smiled at the room he was trying to give her. She didn’t know if it was the conversation topic or the fact it was her that had him slightly uncomfortable. “Nothing earth-shattering. The book I’ve been writing.”
He looked surprised. “I didn’t know you were a writer.”
“Have been for years. I’m not published, just enjoy doing it.” She tipped her coffee cup to see if there was any left.
“Sounds like fun.”
She smiled. “It’s a different kind of work.”
A blue jay dropped down past the porch steps to land on the flagstones and check out what looked like a dropped dime. He took back to flight with a raucous cry.
“Most of the time when a scripture comes to mind like you described, it’s because it is an answer to a question you were asking.”
The only things I’ve been asking lately is where do I go now that Leo is dead….
“Could be,” she replied, knowing he was right. She nodded toward his coffee mug. “Want some more? I need a refill.” She didn’t want to think about Leo and the past. Not on this vacation.
He knew. It was there in his eyes. He knew she was avoiding something God wanted her to deal with. He handed her the mug. “Sure,” he said.
He’d probably never been afraid to face anything in his life. Rae wished she had that kind of courage. She didn’t. Not when it came to saying goodbye to what she might have had. “Black?”
“Please.”
When she came back out with the coffee, he had moved, stretched his legs out fully, was slowly working his right knee. He was doing his best not to grimace with the movement.
Rae felt an intense sense of empathy for him. He was like Kevin, a man accustomed to days of physical work. The pain had to be hard to cope with. She sat back down beside him, leaving a foot of space between them, turning slightly so she could lean against a porch post. “Patricia said the bug was damaging your joints,” she remarked, handing him the refilled mug.
“It’s doing damage like lupus, fibromyalgia, or the aggressive forms of arthritis. The joints lose the ability to move freely.”
“Is it getting better?”
He grimaced. “At a snail’s pace. They don’t know what bug I picked up, and they don’t know how long the symptoms are going to last.”
“Is it the pain that messes up your sleep?” she asked, curious.
“Yes and no. The sleep study showed there is a lot of alpha wave activity during what should be delta sleep. My body isn’t sleeping properly anymore. They don’t know why.”
“You weren’t praying for patience by any chance, were you?”
He smiled. “I was praying for someone to show up in Africa who knew how to train medical staff. We were building clinics faster than we could staff them.”
“What’s the problem with getting staff?”
“Money. Doctors who have been in practice for a few years have grown to like the income and don’t want to go, doctors straight out of medical school are so deep in school debts, they can’t afford to go.”
“I don’t know why that surprises me. We’ve got the same problem staffing the Crisis Centers here.”
The door behind them opened. “Would you two like a hot or cold breakfast? We’ve got everything from fruit and cereal to bacon and eggs,” Patricia asked.
“I want you to give me another pancake making lesson,” Rae requested, scooping up her mug. “The squirrels can eat the ones I burn.”
James laughed. “Rae, she’s not the best at it either.”
“She’s better than I am. That’s all I care about,” Rae replied with a grin as they both went inside.
“Dave, Rae is cooking.” It was a whispered warning overheard from the hall. James had to smile at Lace’s reaction. No one could be that bad a cook.
He changed his mind thirty minutes later. Rae had tried, but the pancakes were not like the ones his mom made.
Rae chuckled at the expressions on her friends’ faces around the table, pulled back the plate of remaining pancakes she had set on the table and reappeared with a plate of pancakes Patricia had fixed. “I’m getting better, you didn’t try to stifle a gag.”
“Rae, why don’t you just give up?” Dave asked. “It’s not your fault your grandmother refused to cook. Cooking is something you either learn as a child or it’s a lost art.”
“Nope. I’m going to learn how if it kills me,” she replied, helping herself to two of the pancakes Patricia had fixed.
“It might kill one of us one of these days,” Dave replied, then yelped when someone kicked him under the table.
“David Hank McAllister, be nice.”
“She knows I’m teasing, Lace.”
“Hank?” Rae burst out laughing.
Dave turned to Lace. “Now see what you’ve done? You promised you wouldn’t tell.”
Rae’s laughter intensified. “Hank. Oh this is rich.”
“I’ll give you rich, Amy.”
Rae wrinkled her nose at him and did her best to stop her laughter. “I can’t believe I’ve known you ten years without knowing your middle name.”
“What’s so funny?” Emily had joined them, wiping sleep from her eyes. James lifted her up into his lap, his own laughter hard to contain. “Just adult stuff,” he told her, smiling.
The threesome quieted down. “Sorry, Dave,” Lace whispered, then giggled.
He snagged his coffee mug to get a refill, his head shaking as he walked to the kitchen. “Women.”
Rae leaned across Dave’s empty chair toward Lace, a smile dancing across her face. “I think I know what we should get him for his birthday.”
Lace had to stifle her laughter at the whispered suggestion. “Think we could still find the CD?” Lace asked. “He hates country music almost as much as he does jazz. It’s perfect.”
“You knew?”
Lace grinned. “He hides a cringe every time I choose track four. He is so easy to get.”
“Lace, you are good,” Rae said, sitting back in her chair and looking at her friend with new respect.
Lace leaned back in her chair. “I’m better than good,” she replied with a smile. “He’s never going to know what hit him.”
Laughter was good medicine, James thought. He hadn’t felt this
