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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.”
