Читать книгу A Time To Heal - Linda Goodnight - Страница 10

Kat slammed into the house, flip-flops thwacking against the gleaming hardwood floors. Susan had some explaining to do.

She couldn’t believe Seth Washington was living in her house. Seth. Of all people. Why hadn’t someone warned her?

She found Susan in the den, wrapping a gift for a baby shower at church. Her brother-in-law, golden-haired Danny, lay kicked back in his brown leather recliner watching a baseball game. Little Sadie, a dark-haired surprise in a very blond family, sprawled across her daddy’s lap feeding him roasted peanuts. Ten-year-old Jon played some kind of hand-held video game while Queenie the pregnant cat followed his rapid movements in fascination. Shelby was nowhere in sight and Kat figured the fourteen-year-old was upstairs talking on the telephone. Her sister’s family was about as all-American as they came.

When Kat entered the den, Susan glanced up with a smile.

“Hand me a blue bow, will you, Kat?” She indicated the coffee table and a plastic bag filled with a rainbow of colored gift bows.

Plastic and acetate rustled as Kat retrieved the needed decoration. Normally she’d ask about the gift, but right now she had more important things on her mind.

“Why didn’t you tell me Seth Washington had rented my cottage?”

Her sister carefully creased the ends of baby-print paper and taped them down before speaking.

“I wondered where you had gone off to.”

Kat clapped the bow into Susan’s outstretched hand. “He almost shot me.”

Susan froze, hand still outstretched. The recliner mechanism popped loudly as Danny sprang upward. “What?”

She told them about the incident, finishing with, “As soon as he recognized me, he lowered the pistol, but he scared twenty years off my life.”

“Seth’s, too, no doubt. What on earth possessed you to go into the cabin?”

“It was one of those spur-of-the-moment things. And the cottage is my house.” But she was feeling more foolish with each passing minute. Her quick decisions in the E.R. were always right on. Snap judgments in life weren’t quite as successful.

Susan’s usual smile was replaced with a frown. “You worry me sometimes, Kat. All those brains and not a lick of sense.”

Kat bristled at the taunt her family had thrown at her all her life. No one had said it in years.

“Susan,” Danny chided gently. “That’s not fair.”

Susan’s shoulders slumped. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I should have told you about Seth.”

At her sister’s sweet apology, the tension dissipated but the words hovered in the back of Kat’s mind, painful because she feared they were true. “Yes, you should have, but going into the house was stupid. I should have realized nothing good could come of it.”

“But you did see Seth again—finally. I know how you’ve dreaded that initial contact.”

Susan was right—again—though Kat didn’t like being so transparent. “I wasn’t exactly dreading anything. I’ve just been too busy to seek out a virtual stranger from the past.”

Too busy sleeping and avoiding life.

Susan gave her a look that said she didn’t believe a word, but she returned to her package without argument. “So how does he look to you?”

Kat wasn’t about to mention Seth’s stunning green eyes rimmed in spiky black lashes or how the little creases beside his mouth, deeper now, still made her stomach flutter.

“Medically, he seems healthy enough.”

Danny made a choking sound as he settled back into his recliner. “Talk about taking the wind out of a man’s sails. I hope Seth never hears that summation.”

Kat started to make some smart remark about men all being the same as long they had health insurance, but she figured her cynical outlook wouldn’t be appreciated.

“I asked him to move out of my house.”

Susan zipped off a strip of Scotch tape. “Don’t you think that’s a little selfish? Come on, Kat, if you don’t want to stay here, there are other places to live until Seth moves into the ranger’s house.”

“I have a couple of vacant cottages that aren’t booked if you’re interested,” Danny offered. “You’ve always liked that secluded little cabin near Dock Nine. We’ve been doing some renovations, but the place is livable.”

He didn’t bother to mention what Kat already knew. The cabin was a stone’s throw from her own A-frame, the one occupied by her former beau. If she moved there—something she’d have to think about—seeing Seth occasionally would be inevitable.

Oh, what was she thinking? If she stayed in Wilson’s Cove for any length of time, she was bound to run into him now and then.

Fine. She could handle seeing Seth Washington. What happened all those years ago shouldn’t matter now. Don’t talk about it. Don’t think about it and everything will be fine.

Susan came around the table to where Kat had plopped onto the fluffy faux-suede couch to think. She set the pretty wrapped package between them.

“We could sew new curtains and maybe slipcovers for the furniture. Fixing the place up could be fun. What do you say, sis? The Thatcher sisters together again, like old times.”

Like old times. She and Susan had once been joined at the hip, but in the past ten years, Kat’s work had stolen their time together. She’d thought she was the only one affected, but Susan had missed her, too. A powerful homesickness welled inside along with the bald truth that she was wrong to expect Seth to move out of the cabin just because she had come back to Wilson’s Cove.

Maybe Seth had been more right than she realized. Maybe she was a snooty girl.

And she’d tell him so the next time they crossed paths.

Three days later, Kat, dressed in blue shorts and white T-shirt, knelt on the back deck of her slightly dilapidated new rental potting scarlet geraniums and contemplating what to do with the rest of her life. If she’d thought time spent here in Wilson’s Cove would take away the emptiness inside, she’d been sorely mistaken. She felt as adrift and lost in this place of her upbringing as she had in Oklahoma City.

So often she wished her parents had lived longer, though Susan had always been her confidant. Still, a mother’s shoulder and wise counsel, even to someone as old as she, sounded good right now.

Yet she hadn’t leaned on her mother when she’d needed her most. She hadn’t leaned on anyone but herself. She’d made the mess and she’d been determined to deal with it on her own. She’d hidden her secret well, too. No one had ever even suspected that the quiet, church-going Thatcher girl had gotten pregnant.

She sighed and shook her head. Why had all these memories started to torment her again?

Maybe she was clinically depressed. The question was why?

She was a successful, well-respected physician. She had friends. She had things. She had money. Why did life feel like one big disappointment?

Holding a single geranium upright in a small pot, she dug the fingers of one hand into the cool, moist potting soil. Susan insisted that flowers around the cabin would add character to the place.

If she knew her sister, planting flowers was intended as therapy for her as well.

The rental was smaller and older than her A-frame but neatly furnished with all the necessities. The property also boasted an old fishing dock right on the lake, though Kat didn’t feel too confident about the dock’s stability.

At some recent time Susan had added her touch to the bedroom, dappling on wall paint to create the look of faux leather. The pale tan was more suitable to a weekend fisherman, but the decor would do until Seth moved into the ranger’s house. Whenever that happened.

The best thing about finding a new place to live was that the activity took her mind off her real problems. She’d finally turned her cell phone on this morning and discovered twenty-three messages from the medical director. He wasn’t the least bit worried, or so he said, about the frivolous lawsuit, and he’d cover her shifts for a few weeks until she was ready to come back. The leave of absence was just that, he insisted, a leave. He refused to believe she’d even consider resigning. He was wrong.

“Take a break. Get some rest,” Dr. Beckham said when she had dialed him up. “Then get your tail back to work. We need you.”

They’d haggled for twenty minutes, but he’d been adamant, and in the end she’d agreed. In all honesty, she didn’t want to consider going back, though she hadn’t told the director as much. She shuddered in dread at the thought of facing another ambulance filled with broken bodies while some ambulance-chasing lawyer stood in the waiting area ready to file suit because she wasn’t God.

Whether here or there, life stunk.

“You look serious.”

At the sound of that familiar gravelly voice, Kat jerked around and nearly lost her balance. At the sight of Seth Washington, she nearly lost her breath.

Lean and fit in his blue-gray ranger’s uniform, dark hair glistening in the sunlight, Seth sauntered across the lush green grass. Susan was right. He looked good in that uniform.

Kathryn patted dirt around the droopy little flower before rising to her feet. “You have a habit of sneaking up on people.”

“Haven’t you heard? Good cops walk softly and carry big guns.” Seth propped an elbow on the wobbly wooden porch railing, his eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses, his grin doing funny things to her concentration. Not that she was concentrating on anything too earth shattering.

“Still mad?” he asked.

For effect and to stop the crazy thoughts running through her head, she glared at him. “Yes.”

After a beat of silence she laughed. “Not really. I just wanted to see your reaction. In fact, I want to apologize.”

He arched a very dark eyebrow. “For?”

“Breaking and entering. Conduct unbecoming. Rude behavior.”

“You were surprised. No big deal.”

“You were surprised, too, but you didn’t get angry.”

“No, but I pointed a loaded gun at you. That would make me a bit testy.”

“Stop being easy on me. I was a brat and I’m sorry.”

“You’ve always been a brat, but I like you, anyway.”

He’d said like as in the present tense. Could he really not hate her?

“I came to apologize to you,” he said. “I was rude.”

He made himself at home on her steps, crossing his ankles and leaning an elbow on the rough planks. A cell phone dangled at his hip instead of a weapon and a shiny badge glinted over his shirt pocket. He looked relaxed and comfy, a lot like the teenage boy she’d once known.

“Does that mean you’re willing to give me back my cabin?”

He made a noise, half chuckle, half scoff. “Nope. ’Fraid not.”

“That’s what I figured. Go away.” But she smiled when she said it.

“Can’t do that, either.” He removed the dark glasses and hung them on the edge of his shirt pocket while he studied her with a thoughtful gaze. “I really do want to apologize. I had no right to be rude to an old friend.”

“Apology accepted.”

“So does that mean we can be friends again?”

Friends? Could she be friends with a man whose presence brought back the most agonizing time in her life?

The memory rose between them, hovering like a red wasp waiting to sting. Did he feel it, too? Or was she the only one who still battled the guilt?

Maybe men weren’t affected in the same way a woman was. Maybe he’d moved on and forgotten. Maybe he’d never been filled with the same sense of guilt and shame.

And just maybe the time had come for her to stop thinking this way.

An expert at compartmentalizing, Kat pushed the thoughts down deep. She would always care about the boy she’d known in high school, but she wouldn’t open the painful Pandora’s box that had been their relationship.

Still she wanted to know how he’d been, if he’d been happy, if all his other dreams had come true.

“I heard you were divorced.” The thought, half-formed, had become words before she could think better of saying them.

He blanched, and some of his ease disappeared. He stared out at the serene lake, his face in profile, serious and rugged and maybe even a bit tragic.

Kat wished she’d kept her mouth shut. No one walked away from a divorce unscathed.

After a painful beat of silence in which Kat tried to think of a way to take back her unfortunate words, Seth released a gusty breath. “Two years later I’m still in shock.”

“Unfortunately, divorce happens.” All the time, from what she’d seen, but she felt bad that a broken home had happened to Seth. He’d suffered enough of that as a teenager.

“Not to me. I don’t believe in divorce. I hate it, hate even saying the words.”

So Susan had been right. “So I guess that means the split wasn’t your idea.”

“No.” The word was flat and hopeless. “Not my idea, but probably my fault. Cops don’t always make the best husbands.”

“I’m sure you did the best you could.” The words were platitudes even to her ears.

“I did. That’s the agony of the thing. We had a Christian home, a Christian marriage. Or so I thought. All the time, Rita was going through the motions, playing church but seeing someone else on the side. I was a fool without a clue. Not a single clue until I came home from shift one morning to find her lover drinking coffee in my kitchen. They wanted to tell me together.”

Emotion darkened his light-green eyes to the color of grass. His ex-wife had wounded him terribly. No surprise there. Seth was the sticking kind. The surprise was that he’d become a Christian.

Instinctively, as she often did with patients, Kat reached out and placed her hand over his. Seth’s skin was warm and masculine tough against her fingertips. “What an awful thing to do to you. I’m sorry, Seth. Truly.”

“Me, too, Doc.” He gave her a lopsided grin and carefully slid his hand from beneath hers and rubbed at his smooth-shaven jaw. The action was intentional, Kat was sure, his way of letting her know that he did not welcome her touch. “But a broken marriage is something even a good doctor can’t fix.”

“I know.” She folded her fingers into a fist.

This was the frustration of being a doctor. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t fix everything. And there were always people who couldn’t accept that fact, including her.

Her visitor gave the porch railing a shake. The old wood wobbled like a bobble-headed doll.

“I can, however, fix this for you.” He nodded toward the rickety old fishing dock projecting out into the lapping water. “And that, too.”

“Feeling guilty about stealing my house?”

“Maybe a little, though dock inspection and repair is part of my job. Safety on the lake, first and foremost. Fix it or tear it down.”

“Doesn’t matter to me.” Nothing much did these days. “I really don’t care one way or the other.”

“The next renter might. I’ll fix it.” He slid the sunglasses back into place. “You sound a little down. Everything okay?”

Like she was going to tell him all her troubles. “I’m fine.”

He didn’t look as if he believed her but he had the grace not to say so. “Well, I guess I better get moving. There’s always work to do on the lake.”

“Not to mention the fact that you’re the only thing resembling law enforcement in Wilson’s Cove.”

“That, too. But I don’t mind. Policing both the town and the lake was part of the deal when they hired me. I’m more cop than I am lake ranger, anyway.”

“The county sheriff has always taken care of Wilson Cove.”

“That was before the lake grew so popular. Sheriff Trout has an entire county to cover with four men.”

Not to mention he was stationed thirty miles away in Henderson. “Any luck with finding out who’s responsible for the recent break-ins?”

“Not yet. Nothing’s been reported for a couple of weeks so maybe the perps were short-term visitors. But just in case, keep things secured and be alert.”

She’d worked in an inner city for years. A physician knew about secure and alert.

She tilted her head in a teasing smile. He sounded so incredibly macho. “Will do, Officer.”

“I mean it, Kathryn. You’re a woman alone. If you should need me…”

“I know where you live.” She couldn’t resist saying, “In my house.”

Some of his seriousness left and he shook his head in amusement. “Still the same sassy mouth.” He slapped the top of the railing, said, “And I’ll be back to work on the dock as soon as I can.”

She’d try not to be here. She didn’t say that, either. But being near Seth resurrected too many memories. She was depressed enough as it was.

“Thanks.”

“So, I guess I’ll see you at church on Sunday?”

“Church?” Her conscience pinched. She hadn’t been to church in years. Hadn’t even thought about going.

“Does that surprise you? That I go to church now?”

She tilted her head to one side. A robin swooped to the ground beside the porch and nabbed a worm.

“A little.”

“All those times you talked about your faith finally soaked in,” Seth said. “I took a while to get the message, but the first time I looked down the wrong end of a nine millimeter and came out alive, I promised God then and there to follow Him. I wouldn’t have survived the last couple of years without Him.”

One of the few things they’d fought about as teens was Seth’s lack of a relationship with God. Somewhere along the way, while she’d been losing her faith, Seth had discovered his.

The irony wasn’t lost on Kathryn, but it was a bitter pill to swallow.

The gentle breeze stirred, sending a lock of hair into her eyes. Her hands were so dirty, she left it.

“So what do you say?” Seth pushed the curl aside and leaned in, green eyes aflame, lips tilted. “See you Sunday morning? Ten-thirty? If you’re nice, I’ll let you sit by me.”

The brush of his hand against her cheek warmed Kathryn more than the seventy-degree day. And that was neither good nor acceptable. She backed away, breaking contact as he’d done earlier.

“I appreciate the invitation, Seth. Really. But I won’t be coming to church.”

A slight frown puckered his dark, slashing eyebrows. “Why not? Don’t want to sit by me? Or are you already heading back to OKC?”

“I don’t know an easy way to say this.” A knot formed beneath her breast bone, like a hand squeezing her heart, but he might as well hear the truth directly from her so he wouldn’t be asking. “I don’t go to church anymore, Seth.”

He stilled, alert and watchful. “Care to explain that a little better?”

Explain? How did she explain what she didn’t understand herself?

Even through the sunglasses, his gaze bored into her, earnest and concerned. She didn’t want his concern. She didn’t want anything from him.

Turning her head, she stared out over the silvery lake. In the far corner of a nearby cove, a single boat bobbed above the gentle current. The soft murmur of voices, sprinkled with laughter, carried across the water. The scene was a happy one. Serene. Peaceful.

Kathryn couldn’t feel that peace, hadn’t felt peace in a long time.

“Somewhere along the line I lost my faith,” she said to the wind, though she could feel the intensity of Seth’s gaze burning a hole in her conscience. “I wish I still believed that God was the answer to everything. I wish I believed He cared. But the truth is, Seth,” she said, swinging her gaze to finally meet his, “I don’t believe in anything at all.”