I will stay for a few minutes,” she heard herself telling Miss Joan as she sank down onto the last empty stool.
Her eyes were riveted on the town’s first doctor in over three decades.
It took her a second to realize that her breath had backed up in her lungs.
Chapter Two
Dan silently scanned the interior of the diner. It was standing room only from what he could see. He couldn’t help wondering if the entire town had piled into the aged, tarnished, silver railroad dining car wannabe, or if there were a few stray citizens who’d shown a little individuality, opted not to imitate sardines and had stayed away.
Despite how crowded it was, there were fewer people here than there had been in the last nightclub he’d been to. The last place he and Warren had been to, he amended, feeling the same sudden sharp pain in his gut that he did every time he thought of his late brother, which was still very, very often. He wondered if that would ever change, or at least get easier to bear.
Right now, from where he stood, he had serious doubts that it ever would.
Dan turned toward the deputy who had brought him to this place. “Is this everybody?” he asked, mildly curious.
His question brought a hint of amusement to the deputy’s otherwise solemn face. “Just how little do you think Forever is?”
“Small,” was all Dan said before he found himself on the receiving end of a surprisingly strong handshake delivered by a thin, ginger-haired woman of indeterminable age who had literally elbowed the deputy out of the way to get to him.
The woman had hazel eyes that seemed to go right through him, as deeply penetrating as any X-ray machine he’d ever encountered.
“Hello, I’m Joan Randall. Everyone around here just calls me Miss Joan.” She made no attempt to hide the fact that she was looking him up and down as if he was a piece of merchandise. “So you’re the new doctor,” Miss Joan declared in a voice that was one part gravel, two parts aged Kentucky bourbon.
There was that word again, he thought. New. He banked down the urge to ask about the “old” doctor. They’d think he was being antagonistic, and he didn’t mean to be. Ever since the fatal cab accident, he was having trouble finding a comfortable zone for his emotions. They kept flaring, bouncing all over the place, taking him with them.
He’d shift from sarcastic to contrite to cynical to humble. And sad, always sad, no matter what kind of front he put up. Coming here had been a duty, a responsibility he knew he had to shoulder. But wanting to be here was a whole different matter.
The woman who’d introduced herself as Miss Joan smiled at him. Her X-ray eyes smiled, as well. “Dr. Warren Davenport, right?” The X-ray eyes crinkled. “Welcome to Forever.”
“It’s Daniel,” Dan corrected her. “Dr. Daniel Davenport.”
A slight confused frown edged away the smile on the woman’s thin lips. “I thought for sure they told me your first name was Warren,” she said, referring to the people she’d spoken to on the phone in her quest to secure a physician for Forever.
It was through her efforts, as she relentlessly bombarded the American Medical Association with requests for a doctor, that Forever’s situation, she’d been told, had come to Warren Davenport’s attention. He’d been looking for some place where he could make a difference and Forever needed a dedicated doctor.
“Was there a mistake in the paperwork?” she now asked the young man before her.
The people in the diner seemed to tighten the circle around them. Dan doubted that it was just his imagination at work. Good thing for him that he wasn’t claustrophobic, he thought.
“No, no mistake, Warren was supposed to be here. But there was an accident.” He tried his best to sound detached as the words slowly left his lips. He had no intention of sharing his pain with anyone, least of all a town full of strangers.
“Was he badly hurt?” Miss Joan asked, concerned. He noticed that she still hadn’t released his hand, although she had stopped pumping it.
His throat felt dry, scratchy, as he stoically replied, “He was killed.”
“Oh.” Miss Joan appeared genuinely stunned. “I’m sorry to hear that.” He felt her squeeze his hand in what he assumed was a comforting gesture. “You’ve got the same last name. Was he a relative of yours?”
“He was my brother.” Dan congratulated himself for not choking on his reply.
The woman’s hazel eyes filled with compassion. The same look was mirrored in the eyes and faces of the people standing closest around him. For a moment, he was caught off guard.
Were they all pretending to be sympathetic?
After all, neither he nor his brother were anything to these people. Other than the obvious, that Warren was supposed to have come here to open up his practice, why would any of these people even care that he’d died? They’d never met Warren and as for him, well, they didn’t know him from Adam. How could they pretend to know or feel his pain? “I’m really sorry to hear that,” Miss Joan murmured.
She sounded so sincere, he could almost believe that she meant it—if it didn’t seem so impossible to him. She splayed her bony hand against her chest to emphasize what she was about to tell him.
“I’m the one who wrote to your brother. Actually,” she amended, “I called and wrote letters to the AMA. They finally referred me to your brother.” Her eyes met his and again, he had the eerie feeling that she could look right into him. “We only spoke the one time. But even then, he seemed like a very nice young man to me. Compassionate and caring,” she added.
That described his brother to a T, Dan thought. Warren had been the good brother, he had been the wild one. And now, he thought heavily, he was the only brother. “He was.”
Disappointment entered Miss Joan’s voice. “You didn’t have to come in person to deliver this news. I—we—would have understood.”
Just for a second, Dan saw his way out of this prospective prison sentence. He could just nod, go along with the woman’s interpretation of the situation and leave this speck of a place. Her assumption was his ticket back to New York. No one would be the wiser.
No one but him.
He’d made a promise. A promise to Warren that he would take his place until someone else more suitable could be found. Sure, he’d made the promise silently in his heart because Warren had been killed instantly when the taxi they were in had been slammed into by that swerving SUV.
But he wouldn’t be able to look himself in the mirror each morning if he broke this promise to his dead brother.
Getting through each day was hard enough for him as it was. He couldn’t shake off the mantle of blame for this, for Warren’s death. If he hadn’t prevailed on Warren and dragged him out—
This wasn’t the time, Dan silently upbraided himself. The woman with the X-ray eyes would pick up on what he was thinking.
“I realize that,” he said to the diner owner. “But I didn’t come to tell
