Читать книгу The Perfect Mum - Janice Johnson Kay - Страница 8

LOGAN CARR MADE SOOTHING sounds while he held the gorgeous blonde.

What in hell? he thought with wry amusement. His face wasn’t pretty, but didn’t usually inspire women to burst into tears.

When she didn’t quiet down, he became worried. Should he be calling the cops? An ambulance? “Can you tell me what’s wrong?” he finally asked.

She wailed something about her daughter hating her. Logan assumed she was Ryan Grant’s sister. There’d been an indefinable something about her that reminded him of Ryan. Logan didn’t know her brother that well, but now he tried to remember what Ryan had said about her.

She was divorced, or at least separated. Logan remembered Ryan banging around one day on a work site, growling under his breath about his goddamn stubborn sister who was buying a house that would fall down on top of her idiotic head any day. Logan had paused, a screwdriver in his hand, and asked why she was buying the place. The gist, as he recalled, was that she’d left her bastard of a husband and she claimed this was all she could afford without asking for help either from him—or her own brother—which she refused to do.

“I wouldn’t give a damn,” Ryan had concluded viciously, “except that the roof will fall on my niece’s head, too. Why couldn’t she buy a nice condo?” he had asked in appeal.

Personally, Logan didn’t blame her. He liked the looks of this place. It was worth a little work.

He kept patting her back and waiting while her sobs became gulps and then sniffles. Logan knew the exact moment when she realized she was crying all over a man she didn’t know.

Her body went very still, stiffened, and then she all but leaped back. “Oh, no! I must look…” She scrubbed frantically at her wet cheeks. “I’m so sorry!”

“I invited myself in,” he reminded her. Sticking his hands in his pockets, he ostentatiously glanced around, admiring the French doors leading into the living room, the staircase, the arched doorway to the kitchen. “Nice place,” he added.

“If you’ll excuse me a moment, I’ll just, um…”

The doorknob rattled behind them, and the door swung open.

“Helen!” exclaimed his bedraggled blonde. “Thank goodness! This is Mister, um… The cabinetmaker. Will you show him the kitchen while I…” She was already fleeing up the stairs.

The redhead who’d come in with the child gazed in surprise after her…friend? Sister? Roommate? He had no idea.

“I didn’t beat her,” he said, trying to look harmless.

She gave him a distracted look. “No, she’s… It’s been an awful day. We should have called you, but we forgot you were coming.”

“Logan Carr,” he said, extending his hand.

“Helen Schaefer.” She shook his hand. “This is Ginny.”

“Ah.” How did you politely say, And who the hell are you?

“Ginny, did you want to watch television while I show Mr. Carr the kitchen?”

The waif shook her head hard, her big eyes fixed suspiciously on him.

Helen Schaefer didn’t look so hot, either, he noted, which made him wonder anew what had happened to upset both women so much. Her face was too pale under skillfully applied makeup, the shadows beneath her eyes purple. He’d felt the tremor in her hand, saw the gentleness with which she stroked her daughter’s head.

“Lead on,” Logan said, wishing the classy blonde hadn’t skipped. He picked up his clipboard from the step where he’d dropped it earlier.

The kitchen had potential and not much else. The vast floor space was wasted, as was typical for a house of this era. Cabinets had been added in about the 1940s, if he was any judge. Which meant drawers didn’t glide on runners, cabinets were deep spaces where you could lose a kid the size of this Ginny, and they stretched to the ten-foot ceiling, the upper ones useful only for stowing stuff that ten years later you were surprised to discover you still owned.

“We can’t afford to replace those,” the redhead told him. “What we’re thinking is that we can make use of this corner.” She gestured.

One area held a table, set with pretty quilted placemats. The corner she had indicated currently had a cart and oldish microwave, an extra chair and a lot of nothing.

Logan considered. They didn’t want to replace their crappy, inadequate kitchen cupboards. Instead, they had in mind him building something that didn’t match in this corner.

Go figure.

“Make use in what way?” he asked politely.

Apparently reading his mind, she smiled with the first spark of life—and amusement—he’d seen in her.

“Kathleen and I have started a business together. We’ve only made a few sales—this is really at the ground floor—but unfortunately it’s taking over the kitchen, and we all have to live here, too.”

“All?” he asked, hoping he didn’t seem nosy.

“Kathleen owns the house,” she explained, “but Ginny and I live here, too, along with another roommate, Jo, and Kathleen’s daughter Emma.”

The one who hated her, he presumed.

And who was Joe, lucky bastard, living with a couple of beautiful women? Unless they were lesbians and Joe was gay.

Nah. Logan couldn’t imagine the woman who’d tumbled into his arms and felt so natural there as a lesbian. Unless that was why she’d left her husband…

Damn it! he thought in irritation. What difference did it make what lifestyle she’d chosen? He wasn’t courting the woman, for Pete’s sake! He was bidding to build some cabinets for her.

Period.

He cleared his throat. “What kind of business is taking over the kitchen?”

“Kathleen makes soap. I market it.”

“Soap.”

“Yeah. You know.” She gazed expectantly at him. “Bars of it. The good kind. Not the kind you buy at the grocery store.”

Personally, he bought whatever was cheap and not too smelly. Speaking of which… He inhaled experimentally. The kitchen was fragrant. He’d vaguely thought they must have been baking earlier, but the overall impression wasn’t of food, but more…flowery.

“Soap-making,” he repeated, and contemplated the corner. “Tell me what it involves.”

They both turned at the sound of a footstep. Looking like a different woman, Kathleen came into the kitchen.

Her face was expertly made up, her thick golden hair loosely French braided. She wore a long, black, knit skirt that clung to her hips and thighs, and over it a simple T-shirt in a vivid shade of aqua. She looked like a million dollars.

“I’m back,” she said with a warm but somehow practiced smile. “Ready to beg your pardon for forgetting you were coming, and then weeping all over you.”

Her face was maybe still a little puffy, her eyes a little red. Even so, she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, from her high graceful forehead to pronounced cheekbones and a full, sensuous mouth. She had the kind of translucent skin, faintly touched with freckles, that gives a woman an ageless quality. He couldn’t tell if she was twenty-five or forty. Either way, her face would have looked fine on the cover of one of those fashion magazines.

“Ms. Schaefer was just telling me about the soap-making,” he said. “I gather you work out of the house.”

“We both have real jobs, too,” Helen Schaefer said almost apologetically, “but we have faith this will take off.”

Kathleen Monroe smelled good, Logan discovered when she stopped beside him. The scent was citrus, a little tart but also delicious. He wanted to bury his face in her hair.

Cabinets, he reminded himself. He was here to make a bid. Not make a move on a woman.

They showed him their supplies and the small pantry, which currently held row upon row of bars of soap, all “curing” according to them. Here was where the smell emanated from. Shelves and the single countertop overflowed, and more circled the floor.

There were long square-edged “loaves” that would be sliced into bars, according to Kathleen. Some of these were clear but vividly colored, sea-green or shocking pink or rainbow streaked. Others were cloudy, dark-flecked and oatmeal colored, another a deep, speckled plum. Some soaps, looking more conventional, had been molded into ovals and rounds, with intricate designs of flowers and leaves pressed into the tops. They were beautiful, he realized, bemused. Not delicate and feminine, but solid and colorful and even sensual. He resisted the urge to touch or bend over to sniff individual bars.

The fragrance swelled in this tiny enclosed area, a symphony where a few notes strummed on a guitar would have been plenty. Cinnamon and flowers and God knew what swirled together to overload his nose.

As he backed out, the two women laughed.

“Gets to you, doesn’t it?” Helen asked.

“Ventilation,” Logan said. “You’ll want a fan out here and maybe another one in the pantry.”

“That would be great,” Kathleen agreed. “Sometimes it’s hard to eat, oh, say, Thai food when what you’re smelling are vanilla and cinnamon.”

He took out his clipboard and started to make notes: broad, double sinks, a stove top, storage for the tools of soap making: scales, jugs and huge pots and measuring cups and spoons.

“Oh, and molds,” Kathleen said, her face animated. She opened a kitchen cupboard so he could see the odd conglomeration of containers used to mold soap, some—he guessed—meant for the purpose, others as simple as ice cube trays, muffin tins and boxes. “A cupboard with nooks designed specifically for the molds would be great.”

Her main need, he gathered, was for work and storage space. He took his tape measure from his belt and began making notes while they watched, the kid still clinging to mom and staring as if she thought he was an ax murderer.

“Get my name from Ryan?” he asked casually.

“He says you’re the best,” Kathleen said.

“Oh, is Ryan a friend of yours?” the redhead asked. “He’s marrying Jo.”

Joe? The tape measure strung on the floor, Logan turned to see if they were pulling his leg.

Both laughed. “J-O,” Kathleen told him kindly. “Short for Josephine.”

Ah. Satisfied, he jotted down the measurement.

“So, you didn’t put me on your calendar,” he remarked.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her flush.

“I did. But the day went hayfire from the get-go.”

The kid decided, at last, to speak. In a loud, clear voice, she said, “I thought Emma was dead. She fell on the floor and there was blood and she didn’t talk to me.”

“Hush,” her mother murmured.

“My daughter fainted and hit her head,” Kathleen said. “We had an ambulance here and everything. I just got back from the hospital. I’m sorry! It was scary, and everything else just left my mind.”

“She okay?”

“Just has a concussion. They’re keeping her overnight.”

Uh-huh. She’d fallen apart because her daughter had bumped her head.

He wasn’t buying.

Writing down another measurement, he asked, “How old is she?”

“Sixteen. Almost seventeen.”

A teenager. Well, that explained the “she hates me” part. It also upped his estimate of her mom’s age. Kathleen Monroe had to be mid-thirties, at least.

Satisfied with his measurements, Logan turned to them. “Let’s talk about wood and styles.”

They sat at the kitchen table. Ginny at last became bored and, after a murmured consultation with her mother, wandered away. A moment later, canned voices came from the living room.

He nodded after her. “How old is she?”

“Ginny just turned six. She’s in first grade.”

He hadn’t been around children enough to judge ages. Opening his clipboard, Logan took out a sheaf of pictures.

They discussed panel doors versus plain, maple versus oak, open shelves versus ones hidden behind cupboard doors.

As expensive as Kathleen Monroe looked, Logan half expected her to choose something fancy: mahogany with gothic panels and glossy finish, maybe.

Instead she went for a simple Shaker style in a warm brown maple. “I want it to suit the era of the house,” she explained. “Later, when—if—I can afford it, we’ll re-do the rest of the kitchen to match.”

He sketched out an L shape of cabinets to fit in the corner, then lightly turned it into a U. “A peninsula there,” he said, pointing, “would visually separate your work area from the dining area. Plus, it would give you more counter space. You could have suspended shelves or cabinets from the ceiling, too.”

“Um…” Kathleen frowned into space. “It sounds wonderful,” she finally decided, “but it may be beyond my means. This may all be beyond my means,” she admitted frankly. “We looked at ready-made cabinets at Home Depot and Lowe’s, but Ryan thought we could do as well going to you, plus you could configure them more specifically for our needs.”

“I’ll do my best,” he promised, standing. “I’ll have the bid to you in a couple of days.”

The bottom line would be affordable, he already knew, even if he took a dive on the job. He wanted to help these women achieve their dream, he wanted to know why Kathleen Monroe had been sobbing—and he wanted to find out what a woman that classy would feel like in his arms when she wasn’t crying her heart out.

Even if that didn’t have a damn thing to do with building cabinets.

EMMA LAY IN THE DARK, feeling the sugar trickling into her body. It was like…like sipping on soda pop nonstop, all day long, until you ballooned with fat. She could feel it sliding through her veins, cool and sticky. Every time a bag emptied, somebody came and changed it.

She hated the nurses who had put the IV needle back in three times, and even more the ones who had finally tied her hands to the bars of the hospital bed so she couldn’t tear it out again.

But most of all, so much it corroded her belly, she hated her mother for letting them do this. For making them do it. Mom could have said, “I’m taking her home.” She could have told them not to force calories on her.

Instead, she was committing her own daughter to a jail. Just because Emma wouldn’t stuff her face.

She was, like, almost at a perfect weight. She used to think eighty pounds would be good, but she had still been pudgy when she got there. So she made her goal seventy-five. Or less. Less would be good. It would give her some room to go up a pound or two and not freak so much.

She didn’t even know why she was surprised. Mom wanted to control her, and food had become their main battlefield. It was so weird, because Emma knew her mother used to think she was fat. Her eyebrows arching disdainfully, she’d say, “Emma, do you really need a second serving?” Or, “Don’t you think carrots would be better for your figure than potato chips?”

She liked to give these little mother-daughter lectures, too. She’d sit on Emma’s bed and say, in this friendly voice, “I know you’re only twelve—” or thirteen or fourteen, the lecture didn’t change “—but pretty soon you’re going to want boys to notice you. It’s going to really matter to you if you feel plump or don’t like the way you look in cute clothes.”

What she really meant was, You embarrass your father and me. To her friends, she said with a laugh, “Emma still has some baby fat, but she’s stretching into this tall beautiful girl.” Baby fat, of course, would magically melt away. Real fat was just disgusting and stayed.

And Mom and Emma both knew that was the kind Emma had.

Emma had started dieting when she turned fourteen not because she wanted to look good in cute clothes, but to please her mother and father. Mom’s face would glow with delight and pride when Emma said no to seconds and dessert and snacks.

When he saw her picking at a salad for lunch instead of pigging out on macaroni and cheese, Dad would say something like, “Keep on that way and we’ll have two beauties in this house before we know it.” Meaning that Mom already was one, but Emma was plain and fat and he hated it when he entertained and he had to produce his one-and-only child and admit she was his.

For a while, Emma had been filled with hope. Finally, she was doing something right. She was making them proud. She would become beautiful, like her mother. Every morning, she’d look at herself in the mirror, tilting her head this way and that, sucking in her cheeks, lifting her hair in different styles, trying to imagine that moment when she would know: I am beautiful. She’d told herself she was the duckling—a plump duckling—becoming a swan.

Only, she stayed a duck. She never saw a beauty in the mirror. And her parents’ pride slowly faded as they started complaining about other things. She slouched. Shouldn’t she start plucking her eyebrows? Her table manners! The way she hung her head when she was introduced to their friends and business acquaintances. Obviously she needed braces. How could she possibly be getting B’s and even a C on her report card, when she was a smart girl?

And she understood at last that she would never be good enough for them. She wouldn’t be pretty enough, smart enough, charming enough to be their daughter.

Hearing the slap slap of approaching footsteps, Emma closed her eyes. The curtain around her bed rattled. A nurse lifted her covers enough to see the needle still stuck in Emma’s hand. A moment later, the footsteps went away and Emma opened her eyes again.

She could see only a band of light coming through the half open door from the hall, diffused by her curtain. She didn’t have a roommate, either because the hospital wasn’t that full or because they thought she was a bad influence or something. She was glad. What if she had some middle-aged woman having her gall bladder out, or an old lady moaning? They might want to talk!

Of course, she wouldn’t be here that long anyway. They were moving her tomorrow. It made her sick, thinking about it. Her therapist, Sharon Russell, used it as a threat: If you don’t eat, we’ll send you there, where they’ll stick tubes down your throat if you won’t eat and not let you alone for a single second in case you try to puke.

They’d watch her pee and everything!

She wondered if, once they untied her tomorrow and left her to get dressed, she’d have a chance to run away. Emma didn’t know where she’d go or what she’d do, but anything had to be better than jail, where some warden stared at you while you sat on the toilet! Energized, she started planning.

She was almost seventeen. She could get a job, maybe, and find a bunch of other kids she could share an apartment with. Or she’d call Uncle Ryan and see if he’d let her come live with him and Melissa and Tyler. They never paid any attention to what she ate. Uncle Ryan wasn’t embarrassed by her. He didn’t want to control her every move.

That was what Emma had finally decided: she couldn’t make her parents happy no matter what she did, so she might as well at least be in charge of her own life. She didn’t want to be fat. It was so like them to want to control what went in her mouth. One minute she was fat and disgusting and she was supposed to nibble on green leaves instead of pizza. The next minute, she was getting too skinny and she should stuff her face. The real issue was, she should do what they told her to do.

Smile. Try to look dignified, if you know how. When you laugh like that people can see your tonsils. You should be on the honor roll. Your idea is silly—write about this topic instead. Eat. Don’t eat. Make conversation. Quit chattering.

Having her decide what she would and would not eat drove them crazy. So crazy, Dad didn’t even want to see her anymore. Which was fine by Emma. She was glad she’d made him mad. When he cracked and started screaming at her, she’d felt good. Powerful.

And having Mom choose her over Dad had made her feel powerful, too. For a while. Until she’d realized that Mom was just as bad as Dad. She was as determined as ever to control Emma. Now that she’d failed, she was resorting to force, just like Dad had tried to do. Only Mom didn’t shove food in her mouth even though she was screaming. No, she made it look like she was doing the “right” thing. Insisting her daughter get “well.” That was her word. Emma wasn’t “well” because she didn’t want to be a porker like the other girls at school who wore their pants really low but had rolls that swelled over the waistbands.

Emma tried wrenching her hands free again, but they’d tied them too tight. She felt as if she was being poisoned. If she were at home and she’d eaten too much, she would make herself exercise until she thought she’d made up for it. Sometimes it took hours.

Maybe she could exercise even if she was tied down. Emma squirmed and kicked until she got the covers off to one side and her legs were free.

Leg lifts. She could do ten on one side, ten on the other, then ten with both legs together. She could do it over and over. Or bicycle. Experimentally, she curled her spine, but had a hard time getting her hips high enough to cycle her feet.

Okay, leg lifts. Keeping her toes pointed, she lifted both legs, slowly separated them, then brought them back together, feeling the strain on her belly and back and butt. Pleased, she did it again. And again.

When her legs began to tremble and sweat popped out on her forehead, she smiled.

They couldn’t keep her from fighting back. From controlling what happened to her. No matter how hard they tried.

KATHLEEN WOKE TO THE sinking knowledge that today would be dismal. For a moment, she lay in bed, her face buried in her pillow, and tried to remember why. It didn’t take long.

Emma. Always Emma.

Kathleen rolled onto her back and noticed dispiritedly that rain was sliding down the window glass and deepening the sky to a dreary gray. Didn’t it figure.

She’d taken today off work so that she could accompany Emma to Bridges, the residential treatment center for patients with eating disorders. Emma was not going to be happy.

Yesterday, when Kathleen had returned to the hospital, the sixteen-year-old had been either sullen or in a rage. Her generally sweet disposition had been submerged by the terrifying fear of gaining weight that ruled—and threatened—her life.

Today was unlikely to bring an improvement.

At least the residential program included certified teachers so that the kids didn’t fall behind in school. Emma’s grades had actually improved this past year and a half, since Kathleen had left Ian, even if she had refused to let go of her obsession with weight. Kathleen didn’t know if Emma was studying more because she didn’t have anything else to do, now that she seemed to have no friends, or whether she hadn’t tried in school just to make her father mad, and now the payoff was missing. Her natural curiosity and intelligence had reemerged, thank goodness, resulting in almost straight A’s last semester. Kathleen hated to see Emma have to struggle to catch up. Her ego was fragile enough already.

With a sigh, Kathleen made herself get up, put on her robe and shuffle downstairs without even a pause to brush her hair. She needed breakfast and a cup of coffee before her shower. The only plus today was that she’d gotten an extra hour of sleep. The house was quiet, Helen gone to work and Ginny to school, she diagnosed. Jo might still be in bed—no, on Thursdays she had a much-hated 8:00 a.m. class.

Even living as close as they did to the University of Washington, Jo had to allow almost an hour to get there and park in the huge lot down by the football stadium, then hike up the stroke-inducing stairs to the campus.

Kathleen would miss her complaints. Jo and Ryan were getting married in July and taking a honeymoon trip to Greece, while his kids visited their mom in Denver. Then Jo would go home with Ryan, not here.

Which meant she’d be family, but in a different way. Kathleen was going to miss more than the grumbles; she’d miss her.

Kathleen and Helen had talked about making a big push to get the soap business earning real money. They were scheduled to have booths at a dozen crafts fairs in the Puget Sound area in late spring and summer, and Helen was spending every spare minute calling on shop owners to try to persuade them to carry Kathleen’s Soaps. If they could make enough, maybe they wouldn’t have to bring in another roommate. Ginny could have her own bedroom, after Jo moved out. That was their dream: just the two mothers and two daughters living in this ramshackle but charming Ravenna district house that Kathleen had once so optimistically believed she could remodel “gradually.”

That was before they’d discovered rotting floor-boards beneath the upstairs toilet, corroded pipes and an inadequate furnace.

She shouldn’t be spending money on cupboards. She should be spending it on a furnace, she worried, as she poured cereal into a bowl.

Thank God that Ian at least carried Emma on his health insurance. For Kathleen, it would have been prohibitive and her plan was less comprehensive anyway.

She sliced a banana onto the cereal and wished she hadn’t thought of Ian. He hadn’t returned her call yesterday, but she couldn’t assume he’d heard the message.

She still wasn’t convinced that it would be good for Emma to have him reappear in her life, but Emma’s therapist had advised her to keep lines of communication open.

“Emma would deny it bitterly, but being rejected by him has further threatened her self-confidence,” Sharon Russell had told Kathleen. “If he can be made to see reason…”

That would be a cold day, Kathleen had thought privately, even as she nodded. Ian Monroe exuded confidence and was completely baffled by Emma’s uncertainties. He refused to consider the possibility that he had played any part in the development of his daughter’s eating disorder. Heck, he refused to believe she was anorexic. Or maybe he just didn’t believe in eating disorders at all. After all, he had no trouble disciplining himself to eat well.

Perhaps, Kathleen thought, she was being just a little unfair. After all, she didn’t overeat or starve herself, either. It was just that she could understand human frailty. Ian couldn’t.

Or didn’t want to, she hadn’t decided which.

After putting her bowl in the sink, she poured her tea and left it to steep while she called Ian again. She didn’t bother trying him at home. He’d have left for the gym for some racquetball hours ago, then been at the office by eight o’clock. He’d curl his lip if he knew at nine o’clock she was still sitting at the kitchen table in her bathrobe and slippers, her hair tangled.

Discipline.

“Crowe Industries, Mr. Monroe’s office,” the secretary answered.

“Patty, this is Kathleen. Is Ian free?”

That was the fiction that allowed them both to save face: most often, Ian wasn’t “free.” His middle-aged secretary didn’t have to say, I’m sorry, he doesn’t want to speak to you, or lie that he was out.

“Let me check. He mentioned wanting to talk to you.”

Kathleen rolled her eyes. I’ll just bet he does.

But he did come on the phone, an unusual occurrence.

“What’s this about Emma being in the hospital?”

“Why, hello, Ian,” Kathleen said. “How are you?”

“Just a minute.” His voice became muffled as he spoke to someone else, or on a second line. She always had hated talking to him at the office, even when she believed them to be happily married.

He came back on. “Was she in an accident?”

“She has continued to lose weight. Yesterday morning she fainted and hit her head.”

“That’s all?” he said in disbelief. “She bumped her head, and you’re leaving dire messages for me?”

“Which you, of course, panicked about. I noticed you rushed to her side.”

“We both know she doesn’t want to see me.”

“Doesn’t she?” Kathleen said quietly.

He let that pass. “Does she have a concussion?”

“Yes, but that isn’t the major problem. She’s down to seventy-seven pounds.”

Ian swore.

“She’s…” Kathleen had to pause and take a deep breath to make sure her voice didn’t waver. “She’s a walking skeleton.”

His voice hardened. “I thought I was the problem.”

Unseen, Kathleen flinched. “You are her father. You’re not off the hook, just because she didn’t magically recover once she wasn’t under your roof.”

“All those doctors and all that counseling hasn’t done jack crap,” he snapped.

“Anorexia is the toughest eating disorder to overcome. Up to ten percent of anorexics die.”

“They starve themselves to death.” He sounded disbelieving, just as he always had.

“Or they damage their heart or kidneys.”

“She’s not that stupid.”

“Stupid or smart doesn’t have anything to do with it,” Kathleen said, feeling a familiar desperation. How could she make him understand? “Or maybe it does. Smart girls are the likeliest to develop the problem.”

“How could she lose that much weight right under your eye?”

Of course, it had to be her fault. It couldn’t be his.

What tore at her was a new fear that he was right. She was responsible for Emma’s determination to starve.

Nonetheless, she tried to defend herself. “She’s been seeing a doctor, a therapist and a nutritionist. They advised me to avoid nagging about food. We’ve been trying to make it a nonissue between the two of us.”

“And failing, apparently,” he said cruelly.

She bit her lip until she tasted blood. “It would appear so.”

“And what am I supposed to do?”

Shaking from fury and hurt that refused to die along with the marriage, she said, “Nothing. Nothing at all. I just thought you should know,” and hung up the phone.

Talking to him had had its usual shattering effect. Once again, Kathleen had confirmation that she and Emma were on their own.

Except, thank God, for Jo, Helen, Ginny and Ryan. And Kathleen’s father, of course. Friends and true family.

Dry-eyed but feeling as exhausted as if she had indulged in a bout of tears, Kathleen slowly mounted the stairs. Time for a shower, and the hospital.