“How long have you been there?” Matthew asked.

“Long enough for you to finish the article about how Compassionate Systems will transform the delivery of medical care to the peninsula…and to scan the society column where you’d hoped to find at least your name, if not a picture of you hobnobbing with the Port Hamilton elite at the Elk’s Club ball.”

He laughed. “I’m so damn disappointed. I thought reindeer antlers glued to my scrub cap would guarantee a spot on the front page. What the hell do I have to do?”

“Dunno.” Sarah was laughing, too. “Be more elk-like.”

They sat there for a minute or so just grinning at each other until Sarah broke off a piece of his tortilla and scooped up some rice. “I’ve been thinking. It’s not every day I apologise, but I’m about to do it, so don’t make it more difficult. The words are practically choking me already.”

“On the other hand, it could be the tortilla.”

“I did kind of get on my soapbox, and I’m –” she swallowed “ –sor-sorry.”

“I heard it.” He glanced around the cafeteria. “Where’s the media when you need them?”

She looked up at him, her expression unreadable. “OK, so now’s where you tell me you’ve thought things over and you’re ready to join forces with me.”

Dear Reader,

How many of us still remember our first “love”? Was it the freckled boy who teased you unmercifully in primary school? A high-school crush? The guy you met in college? Chances are that even if you remember exactly who he was, he was not the man you eventually married. People change, and the special someone who made your heart race in your teens probably wouldn’t even raise a flutter today. On the other hand, maybe he would. Sarah, the heroine of The Baby Doctors, never forgot her first love, Matthew. Marriages to other people and years apart never quite succeeded in dimming her love.

I hope you enjoy The Baby Doctors, and I would love to hear your stories of that guy you never quite forgot. Drop me a line at Janice Macdonald, PMB 101, 136 E 8th Street, Port Angeles, WA, 98362, USA or e-mail me at janicemacdonald.com. You might also check out my new website, travelingromancewriter.com, for details on my books and chronicles from recent travels.

Best wishes,

Janice Macdonald

The Baby Doctors

JANICE MACDONALD

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Barbara and Lee for their inspiration, and to the Fishers for their hospitality and turkey burgers!

CHAPTER ONE

THE GUY SELLING medicinal herbs at the Port Hamilton farmer’s market had shoulder-length hair, a small stud in his nostril and the palest blue eyes Sarah had ever seen. The lack of color disconcerted her. Something about the way the light hit them made it difficult to tell whether he was looking directly at her or at something over her shoulder.

His T-shirt read Stop The War On Drugs, but when he noticed her trying to read the small print, he stopped in the middle of a discourse on the health-giving properties of the dandelions leaves he was holding to launch into another on the kind of drugs he was trying to stop.

“Big Brother pharmaceutical companies,” he said, his English accent becoming more pronounced as he spoke. “If you’re popping pills you’ve bought from the drugstore, you’re not really in touch with nature, and my goal, simply put, is to reconnect people’s consciousness with the environment.” He waved his hand at the row of baskets brimming with plants. “Nature’s pharmacy,” he said. “Echinacea, Saint-John’s-wort, calendula. Atropa belladonna—”

“Commonly known as deadly nightshade,” Sarah said.

He smiled. “Ah, a gardening enthusiast.”

“A medical doctor, actually,” Sarah’s mother, Rose, said, materializing at Sarah’s side. “She’s been practicing in Central America for the past fifteen years. And, let me tell you, she knows a thing or two about woo-woo medicine.”

Sarah shot Rose a glance. “A focus on prevention and well-being rather than disease is not woo-woo medicine.” She turned back to the guy, whose spare, almost emaciated frame suggested nature’s pharmacy probably did double duty as his pantry. “My mother’s a doctor, too.” She jerked her head at Rose. “Runs in the family. Except my mother’s the conventional kind.”

“I’d hardly say that,” Rose replied.

“I was referring to your profession. She’s a dermatologist,” Sarah said, mostly to mollify Rose, who disliked being thought of as conventional in any way, except perhaps in her approach to medicine.

“Right.” He stuck out his hand and directed his pale eyes at Sarah. “Curt Hudelson.”

“Sarah Benedict.” She shook his hand. “And my mother, Rose Benedict. I’m really interested in what you’re doing. It ties in with the sort of thing I’m planning, an integrated approach that combines both conventional and alternative medicine.”

He nodded approvingly. “Right, well, we definitely need more of your type here on the peninsula before big medicine kills everyone off.” As he talked, a young woman who had been waiting on customers came over to stand beside him and he put his arm around her shoulders. “My girlfriend, Debbi. We farm a piece of land on the west end. These two ladies are doctors,” he said. “Tell them how we cleared up your asthma with natural stuff.”

Debbi smiled. “I used to get these really bad attacks, I was always at the E.R. getting treatments so I could breathe and I never went anywhere without my inhaler. Then I met Curt. I haven’t had a bad attack since.” She reached into a small tin box on the wooden counter, withdrew a card and handed it to Sarah. “I also make cosmetics. Natural.”

“Curly Q House of Hair,” Sarah read.

“Well, that’s where I work right now,” Debbi said. “But I’m probably going to quit pretty soon. It’s too far to drive. Plus, Curt needs help on the farm. His business is really growing.”

“Literally.” Curt turned to Debbi. “Tell Sarah about Alli.”

Debbi’s smile faded. “Well, that’s kind of different.”

“No, it isn’t.” He addressed Sarah, “Our daughter was having intestinal problems, which, naturally, Dr. Big Medicine diagnosed as kidney failure and, left to his own devices, would have had her hooked up to a dialysis machine. And how was she this morning, Debbi?”

“Fine, but—”

“Exactly.”

Rose cleared her throat. “Ready, Sarah?”

“Come out and see my gardens sometime,” Curt said. “Debbi and I had intended to organize them according to the various systems of the body, but then it got a wee bit too complicated, so now we have them grouped into historic herbal remedies, folk medicine, homoeopathic medicinals and plants that are currently under investigation by drug companies.”

“Crackpot,” Rose muttered after Sarah had taken down his address and she and Rose were weaving their way back through the crowd toward the car. “Perfect example of how a little medical knowledge can be a dangerous thing.”

Sarah shrugged. “I’d be interested in seeing what they’re doing.”

“Probably growing marijuana,” Rose said.

“Nothing like an open mind.”

They walked along in silence for a while. “I thought you might have changed, being away all this time,” Rose said finally. “Maturity, and so forth but you’re still like just like your father.”

“Idealistic and humanistic?”

“Impractical and naive, not that there isn’t room for some of this hippy-dippy stuff,” she amended as they reached her ancient Volvo, parked behind the courthouse, “but it does seem to attract the fringe element.”

“In the same way that conventional medicine seems to attract those with an unhealthy interest in making money?”

“Get in the car,” Rose snapped.

“I ANSWERED A PAGE for you, Dr. Cameron,” one of the nurses said, opening the door to the O.R. where Matthew had just finished surgery.

“Who was it?”

“Administration. Mr. Heidenreich said he had you down on his calendar at ten. I told him you had an emergency surgery.”

“Thanks.” Matthew removed his blue cotton cap, pulled on a white lab coat over his scrubs and started down the corridor. He glanced at his watch—twenty after. Emergency surgery was an acceptable excuse for arriving late, but these days he was late for everything.

“Coffee?” Jim Heidenreich asked as Matthew walked into the inner sanctum. “Georgia just made a fresh pot.”

“No thanks.” Matt dropped into a chair opposite. A small, dapper man with sparse white hair, Jim had aged visibly in the six months since Compassionate Medical Systems had initiated efforts to buy out Peninsular Memorial.

“One of the nurses said there was someone outside SuperShop yesterday getting signatures,” Matthew told his boss, then instantly regretted the remark. Jim didn’t need anyone confirming what he already knew: That some anonymous conglomerate from Seattle taking over the hospital where just about everyone here had been born, was about as welcome as learning that Port Hamilton High’s football team had lost to Olympia. No one wanted outsiders taking over the hospital.

“Take a look at this.” Jim reached into his desk and brought out a glossy press kit. “Compassionate Medical went into a one-hundred-twenty-five-bed hospital in Oregon—same size as ours and in the same financial hole. They were welcomed with open arms. Happy to have CMS come in… like a guardian angel when you think about it. They provide the capital, recruit physicians. They’ve got the managed care expertise, the experience running rural facilities…”

Matt shrugged. “On the other hand, I know a guy in Virginia—we were in medical school together. His local hospital was gobbled up by—” he gestured at the press kit “—one of these conglomerates. He’s frustrated as hell by it all. Endless paperwork, restrictions on where he refers patients. Diagnostic workups according to cost.”

“What’s the alternative?”

Matt shook his head. He’d pulled together a group of physicians with the idea that among them, they would raise enough capital to counter CMS’s offer. Still, it would be difficult to pull off. Peninsula was drowning in red ink and none of the medical staff were exactly rolling in money. You practiced medicine on the peninsula because you loved the natural beauty and small-town lifestyle, not because you expected to make money. He tried to imagine his ex-wife’s reaction if he approached her about selling the home she and Lucy lived in. The home he still made payments on.

“I had a meeting with human resources this morning,” Jim said. “Their concern was lost jobs. Naturally. And the rumor mill is running full-time. I managed to convince them that for the first two years no jobs would be cut. CMS guaranteed it.”

“And after that?”

“Two years is a long time.

“The physicians will walk,” Matt said. “I’ve heard that from almost everyone. They’ll move off the peninsula if they have to.”

“Not if you come around.”

Matthew blinked. “If I—”

“Matt, if you get behind this takeover, the other physicians will fall in step. You know that.”

“I can’t, Jim. You know that.”

The administrator shifted some papers around on his desk. “Where were you last weekend?” He looked directly at Matthew. “Your daughter’s birthday, wasn’t it? Thirteenth?”

“Fourteenth. Your point?”

“My point is that you were in Seattle performing surgery. Sure, you could have referred the kid like any other physician would have done, but not you. The kid’s your patient and you’re going to see it all the way through. Your patient, your responsibility.”

“So?”

“So your daughter spent her birthday without her father. She’s your responsibility, too, Matt.”

“Sorry.” Matthew folded his arms. “You’re losing me.”

“If we’d had the setup, the sophisticated equipment, you could have done the surgery here. If we’d had the surgical support staff, you could have done the surgery here. If—”

“But we don’t.”

“I’m not finished. That’s last weekend we were talking about. What about last night?”

Matthew rubbed his neck.

“I’ll tell you. You were right here, three floors below doing an emergency appendectomy. And today, same thing.” He got up and walked to the window. “You’re one surgeon, Matt. A terrific one, but you’re not Superman. You need a day off every once in a while. And that’s never going to happen the way things are right now. Compassionate Medical Systems is not only going to save this hospital from going under, it might save you from burning yourself out before you reach fifty.”

“It’s not the answer, Jim.”

“Well, when you figure out what the answer is, you let me know. But I won’t hold my breath. You need to take a cold hard look at the way things are right now. Wanting things to work as they always have isn’t enough.”

An hour later, scrubbing up for surgery, Matthew was still hearing Heidenreich’s words.

CHAPTER TWO

UNTIL ROSE BROKE with tradition by relocating three generations of Benedicts had been practicing medicine in Port Hamilton from the same red barn of a house on Georgianna Street, one block from the waterfront. Sarah’s father had been a general practitioner, seeing patients until the day he dropped dead of a heart attack while Sarah was still in high school.

But all that was changing, Sarah thought, as she took an early-morning walk through town on her way to see Matthew at the hospital. Empty storefronts now dotted Port Hamilton’s once thriving business district. In the years since she’d been away, businesses had come and gone. What was once Betty’s Bakery was now Mombasa Coffee with three-dollar cappuccinos and biscotti in jars on the glass-topped counter.

The Curly Q House of Hair where Debbi worked had once been the old Wharf house. Seeing it now, Sarah tried to recall how old she’d been when she found out that it was going to be demolished to make way for a row of stores. Twelve? Thirteen? She’d tried to enlist Matthew in her cause.

“Can’t they see it’s part of the history of Port Hamilton?” she’d wanted to know. And he’d pointed out the light shining through the warped and rotted boards and the evidence of termites everywhere.

Undeterred, she’d gone from door to door with a petition protesting the destruction.

Maybe Rose was right; maybe she was a dreamer. She’d always had tons of ideas for how things could be better. And not just in Port Hamilton. Deep inside, she had always had this quest for the answer to what would really make her life meaningful. She’d read it in a book, find inspiration in an incredible poem or experience something profound that would totally change everything. Or she’d get on a self-improvement kick about this or that. Yoga, fasting. Whatever. Age imparted some wisdom and she’d learned to keep most of these “answers” to herself. As a kid she’d had no such constraints. Her friend Elizabeth’s mom had called her cute and said she wished Elizabeth cared about such things. Rose had called her overly idealistic.

“Life’s the way it is,” Rose would say. “Things change. Nothing’s perfect. Accept it and move on.” Rose now practiced from an office in an ugly, mustard-colored cement-slab complex on the road out of town. Sarah thought wistfully of the big airy waiting room in the old house, the mismatched chairs lined up around the walls, a table in the middle stacked with kids’ books, most of them her discards. The battered trunk of toys she’d sometimes sneak down to play with after the offices were closed for the day.

According to Rose the house had been inefficient. More practical to have a separate office.

“But I have good memories of that consulting room,” Sarah had said. “Daddy coming up to the kitchen for lunch—”

“His damn seafood chowders.” Rose had rolled her eyes. “The consulting rooms reeked of squid.”

“What I remember,” Sarah had countered, “was how much more personal it seemed. You and Daddy were part of the community, not sterile strangers in white coats. I think it had something to do with being in the house.”

But Rose had been adamant. “Medicine isn’t the same as it was when your father and I practiced together. It’s much more sophisticated. Diagnostic tests have to be done right away…no room for sentiment these days.”

Sarah pictured Rose, long gray hair curled into an untidy bun, her chunky sweaters, tweed skirts and gray flannel trousers. The thought occurred to her that one day she would probably look just like Rose. She made a mental note to drop by Curly Q, maybe see what Debbi could do. Debbi and her pale-eyed medicinal gardener boyfriend. Somewhere between Rose the traditionalist and Curt, nature’s pharmacist, there had to be a middle ground that would be just right.

Which was exactly the case she intended to present to Matthew, she thought as she reached the hospital.

The receptionist in the administrative suite looked young enough that Sarah wondered whether she might have babysat her at one time. Behind her were three doors, all closed, with frosted-glass windows. Matthew’s name was on the middle door, underneath the title Medical Director.

“I’m here to see Dr. Cameron,” Sarah said.

“Do you have an appointment?”

Sarah smiled. Her palms were sweating. She knew that if she dodged into a restroom to check her teeth for lipstick or her eyelids for rivulets of the Tender Taupe shadow she’d bought on sale at Gottschalks along with the tube of Black Velvet mascara, she would find damp patches at the armpits of the beige Ann Taylor blazer, also bought in the same sale. All purchased on an impulsive and, she realized now, misguided thought that if she looked businesslike as she presented her plan it would seem less like one of the old Sarah’s wild-eyed schemes and more worthy of Matthew’s professional consideration.

“Matthew and I are old friends,” she told the receptionist. She’d considered calling for an appointment, but…come on, she’d known Matthew since they played in the nursery-school sandbox together. When he was forever trying to pour sand down her top. “Could you just let him know I’m here? Sarah. Benedict.” She cleared her throat. “Dr. Benedict, that would be.”

The receptionist smiled. “Unfortunately, Dr. Cameron is doing an emergency surgery. I’m not sure how long he’ll be. Can I leave him a message?”

“I’ll just give him a call,” she said. “No, wait…” She delved into her purse, found a grocery receipt and scribbled a message on the back. Not very elegant, but it put the ball in his court, which she preferred. “If you could just stick this on his desk.”

Outside, walking down the corridor again, she listened to the click of her heels on the linoleum. Two nurses in blue scrubs walked by. One of them, tall and blond with boobs like a shelf, smiled uncertainly as though Sarah was someone she might know. Port Hamilton was small enough and isolated enough, sitting at the tip of the Olympic Peninsula, that pretty much everyone knew everyone. But this Sarah with her makeup and power suit was not the bohemian Birkenstock Sarah who had skulked off to Central America after being scorned by her—

“Sarah.” The nurse stopped in her tracks. “Wow. When did you get back?”

“Betsy.” Her archenemy in high school. She was a good fifty pounds heavier than Sarah remembered. “Hi.”

Betsy’s smile faded. “I’m sorry about your husband. I read about it in the paper, and then I saw your mother and she told me. What a tragedy, huh?”

“Thanks.” Frozen, feeling awkward by the sympathy she saw in Betsy’s eyes, Sarah struggled for the right thing to say. “Anyway, I’m… I have to go so—”

“Well, hey, it’s great to see you again.” She hugged Sarah, then pulled back to look at her. “Listen, I know it’s got to be tough. If you ever need to talk to someone, call me. I’m in the phone book. My last name’s Becker now. I married Vinny. Remember him?”

She would be okay, Sarah thought as she continued on. Once she was working again, seeing patients, getting back into the swing of things. She would find a place to live, no matter how much Rose begged her to move back home. She would feel strong and whole again, discover a place where the sympathy and pity, no matter how well intended, would no longer make her want to crawl into a hole and hide.

MATTHEW WAS BACK in his office when his secretary put a call through from his daughter reminding him that the school play was at seven and if he didn’t want her to hate him for the rest of her life, he’d better be there.

One elbow on the desk, chin propped in his hand, Matthew studied the framed picture of her—one of many that filled his office—and grinned. Lucy was fourteen, a budding actress and, although she was always listing ways in which he wasn’t the perfect father she felt entitled to, he loved her as much as any father possibly could. The prospect of having more free time to spend with her was one of the more compelling reasons to join CMS.

“I’m supposed to have tarot cards,” Lucy said. “Mom said she’d pick some up, but she forgot. Could you get some for me? Please?” she added in her wheedling voice. “I really, really need them.”

Remembering she was a Gypsy in the play, he asked, “Something to do with fortune-telling?”

“They tell you stuff that happened and what’s going to happen in the future. You spread them out in a cross and then you read them. Listen, I’ve got to go. Don’t forget them, okay?”

“I won’t,” Matthew said. After he hung up, the receptionist—she was very new, very young, and he could never remember her name—stuck her head around the door.

“This lady came in to see you. She left a note, but—” she gestured to his desk, piled high with papers and journals and more than a few empty coffee cups “—I thought you might miss it. It’s on the back of that Safeway receipt right there.”

“Thanks.” Matthew picked up the receipt and glanced at the back.

He saw the familiar scrawl and laughed.

The note read: “So where the hell were you at four o’clock this afternoon anyway?”

No signature. It wasn’t necessary.

Sarah.

BY THE TIME she left the hospital and walked back into town, it was not quite eleven, too early for lunch. With nothing more pressing to do, Sarah decided to stop by Curly Q. Maybe work up the nerve to get her hair all lopped off and learn a little more about Debbi and Curt’s magical medicinal garden.

The blonde who checked her in wore heart-shaped earrings and a diamond in her left nostril. The entire shop was awash in red paper hearts. Up the walls, around mirrors and across the top of the reception desk, where they competed with a massive arrangement of red balloons bobbing amidst pink carnations.

“Must be Saint Patrick’s Day,” Sarah joked.

The girl gave her a long look. “It’s Valentine’s Day.”

Sarah smiled. “I wondered if Debbi is available.”

The blonde regarded Sarah doubtfully. “Are you a client of hers?”

“Not yet.”

Moments later she was escorted to a chair at the far end of the room and seated before a mirror. A towel was draped around her shoulders. Debbi would be with her in a few minutes, she was told. A blond stylist to Sarah’s left, in red jeans and a fluffy white sweater, was telling a customer that Valentine’s Day was the sole reason more babies were born in November than in any other month. To her right, the topic was those clueless types who walk into restaurants on Valentine’s Day without reservations expecting to get a table. “That’s my husband,” someone said. “We’re going to end up eating pizza tonight, just like we did last year.”

Sarah had the strange sensation that she’d landed from some distant planet. Was an aversion to beauty shops genetic or learned, she wondered. Maybe both. Her mother had once calculated the time and money saved over a ten-year span by wearing her own long, untrimmed hair in a knot at the nape of her neck and allowing it to turn iron-gray

Debbi smiled when she saw Sarah. “I didn’t think you’d really come by. I thought you were just being polite.” In the mirror, her face above Sarah’s was round and doll-like, smooth pink skin framed by a dark shiny bob. Her own face looked angular, Sarah thought, her skin tanned but on the verge of leathery. She felt a tug of guilt for neglecting it. Maybe Debbi had something for rejuvenating forty-two-year-old faces.

“Wow, how long did this take to grow?” Debbi asked, lifting the heavy braid.

“Forever. I keep thinking I want to do something different, but I don’t like messing around with it. “

Debbi’s lip jutted thoughtfully as she unbraided Sarah’s hair. “I could cut some layers into it. Maybe put in some highlights to give it body.” She made a few exploratory moves with the comb. “And you’ve got some gray.”

“Cut it all off and dye it…fuchsia,” Sarah said, only half joking, then lost her nerve. “You know what? Just trim the ends.”

“You don’t want me to cut a little more? Shoulder length would look good on you.”

“A trim’s fine for now.” After Debbi had finished shampooing and escorted her back to the chair, Sarah spotted the row of pictures in Lucite frames on the narrow shelf beneath the mirror. Most were of a dark-eyed toddler with a mass of black curls. “Your little girl?”

“Yeah.” Debbi smiled as she went to work with the scissors. “Alli. She’s two. The terrible twos they say.”

“How is she?” Sarah asked, recalling Curt’s comment about an intestinal problem.

“Pretty good. She gets a lot of tummy aches, but Curt said it’s because I feed her too much processed food. He’s so smart. He wanted to be a doctor, but he doesn’t have the patience to sit in a classroom all day. Plus he’s totally turned off to the way most doctors think.”

“I got that impression,” Sarah said wryly.

“He’s a really good dad. I mean, he loves Alli to death. But he’s got this idea that he can treat anything that comes up and sometimes it kind of worries me. It’s his way or the highway.” Debbi snipped the ends, then, brandishing a purple hair dryer, directed a blast of hot air at Sarah’s scalp. “There’s no in-between.”

“That’s what I want to do,” Sarah said. “Provide the in-between. Conventional medicine doesn’t have all the answers, but alternative medicine can’t do everything, either. I want to have a practice that uses both approaches.”

“Cool.” Debbi smiled. “When can I sign up?”

“I’ve still got some things to work out. There’s another doctor, a pediatrician who’s a good friend of mine. We grew up together. He’d be perfect.”

“What’s his name?”

Sarah hesitated. “Well, I haven’t discussed it with him yet. We used to talk about this kind of thing years ago, but—”

“There aren’t that many pediatricians in Port Hamilton anymore,” Debbie said. “It’s got to either be Dr. Cameron—”

“Yep.”

“He’s fantastic. I used to take Alli to see him. Until I met Curt.”

Sarah felt a vague sense of misgiving.

She watched Debbi try to turn a lock of wiry, recalcitrant hair into something resembling a curl and wanted suddenly to be somewhere else. “Hey, listen, that’s fine. Really.”

Debbi looked doubtful. “You’re sure? Want me to spray it?”

“No.” Sarah stood. Her shoulders felt damp. She followed Debbi to the front of the shop. What did a haircut cost these days? She had no idea. She dug three twenties out of her purse, set them on the counter….

“You need some good conditioner.” Debbi took two of the twenties to the cash register, and returned a ten and a five to Sarah. “The next time you come in, I’ll do a hot-oil treatment.”

“Probably a good idea.” Sarah left the twenty and the five on the counter. “Good luck with your daughter,” she said.

CHAPTER THREE

“CHOCOLATE CHIPS.” Lucy snapped her fingers, a surgeon demanding an instrument. “Butter. Two sticks.”

“Coming up.” Matthew held out a bag of chips, semisweet, as she’d requested when she made the shopping list for him. He watched as she carefully measured flour into a bowl. Her long dark hair, pulled back into a ponytail, was dusted with flour. More flour had fallen like snow around her feet; a dusting of white covered the granite counter tiles.

He couldn’t have been happier.

“Want some music?” he asked.

“Your kind or mine?”

“Since I don’t think of that stuff you listen to as music, it would have to be mine. And if you’d really listen to the words, you’d realize the Eagles—”

“Oh, Dad, no. Please. Not the Eagles.”

He grinned and wrapped his arm around her shoulders in a quick hug. “Do you know how much I like having you here?”

“No, but hum a few bars,” she said.

“Old, old joke.”

“I learned it from you.”

“I guess that makes me an old, old guy then.” He pulled out one of the bentwood dining chairs, sat on it backward, his chin propped on the curved wood. “If I decide to go with the Seattle company that’s moving onto the peninsula,” he told her, “you could spend every Saturday with me.”

“Do it,” she said.

“Would you like that?”

She beamed.

He grinned back at her. Ultimately, it might not take much more persuasion than his daughter’s approval. “I’m thinking about it. It’s just…” The phone rang. “Hold on,” he told Lucy.

“Pleeese, pleeeese, don’t let it be a boring old patient,” she muttered.

He picked up the phone from its hook on the wall. “Hello.”

“I have no pride,” a female voice said. “I leave you messages—”

He burst out laughing. “Sarah!” No salutation, no polite preliminary chitchat. No acknowledgment that it had been fifteen years since they last spoke. “My God. You haven’t changed.”

“Yeah, well, there’s nothing I can do about that,” she said. “By forty the character’s pretty well established. So anyway, I stopped by to see you—”

“I know. Well, I was pretty sure it was you. I’d heard you were back. But the receptionist said a lady came by to see me and the lady part threw me.”

Sarah laughed. Same old raucous laugh, somewhere between an engine starting and a gaggle of geese.

“I ran into your mother in the cafeteria last week,” he said. “Almost literally. You know Rose, a hundred miles a minute. She said you were coming back. She seemed surprised that I didn’t know, but I reminded her that keeping in touch was never one of your priorities.”

“Yeah, well…you know.”

“Listen, before anything else, I’m so sorry about—Ted…”

“Thanks. Me, too.”

Something in her voice warned him to move on. “I want to see you,” he said. “Soon. Now. Damn it, I can’t…when are you available? What are your plans?” He could see Lucy in his peripheral vision; the wooden spoon in one hand had gone very still. “My daughter’s here with me,” he said. “Lucy. Fourteen going on thirty and about to set the theater world on fire.” Lucy flashed him a look over her shoulder and he winked at her. “And you didn’t hear this from me,” he stage-whispered, “but she’s a dead ringer for a young Elizabeth Taylor.”

“She looks like her mother then,” Sarah said.

An almost imperceptible change in her voice reminded him of the last time they’d exchanged anything more than polite formalities and he found himself at a loss for words. “Very much.”

“Don’t you owe me a Frugal burger?” Sarah asked.

“Frugals.” Smiling now, he leaned back against the wall. “Haven’t eaten one of those in years. I’m of the age where I have to think about cholesterol.”

“We both are,” Sarah said. “But you still owe me a Frugals.”

“Hold on.” He glanced at the calendar above the phone. “How about…tonight?”

“Dress rehearsal, Daddy,” Lucy said. “Remember? You promised.”

“Okay, tonight won’t work.” He scratched the back of his head. “I’m on call tomorrow night, but if we keep our fingers crossed that no one gets creamed on the 101 or mistakes their significant other for a shooting range, I could pay off my debt to you.”

“Great,” Sarah said. “What time?”

“Around six? I’ll pick you up.” He thought for a minute. “Guess I need to know where you’re staying. Your mother’s?”

“Actually, I just rented an apartment,” Sarah said. “Yesterday. At the foot of Peabody, just above Front Street. The Seavu. I was walking back to my mother’s, saw the For Rent sign, called the landlord and moved right in. I’m still bringing boxes over from my mother’s.”

He mentally located the place, a rambling multistory wooden building with fire escapes running up the sides and seagull droppings on the front steps.

“You don’t mean the old hospital?”

“Yep. I always wanted to live there. Especially after it became a place for shady ladies. Kind of appeals to the outcast in me.”

He was still laughing when he hung up the phone.

“That wasn’t very nice of you, Daddy,” Lucy said, her back to him.

“What wasn’t very nice?”

“What you said about people getting into accidents and getting shot at.”

“Oh, honey,” he said, still thinking about Sarah, “it was just a joke.”

“People dying is just a joke?”

“Give me a break, Lulu,” he said. “How’re the cookies coming?”

“They’re not.” She carried the pan to the sink. “Who was that, anyway?”

“I CAN’T BELIEVE that out of all the places in Port Hamilton, you actually chose this,” Rose said when she dropped by to see the apartment. She stood in the middle of the tiny living room, gazing out through the window. “Nice view, though.”

“Isn’t it?” Sarah stood beside her mother. Windows on this side looked out over the Straits of Juan de Fuca to the distant coast of British Columbia. From the bedroom, she could see the soaring Olympic Mountains, still covered with snow as they would be for much of the year. “Last night I watched the ferry until it disappeared out of sight.” She glanced at Rose. “Want some coffee?”

“Sounds good,” Rose said. “I’m going to check out the rest of the place.”

“Actually you could do it from where you’re standing,” Sarah said. “But go ahead.”

She filled the coffeepot with water, took a package of muffins from a basket on top of the refrigerator, and stuck two of them in the toaster oven. On the battered three-burner stove was a blue enamel kettle. Above it, on a shelf she’d tacked up that morning, she’d filled a yellow jug with wooden spoons and whisks, a couple of candles and a wicker basket. Just looking at the arrangement pleased her. Amazing how much better she felt than this time yesterday. Hearing from Matthew was another part of it.

She’d felt so terrific after talking to him that she’d thrown caution to the wind and gone on a shopping trip of sorts. At the Goodwill store, she’d found the coffeemaker, some floor pillows, a couple of rugs. Tomorrow, she would bring over the last boxes from Rose’s basement. Home. I’m home again, she thought. I have a home, she amended.

“I see you’ve erected your tent,” Rose called from the bedroom. A moment later, she was back in the tiny kitchen. “I remember you making tents in your room when you were a child. You’d crawl inside, close the flaps and shut out the cruel, nasty world.”

Sarah grinned. Her purchases had also included yards of pale gauzy fabric that she’d pinned on the walls and ceiling around her bed. It did feel rather tentlike, very cozy. Lying in bed last night, covered with quilts, she’d felt completely at peace.

“Long-term lease?” Rose regarded Sarah over the top of her wire-rimmed glasses, strands of steel-gray hair already escaping from the knot at the back of her neck.

“Just six months. I’d like it to have been longer, but apparently the building is up for sale. Actually, I’d like to buy it.”

“Why not just enjoy it while you have it,” Rose said. “Enjoy it for what it is. A place to stay for now.”

“Because I want…” To feel secure, she thought. She poured coffee into two mugs and spread the muffins with butter. In the fridge, she found the marmalade and blackberry jam she’d picked up from the farmer’s market.

“I still don’t understand paying rent for a place when I’m rattling around in a house that’s far too big for me.” Rose spooned sugar into her coffee.

Sarah said nothing. It was pointless to argue with Rose, cruel to voice what they both knew: living together would drive Sarah nuts because Rose was an exacting, demanding perfectionist given to dark, morose moods when things didn’t go her way. Sarah reluctantly conceded she’d inherited the trait herself and, so, found it doubly irritating to deal with in her mother. Ted had once suggested that everything she did was an attempt to prove she wasn’t like Rose. She’d fought him on that, told him he didn’t really know Rose. Later, she wondered if he really knew her.

“Have you spoken to Matthew yet?” Rose asked.

“He was in surgery. But I called him. Actually,” she tried for a casual tone, “we’re going out for a Frugals tonight.”

Rose smiled.

“What?”

“Nothing.” She drank some coffee, set her mug down. “You should look at your face. You look like Queen of the Hop.”

Sarah laughed. “You need to update your terminoogy, Mom.” Through the window behind Rose, she watched a flock of seagulls circle, their cries faintly audible above the sound of traffic going down Front Street. “It was funny talking to him. All these years and it was as if we’d just seen each other the day before.”

JUST AFTER MIDNIGHT, Matthew woke to the sound of his beeper. Fumbling in the dark, he picked up the phone from the bedside table. “I’m not the one on call tonight,” he told the page operator. “I changed with Dr. Adams. You need to call him.”

“Then there’s been some kind of mix-up,” the operator said. “I have you down, Dr. Cameron.”

“Call Dr. Adams,” Matthew said. “I’ll come in if I have to, but try him first.” He hung up the phone, rolled over and closed his eyes. Just as he drifted off, the phone rang again. Adams couldn’t be reached. He sat up, switched on the light. The operator put him through to the E.R. The patient was a child with intestinal problems.

“Give me ten minutes,” Matthew said. He dressed then, shoes in hand, padded silently across the hall.

From his room, he heard his pager go again. He sprinted downstairs, scribbled a note to Lucy and went out in the dark cool night.

Something had to give, he thought, as he drove through the deserted streets. As stubborn as he knew himself to be—and as Elizabeth was always quick to confirm—he understood the mess the system was in. If it was a business other than Compassionate Medical Systems coming to the rescue, he could go along with it, but Olympic Memorial, like a desperate spinster, attracted few suitors.

Sure, he could rhapsodize about the joys of a smalltown practice, the majesty of the Olympic Mountains, the achingly beautiful coastal trails. But none of the major players he’d hoped would offer their hand had shown much interest in what was also a debt-ridden, rural, blue-collar town with an aging population.

The truth was, you had to know Port Hamilton to love it. He did. And Sarah did. Sarah. Who he used to think he knew better than anyone in the world and then realized he didn’t really know her at all. Still, it made him feel good to think of Sarah being back. If you were lucky, you had one, maybe two friendships that lasted a lifetime. Like a plant. A few leaves might fall off through lack of nurturing, but the roots never died. That was how it was with Sarah.

He pulled into the parking lot and switched off the ignition. Through the glass doors of the E.R., he watched a nurse in blue scrubs. His beeper went off again.

“Hey, Debbi.” The mother looked young enough to have been the patient. “What’s up with Alli tonight?”

“She’s been throwing up and pooping all day.” Her face pale in the harsh overhead lighting, Debbi soothed the child lying on the examining table.

“Well, let’s take a look at her.” The toddler, listless and pale, eyed Matthew as he examined her but didn’t make a sound: That didn’t reassure him. Healthier children tended not to submit so easily to being poked and prodded. “Haven’t seen you around for a while.”

She bit her lip. “We moved out to the end of the peninsula. I met this guy and we bought some property together. He’s into a naturopathy, which worked pretty good on my asthma. Really good, in fact. But nothing was working with Alli and I got scared. He went to Olympia to some workshop and I decided I’d bring her in, just in case.”

Matthew said nothing. Mainstream medicine clearly didn’t have all the answers, but there was an almost evangelical zeal about some so-called natural medicine proponents that he found alarming. He’d suspected kidney disease the last time he saw the child and suggested testing. He hadn’t seen her since.

Now he reminded her again. “If it is kidney disease, it can be controlled with medication or even cured. But if it isn’t treated, it’ll just get worse until she ends up needing dialysis or a transplant.”

Debbi’s face clouded. “How much would that cost?”

He looked at the child. He didn’t know exactly what Debbi’s financial situation was, but he had an idea she was one of a number of patients in the practice who paid on a sliding scale according to what they could afford, which in almost all cases wasn’t very much.

“We’ll work something out,” he said. “The important thing is that you shouldn’t delay it. Call my office tomorrow, okay, and set up an appointment.”

But as he scribbled a couple of prescriptions and handed them to her, he doubted that she would follow through.

CHAPTER FOUR

ELIZABETH WANTED to scream. Walking through Safeway with her mother and her daughter was more irritation than anyone should have to tolerate. Lucy was acting like the princess she thought she was. And Pearl, her mother, was the snoopy old Queen Mother.

Which would make her, Elizabeth, the queen, except that no one ever treated her like one. She set a bottle of champagne in the cart.

“I thought you weren’t drinking anymore,” Pearl said. “You fallen off the wagon?”

“Champagne doesn’t count.”

“Booze is booze,” Pearl pronounced.

Lucy, who had gone off in her own direction as soon as they walked through the door, reappeared with a six-pack of socks. “Can I buy these?”

“Do you mean, can I buy them?” Elizabeth asked.

“If you can afford champagne,” Pearl said mildly, “I would think you could afford socks.”

“That’s not the point.” Elizabeth said, but no one was listening.

“Thank you, Grandma,” Lucy said.

“You’re welcome.”

There were days Elizabeth reflected, when everything Pearl said seemed like some sort of attack. Matt always said she was overly sensitive when it came to her mother. But Matt had always idealized Pearl. Once she’d asked him, only half joking, if Pearl was the real reason they got married. Pearl was the mother he’d never had. Pearl wasn’t weird and eccentric like Sarah’s mother. Pearl was sweet and kind and baked cookies. Right. Sweet and kind to everyone but me. Pearl would have preferred a daughter like Sarah. Pearl would have loved to talk about her daughter the doctor.

“Who’s Sarah?” Lucy asked as though she’d just read Elizabeth’s mind.

“Sarah who?” Elizabeth picked up a heart-shaped box of candy and stuck it in the cart for George, the guy she’d been seeing lately. Giving was as good as receiving. Kind of.

“Those will all be on sale next week,” Pearl said. “Fifty percent off.”

“Next week’s too late for Valentine’s,” Elizabeth said. George treated her like a queen. The way Matt used to. Before they were married.

“Dad was talking on the phone to some woman called Sarah,” Lucy said. “Who is she?”

“Lucy, I don’t know every woman your father talks to. Maybe it was a patient.”

“He said she was an old friend.”

Elizabeth looked at her daughter. “Sarah Benedict?”

“How would I know?” Lucy said irritably. “They were talking for ages. And Dad was laughing.”

“Sarah Benedict’s back,” Pearl said. “I had to see her mother for this little thing on my nose.” She turned her face to Elizabeth. “See? That little rough patch. Precancerous legion.”

“Lesion,” Lucy said.

Pearl beamed. “How did I get to have such a smart granddaughter?”

“I take after my dad,” Lucy said.

Elizabeth eyed the champagne. Typical of Sarah to breeze into town and not call. “Sarah and your dad grew up together,” she told Lucy. “Then she went off to medical school and married this doctor and they traveled all over the place. Then he got killed.”

“Your mother broke them up,” Pearl told Lucy. “Your dad and Sarah.”

“I did not.” Elizabeth glared at Pearl. “What kind of thing is that to say to your granddaughter?”

“I’m not a child,” Lucy said.

“I’m just stating the truth,” Pearl said. “Your dad and Sarah were joined at the hip.”

“Gee, thanks, Mom.” She followed Pearl, wearing a snappy red pantsuit and a heart-shaped broach, down the paper-goods aisle, waited while her mother debated between Angel Soft and Dream Puff. “Lucy, go pick up some milk and let’s get out of here.”

“He’s taking her out for a Frugals,” Lucy said.

“Good for him,” Elizabeth said, although the idea of Matt and Sarah being a twosome again made her feel weird. Still, maybe it would be good for Matt to get a life instead of working all the time. He looked like hell these days. Like he hadn’t seen sunshine for ten years or something.

When she told George that her ex-husband was a doctor, George figured she must have all kinds of money. A doctor’s wife, he kept saying. And then she had to explain Matt didn’t make a whole bunch of money, not that he couldn’t, just that he chose to work at the ends of the earth. What she hadn’t told George was that Matt also drove a truck. An old truck that didn’t even have a decent stereo system.

They continued their procession down the aisles. Next stop: jams and jellies. Lucy had disappeared again and Pearl was holding a jar in each hand and studying them as though she was about to take a test. Elizabeth couldn’t help resenting how Pearl always took Lucy’s side and Lucy always took Matthew’s side and Matthew acted as though she, Elizabeth, never had an important thought in her life. That was the good thing about George. He made her feel interesting. And smart.

Unlike Pearl, who was now yammering on about Sarah Benedict and how smart she’d always been and what was she doing back in Port Hamilton when she could live anywhere in the world and wasn’t it rude of Elizabeth not to even give her a call to welcome her home?

Elizabeth ignored her. Sarah didn’t need a welcome-home party. She had Matt. Sarah had always had Matt. One night after they’d been making out down at the spit, steaming up the windows of Matt’s old truck, she’d asked him about Sarah.

“You’re not two-timing with her, or anything?” And he’d laughed. “Oh, Sarah’s my friend,” he’d said. “We tell each other everything.”

“So you’ll tell her about us?” she’d asked.

“Of course,” he’d said.

And maybe he had. But you certainly couldn’t tell from the way Sarah acted. Still, she and Sarah had never been close. Sarah always made her feel dumb. And it felt uncomfortable being around Matt and Sarah, the way they were always laughing and joking, finishing each other’s sentences. It was like they had their own secret world and nobody else knew their special language.

Overhead the music turned into a Rod Stewart song. Suddenly tears started flowing down Elizabeth’s face. That’s what I want. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.

AS SARAH WALKED OUT of Ming Dynasty with a container of mu shu pork, she ran into Curt Hudelson.

“Loaded with chemicals.” Curt tapped his finger against the take-out carton and slowly shook his head. “You need to toss it.”

“No way,” Sarah said. “My philosophy allows me a few guilty pleasures.”

“Sorry if I annoyed your mother the other day,” he said. “Medical establishment and all that. It’s rather like trying to move a dinosaur.”

“I wouldn’t call Rose a dinosaur,” Sarah said, slightly offended on her mother’s behalf. “Set in her ways about some things, but then she hasn’t had much exposure to alternative forms of practice.”

Curt smiled. “Yes, well, I encounter that resistance all the time. Even with my own family. Debbi knows quite well what works, yet if I’m not constantly reinforcing it, she’ll slip right back into going to the doctor for every little thing. Her asthma is a case in point. She knows how to control it but insists on carrying that bloody inhaler.”

“Well, I’m against taking unnecessary drugs,” Sarah said, “but asthma can be dangerous if it spins out of control.”

“Exactly. Which is why I teach her self-hypnosis.”

Sarah said nothing. Maybe it was the eyes, but there was something about him that made her vaguely uneasy. It was that whole balance thing, not swinging too far in either direction. She made a mental note to see if Matthew knew him.

FORTUNATELY, Curt Hudelson’s disapproval of her mu shu pork didn’t interfere with her enjoyment of it. Later, sitting on the living-room floor, cushions piled up around her, the take-out carton in easy reach and John Coltrane on the stereo, she started unpacking the boxes she’d brought over from her mother’s house. The first one contained half-a-dozen photograph albums documenting the first sixteen years or so of her life. The earlier photos were on black paper, stuck into tiny gilt paper corners that she used to buy in small plastic bags from the Bay Variety store on Lincoln. They predated the sticky white boards with plastic sheets that she’d discovered by the time she was twelve. Taking on the role of family archivist had been an act of desperation. After a stack of the shoe boxes Rose always dumped pictures in fell from the closet shelf, spilling all over the floor. Sarah had decided to impose order.

She speared a piece of pork with her chopstick and savored the taste.

A storm had blown in during the night and stuck around. Wind rattled the windows, and rain lashed against the glass. Northwest weather. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed it. Missed everything from her past. Ted, who had left his native England as a child, seemed to have spent much of his adult life looking for a sense of place. She set the chopsticks back in the carton and carried it into the kitchen.

“I want to feel that kind of connection,” Ted used to say when she would talk about growing up in Port Hamilton, about the generations of Benedicts who had practiced medicine there. “I want to know, deep inside me, that this is where I belong. I want to feel a part of the community, of the land. I want to know the people, I want them to matter to me personally. I want the kind of life you had.”

As an adult, she had a less rose-tinted view of what that had been, but until she was fifteen, she really had thought everything about her life was perfect. The big red barnlike house on the bluffs above the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Her attic bedroom, with the window seat where she’d watch the Olympic Princess carry passengers and their vehicles back and forth between Port Hamilton and Victoria, British Columbia. Curling up under blankets at night, gazing at the lights across the water, imagining a Canadian girl just like her staring at the lights from Port Hamilton.

Rose would label it nostalgic yearning, but she had always felt so safe back then. Happy. Long golden summer days, perfumed by the red and pink roses that filled the backyard. Fourth of July parades and picnics on the beach. Time in endless supply, it had seemed. At Christmas, bundled up in coats and scarves, she would hold her parents’ hands as they walked into town for the Christmas-tree lighting on Main Street. Snowshoeing and skiing in the winter, bonfires on the beach in the summer and fireworks to light the dark sky.

Best of all, there was Matthew, the boy down the street. Matthew the star of her childhood memories. Racing their bikes along the jetty that protected Port Hamilton’s deep harbor from the choppy waters of the straits, screeching and whooping, the wind in their faces. Walking home from the beach together, wet hair and sandy feet.

On her thirteenth birthday, she’d scrambled over huge boulders to the rocky beach, Matt right behind her. With their backs against a rock, they’d watched the shorebirds and he’d told her the Latin name of the Black-bellied Plover.

“Pluvialis squatarola,” he’d said, and she’d burst out laughing because she thought he was making it up. She’d looked it up later, of course, and he’d been right.

If there was a time when Sarah hadn’t been in love with Matthew Cameron, she couldn’t remember it. It wasn’t puppy love or a crush or anything like that. She’d never carved their initials into tree trunks or scribbled intertwined hearts on her schoolbooks. They’d never talked about it, this bond between them, never even held hands. She could hardly even explain it to herself, the deep, certain knowledge she’d had that she loved Matthew with every fiber of her being and that they would always be together.

At least, she’d felt that way until Elizabeth moved into the house next door. Elizabeth, with her almond-shaped eyes and naturally rosy lips. Elizabeth, who knew how to talk and laugh with boys but still act like a girl. Her family was from Los Angeles and she wasn’t happy about moving to Port Hamilton, which she considered a hick town that she intended to leave as soon as she could. Elizabeth was always talking about how things were in Los Angeles: the way the girls dressed, the cool places kids hung out, the movie stars all over the place. And when Elizabeth talked, everyone listened, boys and girls.

Before Elizabeth, Sarah had never given a moment’s thought to her appearance, but Elizabeth’s long silky hair made her painfully self-conscious about her own unruly curls, about the freckles that spattered her cheeks and nose and her skinny, boyish frame. More than that, Elizabeth forced her to acknowledge there really was a difference between the way boys and girls behaved.

It was also while watching Elizabeth that Sarah first realized she lacked the ability to do what others girls seemed to do naturally. Elizabeth danced with her head at just the right angle to look up into a boy’s eyes. Elizabeth could walk into the Parrot Cage, where the kids hung out after school, and all the boys crowded round her, falling over themselves to get her attention. Matthew included.

Before Sarah realized what was happening, it was no longer just Matthew and Sarah, the way it had always been. It was Matthew, Sarah and Elizabeth. And then Matthew and Elizabeth. One night he’d started telling her about Elizabeth. “She’s sweet and pretty and…” He’d shaken his head as though words alone weren’t adequate to sum up Elizabeth.

“Wow,” Sarah had said, “sounds serious. Like you’re in love with her.”

“I think I might be.”

And Sarah had forced herself to smile.

“The thing is, I can’t talk to her the way I talk to you,” he’d gone on to tell her. “She doesn’t get my jokes.”

“Yeah, but she’s pretty.”

And then, safe in her own room, Sarah had cried herself to sleep.

By the time Matthew went off to premed in Seattle, he and Elizabeth were officially a couple. Sarah had immersed herself in her own studies and, for the first time in her life, days and weeks, then months went by when she didn’t think about Matthew. But never, ever, did she stop loving him.

The night he married Elizabeth, Sarah had wandered away from the reception out to the small patch of beach just past the hotel. Matthew had found her sitting on a piece of driftwood, staring out at the water. Allergies, she’d said when he’d asked about her red eyes. And then she’d hugged him. “I hope you and Elizabeth will be very happy.”

The following year, she’d gone off to medical school herself and met Ted, a fellow student. Ted, a gentle dreamer who wanted only to help. His death still haunted her dreams.

CHAPTER FIVE

LUCY CALLED just as Matthew was leaving the house to pick up Sarah.

“Daddy.” A pause. “Can I come with you to Frugals?”

“I didn’t think you liked it,” Matthew said. “You never want to go when I suggest it.”

“But I do this time.”

“How about tomorrow?”

“Daddy.” Her tone turned wheedling. “I’m hungry now.”

He laughed. “Well, I’m sure you can find something in the house to eat.” He glanced at his watch. “Listen, Lulu, I’m running late.”

“To see Sarah?”

“Right.”

“Why can’t I go?”

He frowned. “Lucy, what’s this about?”

“Nothing. I just want to go with you.”

“Not this time.” He could almost feel the sullenness of the silence on her end and, although she’d never shown any interest in the women he occasionally introduced her to, he sensed something different. “But I do want you to meet Sarah. You’re going to like her a lot.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Lucy?”

“What?”

“Come on, honey.”

“I gotta go,” she said.

He heard the disconnect, debated whether to call back, then decided against it. No real reason she couldn’t come along, but it had been years since he’d seen Sarah and, he reasoned, Lucy would be bored listening to them play catch-up.

THE TEST OF A TRUE FRIENDSHIP, he later decided was how easily you could slip back into a natural rhythm. Sarah looked like a slightly older version of the Sarah he’d always known. Skinny bordering on scrawny, the small triangular face and shrewd gray eyes that seemed to bore right through any kind of dissembling. Hair always dated people, but Sarah wore her reddish brown hair just as she always had, in a thick, heavy braid that came halfway down her back. The row of small silver hoops in her ears were new, as were a few lines around the eyes. He could imagine her squinting into the bright sunlight. No sunglasses for Sarah. He’d teased her about the sprinkle of gray and she’d done the same to him.

After they picked up the burgers, they’d driven out to the end of Forbe’s Hook, found a spot on the rocks and watched the sun dissolve into the water.

“So what are your plans now?” he asked as the sky turned to shades of pink and red. “Are you going to stick around for a while?’

Head down, Sarah picked at the threadbare knee of her jeans. “Actually, I am.”

He waited a moment. “And?”

“I have a plan.”

Matthew grinned. “You’ve always had a plan.”

“This is different. This is a grown-up plan. A huge plan. And it involves you.”

As Matthew dug around in the paper sack for more fries, he felt the shift in her mood. Whatever Sarah’s huge plan turned out to be, he wasn’t in the right frame of mind to hear it. Her presence had been a welcome distraction from the looming Compassionate Medical Systems crisis, and he felt a reluctance to be drawn into more serious discussion. He also knew that Sarah in full-steam-ahead mode could be nigh on impossible to stop.

She shot him a glance. “You want to hear it?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“You sound tired, Matthew.”

“I am.”

“Work?”

“Essentially.” In the gathering darkness, he saw the glimmer of a smile flicker across Sarah’s face. “Don’t tell me, your plan is the solution.”

“It could be.”

He gave in to the inevitable. “Tell me.”

“Okay.” She drew in a breath. “Remember when you first started medical school, you used to talk about the kind of medical practice you wanted to have? Not just treating disease and patients who were already sick, but patient-centered care that promoted wellness with traditional healing arts, home mind-body therapy—”

Matthew groaned.

“What?”

“Tell me I was never that hopelessly naive.”

Sarah turned to face him. Eyes gleaming, body tensed, she seemed a cat poised to pounce. He braced himself.

“Matthew,” she said, “listen to me. There’s nothing naive about that. It’s exactly what I want to do. What I want us both to do. An integrated approach that doesn’t abandon mainstream medicine. I mean, kids are still going to break bones or need surgery…”

Presumably where he came in, he thought, as he listened to her describe the practice they would set up together along with herbalists, hypnotherpists and an assortment of other practitioners.

“Ted used to talk about establishing that kind of practice,” she said. “And when he died, I thought that his dream died with him, but then—” her voice softened “—it was the strangest thing. I was going through a box of old letters that you had sent me when you were in med school and I found this one that almost spelled out word for word the same thing Ted and I were planning to do. That’s when I knew I had to come back.”

Matthew looked out at the water. The ferry from Victoria appeared on the horizon, its lights punctuating the darkness. “Sarah, I don’t know how to say this—”

“Please don’t tell me it won’t work, because—”

“I wasn’t going to say it won’t work. I think it could. I appreciate the fact that medicine is changing. I don’t believe one school of thought offers all the answers. It’s just not going to work for me.”

Sarah took a deep breath. “Why not?”

“For one thing, your timing couldn’t be worse. I’ve spent most of the day in meetings, listening to reasons why Compassionate Medical Systems is the only answer.”

“You don’t believe that.”

“I don’t not believe it. CMS has an excellent reputation,” he said, hearing the hollowness in his voice. “And, frankly, the peninsula needs an infusion of cash. We need more doctors, a new hospital, new equipment. That’s never going to happen the way things are now.”

Sarah began picking at the knees of her jeans again. Moments passed. “You’re not thinking of selling out yourself, are you?”

“It’s not selling out, Sarah,” he said, his voice sharper than he intended. “The bottom line is providing quality care. Olympic can’t do that under the existing structure. The money isn’t there.”

“Wait.” She cupped her hand to her ear. “That sounded suspiciously like an affirmative.” “I haven’t decided yet.” In Sarah’s world, he was remembering now, there were no shades of gray. Black or white. Good or bad. Right or wrong. Fair or unfair. Remembering too the impossibly high standards she expected, from others as much as from herself. There was Sarah’s way of doing things and there was the wrong way. “Just once,” he remembered shouting, after they’d argued about some high-school project they were working on together, “I want to hear you say that something is good enough, that it doesn’t need fine-tuning.”

“I know something about Compassionate Medical Systems,” Sarah said. “When I first left the peninsula, I made the mistake of going to work in one of their hospitals in Seattle. Ted had a similar experience. We both realized it would never work for us. That’s when we decided to go to Central America. I mean, these companies answer to stockholders. I won’t work in an environment where the real focus is money, not patients. Bottom line, money’s going to dictate which doctor you see, how many tests can be run, what medicine you should take. Patients wait months for appointments that used to take days—”

“I can’t decide whether it’s the Frugal burger or this discussion,” Matthew said, “but I’m getting a headache.”

“Sorry.” She stretched her legs out, wriggled her toes in her beat-up sneakers. “I get up on my soapbox and there’s no stopping me.”

“I noticed.”

“Well—” she wrapped her arms around herself “—it’s getting cold. I should probably get going.”

But neither of them moved. Out on the horizon a few stripes of pink cut through the indigo sky. “Things change, Sarah,” he finally said. “Sometimes that’s a good thing, sometimes it’s not so good. But it’s reality. The way things are now, I go to work. Get home, sometimes not till one in the morning. Sleep the night, if I’m lucky. If not, I get a call from the E.R. because they can’t locate the doctor who’s supposed to be on call. I end up spending time on call that I’d rather spend with my daughter—”

“But I don’t understand. You’re chief of staff. Why would they page you?”

He laughed. “We have a chronic physician shortage. No new people coming in, old ones dying off. Right after you left, the mill closed, so one huge source of employment shut down and, well, you know the peninsula. There weren’t that many jobs to begin with. A good percentage of my patients who’d worked at the mill lost their insurance, but I still see them. They’d pay if they had the money, but there are no jobs. All of that makes it harder to attract new physicians.” He picked up a pebble and tossed it into the dark water. “So if it seems like selling out to you, I’m sorry. Idealism is fine, but I also have to make a living.”

After that, they fell into silence again. Sarah, hunched into her windbreaker, her hair hiding her face. The mood had shifted, and he didn’t know what to do about it.

“Aw, come on,” he said, “it’s not that bad.” The sun had dissolved, turning the sky shades of pink and vermillion against the navy sea. “You don’t get views like this everywhere.”

THE FOLLOWING DAY, Rose stopped by the apartment and, as they were having coffee, announced she was selling the practice. “I was waiting for the right moment, but I didn’t want you to hear about it from someone else.” Sarah stared at her. “You’re not serious.”

“Yes, I am.”

“You’re retiring?”

“Compassionate Medical Systems is buying me out. For a very good price, I might add. And take that horrified look off your face.”

“I’m shocked.”

Rose took a deep breath. “Welcome to the real world. The handwriting is on the wall. Sure, I can hold on for a few more years, but it’s like those mom-and-pop stores—like McGregor’s. I remember when I used to do most of my grocery shopping there and I still drop in to pick up milk or something I’ve run out of, but that’s mostly out of loyalty. When I need a lot of groceries I go to Albertsons or Safeway. Everyone does, it’s a fact of life.”

Her hands suddenly icy, Sarah wrapped them around her coffee mug. Rose was going on about managed care being the wave of the future and encouraging her to apply to Compassionate Medical Systems. Sarah flashed back to the time as a kid when she’d saved her allowance to buy her mom a Norman Rockwell print: a country doctor’s office, the small boy baring his bum for the kindly old doctor’s injection.

She could still see Rose’s bemused expression as she unwrapped the gift. Years later, she’d understood. Too sentimental. Generations of Benedicts might have practiced medicine out of the same family home, but they’d never been a Norman Rockwell family. And now that the money was right, Rose was casually parting with tradition. Selling out.

“Sarah, I know this is a disappointment,” Rose said, apparently reading her expression, “but it’s honestly the only way to go. It’s getting harder and harder to make a living this way. More uninsured patients.”

“Someone has to take care of them.”

“Someone also has to make a living,” Rose said. “And if you think I’m being hardhearted, talk to Matthew—”

“I already have.”

“Uh-oh.” Rose’s mouth twisted. “And?”

“Take a wild guess.”

“Didn’t I try to tell you?”

After Rose left, Sarah stood in the kitchen, staring out at the gulls and the tankers on the water and the wind-tossed trees. Things did not look promising.

On the wall of her clinic in Central America, she’d tacked up a pain-assessment chart with six cartoonlike faces whose expressions ranged from happy and smiling to great discomfort and unbearable pain. Small kids couldn’t read the captions underneath—annoying, nagging, miserable, horrible, excruciating and so forth—but they knew that a furrowed brow, down-turned mouth and falling tears weren’t good things.

She’d stuck the chart on the refrigerator. Right now, she was definitely among the scowls and grimaces group. Coming back to Port Hamilton was supposed to be like completing a circle. A return to the place where she’d been the happiest, an opportunity to practice medicine with a doctor she admired for his ideals and who was also her best friend.

So much for that.

She made more coffee, carried her mug into the living room, back to the window. Tempted to just go to bed, pull the covers over her head and shut out the world, she was stopped by Rose’s voice in her head mocking her for doing that very thing. She pulled on her sweats and running shoes and jogged down to Francis Street Park, her favorite place in Port Hamilton.

The park was steeply banked with tangles of blackberries on either side and steps running down to the water. Even before she reached the steps, she could see the dark hull of a tanker at anchor, hear the seagulls screech. She felt an almost holiness, like walking into a church.

She took deep, slow breaths, tried to clear her mind. Minutes passed and, slowly, the turbulent thoughts began to subside. She would be all right. Things would work out. She would come up with a new plan. Maybe Matthew wouldn’t have fit into the picture anyway.

They hadn’t always seen eye to eye. Last night was a reminder of that.

In the silence that had fallen between them on the drive back to her apartment, she’d gone through all the things he would never actually say to her about why sharing a practice would never work anyway. He would never say them, because he loved her. Not the way she’d always wanted him to love her, but as a friend whose feelings he wouldn’t want to hurt. You’re too idealistic, Sarah. Too unpredictable. Too…much.

The wind picked up and blew in cold gusts that reached like bony fingers through the fabric of her sweats. She started to run. And this was the memory she wanted to run from now—she’d preached at him. Accused him of abandoning his ideals. Just thinking about it now made her run faster. His expression as he tried to explain was burned on her brain.

Her sneakers slapping the pavement, she continued down the trail. When she reached the ferry terminal, she stood for a moment trying to decide whether to run on to Lopez Hook or head back to the apartment and… what? Send out résumés? Return to Central America? She decided to continue for another ten minutes or so.

“THERE YOU GO.” Elizabeth set a platter of bacon and eggs down in front of the guy at the table by the window. “Can I get you anything else?”

He smiled up at her. “Maybe just a refill.”

She brought the coffeepot over and filled up his mug. If he hadn’t been reading the newspaper, she might have got him talking. She liked to do that, hear people’s stories. Chitchat about the weather. No big heavy stuff, just people being nice to each other.

Back in the kitchen, she stood with her arms folded, watching the gulls in the empty parking lot fight over a scrap of something. No one believed it when she’d taken the job as a waitress at the coffee shop down by the ferry landing. The ex-wife of a doctor, pocketing tips and getting paid minimum wage. But it wasn’t the money—Matt was good about making sure she and Lucy had enough. It was being appreciated. People smiled when she brought their food, they thanked her like they really meant it.

Trouble was, business had slowed down to practically nothing. Now she was the sole employee. Cook, waitress and cleanup crew and she still had time to stand staring out of the window. Time to start feeling sorry for herself, Pearl would say. She looked around for something to do, but the kitchen and all the tables were spotless, so she called home to talk to Lucy. The phone rang five times before the girl picked it up.

“Hi, honey.” Elizabeth smiled into the phone. “Watcha doing?”

“Sleeping,” Lucy said.

“Hon, it’s nearly noon.” As soon as she said it, Elizabeth wanted to take the words back. Everything she said these days made Lucy mad. Being around her was like walking on eggshells. “Why don’t you get dressed and come down here and I’ll make you lunch.”

“Can I come down without getting dressed?”

“Huh? No, I—”

“Joking, Mom,” Lucy said, as if Elizabeth was a child. “I think I would have figured out that I needed to get dressed first.”

Elizabeth felt tears prickle in her nose. Lucy would never talk to Matt like that. Lucy respected Matt, that was the truth of it. And she didn’t respect her mother. She blew her nose. “Okay, suit yourself.”

Through the row of spider plants in macramé hangers that separated the kitchen from the dining room, she could see the guy had finished his breakfast and was looking around the way people did when they wanted to pay their bills.

“I gotta go,” she told Lucy.

“You here visiting?” Elizabeth asked the man as she filled his cup again. He wasn’t one of the regulars, no one she’d seen around town.

“Just for a couple of days.”

“Vacation?”

“I’m a reporter for the Seattle Times. Doing an article on the goings-on at your hospital. Compassionate Medical Systems coming in, shaking things up.” He took a sip of his coffee. “How do you feel about it?”

“I’m all for it.” Elizabeth leaned against the edge of the booth. “My ex is a doctor at the hospital and he’s working himself to death the way things are now. I hear if Compassionate Medical Systems comes in, they’ll bring in more doctors. There’s even talk about building a new hospital, which, God knows, we could use. I was born in that place and I don’t think it’s been remodeled since.”

“Your husband is a doctor there?”

“Ex.”

“What does he think about it?”

“Oh…” She shrugged. “He’s one of those idealistic types. He’d rather work himself to death than bend. But if enough people want it, I don’t think he’ll have much choice.”

She set the check on the table in front of him, and after he left, she went back to the kitchen for a rag and wiped down the already clean tables. Then the door opened on a gust of cold air and a woman came in. Navy sweat suit and baseball cap. No jacket, which meant she was a tourist not used to the local weather. The woman looked at her and then they both did a double take.

“Sarah?”

“Elizabeth! I didn’t know you worked here.”

And then there was an awkward moment when she could see Sarah didn’t know whether to hug her or not, or maybe it was her feeling that way about Sarah who she’d never exactly been on hugging terms with, mostly because Sarah wasn’t the hugging type. But then they both moved forward at the same time and wrapped their arms around each other like long-lost friends.

“I feel bad we haven’t got together since you’ve been back,” Elizabeth said, which wasn’t exactly true, but what the hell. “Every day, I think, okay, I’ve got to call Sarah, but you know how it is.” She plucked at the arm of Sarah’s sweats. “You look frozen to death. How come you’re not wearing a jacket? This is Washington, not…wherever you were. Where was it? Matt told me once, but I forget. Wait, wait, don’t tell me. Panama.”

Sarah smiled. “Nicaragua.”

“But weren’t you in Panama? I remember Matt saying something about the canal.”

“I flew into Panama City.” Sarah pulled off the baseball cap, blew into her hands. “And then I went to Nicaragua.” She glanced around. “I had no idea you worked here,” she repeated. “This was my favorite place as a kid. It was a big treat to come here for breakfast before we caught the ferry.”

Elizabeth smiled. Sarah hadn’t changed a whole lot. Same reddish hair that always looked like someone had taken an electric mixer to it, fuzzy and flyaway. Maybe a few wrinkles, but who didn’t have those? And she didn’t look like she weighed any more than she had in high school, which was more than she could say about herself.

“So, you going to have breakfast?”

Sarah seemed to be thinking it over, then she smiled and sat down in one of the booths by the window. “Sure. Why not?”

The phone by the cash register rang.

“The Landing,” Elizabeth answered.

“I’m sorry for being mean,” Lucy said.

“Aw, honey.” Elizabeth set down the menu she’d picked up for Sarah. “Are you crying?”

“Yeah. I feel sad.”

“Oh, Lulu.” Elizabeth wiped her own eyes. “How come?”

“I don’t know, I just do.” A pause. “Dad called. He was supposed to take me to the mall to get fabric for my costume and now he can’t go.”

“Well, I can take you. As soon as I get off work. We’ll go to the mall and go to the Olive Garden afterward. Mmm, that artichoke dip you like. And lots of bread sticks? How does that sound?”

“Okay,” Lucy said in a small voice. “But I kind of wanted Dad to take me.”

Elizabeth took a deep breath. “How come he can’t?”

“I don’t know. Something at the hospital.”

“I’ll talk to him, sweetie—okay?” Elizabeth signaled to Sarah that she’d be right there. “Cheer up.”

She hung up the phone, grabbed a menu and set it down in front of Sarah. She poured coffee without asking because she remembered Sarah had always been a coffee fiend and she was pretty sure that hadn’t changed. “The omelets are good.” She watched Sarah scan the menu. “So are the scrambles. Especially the shrimp and crab.”

Sarah looked up at her and smiled. “Sounds good to me.”

“I’m running the show,” Elizabeth said. “Meaning, I’m the cook, too. Come back and talk to me while I fix your food. Bring your coffee. I think I’ll have some, too.”

She poured herself a cup, got eggs and two stainless steel containers of vegetables she’d chopped earlier and set them down by the stove. “So how were your cheeseburgers last night?” she said as she scrambled the eggs.

“Cheeseburgers?” Arms folded across her chest, Sarah stood off to one side watching. “Oh, Matthew told you—”

“Matthew never tells me anything,” Elizabeth said. “Lucy told me. My daughter,” she added. “Well, Matt’s daughter, too. She’s definitely a daddy’s girl. Twists him around her little finger like he’s made of putty. He probably talked your ear off about her, right?” “We started talking shop,” Sarah said, “and that pretty much took up the evening.” She drank some coffee, set the mug down. “So anyway, how old is your daughter?”

“Fourteen,” Elizabeth said. “And…” She stared hard at the chopped pieces of red bell pepper and onions in the frying pan and then, just like in the Safeway, felt the tears start up. “Sorry. Ignore me. I don’t know what’s wrong with me….”

“Sounds about the same way I’m feeling right now,” Sarah said.

Elizabeth glanced at her, but it had always been difficult to tell what was really going on with Sarah. She slid a spatula under the eggs. “You want cheese, right?” Then, without waiting for an answer, she grabbed the container of grated mozzarella from the refrigerator. “You got any ideas why a girl who is loved to distraction by both her parents would rather have a root canal than spend time with her mother, but thinks her father can do no wrong and goes to pieces when she can’t be with him?”

CHAPTER SIX

“NOT HAVING KIDS MYSELF,” Sarah said as she sprinkled cheese onto the eggs Elizabeth had scrambled, “I’m probably not the best person to ask. But since you did, I remember at fourteen, I preferred my father to my mother. He was just less…I don’t know, judgmental. Actually, Rose and I have always had a sort of prickly relationship.”

“With Lucy,” Elizabeth’s voice trembled, “she knows she takes after me, but she looks at me these days and it kills her to think she might end up like me.”

“Or she could just be a typical fourteen-year-old girl,” Sarah said. “And it’s just a stage you have to live through.” She glanced around the kitchen, wondering about silverware. Somehow, without realizing it, they’d changed places and now Elizabeth, seated on stool by the stove, was watching as Sarah finished cooking the breakfast.

“How did this happen?” Elizabeth blew her nose. “You’re the customer. Oh, well, no charge.” She managed a watery smile. “You must think I’m some kind of nutcase. We haven’t seen each for years and you’re here five minutes and I fall apart.”

“I tend to have that effect on people,” Sarah said. In fact, she’d barely recognized Elizabeth and might not have if Elizabeth hadn’t said her name first. A glimmer of the old Elizabeth lingered in the husky screen-siren voice and the creamy complexion, but the flashing dimples and almond eyes were lost in soft folds of flesh. The lithe cheerleader shape was now pillowy breasts and hips sausaged into black stretch pants. She divided the food between the two plates Elizabeth had set on the chrome serving shelf. “I’m working on it though.”

“Let’s eat back here.” Elizabeth pulled her stool up to the counter and sat down again. “I can see if anyone comes in.”

Sarah dug her fork into the eggs. “Not bad. If I do say so myself.”

“Remember home ec?” Elizabeth asked. “One time we were supposed to be making… what was it, some kind of cake together. And you drove me crazy because everything had to be carefully measured.” She set down her fork. “You insisted on running a knife over the top of a cupful of flour to make sure it was exactly one cup.”

Sarah smiled. “I remember that. You drove me crazy. You kept adding things that weren’t in the recipe.”

“But Matt liked my cake best,” Elizabeth said.

“Yep.” Sarah nodded, remembering. “Matthew liked everything best about you.” Suddenly embarrassed at what she’d said and at the power still remaining in those memories, she made a production of getting more coffee for both of them. At the moment, Matthew didn’t feel like a safe subject.

“Have you been working here long?” she asked.

“Six weeks.”

“Must be interesting meeting new people…lots of tourists, huh?”

“It’s a job,” Elizabeth said. “Nothing like what you or Matt do.”

“At the moment, it’s more than I do,” Sarah said. “I thought I’d come back here and—” She stopped herself. “Compassionate Medical Systems seems to have taken over. I gave Matthew a hard time about it. I accused him of selling out.”

Elizabeth shook her head.

“I know, I feel bad.”

“No, I don’t mean that. It’s just…the two of you. He’s been agonizing about whether or not to join.”

“He has?”

“God, yes. I tell him he needs to come down from his ivory tower once in a while, pay a visit to us real people. Everyone knows it would be the best thing that ever happened to Port Hamilton. I mean, how long has that hospital been there? It’s a dump. They’d tear that down, build something modern. And right now, the way Matt is always on call, they’d get more doctors and they’d all be making more money, which, for sure, would be good for everyone. Matt needs to throw his support to CMC, Sarah. If he doesn’t, he’s going to kill himself.”

Her appetite gone, Sarah pushed her plate away. “Now I really feel bad.”

“Don’t.” Elizabeth looked at her for a minute. “It’s funny, some people just kind of tiptoe through life, never putting their feet down too hard and then there’s…”

“Me,” Sarah said. “Sarah the trampler.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to.”

Elizabeth folded her arms. “Can I give you a piece of advice? I mean, it seems weird advising you, but—”

“Why would that be weird?”

“Well, it’s always…you know, Sarah’s so smart. Elizabeth’s pretty, but Sarah’s smart. But okay, here’s the thing. So you said something that maybe you shouldn’t have and maybe it bothered Matt. Well, so what? He’s a big boy, he’ll get over it. That’s the way life is. I make you mad. You make me mad. The world keeps turning, right? Quit beating yourself up. Go see him, say hi and act like nothing ever happened.”

Sarah considered. If nothing else it might help mend the personal rift. Plus there was always the chance that after thinking things over, he’d have a change of heart about her proposal. Maybe she’d give him a day or two though. Sarah finally nodded. “I might do that.”

“Good.” Elizabeth smiled. “You know what? I feel a whole lot better just talking to you.”

“That makes two of us,” Sarah said.

“Hey, Sarah.” Elizabeth’s smile grew less uncertain. “I should have said something before. I meant to, but I’m bad at this. Listen, I’m really sorry about your husband. That must have been tough.”

“Yeah.” Sarah looked beyond Elizabeth’s shoulder. “Well, I guess I should get going.”

AS HE WALKED through the mall, Lucy on one side, his former mother-in-law, Pearl, on the other, Matthew was thinking about Sarah. His plan had been to call her, suggest another Frugals trip, this time without drifting into the murky waters of professional ethics. That it still irked him to be accused of selling out was, he realized, because he shared her opinion.

“Elizabeth’s drinking,” Pearl said. “I worry about her.”

“She told me she was going to counseling,” Matthew said.

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