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To the best of Theresa’s knowledge, none of their children knew anything about this side venture she and her two best friends were engaged in, despite the fact that they’d secretly arranged all four of their children’s marriages.
“Apparently, Jewel told her,” Maizie said, shifting her gaze toward Cilia.
Very little ruffled Cilia, but this clearly astonished her.
“My Jewel?” Cilia asked incredulously. This was the first she’d heard even a hint of this. Certainly Jewel had never said anything to her.
Maizie nodded. “Your Jewel,” she confirmed. “But the really astonishing thing about this is that Nikki wants me to ‘work my magic,’ as she put it, to arrange a match for her friend Mikki. The two of them were roommates all through college and then they graduated medical school together—”
“Wait, so this Mikki you’re talking about, she’s a doctor?” Theresa asked, wanting to be absolutely sure she was getting the story straight before she allowed her imagination to run off with her.
“That’s what usually happens when you graduate medical school,” Maizie replied, her voice somewhat strained.
A doctor.
That was all Theresa needed to hear. She clapped her hands together in a sudden, uncharacteristically overwhelming burst of joy.
“Perfect!”
Maizie glared at her friend oddly, wondering what had come over her. “I think so, too. But why did you just say that?”
To explain, Theresa felt she had to backtrack a little. “Do you two remember Jeff Sabatino? That very handsome boy who used to work for me and then went on to open up his own restaurant right here in Bedford?” She looked at Maizie and Cilia, searching for any signs of recognition.
“Oh, that’s right. Dinner for Two,” Maizie recalled. “I went there when it first opened. Wonderful food. You taught him well,” she told Theresa with a warm smile. And then she paused. “But why are you bringing him up?”
“Well, initially I wanted to ask if Nikki could recommend a good doctor for his mother. Seems Mrs. Sabatino refuses to go see one, and Jeff thinks she’s in failing health,” Theresa answered. “He asked me to ask you to ask Nikki—”
Cilia held up her hand, stopping her friend from continuing. “Cut to the bottom line, Theresa. None of us are as young as we used to be.”
Maizie gave her friend a look. “Some of us are younger than others, Cilia—but yes, Theresa, what is the bottom line?”
Theresa told them Jeff’s request. “Can you have Nikki recommend a good doctor—preferably female—with a good bedside manner?”
Maizie hadn’t come this far in life without the aid of well-honed intuition. “There’s more, isn’t there?”
Theresa loved it when things just all seemed to come together. They all did.
“Well, Jeff is extremely good-looking. He’s got chiseled features and liquid green eyes a woman could get lost in,” she told her friends. “I’m speaking as a grandmother, by the way,” she added in case her friends had any doubts about her interest in the young man, “and there’s no girlfriend in the picture. He said something to the effect that he’d like to have kids, but he’s too busy right now making a go of his restaurant—and taking care of his mother.”
Maizie needed no more. Her eyes lit up. “We could get two birds with one stone.”
“Exactly what I was just thinking when you started talking about Nikki’s friend,” Theresa said. And then a bubble-bursting thought suddenly occurred to her. “This friend, she’s not a specialist, is she?”
“From what I remember, Mikki is an internist who specializes in cardiology,” Maizie answered.
She smiled broadly at the two other women sitting at the card table. A single hand hadn’t been dealt yet, and quite possibly, one wouldn’t be, at least not tonight, Maizie thought. Tonight was for making plans and laying groundwork.
This was going to be good.
Maizie smiled broadly at her friends. “Ladies, I believe—in the words of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous character, Sherlock Holmes—that the game is afoot.”
“I think the quote ran a little differently than that,” Cilia corrected.
Theresa waved her hand at the possible contradiction. “The exact wording doesn’t matter, Cilia. What does matter is that we just might have ourselves another match in the offing.”
“Details,” Maizie said aloud what they were all thinking. “Let’s review details.” She turned toward Theresa. “You tell us about your former protégé and then I’ll tell you about my daughter’s friend so that there are no surprises—other than pleasant ones, of course,” she added.
Theresa rubbed her hands together and smiled broadly at the two other women at the table. “I knew today was going to be a good day.”
“Put your cards away, Maizie,” Cilia said, noticing that the deck was still out. “Looks like we’ve got work to do.”
Chapter Two (#ud9ad6dfc-c045-5e53-bf8c-312562824536)
“Oh, come on, Michelle. Come to the party with me. You work too hard, darling. Don’t be afraid of having a little fun.”
Mikki McKenna suppressed a deep sigh.
Served her right for answering her cell phone without looking at caller ID. But she’d just pulled into her parking spot in front of the medical building, and because of the hour, she had naturally assumed that it was someone in her office or the hospital calling.
Either that, or it was one of a handful of patients she’d entrusted with her private line in case of an emergency.
She hadn’t expected her mother to call. That came under the heading of an entirely different sort of emergency. Something just short of the apocalypse.
It had been several months since she’d heard from her mother. Thinking back, Mikki vaguely remembered that it had been right between her mother shedding Tim Wilson, husband number four, and going off on a cruise to some faraway island paradise, the name of which presently escaped her. Her mother always went off on a cruise after every divorce. Cruises were her mother’s primary hunting grounds for potential new husbands. She kept going on different cruises until she found someone to her satisfaction.
“I’m not afraid of having fun, Mother,” Mikki began, attempting to get her mother to see her side for a change even though, in her heart, it was a hopeless endeavor.
Veronica McKenna Sheridan Tolliver Wilson—her mother thought that having so many names made her seem like British royalty—immediately interjected, “Well, then come! This promises to be a really wonderful party, Michelle. Anderson throws absolutely the very best parties,” she said with enthusiasm.
Anderson. So that was the new candidate’s name. She wondered if the man had any idea what he was in for.
“I’m sure that he does, Mother,” Mikki said, humoring her. “But—”
Veronica was quick to shut her daughter down. She’d had years of practice.
“Michelle, please, you need to have a little fun before you suddenly find that you’re too old to enjoy yourself. Honestly, I don’t know how I wound up raising such a stick in the mud,” Veronica lamented dramatically.
Possibly because you didn’t raise me at all, Mother, Mikki thought.
Between her parents’ arguments and the almost-frenzied partying they both indulged in, singularly and together, she’d hardly ever seen her parents when they were still married.
She remembered being periodically dropped off to stay with various relatives as a child. As she got older, there were sleepovers at friends’ homes instead, especially her best friend, Nicole. Envious of the family unity she witnessed, Mikki had made sure she was the perfect houseguest, going the extra mile by cleaning up after herself as well as her friend and even preparing breakfast whenever possible.
It was her way of ensuring that she would be invited back.
By the time she was twelve, her parents had divorced, and they’d professed to want shared custody of her—which meant, in reality, that neither parent really wanted to be saddled with her upbringing. Each kept sending her to the other. Money was substituted for love. The only interest from either one of her parents came by way of the actual interest her trust fund accrued.
If it hadn’t been for her great-aunt Bethany, Mikki would have felt that she had no family at all. It was Great-Aunt Bethany who took an interest in her education and suggested that she consider attending medical school.
The latter had grown out of her having nursed an injured bird back to health after it had flown into the sliding glass patio door.
“You have a good heart and good instincts, Michelle. It would be a shame to let that go to waste,” Great-Aunt Bethany had told her that summer, literally dropping a number of medical school pamphlets in her lap.
And that had been the beginning of Mikki’s career in medicine. Her desire to help others, to make a difference, took root that summer. Very simply, it was the reason she had decided to become a doctor.
There had also been a small part of her—because for the most part, she had given up hoping to make any meaningful connection with her mother—that did hope her mother would be proud of her choice.
She supposed she should have known better.
“Well, if that’s what you want, I suppose you should go for it,” Veronica had said when she told her mother of her plans to go to medical school. “But personally, I can’t see why you’d want to go poking around people’s insides or whatever it is that you’ll be doing. It’s all so very icky, darling.” Mikki could still picture the look of revulsion on her mother’s face. “And you really don’t have to do that, you know. You don’t need to earn a living.”
She let her mother go on trying to talk her out of her choice until Veronica lost interest in the subject.
Her mother was always losing interest in subjects, this included the various men that she had married. It was always “the next one” who promised to be better. Until he wasn’t.
Watching her mother over the years, Mikki had become sure of one thing. That was not the kind of life she wanted.
“I’m only going to be in town for another day or two,” her mother was saying now. “I don’t know why you don’t want to take the opportunity to come out of your shell and see me.”
“Because I won’t be seeing you,” Mikki pointed out patiently. “Not personally, at least. You’ll be partying with an entire ballroom full of people.” Her mother was never happier than when she was the center of everyone’s attention. And if she wasn’t the center of attention, she did something to make that happen.
“And what do you want me to do, Michelle? Would you like me to sit by the fireplace like some old woman, mourning over things that didn’t happen?” Veronica asked testily.
“No, Mother,” Mikki replied. Because it was getting warm in her car, she put her key in the ignition and cracked open a window. She knew she could just as easily step outside, but she didn’t want anyone overhearing her conversation with her mother. “I want you to do whatever makes you happy. Just like I want to do whatever makes me happy.”
“But—”
She could hear her mother’s frustration vibrating in the single word. But she’d learned not to allow her mother to play her.
“Sorry, Mother. That’s my other line. I’ve got to go,” Mikki told her, terminating the call.
Mikki held the cell phone against her for a moment and sighed. For once, there was no other incoming call, but she couldn’t think of another way to get her mother to stop going on about the party at the Ambassador Hotel that she wanted her to attend. She had absolutely no use for those kind of vapid parties. Mingling with a roomful of strangers wearing overpriced clothes seemed like a colossal waste of precious time to her.
She supposed that the invitation could be her mother’s way of trying to connect with her after all this time, but she really doubted it. Most likely, her mother was just trying to assuage her guilty conscience, although that in itself was rather unusual. Guilt and Veronica McKenna Sheridan Tolliver Wilson did not coexist on the same plane.
Best guess was that Anderson Pierce, Veronica’s boy toy of the month, had probably expressed an interest in meeting her daughter. Mikki wouldn’t have agreed to go even if she wasn’t busy, which she was.
All the time.
She had a thriving internal medicine practice associated with Bedford Memorial and, if that wasn’t enough, she also volunteered on Saturdays at the free clinic.
She would sleep, she often said, when she was dead.
That would also be when she’d party, Mikki thought with a smile. When she was dead.
Her cell phone began to ring again. This time, she looked at caller ID before answering. The number on the screen was not familiar, but the name above it was.
She couldn’t remember the last time she had spoken to Maizie Sommers.
“Mrs. Sommers?” she asked uncertainly, still not sure this was the woman she was thinking of.
The second the woman spoke, all doubt vanished. No one could pack as much warmth into a simple sentence as her best friend’s mother could.
“Mikki, how wonderful to hear your voice again. How are you?”
“I’m well, thank you—”
“And busy, I hear,” Maizie said, reading between the lines. “Nikki tells me that you’re extremely busy these days.”
“Well, yes, I am,” Mikki admitted, but she didn’t want to just brush the woman off because of that. She had some very affectionate memories associated with her best friend’s mother. She’d lost count the number of times she had slept over Nikki’s house—or the number of times she had wished that Nikki’s mother was her mother, as well. “But never too busy for you, Mrs. Sommers. What can I do for you?” she asked, certain that the woman had to be calling about something. It wasn’t like her to just call up for no reason.
“That’s very sweet of you, Mikki,” Maizie responded. “As a matter of fact, I did call you for a reason—”
Mikki was quick to tell the woman some necessary information. “I’m not in my office right now, but I know that my schedule is full for the next few days. However, I can see you either before office hours or after office hours, whichever would be more convenient for you, Mrs. Sommers.”
She heard Nikki’s mother chuckle softly. “You haven’t changed a bit. You were always such a very thoughtful young woman. This isn’t about me, dear. It’s about—a friend,” Maizie said, finally settling on a satisfactory wording for her request. “The poor dear hasn’t been well lately.”
Maizie paused for a moment to recall exactly what Theresa had told her. “She’s been experiencing sharp pains in her abdomen and a general feeling of being unwell—”
“And what does her doctor say about her symptoms?” Mikki asked. She didn’t like stepping on another doctor’s toes unless she thought that there might be malpractice at the bottom of the case.
“That’s just it, dear. She doesn’t have a doctor. Absolutely refuses to go see one,” Maizie added for good measure.
In this day and age, that didn’t make much sense to her. “Why?” Mikki asked.
“It’s a very sad story, really,” Maizie said. “Her husband was misdiagnosed many years ago, and the poor man died as a result.”
“And so now she doesn’t trust doctors,” Mikki concluded.
“No, not since that day,” Maizie confirmed. “She’s adamant about it.”
“I can see why she might feel that way, Mrs. Sommers. But I can’t exactly examine her against her will,” Mikki pointed out.
Maizie started talking a little faster as she tried to change Mikki’s mind about the matter. The way she saw it, there was a lot at stake here, more than just Jeff’s mother’s health.
“Her son is very worried about her,” she stressed, continuing to set the stage. “If I can get him to bring her in to your office, can you give her a thorough examination?” Maizie asked. “You always had such a wonderful, calming manner about you.”
Mikki laughed quietly. “I never examined you, Mrs. Sommers.”
“I meant in general,” Maizie said. “You know, I always thought you were the perfect friend for Nikki.”
That brought back memories. “I always thought it was the other way around, really.”
Mikki thought for a moment. Her cell was beeping, letting her know that this time there was another call coming in. However, she didn’t want to put Maizie on hold or risk disconnecting. She wanted to finalize things before ending the call.
She thought for a second, then asked, “Could either you or your friend’s son bring this lady to my office at eight tomorrow morning?”
“Eight?” Maizie repeated.
