anything she relished on that particular day. Her concerns were too serious for light chatter. But in spite of her efforts, she arrived to find at least a dozen people milling around, chatting and drinking coffee. No cocktails. She had forgotten Lorrianne’s rule about not serving alcohol before six o’clock. Lorrianne claimed that Americans spent too much money and wasted too much energy on alcohol. Not that any of it mattered to her; a glass of wine was as much as she ever drank.
Her hostess introduced her to the other guests, but she couldn’t muster any interest in the things that concerned them—mostly local gossip and politics—and after a few polite exchanges she focused her attention on the garden. Lorrianne Graham had created a magnificent retreat for a troubled spirit, Amanda decided, as she strolled among the profusion of red, white and pink peonies, pansies, hyacinths, and flowering dogwood and fruit trees. What a pity the tulips had no perfume, she thought, gazing at their array of colors and the many shapes of their petals. Flowers from several fruit trees floated to the ground, leaving behind their tiny green treasures.
She leaned against a wrought-iron bench and inhaled deeply, enjoying the fresh spring air and the fragrant hyacinths. But her weight toppled the three-legged bench and, to her amazement, she lay sprawled across a patch of purple and yellow pansies. Her cheeks burned in embarrassment as she looked around, hoping that she’d escaped notice.
“Here, let me give you a hand.” She had to quell the impulse to ask him to leave her to her own devices, summoned her dignity and smiled politely. Of all people: the man she’d seen that previous Thursday in the doctor’s office.
“Give me your hand,” he persisted. She raised her left hand, because her right one lay trapped beneath her side. “You’re lucky you missed that raspberry bush,” he said, friendlier than she thought necessary. She accepted his assistance with as much dignity as she could muster, thanked him and hoped he’d leave her and join the other guests. She couldn’t think of a way to dismiss him without appearing rude and ungrateful. So she strove to be her normally gentle, courteous self and to make conversation, but her personal problems bore so heavily on her that she couldn’t summon the will to friendliness. I’m in bad shape, she conceded, if I can’t focus well enough to carry on an impersonal conversation with such a man as this one.
“Your head is almost covered with pink and white petals,” he told her, evidently oblivious to her discomfort. That voice. Could he hear the melodies in his speech? Of course, she immediately concluded; enough women must have told him about it. She forced herself to turn slowly toward him, gaining time to restore her equilibrium.
“Oh? Flowers in my hair?” She hated that he disconcerted her to such an extent that she lost her poise.
“Yeah,” he answered, no doubt unperturbed by her aloofness. “Lots of them.” He picked off a few and showed them to her. She backed away, sensitive to the feel of his fingers on her scalp, and resisted the urge to remove her dark glasses. Remove them and get an unobstructed look at eyes she remembered as being the color of dark brown honey and at a flawless almond complexion. She breathed deeply in relief when a beautiful, sepia woman with a mannequin’s build and carriage claimed his attention and took him away. All I need right now is to lose my head over a guy like that one, she told herself, amused that the possibility existed.
She didn’t tolerate the medicine well and went back to her doctor two weeks later for a new prescription.
“Nothing has changed,” Jacob Graham told her when she asked again whether he was certain of the diagnosis. “Only time will change this; you know that, so you might as well start right now to adjust to it. It won’t be easy, but I’m confident you’ll manage.”
“Don’t worry; I’ll be fine. Give my love to Lorrianne.” She doubted that anything could have depressed her more than his declaration that he knew she’d manage. How was she supposed to do that?
An hour and a half later, she slid into a booth at Caution’s Coffee Bean. She had heard it said that, if you went to the popular eatery often enough, you would eventually see most of the town’s fourteen thousand inhabitants. She barely remembered driving from Elizabeth City to Caution Point, North Carolina, or even parking her car. The waiter brought her usual breakfast of coffee and a plain doughnut and would no doubt have paused for their morning chat, had she not been preoccupied.
She sipped the coffee slowly, without tasting it. In two weeks, just two short weeks, she had tumbled from a state of euphoria to one of despair. She almost wished she hadn’t gotten that promotion; a department head might get away with it, but never a school principal. It couldn’t be happening to her. But it was and, somehow, she had to find an acceptable solution.
“It’s ridiculous,” she heard a man in the adjoining booth say. “How can they charge like that? It must be illegal.”
“They can, and it’s legal,” his companion replied in a deep, resonant, almost soothing voice, a familiar voice. “One hundred thousand dollars for my child’s future. A hundred thousand and she’ll be able to walk like other children. She’s had fourteen months of operations, tubes and needles. Fourteen months in intensive care, and now this. Those doctors charge as much as ten times what the insurance pays. I’ve sold my car, mortgaged my home and my business and borrowed on every credit card I have. And now because the insurance company will pay only thirty thousand of it, I have a little more than a week to come up with seventy thousand dollars, or Amy will never walk again.” Amanda couldn’t help listening to the two men.
“And the bank turned you down flat yesterday afternoon?”
“Yeah. Wouldn’t you? I’m a poor risk right now. A year ago, I could call my shots, but now I can’t even take care of my child’s needs. I told the bank officers that I have a strong damage suit in this case, but all that got me was sympathy.”
“Have you tried Helena? Maybe she’d be willing to help. After all, that British polo player she married is rolling in money.”
“I wrote her about the accident the day after it happened, and I got a note about six weeks later saying that she hoped everything was all right. Not that I expected more; Helena doesn’t have the maternal instincts of a flea. She hasn’t written since and doesn’t know what her four-year-old daughter’s condition is.” Amanda empathized with the man; compared to his problem, hers seemed slight. If she could solve her problem with seventy thousand dollars, she would stop worrying. As heir to the wealth of her parents, grandparents and great-aunt—derived from their interests in one of the regions most prosperous fish and seafood canning businesses, money was the least of her problems. She wanted to peer around the coat tree to get a look at him, but she wouldn’t know which one was Amy’s father. Surely that voice couldn’t belong to the man she first saw in her doctor’s office and then at Lorrianne’s barbecue brunch. But how could two men have that same voice? She sipped some water. Great-Aunt Meredith had always said that sipping water slowly was very calming. The men continued to search for a way to pay for Amy’s surgery.
“Can’t you pay the doctors on installment?”
“They want it upfront,” she heard him say. “Every dime of it. But look, Jack, you’d better go. You’ll be late for work, and you’ve sacrificed enough for me.”
She looked up as “Jack” passed her on his way out, then focussed on the man who remained. Good Lord! He was the same one she’d seen in Dr. Graham’s office and at his home. She regarded Amy’s father, a handsome, clean-cut man whom she thought any woman should be proud to have for a husband. Dr. Graham had said that they could solve each other’s problem. Her gaze held him, seemingly deep in thought, as he stared into his coffee cup. Perhaps…No. She pushed back the absurd idea, paid for her breakfast and left.
Amanda
