Читать книгу Daddy To Be Determined - Muriel Jensen - Страница 13

Vanessa and Roxie skipped after him as he carried a still-sleeping Natalie Browning, wrapped in a blanket, out to the van. His mother followed with the suitcase.

“She’s so pretty!” Vanessa exclaimed as he placed Natalie on the front passenger seat, tilting it back to help keep her in place.

“Like Sleeping Beauty!” Roxie said.

His mother slid the side door open and put the suitcase into the back seat.

Vanessa tucked Natalie’s feet in.

“If you kiss her, Daddy, she’ll wake up!” Roxie added.

His mother smiled at him and said under her breath, “And maybe you will, too, Ben.”

He sent her a dark look. “You’re already on dangerous ground, Mom. She can stay on the sofa tonight, but first thing in the morning she’s on her own.”

“Of course.” She reached up to kiss his cheek as he closed the door on his unexpected houseguest. Lulu blew kisses to the girls and hurried back inside.

Roxie stood between the two front seats when he climbed in behind the wheel. She looked down at the young woman, patting the disheveled blond hair with a pudgy little hand.

“I wish my hair was this color,” she said.

Vanessa, leaning over the back of the front seat, handed the seat belt to Roxie, who clicked it into place.

“Yeah, me too,” Vanessa replied. “I’d wear it long with lots of curls.”

“Can we keep her, Daddy?” Roxie asked promptly.

“She’s not a puppy, Rox,” he said patiently. “When she wakes up, I’m sure she’s going to want to go home.”

Actually, she might not, he thought as he backed the van out onto the street. Judging by the newspaper article, things must have been difficult for her there. The article had included a rude comment from an old boyfriend of hers and his suggestion that she wasn’t the beautiful, sweet woman she appeared to be on television.

“Can we keep her till she wakes up?”

“She’ll be awake in the morning,” Ben assured his daughter.

“If you don’t kiss her, she won’t.”

“She’s not Sleeping Beauty,” Vanessa told Roxie. “She’s just a lady that’s asleep. Grandma said she’s on television.”

“Right.” Ben took the turn that would lead them home. “She does the news at night. Like Peter Jennings.”

In the rearview mirror he saw Roxie wrinkle her nose. “The news!”

“It’s an important job,” Vanessa informed her. “Daddy watches it all the time. That’s how you learn what’s going on in other places.”

To Roxie, who cared mostly about her room, her house and Marianne’s Day Care, that seemed irrelevant.

“She can sleep in the other twin bed in my room, Daddy,” Vanessa offered. “So she isn’t afraid when she wakes up.”

He’d told his mother that he intended to put Natalie on the sofa, but he’d just repainted the fourth bedroom upstairs and put the futon from the family room in it. She’d be comfortable there, and he’d be more likely to hear her if she woke up in the middle of the night, wondering what had happened and where she was.

He turned into their driveway, which was lit by floodlights at the front of the house. He hit the garage door opener and pulled into the dimly lit interior.

The girls scrambled out and went ahead of him to open doors.

He scooped Natalie Browning out of the front seat and into his arms. She lay limply against him, the scent of gardenias intermingled with the smell of a mentholated rub.

He remembered her looking into his eyes and telling him that he was “the one.” The one her dream had sent to give her a baby.

He walked into the house with her, as Vanessa held the kitchen door open. He couldn’t help wondering why a beautiful young woman would have gone to a sperm bank in the first place. Unless the boyfriend quoted in the article was right and she was cold and forbidding.

It was hard to tell when he’d spoken to her only while she’d been incoherent. But she didn’t look like a cold-hearted woman.

Roxie held open the door to the fourth bedroom upstairs. Vanessa, running along behind him, asked him to wait while she got a sheet and blankets out of the linen closet.

She and Roxie spread a flannel sheet over the plain red futon.

“I’ll get one of my pillows,” Vanessa said, and ran off.

“She should have something to sleep with,” Roxie said. She took Betsy out of her pocket, studied the doll with a worried frown, then placed it beside Natalie. But before she could even remove her hands from it, she reconsidered and pressed Betsy to her chest.

“I’ll get Starla for her!” Roxie said, clearly pleased to have come up with a solution that did not involve parting with Betsy. Starla was a large stuffed bear who’d lost his right button eye. Julie had covered the large hole with a star-shaped piece of yellow felt stitched into place. Roxie loved the bear’s new personality and had even renamed it appropriately.

When Ben had suggested that the name was feminine and not masculine, Vanessa had taken her sister’s side. “Only girls have stars in their eyes, Daddy, so she must be a girl.”

Well, he’d learned something new.

He lay Natalie down on the flannel sheet and the blanket she’d been wrapped in. Vanessa arrived just in time to put a pillow under her head. Roxie put Starla beside Natalie and made sure that Ben covered her, too, when he opened out the top sheet, then a pink thermal blanket and spread them over the bed. Not certain one blanket would keep her warm enough, he sent Vanessa to the linen closet for another.

Natalie stirred restlessly as Ben spread the second blanket. Her brow furrowed and she moaned as though something hurt.

“What’s the matter with her?” Vanessa asked worriedly.

Instinctively, Ben put a hand to Natalie’s cheek. “Probably just a bad dream,” he guessed. He noticed with a start that her skin was like satin to the touch.

She smiled, just a very small curve of her lips. Then she reached out, as though groping for something, her fingers spread wide.

Again, instinctively, he caught them in his. Her hand tightened around his with a strength that demonstrated how desperate she’d been for that contact. At least in her sleep. Loneliness, he knew, was a powerful enemy.

“She likes you, Daddy!” Roxie whispered loudly.

Vanessa looked at him a little worriedly, and he was just wondering himself if he was going to have to lean over this bed for the rest of the night when Natalie made a contented little sound, freed his hand and rolled onto her side.

He felt enormous relief as he readjusted her blankets.

He ushered the girls out into the hallway and pulled the door halfway closed.

“Can we have our ice cream now?” Roxie asked.

“We had ice cream at Grandma’s,” Vanessa ratted, to Roxie’s chagrin. “And cookies, too.”

“Then I think we’re finished for tonight.” Ben picked up Roxie under one arm and Vanessa under the other, to their squealing delight. He had to keep reminding himself to play with them more often, to remember that they needed him to be cheerful and hopeful.

He tended to get bogged down in work and memories and forget that a child learned a lot by having fun.

He dropped Roxie onto her bed and, with Vanessa still tucked under his arm, leaned over her to kiss her good-night. The girls collided and giggled hysterically.

He carried Vanessa out with him across the hall to her room and dropped her in her bed.

“Can she stay for dinner tomorrow?” she asked, sitting up in bed.

“Roxie?” he asked, fluffing the one pillow Van had left. “Yes, we have to let her stay for dinner. It’s part of the family deal. You have to feed the kids.”

“Daddy!” Vanessa slapped his arm. “I mean the lady. Can she stay for dinner? If she isn’t awake when I go to school, I won’t even hear her talk or anything.”

That confused him for a moment. “Hear her talk?”

She hunched a shoulder. “Yeah. You know. I bet she has a pretty voice, ’specially if she’s on television. And I miss Mom’s voice.” She looked at him from under thick dark lashes. “Is it okay to say that?”

He sat down on the edge of her bed, anguished by that question. “Van, it’s okay for you to say whatever you’re feeling. I asked you to tell me when you miss her and feel lonely.”

She nodded quickly. “I know. And I do. But I had just turned six then. Now I’ve been seven for a while and it doesn’t make me cry anymore when I miss her, and I know I have to make believe everything’s okay.” She gave him a look that told him she understood far more than he realized. “That’s what you do, ’cause you’re the dad. So, I do it, too, ’cause I’m the big sister. But it would be nice to hear the lady’s voice, if we can’t ever hear Mom’s again.”

Her perception always amazed him. He didn’t know why he was surprised that she’d understood he pretended cheer and hope when he didn’t feel it.

“Sometimes,” he said, ruffling her short, shaggy hair, “if you pretend something awful is really okay, it eventually makes it okay. Or at least makes it hurt less.” He pinched her chin. “But you don’t ever have to pretend what you don’t feel, Vannie. You can always tell me what you’re thinking, even if you’re afraid I won’t like it.”

“I know.” She lay back against her pillows and smiled up at him. “I’m not afraid to tell you anything. I just don’t want to make you sad if you’re not by talking about me being sad.”

He drew her blankets up and leaned down to kiss her cheek. “But I’d be really sad if you were sad and didn’t tell me.”

She smiled. “I’m not sad right now. I’m anxious to wake up in the morning and see what the lady’s like. Promise if she isn’t awake when I go to school, you’ll ask her to stay for dinner so I can talk to her.”

That didn’t sound like a good idea, but he couldn’t deny her. “I promise.”

“Okay. Good night, Daddy.”

“Good night, baby.”

“I’m not a baby.”

“You’ll be my baby until you’re ninety.”

Vanessa smiled tolerantly, appreciating her precious status, though still offended by the name. “Roxie’s the baby.”

“I am not!” The protest came indignantly from across the hall. “I’ve five! And I’m gonna get pierced ears!”

Vanessa sat up, competitive edge honed. “She is?” she demanded of Ben. “When?”

Ben shouted across the hall. “When, Roxie?”

There was silence for several seconds, then Roxie replied grudgingly. “When I’m grown up. But I’m gonna get three in each ear!”

Pleased that she hadn’t missed a rite of passage, Vanessa fell back on her pillow. “She’s such a fibber!” she said.

“I am not!”

“She was just anticipating,” Ben said. “You know what that is?”

“It’s like thinking about it, only before it happens.”

“Very good.”

Ben covered her again, kissed her cheek and turned off her bedside lamp. “Good night, woman of great wisdom,” he said grandly.

She giggled. “That’s better, Daddy.”

He kissed her again and went across the hall to where Roxie sat up in bed, her expression pugnacious, her arms folded. “I’m not a baby,” she declared clearly. “I’m the littlest, but I’m not a baby.”

“You’re absolutely right,” he said, gently pushing her back and pulling up her covers.

“I can pour my own milk if you don’t buy the really big bottle with the handle, and I know about looking both ways to cross the street, and I don’t cry when I fall down.”

“Yes, I know.”

“At Marianne’s I can swing higher than Austin O’Brian, and he’s six!”

She was the most adventurous child at the day care center—Marianne had told him that several times. Ben liked knowing she wasn’t afraid but hoped she’d acquire her sister’s sense of self-preservation before she did herself any real harm.

“I know you act like a big girl,” he praised her, taking her rag doll from the coverlet and putting it in her hands. “But you and Vanessa were such pretty babies that I still think of you that way sometimes.”

Roxie was a pushover for flattery. She smiled benevolently. “That’s okay, Daddy. What time is the lady going to wake up?”

“I don’t know, Rox. We’ll let tomorrow take care of itself, okay?”

Her pristine little brow puckered. “What does that mean?”

“It means we won’t worry about what happens tomorrow until it’s tomorrow.”

“Oh. Am I going to Marianne’s right after breakfast?”

“Yes. I have to put a new water heater in the building tomorrow and I’d like to get an early start. Is that okay with you?”

“Yeah. We’re going to make turkeys tomorrow by drawing our hands. That’s going to be fun.”

He tried to imagine how that would work and couldn’t. “Good.” He leaned down to hug her and got a big hug in return. “See you in the morning.”

“’Night, Daddy.”

“’Night, ba—” He caught himself just in time. “Good night, Roxie.”

“Wait!” She sat up again, and he swallowed frustration and a desperate need for a gin and tonic.

“Yeah?”

“You called Vannie a woman of…what was it?”

“Wisdom,” he replied.

“Yeah.” She grinned eagerly. “You have to call me something grown-up, too.”

He wasn’t sure he had a creative thought left in his head tonight.

“Ah…lady of adventure?”

She drew the blankets up to her chin and fell back giggling. “Now say good-night to me again.”

He leaned down, a hand on either side of her, and said, “Good night, oh lady of adventure.”

She looked pleased. “Good night, Daddy.”

He flipped off her light and pulled her door halfway closed. Then he backtracked to peer inside the guest room and found Natalie Browning still fast asleep, Starla clutched in her arms.

Her left leg, though, had kicked free of the blankets and now dangled over the side, covered in goose bumps from the cold. Ben groaned and went to his room for a pair of thermal underwear bottoms he wore when he worked outdoors in winter.

He carried them back to her room, wondering if he had the courage to put them on her. She was huddled under the covers as though cold, and he decided that he could be clinical about this in the interest of her welfare.

With swift but careful movements, he slipped the left leg of the longies over her foot, pushed the blankets aside to find her other foot and pulled the other leg on.

He almost hesitated when it came to slipping them over her hips but knew the less he thought about it, the better. He simply leaned over her with an arm under her waist, held her to him for the time it took to pull them over her bottom, then almost gasped with relief when he could lay her down again. He covered her quickly and left the room.

He went downstairs feeling as though the day had been thirty hours long. He mixed a gin and tonic, sat down on a bright red sofa he’d bought because the girls loved it, and propped his feet up on an old wooden garden bench he’d cleaned up and brought inside.

He turned on the Home and Garden Channel, hoping Norm Abrams was sharing an interesting building project. Ben leaned his head against the high cushions and let his eyes drift closed during a commercial about waterproof stain.

He was asleep before the commercial was over.

NATALIE AWOKE TO a headache so brutal she dared not open her eyes.

I’m having a stroke! she thought in panic. Or I’ve been struck on the head with something heavy! I’ve been mugged!

Mugged. No. The warm cocoon in which she was wrapped didn’t feel very post-mugging.

And she probably wasn’t having a stroke. She could move her arm, flex her fingers, put them to her head, where there was no evidence of a bump or a cut. So she hadn’t been struck, either.

She tried hard to think, but her aching head made it almost impossible.

Then she realized she could hardly breathe and her throat was scratchy. The cold. She had an awful cold. She’d taken two cold tablets, then two more, then someone had given her a powerful brandy drink….

Suddenly it all came back. The sperm bank, her investigation and KXAV’s humiliating report, followed by her starring role in Jolie Ramirez’s “Celebrity Dish.” There’d been the trip to Dancer’s Beach and Dori’s absence, the lowest moment of Natalie’s life.

Her head thudded viciously in response to her brain activity, and she was forced to give it a rest.

I’m hungover, she thought defeatedly. She wasn’t hurt or ill; she was hungover on cold medication and brandy. She vaguely remembered still feeling poorly after the drink and taking two more pills. Loggers in spiked boots danced in her head, and she lay quietly for a moment, trying to let her mind rest.

But she had to know things. She had to remember where she was. Her head hurt too much, though, to risk opening her eyes.

She remembered a man and a dog in front of Dori’s house, directing her to…the bed-and-breakfast! Yes! She breathed a sigh of relief. Yes. She was on the third floor of a bed-and-breakfast in a pretty brass bed. It was called the Woodsy Cabin Room because there were pine trees and bears and moose on the wallpaper!

She breathed another sigh of relief. There! Her brain was working. She knew where she was. Feeling just a little better about everything, she risked opening her eyes to slits. They encountered bright sunlight and…no pine trees, no bears, no moose.

She sat up, forgetting the state of her head in her sudden panic at the unfamiliar sight of deep, rose-colored walls covered with framed maps and charts and photos of lighthouses.

She was rewarded with a pounding in her head so severe that she put both hands to her ears, certain they were going to fly off from the pressure.

When her head finally quieted, she took another careful look around. Her bed had short, off-center head and footboards in dark wood that suggested she was sleeping on a futon. The dresser was dark wood, and there was a large model of a sailing yacht on the dresser. The yacht was reflected in the mirror behind it so that it looked as though the model and its reflection were in a neck-and-neck race.

In one corner was an upholstered rocking chair in blue and cream; against another wall stood a tall accountant’s desk from another century. Her eyes went back to the chair. Her suitcase lay on it.

She sat very still and tried to remember where she was, and how she’d gotten here. But all she could recall was a very fuzzy memory of a man, someone she’d thought had been sent to…impregnate her.

Oh, God! Oh, God! She turned to the pillow beside her, wondering if she was sharing the bed with someone she hadn’t even noticed in her panic over her strange surroundings.

She emitted a little sound that was half alarm, half amusement at the sight of the two-foot-tall plush bear. One eye had been replaced with a star-shaped piece of felt, and it seemed to wink at her stupidity.

She wished desperately that she could remember what had happened, hoped against hope that she hadn’t done anything truly stupid. But she was here, wasn’t she? she thought grimly. In a bed she didn’t know, in a room that was unfamiliar. Stupid was written all over it.

Well. She tossed the blankets back and carefully put her legs over the side. Her head thumped in response but she ignored it. Her principal priority was to get away before anyone noticed she was awake. If anyone was here.

The clock on the bedside table read just after eight. If she was lucky, whoever owned this home was on the way to work. She studied the bear worriedly for a moment and wondered if it meant there was a child in residence.

She prayed not. She hated to think she’d been out cold in front of a child.

Natalie got as far as the bathroom off the bedroom before she realized what she was wearing. The red-and-black flannel shirt she remembered. But the baggy, waffle-patterned black thermal underwear did not belong to her. Did it?

And if it didn’t, who had put it on her? The man she’d thought had come to impregnate her?

With a groan of agony, she fell forward against the door molding and closed her eyes. For a woman who’d once had charge of her destiny, she was making one self-destructive move after another.

After a moment of self-pity, she pushed herself upright again, went into the bathroom, filled the sink with water, found a facecloth and did her best to cat-wash quietly so that if anyone was still around, she could make her escape without disturbing them.

She dug through her bag, found a pair of brown cords and a brown turtleneck sweater, and ran a comb cautiously through her painful hair. She folded the black underwear neatly and left it on the foot of the bed.

Then she opened the door silently and, with suitcase in hand and a blue jeans jacket slung over her arm, tiptoed to the head of a wide stairway. On second thought, she reversed direction and went down a smaller back stairway she hoped would lead to a rear hallway and a back door.

She discovered a moment later that she’d been mistaken. The stairway ended in a bright red-and-white kitchen into which small-paned windows all along one side spilled sunlight.

At a farmer’s table in the middle of the room, a man sat reading the paper, while two little girls finished bowls of cereal, their moods apparently morose.

Natalie drew in a breath, distressed at having stumbled into the very confrontation she’d hoped to avoid—and with two beautiful children!

For one instant that would stay with her for a long, long time, she let herself believe that she belonged here, that she’d just showered and dressed and was joining her family for breakfast. The girls were as beautiful as any she’d dreamed of having.

And they looked delighted at the sight of her, grim moods falling away and broad smiles curving their mouths.

“Daddy!” the older of the two girls exclaimed, dark eyes brightening. Natalie guessed her to be seven or eight. “She’s awake!”

“Hi!” The second child, probably a couple of years younger, knelt up on her chair in excitement. “My name’s Roxie!”

The man looked up from his paper and turned his head in her direction. He had close-cropped, dark brown hair, a strong nose, a square chin with the slightest cleft in it, and a mouth that might have lent that tough face a little softness if it had been smiling.

But it wasn’t. And a pair of mahogany-brown eyes said clearly that he disapproved of her.

Time began again and reality descended upon her with a crash.

He was the man in her blurred images of last night. And she’d mentioned impregnation to him; she knew she had. He must think her either a slut or a complete idiot. She didn’t really care to know which.

To her utter and complete surprise, he pushed back from the table and stood. “Good morning,” he said politely, if a little stiffly.

“Good morning,” she replied in a raspy voice. She cleared her throat and smiled at the girls. “Hi. I’m Natalie.”

The older girl tried to get up, but the man stopped her with a look. Then he transferred The Look to Natalie. It made her, too, stay in her place.

“I’m Ben Griffin,” he said. “My mother owns the bed-and-breakfast where you were staying. These are my daughters, Vanessa and Roxanne.”

She smiled at each in turn. Bright smiles that could not be squelched by The Look were offered to her.

“I’m pleased to meet all of you,” she said, transferring her suitcase to her other hand. “And I want you to know how grateful I am for your hospitality.”

She had a million questions. Had she been rowdy last night and had his mother asked him to get rid of her? Had Natalie invited herself over? Had he invited her after her impregnation remarks?

On second thought, maybe she didn’t want her questions answered.

Vanessa turned to her father. “I knew she’d have a nice voice. Does she have to go?”

“Yes, I do,” Natalie replied quickly, unwilling to let Ben Griffin be put on the spot after whatever it was she’d done last night. “I have to…go to work.”

“Isn’t that in Philadelphia?” he asked.

She wondered how he knew that, then realized that if she’d asked him to impregnate her, chances are she’d told him where she lived. She swallowed a groan.

“Yes. I have to get to the airport.”

“I’m afraid we left your car at my mother’s,” he said. “I’ll drive you when I get back from taking the girls to school and day care.” He pointed to the bowl at the fourth place set at the table. “Why don’t you have some cereal and a cup of coffee, and I’ll be back in about fifteen minutes.”

“I could take a cab there,” she demurred, sure all he needed was to be put to more trouble on her account.

He shook his head. “Cab service died last year.”

Roxie, still kneeling on her chair, leaned across the table to shake cereal into the empty bowl. “We really like Frosted Pups. It has colored candies in it, but Daddy says we can’t have that except sometimes on Saturdays. It doesn’t have enough…” She turned to her sister for help.

“Nutrition,” Vanessa enunciated carefully. She pushed the milk in the direction of the empty chair. “Daddy said you could stay for dinner,” she added in a rush.

Natalie guessed by the way Ben Griffin stopped in the act of removing a battered suede jacket from the back of his chair that the child had lied.

But he shrugged on the jacket without correcting her.

“That’s very generous,” Natalie said, beginning to feel his disapproval like a weight and hating that she couldn’t respond to the children’s warmth. She knew he wouldn’t like it. “But I really have to go today.”

Both girls looked crestfallen, and she was at a loss to understand their interest in her when she’d hardly spoken to them.

“But I can have breakfast first,” she said, hoping to draw back the smiles. She put her suitcase down by the door and went to the table.

Ben poured coffee into her cup, then excused himself to find his car keys.

Vanessa took a napkin from the holder in the middle of the table and walked around to hand it to her. “Would you like a banana for your cereal?” she asked.

Natalie opened the napkin onto her lap. “No, this is fine, thank you. What grade are you in, Vanessa?”

“I’m in second. Roxie’s in preschool.”

“But I’m gonna get my ears pierced,” Roxie said, coming around the table to press in on the other side of Natalie. She put a fingertip to the jade stud in Natalie’s closest earlobe. “And I’m gonna get earrings just like yours!”

Vanessa rolled her eyes. “She’s not getting her ears pieced until she grows up. Daddy says we’re too young. Do you think we’re too young?”

“Definitely,” she said. “You have to take care of your ears very carefully when you have them pierced or you get an infection. And it’s easier to remember all the things you have to do if you’re older.”

“How old were you?” Vanessa asked.

“I was in high school,” Natalie replied. “My friend gave it to me as a present for my birthday.”

“You were sleeping last night,” Roxie said, leaning her elbow companionably on the table beside Natalie’s bowl and smiling up into her face. “I thought you were Sleeping Beauty! I wanted Daddy to kiss you, but he didn’t want to.”

Natalie bet he didn’t. “I wasn’t feeling very well.”

Vanessa confirmed that with a nod. “Grandma said you had a cold, then you had some brandy, and you didn’t answer the phone.”

Natalie propped her elbow on the table and rested her forehead in her hand. It ached abominably.

“Dillydally if you’re able,” Roxie sang to her, quoting the old aphorism, “but keep your elbows off the table.”

Natalie dutifully lowered her elbow.

“That wasn’t polite!” Vanessa scolded Roxie. “She’s company.”

“Daddy says we have to have good table manners all the time!”

“Us, but not her! She’s a grown-up!”

“No, no, that’s all right.” Natalie put an arm around each girl to defuse the argument. “Thank you, Vanessa, but Roxanne is right. Good manners are always important.”

Their father returned with a key ring hooked over his index finger. He took in the scene of the three of them and his brow darkened.

Natalie dropped her arms from them and swallowed a lump in her throat as she smiled. “You girls have a good day at school,” she said. “And thank you for getting my breakfast together. I’m very glad that I got to meet you.”

“You ready, girls?” their father asked.

Vanessa sighed. “Yes. Come on, Roxie.”

Vanessa picked up her lunch box from the counter, and Roxie took a well-loved doll from beside her bowl. They stopped to wave as their father held the back door open.

“I’ll be right back,” he said to Natalie.

The heroic thing to do, she thought, as he closed the door behind him, was to quickly finish her cereal and start walking to the B-and-B. Her suitcase had wheels, and Dancer’s Beach was small enough that it would take her only a moment to figure out how to get to the B-and-B from here.

She congratulated herself on the first reasonable plan she’d made since her unfortunate decision to use a sperm bank to get a baby in her life.

She finished her cereal hurriedly, had several sips of hot coffee, then rinsed out her dishes and put them in the sink.

Nothing about the view from the window above the sink looked familiar. She walked into the living room and looked out the large window. She saw that the house was on a hill just above town, and that it was probably six or seven blocks downhill, then just about half a mile to the B-and-B and her car. A cinch. At home she ran three miles every other day.

Unfortunately, she discovered a moment later, she ran far better than she walked. When she turned to head back to the kitchen to retrieve her suitcase and leave quickly, she caught her foot on a two-by-four in the hallway that she hadn’t noticed on her way in. She fell flat on her face, a burning pain ripping through her right ankle.