Dorothy Garlock - [Tucker Family] (23 page)

“Even teaching?”

“I don’t want to get my hopes up too high, but I might want to give it another try.” Holden smiled. “I’d still be afraid of what would happen if I had a tremor standing in front of a classroom of children, but who knows, someday I might find the confidence.”

“Your tremors might go away entirely. You might not have to worry.”

“If they do, I’ll have you to thank.” Slowly, Holden leaned forward, reaching out to take her hand in his. He was staring at her intently, his feelings suddenly as unmistakable as if he were whispering them in her ear.

Though there was still a fluttering in her heart, Christina knew that even something as innocent as holding his hand was a betrayal of her feelings for Tyler. It also wasn’t fair to Holden. The last time she’d confessed to something, it had resulted in pain and sorrow, but now, with his thumb lightly tracing an arc across her palm, Christina knew she no longer had a choice. Slowly but firmly, she pulled her hand from his.

“What’s the matter?” he asked softly. “Did I do something wrong?”

Holden’s words nearly broke Christina’s heart. The truth was that he’d done
nothing
wrong. He’d met someone he was attracted to, came to know her, expressed his feelings, and, if only for a moment, had them returned. Now she prepared herself to shatter the illusion she had helped create.

“No, you didn’t,” she said, “but I did.”

Holden paused. “You’re talking about the other night…”

Christina nodded.

“I didn’t mean for what happened to upset you,” he said, his eyes searching for hers, but she would not allow them to meet, “but I don’t regret what happened. I certainly didn’t show up at your door so that I could kiss you. I just wanted to spend some time with you. I thought that you’d want to see that I was feeling better. But after you helped me with my tremor, once I looked you in the eye I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to kiss you, consequences be damned.”

“But there
were
consequences,” she argued.

“For whom?”

“For me!”

“What are you talking about, Christina?” he asked, growing frustrated.

“What happened wasn’t your fault,” she tried to assure him, “but I shouldn’t have acted as I did.”

“Because you kissed me…?”

“Yes.”

Holden frowned. “Maybe I could have chosen a better time to show you how strongly I felt about you,” he explained insistently, “but I remember what happened when our lips first touched. You kissed me back. I didn’t imagine that, did I?”

“No, you didn’t,” Christina had to admit as tears began to well in her eyes. Desperately, she turned and looked out the window; the rain fell harder now, as if it were trying to match the tension in the room.

“Because of that, because of what all you’ve done for me, I’ve come to a decision,” Holden said. “I want you to be a part of my future. I want to see where our relationship can take us. I want
you
.”

Even though Christina had known that this moment was inevitable, that she’d have to tell Holden about why such a decision was so difficult to make, to finally be confronted with it nearly tore her heart in two. She could see that everything he’d said had been genuine, heartfelt, and earnest. If only she had refused his kiss, then none of this would be necessary, but she could wish all she wanted…nothing would change…

“I…I can’t be with you, Holden…,” she answered him tearfully.

“Why not?”

“Because…because I’m involved with your brother,” Christina explained. “I’m involved with Tyler.”

The look that crossed Holden’s face was exactly the same as the one Tyler had after she confessed in the examination room. With his eyes wide, his mouth slightly opened, and his body jolted so hard with shock that he looked unsteady, Holden was clearly dumbstruck by her words. Shame again filled Christina; she couldn’t believe that she’d hurt the both of them as badly as she had. But when Holden spoke, unlike the fire and brimstone that colored Tyler’s words, his voice was soft, barely a whisper.

“Are…are you…in love with him…?”

Christina was stunned by his question. With everything spinning around her, there’d never been time for her to ask such a thing of herself. While Tyler had been exasperating in the beginning, she now cherished the moments they spent together, especially the day he’d shown her his beehives and the night they’d kissed underneath the stars.

I don’t know…

“I never meant to deceive you,” she replied. “I would’ve told you, had I been sure.”

“But I didn’t give you the chance,” he finished her sentence.

Through a haze of tears, she cried, “I’m so sorry!”

“Does he…does Tyler know you feel this way?”

For a moment, Christina wondered if Holden wasn’t trying to figure a way around the predicament she’d placed him in, but when she looked at him and saw the resigned look in his eye she knew there was nothing malicious about his question.

“He does. We…we’ve…,” but she stopped, unable and unwilling to hurt Holden further with the details of her relationship with his brother.

Holden’s reaction made it clear that he understood; his shoulders slumped even further, his expression grew even more pained. “Did you tell him about…our kiss?” he asked.

“I had to,” Christina answered. “But I kept it in too long. I only told him after he’d rescued me from Annette. He was so upset that I don’t know if he will want anything to do with me now.”

“Tyler’s stubborn to a fault,” Holden said, “but I doubt that even he’s a big enough of a fool to throw
you
away.”

Holden rose from the bed and, without another word, went to the door. Christina desperately wanted to say something, anything that would soothe the hurt she’d so clearly caused him, but there was nothing that could perform such a miracle. Stopping with his hand on the knob, Holden turned to look at her. Even though, in her heart, she had made her choice, she knew that he would someday make a woman extremely happy.

“I’m so sorry, Holden,” she said.

Smiling painfully, he replied, “Right now, I think both of us are.”

Then he left Christina to her tears.

T
HE DAY AFTER
she’d told Holden about her feelings for Tyler, Christina left the Sutter home and returned to her apartment. When she opened the door for the first time, a shiver of memory raced down her spine. The front room was just as it had been when Tyler had rescued her from Annette’s vicious attack; a chair still lay on its side beside the shattered remains of a coffee cup; Christina was surprised to discover that, in the chaos of that night, she couldn’t recall when it had been broken.

Just as she swept up the broken cup, Christina went about repairing the pieces of her life.

After thoroughly cleaning her apartment of any signs of the struggle, she did some shopping, wrote long letters to her mother and Charlotte that left out many embarrassing details, and then settled down for a good night’s sleep; the next morning would be her first day back at work.

But her last thought before drifting off to sleep was a troubling one…

She had yet to hear one word from Tyler.

“Now where in the hell did I put that damn thing?”

Dr. Barlow stomped around his office in a huff. For the last few minutes he’d been out of sorts looking for his stethoscope, and he had proceeded to make the room an even bigger mess. Stacks of books had been toppled and then scattered. Crumpled pieces of paper had been dumped from the trash bin beside the desk. Cupboard doors were yanked open, their contents added to the chaos.

The doctor was as frenzied as his office. His hands kept rising to the top of his head, absently pulling at tufts of his white hair. When he wasn’t swearing about the stethoscope, he was muttering to himself under his breath. Occasionally, he took off his glasses to pinch at the top of his nose, his eyes shut tight. He was as hard to be around as a bear awakened early from its winter of hibernation.

“Do you remember where you were the last time you saw it?” Christina asked from the safety of the doorway.

“If I knew that, I wouldn’t be standing here half out of my mind, now would I?” he snapped. No sooner had the last angry world left his mouth than Dr. Barlow stopped pacing about, took a deep breath, and said, “I’m sorry that I spoke to you that way, Christina. I’m a bit out of sorts today.”

“Apology accepted,” she replied. “Let’s just find it.”

Watching the doctor as he went back to searching for his medical instrument, albeit a bit less angrily than before, Christina wondered if he was out of sorts because he’d resumed taking morphine. It pained her to even think such a thing, especially remembering how he had promised her he’d given it up, but he’d been a grouch since she’d walked in the door that morning. He’d even been curt with a couple of patients, leaving it up to her to mend things once he’d left the room.

Ever since the afternoon she’d been knocked to the ground by the strange man, Christina had worried that Dr. Barlow might fall off the wagon. It was obvious that he was stressed by their encounter. Maybe he’d found comfort with an old companion, taking the drug so that his worries would vanish. Still, she didn’t dare ask, not with the mood he was in.

Instead, she started looking for the stethoscope. She didn’t want to rummage around in the mess of books at her feet, so she began looking elsewhere: on the chair nearest the door, the top of his desk, anywhere the doctor hadn’t already been. It didn’t take long for her to find it; it was wadded up and stuffed into the deepest pocket of a jacket hanging from the coat tree.

“Here it is,” she said, holding it out to him.

“Damn it all!” Dr. Barlow swore as he snatched it from her hand.

This time, there was no apology.

Leaving Dr. Barlow to fume in his office, Christina walked out to the empty waiting room. Callie sat behind her desk, sorting files.

“The doctor sure is in a foul mood today,” Christina complained.

“It’s days like this one where I’m glad I sit out here.” Callie smiled, patting her desk. “Course, that doesn’t mean you’re not gettin’ plenty of my sympathy.”

“I just watched him tear apart his office looking for his stethoscope.”

“Did he check his coat pocket?” Christina couldn’t have held back her laughter if it was a contest with a bushel full of money as the prize. Callie joined in, chuckling along with her, knowing that she’d been right.

But even though they were laughing, Christina still couldn’t help worrying about Dr. Barlow. The thought that he was abusing morphine again kept nagging at her. She’d confided her fears to Callie before…

“How has the doctor been since I’ve been gone?” she asked.

Callie rolled her eyes. “You see how grouchy he is today?” she replied. “He’s been a pain in the rear end the whole time. Complainin’ ’bout one thing right after another. Doesn’t seem to make any difference whether it’s deserved or not, he just keeps right on barkin’.”

Again, Christina remembered the look in the strange man’s eyes when he turned to face the doctor; for that matter, she recalled the fear Dr. Barlow had shown her immediately after the man left.

“You…you don’t suppose he’s started taking drugs again, do you?” she asked.

“No, that ain’t it.” Callie shook her head. “As a matter of fact, I think it’s just the opposite.”

“You do?”

Callie rose from her chair to sit on the edge of the desk, close to where Christina stood. She paused before she spoke, cocking her head and listening, making certain the doctor wasn’t about to interrupt them.

“I had an uncle back in Alabama, my mother’s brother, Earl, who had a problem with drinkin’ every bit as bad as the doctor has with his drug,” she began, “though he didn’t come to it the same direction, took it up out of choice, not ’cause he was bein’ chased by demons he wanted to escape, but it had its claws in him just the same.

“One night, Earl had been out drinkin’ in the tavern where he spent almost every night. Though he’s drunker than a skunk, he gets in his car and starts speedin’ home. He ain’t in no shape to drive, so he ain’t far down the road when somethin’ startles him and he crashes right into a tree. Somehow, even though his car is a complete wreck, Earl walks away without a scratch.

“The only answer Earl could come up with was that the Good Lord was giving him a chance: give up the drink or burn in hell. Well, Earl wasn’t about to begin arguin’ with Him, so he poured all his bottles of booze down the drain and struggled to stay sober.

“Now, most days, Earl was the sweetest man. He always had a joke or a sweet tucked away in a pocket, waitin’ for one of us to come ’long so he could give it to us, but without drink in his life he turned ’bout as rotten as a tomato in the summer sun. Walked round with a sour face, shoutin’ at anyone unwise enough to get too close, miserable most days. Eventually, he got used to it, returned to bein’ most of the good man he’d been, but it weren’t an easy path to walk. The way I reckon things, Dr. Barlow’s on that same road.”

Christina felt the sharp sting of embarrassment listening to Callie. What she described sounded an awful lot like how Dr. Barlow had acted ever since Christina had found him in his backyard. Could it be that his grouchiness was the price he suffered through to stay off of morphine? If so, he was a far stronger man than she was giving him credit for.

“I think you might be right,” she said.

“That’s why we’ve got to be
extra
patient with him now,” Callie explained. “It’s clear he’s strugglin’ to get through this. He don’t need us givin’ him more grief on top of it. After all, it’s like the good book says; you can’t judge a man without walkin’ a mile in his shoes. Whenever I imagine what he’s goin’ through, it makes it a lot easier to turn that other cheek.”

Before Christina could respond, Dr. Barlow stalked down the hallway. Putting on his jacket, he looked at her and said curtly, “If we’re going to make those appointments to the south of town, we’ll need to get moving. Don’t dillydally around; just grab your things and get to the car.” Without waiting for a response, he turned and walked away.

Christina understood what Callie had said about being patient with him, but Dr. Barlow was making it awfully difficult.

Christina spent the rest of the afternoon gritting her teeth at every grumbled complaint, every snide comment, and every needlessly barked command Dr. Barlow hurled her way. Occasionally, a sick farmwife or sore orchard hand would worriedly glance at Christina in disbelief of the way the doctor spoke to her, but she responded by plastering a grin on her face and weathering the storm. Regardless of how she acted, his words still stung.

Leaving the last farmstead, where Dr. Barlow had humiliated her by chastising her about how she was putting a bandage on a woman’s painful, bleeding sore, Christina had had enough.

Stopping just short of the coupe, she decided that unless he revealed the reason for his grumpiness, she would rather walk home than be subjected to another abusive car ride.

“What is the matter with you today?” she asked, folding her arms over her chest and refusing to budge an inch until he answered. “You haven’t had one good thing to say about my work all day.”

“I have so,” Dr. Barlow grunted, tossing his bag into the backseat.

“Then what was it?”

Dr. Barlow opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out. He blinked a couple of times, trying to come up with an answer that simply wasn’t there, before he sighed deeply.

“You’re right,” he said. “I shouldn’t be treating you like I have, especially after everything you’ve been through, and this your first day back. I’ve just got a lot on my mind.”

“Then why don’t you tell me what it is?”

He looked back down the drive, far away from her piercing stare. “Can’t this wait for another time?” he asked.

“Ever since I came to your house that afternoon,” Christina said, not needing to mention what she had found, “you’ve told me to wait for an answer to all my questions. Doesn’t there have to be a time when I get them? You can’t just keep on putting it off forever.”

“I told you about why I take morphine,” he said defensively.

“You told me some of it,” she agreed, “but we both know there were things left unsaid.”

Dr. Barlow didn’t answer; Christina noticed that even though he didn’t agree with her, he didn’t contradict her, either.

“Does this have anything to do with the man who collided with you in the street the other day?” she asked.

Without his saying a word, Dr. Barlow’s reaction told Christina everything she wanted to know. His eyes flew to hers, wide open, even a bit frightened, as his mouth puckered into a tight grimace. Her assumption had been correct, her words striking their mark.

“Who is he?” she asked.

Dr. Barlow looked away, making no response.

“Did he threaten you?” Christina pressed, wanting him to open up to her.

But still she got no answer.

Christina simply could not believe the way each of the Sutter men behaved around her; getting something out of them was as difficult as pulling teeth. But eventually, both Holden and Tyler had confided in her. It was her hope that their uncle would be no different.

“I want the truth, Doctor,” she insisted.

“Not here,” he finally answered. “Just get in the car. I’ll tell you what you want to know while we drive back to Longstock.”

Christina nodded. Just as she was about to open the passenger’s door, the doctor stopped her.

“Wait,” he said. When she looked up, he tossed the coupe’s keys across the roof and she reflexively caught them. “If I’m going to tell you these things, it’ll be in both of our interests if you’re driving. I’m sure you’ve noticed, but I’m not so good behind the wheel.”

Driving the coupe back toward Longstock, Christina took each turn carefully so as not to screech the tires, checked her side mirrors to see if anyone was coming up behind them, and all the while maintained a respectable speed. In short, her driving was the opposite of the doctor’s. Still, she knew that her attention wasn’t focused entirely on the road.

Dr. Barlow sat beside her, one arm draped out the open window on the passenger’s side. Even though he had promised to tell her what was weighing on his mind, he’d yet to say a word. Several miles had passed, and still he stared out the window, watching the countryside slide past.

Christina didn’t press him; something about the way he’d spoken to her back at the farmstead led her to believe that this time would be different. A few moments later, her patience was rewarded.

“You were right to worry about that man,” Dr. Barlow finally said, still looking away from her, his eyes never leaving the orchards. “Knocking a lady to the ground is the least that degenerate is capable of. Ever since that day, I’ve been all out of sorts.”

“When he turned back to face you, he looked so…violent…”

“Dangerous is what he is. If I’d gotten a better look at him when he went past, I never would’ve shouted after him. Messing with Luther Rickert is about as wise as sticking your hand into a nest of vipers!”

Even the man’s name, Luther Rickert, sent a shiver of unease racing down the length of Christina’s spine.

“For the life of me, I still can’t figure out how two fine people the likes of Christian and Celia Rickert had such a boy,” he kept on. “You’d have been damn hard-pressed to find two nicer, more good-hearted folks. Why they got two sons as rotten as Luther and his brother, Donnie, only the Lord knows.

“Even when they were boys, whenever Celia brought them into the clinic you expected there to be trouble. Luther would pocket anything left lying around, some bandages or a tongue depressor, anything he could get his mitts on. Donnie went along with anything his brother did. He idolized Luther. In the end, that’s probably what killed him.”

“Luther’s brother is dead?” Christina exclaimed.

“Yes,” Dr. Barlow said, finally turning to face her. “And Luther thinks that I’m the one responsible for it.”

“But why?” she asked, quickly righting the drift of the car onto the shoulder of the road. “Why would he think it was your fault?”

The doctor sighed deeply but didn’t answer Christina’s question.