my foot. I’m sure I was quite a sight, a dried-up old broad lying there in the gutter.”
Sue tried to make a joke and smiled at Maddie, sitting at the work island doing one of her math worksheets, but as she twisted to reach for the egg carton on the countertop, she winced as if she had dropped a heavy cast iron Dutch oven on her foot.
She swallowed a moan and Eliza moved forward to grab the eggs for her and move them closer so she could reach. She wanted to haul the woman to the doctor herself. Worry was a hard knot in her stomach.
“Please, Sue. You need to sit down.”
“Oh, don’t fret about me. By tomorrow, I’ll be in fighting form. You’ll see.”
“The only thing you’re going to be fighting is me if you don’t sit down and take some weight off that foot. I mean it. I can’t believe Jim didn’t take you into the E.R. for an X-ray last night.”
“He wanted to, that old worrywart. I wouldn’t go. Told him, I didn’t need to waste our hard-earned money for a doctor to tell me it was only sprained. The only way I was going to that clinic was if he tossed me over his shoulder and dragged me there kicking and screaming. He knew it wasn’t an idle threat—just like he knows darn well he can’t lift me anymore, what with his bad back and all.”
She hopped to the work island for the package of bacon she had left there. By the time she hopped the short distance back to the stove, she looked close to passing out.
“Good grief, you are one stubborn woman,” Eliza exclaimed. “Sit down. I’m making breakfast. I can handle pancakes and bacon.”
Sue looked as if she wanted to argue but didn’t quite have the strength to do it. After a moment, she sighed and sank onto one of the stools around the work island. Tears of frustration and pain gathered.
“What am I going to do? Aidan’s family is coming in two days.”
Eliza snatched a tissue from the box on the counter and handed it to her, then grasped Sue’s other hand in both of hers. “Please let me take you in for an X-ray. If it’s a sprain, you can at least get some crutches so you’re not hobbling around in pain with only that old cane you’re using. Who knows? Maybe they can give you a brace or something, or one of those cool little knee walkers I’ve seen people use at the grocery store. You don’t want to do more damage to it, possibly make things worse, right? If you can’t even stand up, you won’t be any use to Aidan while his family is here. You know that.”
The older woman seemed to waver. “I hate hospitals.”
Maddie slipped down from her chair and came over to Sue. This darling girl who had endured too many hospital visits placed a hand on the older woman’s leg. “You shouldn’t hate hospitals. The doctors and nurses only want to help you feel better.”
“Is that right?” Sue gave a little chuckle at receiving words of advice from a five-year-old.
Maddie nodded. “Even when they have to hurt you, it’s only so they can fix what’s wrong with you, then you’ll be all better.”
Sue tugged at one of Maddie’s braids. “You’re a pretty smart cookie, you know that?”
Maddie beamed at her and even though Sue looked tired and cranky and sore, she still smiled back.
“I don’t have time for a sprained ankle,” she said under her breath. “In forty-eight hours, twenty-plus people will be arriving here with empty stomachs.”
“We’ll make sure nobody goes hungry, Sue, I promise.”
“You know what the worst thing just might be? Having to admit everybody else around here is right and I just might be wrong.”
“We’ve all been there, right?”
Eliza smiled, thinking how very dear this woman and her husband had become in the time she had been at Snow Angel Cove. She wanted to be just like Sue some day, plucky and strong, opinionated and hardworking and efficient.
“Who knows? It might just be a sprain, just as you said, but you can’t know for sure until you have it checked out. I’ll just finish the breakfast and we can run over to the Lake Haven Hospital.”
“Jim can take me. You’ve got plenty to do here.”
Eliza started to tell Sue that everything else could wait but she heard the door of the mudroom open before she could, then Jim’s and Aidan’s voices.
“Speak of the devil,” Sue said.
A moment later, the two men walked into the kitchen. Eliza’s resident troop of butterflies started dancing around her insides again at seeing him for the first time since she had left his arms the night before.
“Morning,” he murmured to all of them, but she was quite certain his gaze rested on her for much longer than was strictly necessary.
“Hi, Mr. Aidan,” Maddie said cheerfully. “Sue needs to go to the hospital.”
He blinked at Maddie’s casual tone. “What?”
“It’s nothing,” the cook assured him. “I slid over an icy curb at the boat parade last night. I probably should go get a brace or something.”
“I knew it!” Jim exclaimed. “I should have taken you there last night like I wanted to. Maybe if I had, it wouldn’t have been so swollen that you couldn’t even put your shoe on this morning.”
“You’re right and I was wrong. There. I said it. Happy now?”
She looked so miserable that Eliza couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. Any trace of pity seemed completely inconsequential when Jim stepped forward and kissed the top of the woman’s graying head.
“Now, how could I be happy when my darling girl is in pain?” the quiet cowboy said.
Oh. Eliza’s butterflies stopped long enough to go as gooey as the rest of her. She glanced at Aidan and found him watching the older couple with a softness she didn’t usually see there.
“Son, you mind if I take the Suburban?” Jim asked him. “She can stretch her leg out better in that.”
“Not at all. I’ll go pull it around for you.”
He gaze Eliza a quick, unreadable look, then hurried back out to the mudroom and out the door.
“Can you go over to our place for my best black coat and my purse with the insurance information?” Sue patted Jim’s arm, apparently resigned to her fate now and in action mode.
“You bet. Be back in a flash.”
He practically galloped out the door.
“I think the darn thing might be broken,” Sue admitted when it was just the two of them and Maddie in the kitchen again. “I’ve had sprains before and they never hurt like this one.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“What if it is? I’ll ruin everything for Aidan and his family.”
“You’ll
