The Prodigal M.D. Returns

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The words were recited without feeling, but Ben knew better. No one cared more than Shayne about these people. Whenever there was a cave-in, Shayne was the first there to help with the wounded. To go into the bowels of the earth if need be. Shayne coped by keeping a tight rein on his feelings. Just the way he had when their parents were killed.

Ben thought back to the special he’d watched last month. The one that had triggered his decision to return home. Maybe the footage he’d seen on the Alaskan cave-in had even been of the one that had claimed Heather’s husband.

Small world.

He realized that Shayne was holding a cup out to him. Taking it, he looked down at the pitch-black, almost-solid contents. “You know, you should offer to coat the walls at the mines with this stuff, Shay. They’d never cave in again.”

“Starbucks is approximately a hundred miles due east,” Shayne told him, pointing in that general direction. Just as he took a sip of the dark brew, they heard a bell ring in the front. It was swiftly followed by a low, resonant greeting.

“’Morning!”

“That would be Jimmy.” Rather than leave the cup behind, Shayne topped it off then headed out of the small room. “C’mon. Time to make introductions.”

The coffee jolted through Ben’s system. He’d forgotten just how strong Shayne’s coffee could really be. He smiled to himself as he followed behind his brother. It felt good to be home.

Heather had no recollection of the short drive home from the clinic. She didn’t remember getting into the car, didn’t remember strapping the girls in, didn’t remember starting the car or turning on the radio. As she paused to glance into the back, she was surprised to see the girls were each in their car seats where they were supposed to be. She vaguely became aware the radio was on only when she heard the deejay, Preston Foster, launch into his stale routine. It hadn’t changed very much since he’d cut his teeth on the radio station in high school.

Staring ahead again, she gripped the steering wheel so tightly that had it been frozen, she would have succeeded in snapping it in two. Not to mention she was moving slightly faster than a snail suffering from a bout of the flu.

It was a preventative action because she didn’t want to hit anything. The fact that Hades had no traffic seemed to have escaped her. At given times of the day, there would be only one, possibly two vehicles on any of the three streets that led in and out of the town. A traffic jam was declared whenever three vehicles all headed in the same direction.

“Faster, Mama, faster,” Hayley urged. The girl waved her feet back and forth quickly, as if that would help propel the vehicle a little faster. “I’m gonna miss Celia Seal.”

Trying not to think about the man in the clinic, Heather pressed down on the accelerator. The speedometer on the dash rose to a racing twenty-five miles an hour.

“We’ll get there,” Heather assured her younger daughter.

Hayley was unconvinced. “Shoulda let the doctor drive,” she said, pouting.

Should have never come in today, Heather thought. “Maybe next time.”

Glancing in the rearview mirror, she saw that Hayley’s face had lit up as she strained against her restraints. Lack of enthusiasm had never been Hayley’s problem. “Really?” she asked eagerly.

“No, not really,” Heather told her quietly, struggling to tuck away the frayed ends of her nerves. “He has other things to do.”

For now, Hayley dropped the subject and bounced on to another. “Do you like him, Mama?” she asked. “I like him. He’s cute.” She punctuated her declaration with a giggle, then tried to muffle the sound with both hands across her mouth.

Heather sighed, shaking her head. Like mother, like daughter. Except that she’d learned the hard way just what a fool she was. She fervently prayed that Hayley would never meet someone who would shake her world up so completely.

Looking again in the rearview mirror, she said to her older daughter. “How about you, Hannah?” Hannah had lapsed into her customary silence while they were still at the clinic. Heather had tried to gauge the little girl’s reaction to Ben, but she couldn’t detect anything one way or the other. “Do you like him?”

Hannah turned her small face toward the window at her side. Small shoulders rose and fell, as if she hadn’t thought about it and now found the topic not crucial enough to consider.

Hayley’s legs waved even faster. “Hannah doesn’t like anybody,” she declared.

“Do, too,” Hannah protested.

And they were off, Heather thought. But at least they were home, she comforted herself. Turning the wheel, she pulled up right in front of the small two-story house that Joe had built for her with his own hands. It was a labor of love. Every time she looked at it, she could feel a smattering of guilt assail her. Joe had loved her a great deal. And she had rewarded that love with deception.

Not going to do you any good, dwelling on that. You did the best you could. For everyone.

Knowing that didn’t make it right.

“Don’t fight, girls,” she said, turning off the engine. “You know how it bothers Gran.”

“Everything bothers Gran,” Hayley responded with a wisdom that was far beyond her four years.

She had that right, Heather thought. As far back as she could remember, her mother had something disparaging to say about almost everyone and everything. She tried to remember the last time she’d seen her mother smile, and couldn’t. The woman’s face had all but frozen in a permanently sour expression. It made her appear years older than the date on her birth certificate.

Heather stifled a sigh as she got out of the car and opened the rear door directly behind the driver’s seat. She undid first one child seat, then the other, her fingers moving mechanically; she’d done this a thousand times.

Life was funny. At eighteen, when she’d imagined herself at thirty, she would have thought that she would be at least half a continent away from both her mother and from Hades. She’d wanted to do something different, something important with her life.

Instead, hers had turned out to be a very old story, almost as old as time itself. Nursing a crush from the time she was ten, she had fallen under the spell of a handsome local one fateful night. Leading with her heart instead of the brains that God had given her, she had one wonderful experience and then very quickly found herself pregnant. With no one to turn to, she was trying to work up her nerve to tell the man who had captured her heart that he was about to be a father when she discovered that he’d abruptly left town. Leaving her emotionally stranded.

Not that he had done any of this on purpose. He had no more clue that she was pregnant than her mother did. It wasn’t as if they’d been going together before that night. They had run into each other, she walking off the effects of another awful argument with her mother and he coming back from a trip to Anchorage. She was walking along the road by the lake, and he’d slowed down his car to ask her if she wanted a drive home.

Home was the last place she’d wanted to go and said so. But he hadn’t wanted to leave her alone out there, so he offered to keep her company. They’d sat in his car and talked. About his plans. About hers. And then, somehow, magic had happened. Magic that had nothing to do with her mother or the woman he was supposedly engaged to, or the woman he’d been writing to who he’d invited to come out here to live. It was the first time she’d ever seen him looking anything but decisive. But he was having doubts about the future.

They both took shelter in the present. In the moment. In each other.

And soon after that, he left Hades. Left because Lila Montgomery had changed her mind. Lila Montgomery who’d once bragged that she could have any man. And she had wanted Ben.

Opening her front door, Heather realized that Ben had never answered the question she’d asked him at the clinic. He never said what he was doing back. Or how long he intended on staying. Was this just a visit or the beginning of something permanent?

She had no idea which she was rooting for.

Shepherding the girls in front of her, Heather entered the house. “Mother, we’re back.”

She heard the floorboards creak as the wheelchair slid over them.

“Did you remember to pick up my medication?” Martha demanded sharply as she propelled her wheelchair into the room.

Heather felt her stomach drop another notch.

Chapter Four

Please, please, let me get out of here without an argument.

Mindful that the girls would pick up any exchange of heated words, Heather hoped her mother would just drop the matter, even though she knew better. Martha Ryan let nothing drop until she was good and ready.

One hand on each little girl, Heather shepherded them toward the kitchen. She’d left snacks for them in the refrigerator.

“Sorry.” She tossed the apology over her shoulder. “I’ll pick it up on my way home.”

Heather didn’t have to look to know that her mother was glaring at her. She could feel it.

“If you don’t forget.”

Heather kept her voice upbeat and cheerful. “I won’t forget.”

“You forgot this morning,” her mother accused.

“I was in a hurry,” Heather pointed out.

It wasn’t easy keeping the irritation and frustration out of her voice. She certainly hadn’t forgotten her mother’s medication on purpose. Seeing Ben had knocked every thought out of her head. Besides, it wasn’t as if her mother was down to her last dose. There was enough for several more days. And yet, forgetting the medication was just another “failing” to upbraid her for. Her mother never cut her any slack. She’d even taken her to task for some minor oversight the day of Joe’s funeral.

“And tonight you’ll be tired,” Martha declared as if it was a foregone conclusion.

“I’ll go and pick your medicine up during my lunch break.” She saw her mother open her mouth for another go-round. Sometimes she thought that the woman lived for arguments. “Mother, I have to go.”

Heather deliberately turned her back on her mother, hoping that was the end of it. Bending down, she kissed first one girl and then the other. She didn’t think she would have been able to stand it if they weren’t in her life. Hannah and Hayley were what kept her going. What kept her sane.

She hugged them both quickly. “You two be good today and be sure to help your grandmother, okay?”

Hannah made no protest. She merely nodded as a little sigh escaped her lips. In many ways, Hannah was more like her than Hayley was.

“Okay.”

Hayley appeared far less bound to the request, even though she made no protest. Instead, she shrugged her small shoulders and Heather had the impression that her daughter was flinching off the request with the same minute motion.

“Sure, Mama.”

“That’s my girls.” Heather smiled at her daughters. She rose and slid the straps of her purse back up onto her shoulder, then headed toward the front door. “See you tonight.”

“How’s their rash?” The question came across like a demand for information as Martha propelled her wheelchair, following Heather into the living room.

“Gone.” Heather hoped the one-word answer would satisfy her mother. She should have known better.

Martha made a disparaging noise. “I could have told you that and saved you some money.”

“Shayne didn’t charge me.”

“That’s probably because he overcharged you to begin with.”

Heather struggled with a flash of temper, which happened more frequently the longer she took care of her mother. Knowing it would lead to an exchange of words she didn’t want her girls overhearing, Heather banked it down.

“He didn’t overcharge me to begin with, Mother.” Her tone turned frosty. She hated that her mother turned her into a person who was less than compassionate, less than kind. She didn’t like to think she could be stripped of these traits, but her mother always sapped everything out of her. “I’ll see you tonight.” Looking back toward the kitchen, she raised her voice so that her daughters could hear. “Bye, pumpkins.”

To her surprise, just as she turned to make her escape, her mother caught her arm. “What’s wrong?”

She refused to believe that her mother could see through her. That would take some sort of bond, some sort of connection, and they had never had one. “I’m going to be late, Mother, that’s what’s wrong.”

But Martha continued to hold on to her wrist, apparently not satisfied with the answer. “You’re shaking.”

Heather extricated her wrist from her mother’s grasp. She needed to get to work and get a grip. Her mother prevented her from doing both.

“Not enough sleep last night,” she lied, hoping that would be the end of it.

“What do you have to keep you awake at night?” Martha asked. “You’re not the one who’s stuck in a chair, looking up at people all the time. The object of everyone’s pity.”

Heather was tired of being made to feel guilty for something that had never been her fault. And if she stopped to give her mother a pep talk, the way she had countless times before, she would make herself late.

“No, I’m not, Mother. But I have to go to work. We can discuss this later.” And with that, she hurried out the door, closing it quickly behind her. She could still hear her mother’s voice as she went down the porch steps.

With effort, Heather found she could block out the words, if not the sound.

She knew that part of her mother’s bitterness stemmed from being felled by myasthenia gravis, the disease that rendered her legs nearly useless. Heather couldn’t help feeling guilty at wanting to escape, guilty because she hadn’t the time or the inclination to remain a few extra minutes, trying to placate the woman. Her mother was not to be coaxed out of that dark place this morning. There were times, like today, when her mother seemed to enjoy wallowing in self-pity.

Once in her car, Heather started it up and backed away from the house. She hated leaving her girls to witness this. But school was out for the summer and the day care center that Shayne’s wife ordinarily ran was closed this week. Sydney was taking a well-deserved rest, and Heather could hardly blame her. At the same time, it did make things very difficult for her.

She hated asking her mother for favors, any kind of favor. And her mother had grumbled when she’d asked her to keep an eye on the girls this week. One would think that she’d welcome the company instead of remaining alone the way she normally did for a good part of each day.

Heather sighed. She’d given up trying to figure her mother out. Not to mention trying to brighten the woman’s life as best she could. Some people preferred living inside a cave, enveloped by darkness. Her mother was one of those people.

It was only going to get worse.

Heather pressed her lips together. She did not look forward to her mother learning about Ben’s return. Martha Ryan had never had a good word to say about him. Ben’s charm left her cold, perhaps because it reminded her so much of her own husband.

Though she’d idolized her father, Heather couldn’t remember John Ryan ever being nearly as charming as Ben. Or as intelligent, for that matter. Ben didn’t have just street smarts, he had a mind that quite simply left others, including his own brother’s, in the dust. He always seemed to absorb things more easily and quickly. That was why at the age where other students were just graduating college, Ben was graduating from medical school. It had never even occurred to him that he had done anything out of the ordinary.

She sighed as she came to a stop at Hades’s only traffic light. There she went, being his advocate. Why? He didn’t need her taking up his cause, even silently. The very last thing she needed right now was to clutter up her mind with thoughts of Ben. She was years beyond that young girl with the hopeless crush. The girl whose very breath stopped in her lungs whenever he looked in her direction. That had been an entire lifetime ago.

She and Ben had nothing in common now.

Nothing but Hannah, she thought.

Except that Ben didn’t know about that. No one did, not even Shayne, who’d delivered her baby.

Finding herself pregnant had been the scariest period of her life. And then Joe Kendall had come to the rescue. Poor, dear Joe, her lumbering giant who had loved her with the complete devotion of a puppy. Who’d told her that he would work and slave to provide for her, pledging the rest of his life and undying love if only she would agree to marry him.

So she had. What choice did she have, really? Hades was not a condemning community, but being an unwed mother was a stigma she wasn’t willing to endure if she could avoid it. She especially didn’t want her baby coming into the world without a father’s name.

And even if no one ever said a word to her about it, never even appeared to give it a second thought, she knew that her mother would make her life miserable because of her momentary transgression. Worse, her mother would make the life of her unborn child miserable. So she had said yes to Joe and silently vowed to be the best wife she could.

For a while, their marriage had gone well. Joe gave no indication he ever suspected that Hannah wasn’t his. And when Hayley came along, exploding like a fire cracker almost from the moment she was born, Joe had been beside himself with joy.

Heather eased her car toward the north side of town. She could still remember the look in Joe’s eyes when he told her how happy he was. And how grateful he was to her for it.

That was the night before the cave-in.

At least he died thinking she loved him. And in her own way, she had. But she had loved Joe the way she would have loved a beloved friend.