer her mom had installed in an effort to help Katie be neater. The endeavor had been a failure and the family had joked about Katie’s inability to keep her room clean ever since.
As she headed for the stairs again, she held on to her heart necklace, wishing it could offer the same comfort that holding her mother’s hand always had.
“Get over it,” she told herself when she got to the main floor. “It’s just a building.” She sat on the steps, lost in her thoughts, having no success whatsoever in following her own advice.
Finally, she stood slowly, grabbed her purse and a soft drink from the kitchen counter, and headed out the front door without looking back. She could barely see where she was going through her tears.
* * *
KATIE PULLED HER JEEP up along the curb on the far side of the moving truck and hopped out after composing herself somewhat. If she had her way, she’d sit here in the street forever and avoid going inside. The moving men already had the back of the truck open and were starting to unload it, but her dad and stepmom were nowhere in sight.
She walked slowly up the driveway, giving the movers a hard time as she went. Finally she reached the front door of the square, characterless house, which was propped open. Up until now, she’d avoided entering the place. Her dad had tried several times to get her to go with them to see it, but she hadn’t been able to work up the interest. She’d held on to her denial for as long as she could.
After composing herself, she stepped over the threshold. Already, the couch was placed along one of the walls in the living room. The couch that had been in her home for years. It didn’t fit here at all. It no longer felt comfortable or wholly familiar.
“Hello?” she called. It echoed through the half-empty roo
ms.
“Hey, honey. There you are.” Her dad came out from the kitchen. “Come on in here. We’re just unpacking the necessities.”
She went to the doorway of the kitchen. It was modern, sparkling clean, full of white cabinets and stainless-steel appliances. The exact opposite of the traditional coziness of her old home. She wondered if they had chosen this on purpose.
“I’m going to look around,” she said, trying her best to ignore the feeling of being totally lost.
Everything was on one floor, which would be good for her dad’s heart. She continued through the living room to a hallway. There were three doorways close to each other, two on one side and the other across the hall.
She poked her head into the first one and found it nearly full with the first truckload of furniture. Her dad’s office. The next room was clearly the master suite, even though there was no furniture in it so far, only a pile of boxes against one wall.
Finally, she walked into the third room. She knew instantly this one was supposed to be hers; there was her own bed in the corner.
Just as quickly, she knew she could never stay here, would never call this place home. It wasn’t that it was a bad room, it was just...not hers. Instead of having the feeling of belonging, she felt as if she were walking into a dorm room that had served its purpose for dozens of other people. As if putting anything on the walls would be pointless.
Katie turned away, a sharp pain shooting through her head.
No way could she stay here.
She walked directly out the front door and back to her Jeep. She’d planned to stay in Lone Oak for her last three weeks of enforced healing time, but not anymore. She’d needed comfort and now that was gone.
She drove to Savannah’s house, hoping they’d finished the basement as they’d planned to do a few months ago and had put a bed down there. And if they hadn’t, cement floors and a cot would be just fine for the next couple of nights until she headed back to St. Louis.
She rang Savannah’s doorbell. Her brother-in-law Michael opened the door.
“Katie.” He held out his arms and she hugged him. “How’s my favorite kid sister?”
“Still your only kid sister.” She kissed his cheek, then looked him over closely for any signs of strain. She would have to have been blind to miss the tension in his face, the way his mouth fell into a frown of sad resignation.