greatly appreciate it.”
She sounded as if she was talking to a stranger, Peter thought. “No problem,” he told her.
The limousine driver had popped to attention the moment they’d approached the vehicle, and he was now holding the rear passenger door open for them. Peter waited until Anna climbed in beside Ella, then got in himself.
“Are you sure you won’t come to the reception?” Peter prodded. “Just for a few minutes.”
But Anna remained firm. “I’m sorry, I really do have to leave. I have a flight to catch, too. I realize that I won’t be reconstructing some Hollywood wannabe starlet’s breasts in the morning, but what I do is important, too.”
“No one said it wasn’t, Anna,” Peter pointed out.
Why did everything always devolve into an argument between them? Right now, he really wasn’t in the mood to walk on eggshells.
Unable to take any more, Ella spoke up. “Please, we just buried Dad. Do you two have to do this now?”
Their father’s death had brought everything too close to the surface. Like nerves and hurt feelings.
It was Peter who retreated first.
“Ella’s right.” It was on the tip of his tongue to say We shouldn’t be acting this way, but he knew Anna would take the statement as accusatory and it would only add kindling to the fire. So instead, he changed the subject, hitting on what continued, thanks to Bethany’s announcement, to be foremost in his mind. “Anna, I’m going to need your help.”
It was obviously the last thing she had ever expected to hear from him. Anna looked at Peter, utterly surprised. “You need my help?”
He could feel Ella looking at him, mystified. But it was true. He did need Anna’s help. “Yes.”
This was definitely a first, Anna thought. An uneasiness immediately slipped over her. An uneasiness because she had a feeling she knew what her older brother was going to say. And if she was right, she was going to have to turn him down. Because she was facing a huge conflict of interest. So, she made a preemptive strike, nipping a potential problem in the bud before she was faced with it. “I’m sorry, Peter, but all my time is already accounted for over the next few months,” she said firmly.
“I see.” He let the matter drop, silently upbraiding himself. Given their distance recently, he should have known better than to ask.
Peter’s small, two-story house was stuffed with people. Nearly everyone who’d attended the service and gone to the cemetery had followed the stretch limousine back to the reception.
Peter mentally tipped his hat to Ella. He had no knowledge of these kind of situations, no idea what was expected beyond the necessary funeral arrangements. Ella had handled all the subsequent preparations, securing a caterer and telling the man what to bring, where to set up and when.
Initially, when he’d seen how much food was going to be on hand, Peter had envisioned himself having to live on leftovers for the next six months. Watching his various guests help themselves, he smiled now, thinking that if there was enough left over for a sandwich for lunch tomorrow, he’d be doing well.
He supposed that sorrow brought out the hunger in some people. As for him, the exact opposite was true. He wasn’t sure if he’d had more than a single meal since his father had suffered the fatal heart attack that had taken the man away from them.
Damn, but I am going to miss you, Dad. You left too soon, he thought not for the first time.
“You’re not eating.”
The words took him by surprise. Or rather, the voice did. Bethany Holloway, the Jill-come-lately to the hospital’s board of directors.
As he turned to look at her, he caught himself, thinking that David was dead-on in his evaluation of her appearance. But he had a sneaking suspicion that they might find themselves on the opposite sides of an opinion.
Pity, he thought.
“That’s because I’m not hungry,” he said, punctuating his statement with a half-hearted smile.
“You really should have something,” Bethany advised. The next moment, she was putting into his hands a plate containing several slices of roast beef and ham that she had obviously taken for herself. “You’re looking a little pale.”
Trying to return the plate to her proved futile. “You have a degree?” he asked amiably.
Bethany knew he meant in medicine, but she deadpanned her answer.
“In observation.” She quickly followed up with, “And it doesn’t take much to see that you haven’t been visiting your refrigerator with any amount of regularity.” That actually stirred a few distant memories within her. She really had so few when it came to her own home life. “My father used to get too caught up in his work to remember to eat,” she added, hoping that might persuade him to take a few bites. She could well imagine how he had to feel. It wasn’t easy losing family, and from what she’d observed of father and son, they had been close.
“Used to?” Peter echoed. “Is he—” He couldn’t bring himself to finish the question. The word dead stuck in his throat like an open wound, the kind sustained by swallowing something that was too hot.
“Gone?” she supplied. It was a nice, safe word for what he was implying, she thought. “No, actually, I’m the one who’s gone. From the state,” she added quickly when she saw his eyebrows draw together in minor confusion. “As far as I know, both of my parents are still working like crazy.” Bethany lifted one shoulder in a quick, careless shrug and then took a sip from the glass of diet soda she was holding in her other hand. “It makes them happy so I suppose it’s all right.”
From her tone, Peter inferred that it was not all right with her. Questions about her began to form in his mind.
Bethany looked around the tightly packed family room and beyond. There was barely enough space for people to mill around without rubbing elbows and other body parts against one another.
“This a very large turnout.” She smiled at him. “Your father had a lot of friends.”
To know his father was to like him, Peter thought. “That he did.”
“I didn’t know him very well,” Bethany began, picking her words carefully, “but the little I did know, I liked a great deal.” Her smile widened and Peter caught himself thinking that she had an extremely infectious smile. “He reminded me a little of Jimmy Stewart in It’s A Wonderful Life, always thinking about other people and what they needed.” She raised her eyes to his and, just for an inkling, Peter thought he felt something inside himself stirring, reacting to the soft blue gaze. “You kind of look like him.” He perceived a hint of pink along her cheeks. “I mean, like the portrait of him that’s hanging in the hospital corridor outside the administration office. Same strong chin, same kind eyes.”
And then she laughed. “I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I always speak my mind. My mother told me it would get me in trouble someday.” Lectured her, actually, but Peter didn’t need to know that.
“And has it?” he asked.
