Читать книгу At Odds With The Midwife - Patricia Forsythe, Patricia Forsythe - Страница 10
ОглавлениеONCE AGAIN, HEAT rushed into Gemma’s face, but this time, it wasn’t from anger. She pressed her palms together and cleared her throat. “I wasn’t... I wasn’t going to say that.”
“You didn’t need to,” Nathan said, standing up. “Everyone in town knows it.”
Gemma stared at him in dismay. She hadn’t meant to bring it up. It had to be humiliating for him to return here, face the critics, try to make things right. “I... I’m sorry.”
The tight look on his face told her he wouldn’t welcome any more references to the issue, so Gemma cleared her throat and said, “Nate, good luck with the hospital.” She offered him a tentative smile, which he didn’t return.
Instead, he said, “Thanks. I’ll need it.” He turned toward the door and paused. “And thanks for the bandage.” Nathan left the way he’d come. She walked to the door and watched him jog away into the darkness, his white T-shirt leaving an impression in her vision long after he was out of sight.
Gemma stood for a moment with her shoulders drooping. She had known there would be opposition to the birthing center, but she hadn’t expected to start this battle quite so soon, and certainly not with Nathan. Her heart felt heavy with dismay and disappointment.
As she cleared away the basin and first-aid supplies, Gemma wondered why Nathan was back. Why was he reopening the hospital? The last she’d heard, he had an excellent job at a hospital in Oklahoma City. At least now she knew where he stood regarding the birthing center.
After a few minutes, she went back outside to finish planting her herbs, making sure they were firmly in the ground, each with a small trench around it. She could fill the trenches with water, or they’d catch the abundant rain they’d had so far this spring.
It was nearly midnight by the time she finished so she cleaned her tools, put everything away and went inside for a shower. By sheer force of will, she put Nathan out of her mind and focused on thoughts of the birthing center and the positive impact it would have on the women of Reston County.
* * *
“THIS WILL ONLY take a few minutes,” Lisa Thomas assured Gemma the next morning as she slid behind the wheel of her car and buckled her seat belt. “I can’t wait to see the Sunshine Birthing Center. It’s so great that you named it after your mom.”
“She’s pretty happy about it. I figured I owed her some kind of tribute for letting me bring home all those injured animals when I was little.” Gemma settled into the luxurious seat, so different from the utilitarian one in her elderly Land Rover. One of these days, she would get that seat replaced and not even think about how strange it would be with the well-worn interior. She couldn’t be without her rough-and-tumble Rover, though, not in this county, where roads more often resembled dried-up, rocky riverbeds.
“I’ll never forget the first bird whose wing you tried to bandage. Between the splint and the bandages, that crow couldn’t even stand up and constantly tipped over.”
Gemma grinned. “He lived, though.”
“Well, yeah, but he always flew kind of sideways after that—kept flying into your living room window.”
“He did that on purpose, remember? He’d become addicted to my mom’s homemade bread. He finally figured out that if he sat on the sill and tapped his beak on the glass, Mom would run out with some crumbs.”
Lisa laughed, the deep, throaty sound that was so at odds with her petite frame. As usual, she was wearing a beautifully fitted and professional-looking dress. This one was the same blue as her eyes, and she wore matching four-inch heels.
“She was as big a pushover as you were. That’s why he never left the area.”
“Well, that and, thanks to me, he flew sideways.”
Lisa grinned as she said, “Now tell me what you’ve accomplished toward the birthing center in the past week. Every time I go to one of those real estate conferences, I feel like I’ve spent time on another planet.”
She pulled onto the highway and headed into town, listening while Gemma told her about the latest developments.
“We have an office with very little in it except a desk and chair, computer and phone. I’ve hired Rhonda Morton to be our receptionist.”
“The mayor’s wife? She’ll certainly keep you up on all the local gossip.”
“That’s fine as long as she doesn’t gossip about any of our patients. I’ve also hired Beth Garmer and Carrie Stringfellow, but they’re my only nurses until we get our clientele built up enough—” She stared at the house where they had stopped. “Why are we at the Smiths’ place, Lisa?”
“Nathan wants to sell it. Apparently, the house actually belonged to his mom. When she passed away, she left it to him and it’s been sitting empty since his dad disappeared. I told him I’d look the place over and give him an estimate on what I think it might sell for.”
Lisa swung out of the car and opened the back door to tug out a fat briefcase and a big, black binder. “Although I don’t know what I’m going to use for comparative prices. This town isn’t exactly a hotbed of real estate activity and there aren’t too many houses like this one that come on the market. Even in this run-down state, it’s worth more than all the other houses on the block combined. Did you know the foyer is white Carrara marble? Of all things to find in rural Oklahoma.”
Belatedly, she seemed to realize that Gemma hadn’t moved a muscle.
Lisa leaned in and gave her a puzzled look. “Come on, let’s go.”
Gemma responded with a big smile. “I’ll wait in the car.”
“Are you crazy? You’ll roast!”
“It’s not that hot.”
“Come on. Aren’t you curious to see inside the Smiths’ house?”
“Not really,” Gemma murmured as she joined her friend on the sidewalk.
Lisa held up her cell phone and took a picture of the front of the house before they walked through the sagging wrought iron gate and up the cracked sidewalk. Grass poked through—brave little spikes of spring in an otherwise lifeless landscape.
The general air of neglect was depressing. The front flowerbeds, which had once held Mrs. Smith’s prize roses, overflowed with dead plants.
“Going to need a major cleanup before it goes on the market,” Lisa said, stepping up to knock on the door.
A few seconds later, the door swung open. “Hello, Lisa. Thanks for coming, and...oh, Gemma.” Nate’s dark gaze swept over her, from her neon green toenails, to her cargo shorts and sleeveless Hawaiian-print camp shirt, to the loose swirl of hair she’d pinned atop her head.
He was struggling to control his expression. “Hello,” he finally said, stepping back.
She took off her sunglasses and perched them atop her head as she gave him a friendly nod.
Lisa strolled inside, seeming not to notice the tension between the other two.
“Gemma and I were on the way to the birthing center so she can show me around, but I knew you were expecting me to stop by this morning.” Lisa looked over the foyer as she set her binder and briefcase by the door. “Okay if I take some pictures?”
She didn’t wait for an answer, but strolled away, drawn into the once-magnificent home and toward the dining room. “Kitchens and bathrooms,” she called over her shoulder. “That’s what sells houses. Kitchens and bathrooms.” She disappeared around the corner.
Gemma and Nathan stood awkwardly for a moment before she pointed to his hand. “How is the cut this morning?”
“Better. It’ll heal.”
Since that topic of conversation had gone nowhere, she looked around at the nearly empty living room. A huge, clean rectangle of hardwood floor was bordered with scuffed dirt where a rug had obviously been rolled up and taken away.
“Looks like you’re clearing things out.”
“Yes. I sold all the furniture to a secondhand store over in Toncaville. Now I’m dealing with the smaller items—and the dirt.” He bent slightly to dust off the knees of the faded jeans he wore with an old blue T-shirt and battered sneakers. He reached up to smooth his mussed hair and came away with a cobweb. “And the spiders,” he added.
“I ran in to a bunch of those at my place, too. I didn’t mind too much until they tried to join me in the shower.”
“If I lived here, I’d have to pay rent to the spiders to even use the shower.”
She smiled, feeling an easing of the tension, and walked over to examine a grouping of family pictures on the wall. Most of them were formal family portraits, everyone looking stiff and awkward. Gemma studied the faces of Nate’s parents, both of them serious, almost grim. She could see Nate reflected in each of their faces, but staring at his father, she wondered what was on the man’s mind. Was he even then siphoning money from an institution that was so vital to the community where he lived? She had no answer, so she turned her attention to the other photos. A few were snapshots of Nathan as a small boy, alone, or with an older girl. In one photo, he appeared to be about two and she held him on her hip with one arm and tickled him with her other hand. It was a happy, spontaneous contrast to the other pictures, but somehow it made her sad.
Gemma frowned, trying to pinpoint the reason for her sudden melancholy. “That was your sister, Mandy, wasn’t it? I remember that she was very beautiful, and—”
“And she died when I was twelve.” Nathan stepped forward and took the picture from the wall. He pulled a rag from his back pocket, wiped the picture clean and then placed it inside an open box on the floor.
“I know. I’m very sorry. I remember she used to come to our place and hang out with my mother.”
Nate frowned at her. “What? When?”
Gemma paused to think. “It must have been during her senior year in high school. You and I were in second grade. I remember seeing her and my mom out in the garden, and sometimes working in the kitchen. I think Mom taught her to bake bread.”
Nate didn’t respond but stood looking down at the photo he’d placed in the box.
“Is something wrong, Nate?”
“No. No. It’s ancient history now.”
Lisa called to him from the kitchen and he left Gemma standing where she was, gazing at the family pictures and thinking that even ancient history never really disappeared.
* * *
NATE STOOD BY the picture window in the living room and watched as Gemma and Lisa headed toward Lisa’s sporty little car. As they climbed in, Lisa said something that had Gemma throwing back her head and laughing as she tugged open the door and dropped into the seat. He tucked his hands into his back pockets and let his shoulders relax as he watched the curve of her neck and the way her ponytail bounced.
Gemma was everything this house wasn’t—warm, inviting, happy. Somehow, having her here, if even for a short time, had made the place even more depressing.
As they drove away, he turned back to the living room, his gaze going to the wall of family pictures—although, in his mind, family hardly described the people who had lived in this house, especially after Mandy’s death. He and his parents had been like three separate planets, each in their own orbit, never touching, rarely interacting. The Smiths had been the exact opposite of the Whitmires, whom he had often seen together in town—a tight, happy little unit of three. He remembered watching them with longing, wanting what they had, knowing he would never have it.
Mandy must have wanted the same thing. He hadn’t known she was close to the Whitmires. It ate at his gut to know she’d had a whole life, areas of interest he hadn’t known about, but he’d only been a kid, so how could he have known? He wondered if his parents knew. Maybe, judging by the frequent negative comments his mother had made about the “hippie crazies.”
Nate shook his head, pulling himself back from the past, where he’d been too often since returning home. Whatever happened now, it was up to him to create it. He had a huge job before him and it would be helped along by selling this mausoleum. Who knew? Maybe it would be purchased by a happy family with parents who didn’t mind how much noise a kid made running up the stairs, or building some crazy construction in the backyard.
Cheered by the thought, he turned toward the staircase and the last of the stored items he needed to sort through. There were a few sealed boxes in his mother’s closet that he would have to look at someday. They probably contained nothing more than old business papers, but maybe there was some family history that might actually spark a sense of family in him. He snorted aloud, marveling at his need to be proud of people he’d made a point of not obsessing over.
He would finish this task, have the place cleaned and painted, then sell it and move on with his life.
* * *
“I DON’T KNOW why I let you talk me into this,” Gemma groused as Carly Joslin took another bump in the road at warp speed. Her truck was headed back to Reston and the organizational meeting for the reopening of the hospital.
“I’m wondering the same thing,” Lisa added, looking from one best friend to the other.
The three of them were crowded into the front seat of Carly’s truck, as they’d been so many times before.
“Oh, come on,” Carly answered, taking her eyes off the road to tilt her head and grin at Gemma, who was hanging on to the door handle for all she was worth. “It’s like old times—taking my dad’s truck, although now it’s my truck, driving to Toncaville for lunch—”
“Dragging you out of antique and junk shops,” Lisa broke in.
“Arriving back late, getting in trouble,” Gemma added.
“Only we won’t be getting in trouble this time. We’re no longer crazy teenage girls...”
“We’re crazy thirty-two-year-old women, and at least two of us should know better than to go anywhere with you on the day the county is doing brush and bulky-trash pickup,” Lisa said.
Gemma glanced over her shoulder at the “treasures” Carly had already collected along the highway and placed in the truck bed. Twice a year, May and November, the county sent big dump trucks around to collect yard clippings to be ground into mulch, and items too large to fit into trash bins. People put out a wide assortment of throwaway items, which Carly would gleefully collect and repurpose—or “upcycle,” as she called it. She hauled it all home, stored it in the barn and garage and worked her way through it until the next brush and bulky pickup. To her it was like getting two extra Christmases each year.
Lisa glanced back, too, and Carly met their skeptical looks with an unrepentant grin.
“What are you going to do with an old bicycle frame, minus tires and handlebars?” Lisa asked.
“Are you kidding? It’s beautiful. I’ll paint it—maybe fire-engine red—and spruce it up. Imagine how cute it’s going to look in someone’s front yard with live flowers in the basket...”
“Conveniently placed for the next brush and bulky pickup,” Gemma said drily.
“It’ll be a work of art.”
“Yes,” Gemma said with a sigh. “When you’re finished with it, it probably will be. But some of that other stuff...the washing machine, for example.”
“That wringer-type washing machine is in pretty good shape considering it probably saw its heyday when Herbert Hoover was president.”
“But what on earth are you going to do with it?”
Carly gave her a smug look. “Remove the rust, oil all the parts, polish it up. Believe it or not, there’s a whole society—mostly men—who collect washing machines. After I fix it up, I’ll sell it to one of them.”
Lisa stared at her. “Men who collect washing machines? Someday you’re going to be struck by lightning for the fibs you make up.”
“It’s true! They’ve got hundreds of members—all around the world.”
“That’s crazy,” Gemma said.
“Yup, but profitable, and besides, I’m a little crazy,” Carly answered. “I’m surprised you still let me take the lead on these things.”
“You’re the one with the truck,” Gemma reminded her sweetly. “And I needed a new lawn mower, which, now that I think of it, could have fit in the back of my Land Rover.”
“But we wouldn’t have been able to collect nearly as much useful stuff—”
“Good!” her friends said in unison.
“And I could have found you an old lawn mower, fixed it up and—”
“No.”
“Well, in any case, you don’t have to do your own mowing. You could hire someone to... What’s that?” Carly slammed on the brakes at the same time she whipped her head around so fast, Gemma could hear her neck crack.
“It’s nothing,” Lisa said. “We need to keep going. We’ll be late for the meeting.”
“That’s a chair.” Carly pulled over to the mound of discarded furniture someone had piled up at the end of the road that led into the Bordens’ place. “We’ve got plenty of time to get to the meeting. I don’t want to miss it since I hope to sell produce to the hospital kitchen.”
“The chair is broken.” Gemma knew it wouldn’t do any good, but she had to try. She exchanged an exasperated look with Lisa. “You don’t need a broken chair, Carly.”
But Carly had already turned on her hazard lights to alert approaching traffic, catapulted from the truck and freed the discarded piece of furniture from a tangle of wire and sheet metal, easy for her since she was tall. She was also strong from years of working outside. Her long black ponytail swung as she held up her find.
Gemma wasn’t the least bit surprised to see Carly’s dark brown eyes shining in triumph as she examined it. No archaeologist unearthing a history-changing artifact could be more excited than Carly was at this moment.
“It’s Duncan Phyfe style.” She turned it this way and that, checking it from all angles and testing the joints. “The arms are sturdy. I can make this into something useful.”
“Yes,” Gemma said, joining her. “Kindling wood.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Only the legs are broken. This would make an adorable swing to hang from a tree limb, or a porch beam.”
Gemma tilted her head back and looked at the clear blue sky. “Repurposing, thy name is Carly.”
Thrilled with her new treasure, Carly placed it in the pickup bed beside the box holding Gemma’s yet-to-be assembled lawn mower. “If I attach a seat belt, it would even be suitable for little kids.”
When she started to turn back to the junk pile to look for more gems, Lisa leapt from the truck. She and Gemma each grabbed an arm, marched their friend in a circle and then took her straight back to the driver’s side.
“Wait!” Carly protested, straining to look over her shoulder. “There might be something—”
“Yes,” Gemma answered. “Tetanus.”
“Snakes,” Lisa added. “Copperheads, cottonmouths, timber rattlers.” She pointed to the pools of water in the bar ditch beside the road, evidence of the recent rains. “Remember they like moist places.”
Carly grimaced. “Oh, yeah, right.” With a slight shudder, she climbed behind the wheel. Gemma and Lisa hurried around the front of the truck and climbed in. After they fastened their seat belts, they resumed their drive to Reston.
“You wait and see,” Carly said smugly. “I’ll make that chair into something adorable and useful.”
“I don’t doubt that,” Gemma answered. “But has it occurred to you that it might be a good idea to begin getting rid of some of the chairs you’ve refurbished over the years? You’ve got enough for a symphony orchestra.”
“You’re exaggerating.”
“Not by much,” Lisa added. “You’ve made each chair into a unique collector’s item. If you wanted to, you could open a shop in Reston or Toncaville, or somewhere else nearby.”
“But I don’t want to. I don’t want to be tied down. I wouldn’t be able to work on refinishing furniture at my own pace or go out looking for new pieces. Owning a shop means having to deal with the public. The way it is now, I advertise the items I’ve got for sale online and people come find me, or call me up and place an order over the phone. Besides, what about my farm? My organic produce won’t plant and harvest itself.”
Lisa threw her hands in the air. “But with a shop your sales would go through the roof. People like to come in and browse. I know you’re the ultimate do-it-yourselfer, but you could work on the farm in the mornings, then have a place in town with a back room. You could work on your projects, hire someone to work the front, arrange your merchandise. You’d be providing a job for someone. Maybe two people. A shop like that would be another way to attract tourists here. The kinds of projects you do? People from Dallas would eat that up with a spoon. They’d gladly drive up here to shop, enjoy the rustic experience, eat lunch, spend money.”
Carly sent her a sidelong glance. “You planning to run for mayor, Lis?”
“I might. Someday. There’s a lot that could be done in Reston if people would get their heads out of the past and think about the future.” Lisa had the bit between her teeth now and was going to run with it, doing her best to convince Carly of the rightness of this idea.
“The Smiths’ house, for example. It’s been sitting empty all this time, but it’s sound, only needs upgrading. The place has six bedrooms. It would make a perfect bed-and-breakfast.”
Gemma raised an eyebrow. “I’ve had two encounters with Nathan Smith since I’ve been back. Neither one of them gave any indication he was interested in running a B and B. Besides, didn’t you say he’s anxious to sell?”
Lisa gave a dismissive wave of her hand. “It was only a suggestion of what could be done with that property. And furthermore, if you reopened your family’s campground, you could attract tons of visitors. And the pavilion would be perfect for weddings and receptions.”
“If nobody minds the giant hole in the roof,” Gemma added.
Lisa didn’t even pause for breath. “Your lake has hardly been fished in years. The trout are practically begging to be caught. Fishermen would be buying tackle at Wilson’s Hardware, fuel and groceries at Crossroads Gas ’n’ Stuff...”
“Not gonna happen,” Gemma responded with a firm shake of her head. “I’ve got my hands full with opening the birthing center. I can’t take on anything else.”
“Well, keep it in mind for the future. That’s exactly what I’ve been talking about—planning for Reston’s future. This could be a prosperous little town if people would get behind a few of these projects.”
“Which you’ll think up and organize,” Carly said.
“Of course. Somebody has to be in charge.”
“You did do a good job of convincing the mayor to find a buyer to renovate and reopen the Mustang Supermarket,” Carly said.
“Having three grocery stores in town benefits everyone. Competition is a good thing.”
“Having three retailers to buy my produce is also a good thing.”
Smiling, Gemma settled back and only half listened to her friends. This was one of the reasons she had been so happy to move home to Reston. Besides providing a useful service to women in this rural area, she was getting to reconnect with her two best friends. Even though neither of them had anything to do with the medical field, they would be her staunchest supporters as she opened the birthing center.
Unlike Nathan Smith, Gemma thought with a sigh. His feelings about it were crystal clear and his attitude made her feel both wary and disappointed in him. She didn’t know why she’d expected more from him. After all, she didn’t really know Nathan anymore.
“Wow,” Carly said, leaning over the steering wheel to gaze ahead as she slowed to a crawl inside Reston city limits. “An actual traffic jam.”
A line of cars and trucks waited, turn signals blinking, to pull in to the high school parking lot. Junior Fedder, the deputy sheriff—short, dangerously obese and sweating profusely in the late-afternoon sun—stood at the entrance, directing traffic.
“I think that’s the most movement I’ve seen out of Junior since that day last fall when Tyler and Bradley Saxon put a dead skunk on top of the furnace in the high school basement. Junior chased those two all the way down Main Street, but they finally lost him when he collapsed in front of Wilson’s Hardware. Fortunately, he fell into a wheelbarrow so Frank Wilson was able to get him back to the sheriff’s office.”
As she listened to Carly’s matter-of-fact recital of this story, Gemma began laughing so hard tears rolled down her face. “In the...whee-wheelbarrow?” she choked.
“Yup. Frank’s wife, Tina, ran alongside, fanning Junior with a newspaper and spraying him with a plant mister.” Carly grinned and waved at Junior as the truck crept past him and into a parking place. “It was a new, heavy-duty wheelbarrow that Frank had assembled and put on display. He sold out the next day when everybody saw how much poundage one of those puppies could carry.”
“You lie.”
“No, it’s true,” Lisa assured her. “Carly bought one.”
Still laughing, Gemma all but tumbled from the truck. “Oh, how I’ve missed this town,” she said, looking up at that moment to see a solemn Nathan Smith, briefcase in hand, heading toward the auditorium. He glanced her way, nodded briefly and kept walking.
The chattering crowd fell silent and stood back to let him pass. Gemma saw him pause and glance around, then mount the steps purposefully. As far as she could tell, every eye was on him, but no one had greeted him.
“Come on,” Lisa said. “Or we’ll never find a seat.”
As it turned out, someone had saved seats for them near the front so they had a good view of the proceedings. Gemma looked around, recalling happy memories of her time at Reston High School. In spite of her unusual parents and her own obsession with finding and patching up wounded animals, she had never felt like an outsider and had enjoyed her years here. She was happy to see that, except for a fresh coat of paint and recently reupholstered seats, the big auditorium was still the same.
Two rows of chairs were on the stage and each was filled with someone important to the reopening of the hospital. County supervisors and city planners were in the back row. In the front row, white-haired, sleepy-looking Brantley Clegg, who ran the bank and would be handling the finances, sat on the far end beside Harley Morton, the mayor of Reston. Nathan, somber in a black suit and tie, was next. He sat arrow straight in the hard folding chair, his hands on his knees, his gaze on the audience, although Gemma didn’t think he was actually seeing anyone.
Beside him were Tom and Frances Sanderson, wealthy landowners and cattle ranchers who had given a huge sum of money to the project. When Frances saw Gemma, she elbowed her husband and the two of them gave her happy waves. Gemma waved back. Nathan saw this interaction and shot a swift glance from the couple to Gemma.
Gemma’s smile faded. Nathan would find out soon enough how it was that she and the Sandersons were so well acquainted.
“Wow,” Carly said under her breath. “I wouldn’t have known Nathan. He’s so much taller, and in great shape. He looks like—”
“A sexy undertaker,” Lisa finished for her. “I noticed that the other day when Gemma and I were at his house. Very solemn.”
“I don’t ever remember him being a barrel of laughs,” Carly said. “And now he looks like he’s made up his mind to run his head into a brick wall.”
Gemma studied his face. Carly was right. He didn’t appear to be looking forward to this at all. He must have felt her gaze on him because his eyes met hers. Her heart gave a little kick of anticipation but she didn’t want to analyze the reason for it.
She pulled her attention from him as Mayor Morton approached the podium and went through the usual ritual of tapping the microphone attached to the antique sound system to make sure it was working, then leaning in so close to speak that it released a loud squawk. The audience groaned and several people clapped their hands over their ears.
“Oh, uh, sorry, folks.” The mayor looked contrite as he jerked back. The microphone went dead and he was perplexed for a minute until a boy who couldn’t have been more than fourteen jumped onto the stage and fiddled with something under the podium, then picked up the microphone and handed it to the mayor.
“Oh, thanks, Owen.” The mayor nodded and finally seemed to be in his element. He looked up and fixed his good-neighbor-and-good-politician smile into place as he surveyed the audience. “We’re here as a community to reveal the plans for reopening Reston County Hospital. We’ve got a slide show to explain our plans and we’ll take questions afterward.”
“I’ve got a question right now,” a voice called out.
Everyone turned to look at the speaker.
“Cole Burleigh,” Gemma said, her lips tightening in a line of annoyance.
“Oh, for crying out loud, who kicked over a rock and let him slither out?” Carly asked as Lisa clicked her tongue in disgust.
Cole looked around the big room to make sure he had everyone’s attention. He didn’t look much different than he had in high school, except that he had filled out, and if he wasn’t careful would soon begin running to fat. His blond hair was still thick, his brown eyes just as calculating. They narrowed as he pointed to Nathan and asked, “I want to know if Dr. Smith’s briefcase is packed full of all that money his dear old daddy stole.”
A murmur ran through the crowd as people turned to watch Nathan’s reaction. His color deepened and he started to rise to his feet. The mayor waved him down as he turned back to Cole.
“This is neither the time nor the place for that, and—”
“Why not? It’s why everyone is here, after all.”
