just need to get through this until we figure out what’s really causing the problem.”
Megan forced a gentleness to her voice. “Then if you won’t accept help, place her into protection until we do get it figured out.”
“Protection?” There was a soft snort. “You mean imprison her, don’t you?”
“I mean arrange it so this doesn’t happen again.”
“Megan, she’s a vital, active, fifty-two-year-old woman, not someone accustomed to sitting in a rocking chair or being cooped up in a block of rooms. You think she deserves to be locked up in a nursing home?”
“I don’t think she deserves Alzheimer’s, but—”
“Don’t say that! I hate that word. You know as soon as that diagnosis is made and the patient is shoved into a lockdown ward, no one ever searches for other causes, they just treat the symptoms. I’m not giving up on her that easily.”
“I’m not telling you to give up.”
“This isn’t sundowner’s syndrome.”
Megan couldn’t miss the increasing tautness of Lynley’s voice. “It’s okay,” she told her friend. “You’re not alone in this. I’m here for you.”
There was a brief silence and then “How? You wouldn’t move in with us.”
Shame attacked Megan. She didn’t have the strength to explain yet. “I’ll do all I can to help you and Kirstie through it.”
“You mean help Dr. Kelsey convince us she really is losing her mind?” There was a plaintive sadness in Lynley’s words.
Megan closed her eyes. “I didn’t say that. I’m here as your friend.”
There was a quiet sigh. “Okay. Thanks. I’m glad you’re back in Jolly Mill even if we don’t agree about everything.”
“We’ve never agreed about everything.”
“This is different.”
“Can’t you just trust me for once? I am a doctor now.”
“And I’m a nurse. So is Mom.”
“So you’re saying two nurses trump a doctor?” Megan forced a smile so it would bleed into her voice. Anything to lighten the moment.
“Something like that. Megan, are you…” She paused, sighed. “Be honest with me. Why did you come back here?”
Megan closed her eyes. There it was. The question.
“Your family’s all in Cape Girardeau now,” Lynley continued. “Why didn’t you go there? Not that I didn’t want you to come here, because I did, but—”
“You should know why. This is still home to me.” Unlike being with her family. If she heard Mom tell her one more time how wonderful it was to have grandchildren, and that she wanted more, Megan would pledge lifelong celibacy. Let her big brother provide all the descendants for the Bradley family. Randy seemed happy to do it.
“Megan,” Lynley said, “did Mom ask you to come here and convince me to let her check into a nursing facility?”
Megan hesitated a second too long. “That’s not why I came.”
“But she did ask you.”
“She’s afraid you’ll waste the rest of your life taking care of—”
“Waste? Did you say waste?”
“She’s the one who said it, Lynley, not me.”
“Careful, or you’ll begin to sound like Dad.”
“Notice I actually came to Jolly Mill. I didn’t leave,” Megan snapped. Unlike your father, she wanted to say, but Lynley knew what she meant. Barry Marshal was a self-centered egotist who had split soon after Kirstie’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis. For everyone’s sake, he should have split long before that. Megan knew too many of that man’s secrets. Too many Jolly Mill secrets.
“Sorry,” Lynley said. “You’re right. I know.”
“Just bring Kirstie to the office when you find her,” Megan said.
“I will. Thanks.”
“I can come help you search.”
“No. You just be there for us when I find her.” That slender edge of tension lingered after Lynley disconnected. Megan knew her friend’s resentment wasn’t directed totally at her. She was just the punching bag for all Lynley was going through, for all Barry’s failures as a father. Megan wasn’t taking punches very well right now. Lynley didn’t know about Joni’s murder. No one here did.
Kirstie would be found again—or she would return herself home when she regained her senses, as she had done every time she’d gone missing. Everyone in the Jolly Mill community knew her and watched out for her.
Megan pushed her cell phone back into her deep purse and was turning back toward bed when a flash of light struck one of the panes. Brief. Barely there.
She frowned, staring out into the darkness. Had she actually seen that, or was it a side effect of her sleeping pill? The drug could do strange things to some people. She’d considered more than once the possibility that the drugs were causing the dreams, but she’d so craved sleep after the weeks of sleeplessness following Joni’s murder that she took them anyway.
A whisper of a different kind reached her from outside—not wind or frogs or the sound of the electric water pump. There was another flash. A newly familiar strum of panic restricted Megan’s feet to the woven mat by the front door.
She clenched her fists. Don’t allow the panic to control you. This wasn’t the mean streets of the city. This was tiny Jolly Mill, safe, quiet, secluded. She didn’t need a weapon here to protect herself.
Another sound reached her—tires crunching on rock?
Her fear quickened. When she entered her drive, her tires always met the gravel on the quarter-mile track that led to this cottage. What she’d just heard might be that gravel pop-snap in the distance. Maybe someone had turned around at the mailbox and was driving away. That had to be it.
The only sounds she typically heard here at night were the occasional bark of a farm dog, the lowing of a cow separated from her calf or the spine-tingling call of an owl that sounded more like mocking laughter at her plight. None of the wildlife in this area sounded like a car.
As she wavered, the soft rumble grew louder, followed by a flicker of shadows through the trees. A vehicle. An aura of stealth seemed to fill and then illuminate the darkness like a hunter stalking its prey.
The drive to this cottage was private. No one else around here had reason to be on it at this time of morning—except maybe a patient in trouble? She’d decided not to have a landline, despite the spotty cell coverage in Jolly Mill. If there was an urgent medical need, it was feasible someone could be coming
