The Promise of Rainbows (13 page)

“Maybe you should return at another time, Ms. McGuiness,” Jeffries suggested in a quiet tone, completely nonplussed by the scene.

“I’ve got this, Jeffries,” Shelby told him. Then she shut the door in his deadpan face.

Moving quickly across the white silk rug to where Gail was seated, she put her hand on the woman’s back.

“Gail! Good heavens. What in the world is the matter?” Gail wasn’t named Hardcrew indiscriminately. She was the toughest woman Shelby knew.

Her boss shook a weak hand in the air. Her ruby, amethyst, and sapphire rings all glittered in the sunlight streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows.

“Give me a minute, Shelby. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m having a moment.”

Leave it to Gail to set a person down even when she was crying. Shelby took a seat in the tapestry chair across from the antique cherry desk. Silence hung between them for a few long minutes.

“Do you have a mirror?” Gail finally asked, pushing herself upright.

Leave it to Gail to address personal grooming first and foremost. Shelby handed her a makeup mirror from her purse, hoping that request was a positive sign her boss was coming back to herself.

Gail wiped at her kohl-lined eyes, which were smudged, and tidied her curly black hair. “Oh, take that thing away. I look like an old crone.”

“I’m sure Jeffries can find you a wet washcloth,” Shelby suggested, hastily stowing the mirror.

“It will take more than a good scrubbing to alter this damage.” Gail heaved out a sigh. “Crying does age a person, doesn’t it? I will have to ensure I don’t do it often.”

If Shelby hadn’t been so worried, she might have smiled.

“Shelby dear, why are you here? I can’t seem to remember at the moment.” Gail opened a desk drawer and drew out an object that took Shelby a moment to recognize.

“Is that a garter flask?” Shelby asked with a gasp.

Gail waved it in the air, and sparkles shot across the room from the crystals etched in the glass. “Yes. My first husband, God rest his soul, presented it to me on our first anniversary. I should have buried it with him. He made me drink quite a bit until he passed. But it’s too lovely for words. It’s from Paris, and it’s covered in Swarovski crystals. Of course they rub your thigh raw if you actually put it in a garter. Not a smart design.”

“It is beautiful.” Maybe she needed to get herself one, minus the chafing. “I’m here for your signatures on payroll this month.” Gail always signed the checks personally, saying it was her way of showing her employees she cared about them. Shelby rather respected that.

“Of course! Payroll! Lord have mercy. I must be having a day if I can’t remember something as regular as that.” She tipped back the flask and took a long draught. “Bourbon. Reserve barrel. Damn good. Would you like some?”

“No, thank you,” she said politely. “Do you want to talk about what happened?”

Fresh tears darted into Gail’s eyes, and she reached into her desk for a hand-stitched blue handkerchief embroidered with her initials. “I had a call this morning from my doctor. He tells me I have something called familial hyper…hyper.” She grabbed a notepad by the phone. “Hyper-tri-glycer-i-demia. Good Lord! Where do medical people come up with these names?”

Shelby had no idea what the term meant, but it sure didn’t sound good. Besides, tears and a garter flask implied something serious. “I’m so sorry to hear that, Gail,” Shelby said, her stomach swirling with nerves. “Is there anything I can do? Anything you need?”

“Hell’s bells, Shelby, this disorder isn’t going to kill me,” Gail muttered, taking another deep draw from her flask. “I won’t let it. But I am pissed I didn’t know about it earlier.”

“Umm…I’m not familiar with…what you have,” Shelby said, wishing she’d taken Gail up on her offer to have a drink.

“Neither was I,” Gail sighed, holding the flask to her ample bosom. “I went in for a checkup because a friend insisted I should. I’m only forty-five. You’d think I was in danger of being put six feet under if you asked Eunice. But that woman turned out to be an angel in disguise. Even though I exercise and watch my weight like a belle out for my first season, my triglyceride thingies were off the charts. The doctor asked if anyone in my family had heart issues at a young age, and I honestly didn’t know. I immediately called my aunt because my daddy—God rest his soul—never talked about his health. I hung up with her shortly before you arrived.”

Shelby immediately thought about her daddy. He’d be going on fifty-five years now—about the time when many men started to experience health troubles.

“True-blood Southerners don’t flap their gums about their health,” Gail continued. “It’s bad taste. Like talking about money.”

Shelby only nodded.

“Well, after having my aunt hem and haw about how it wasn’t polite to discuss anyone’s health, she finally shared that
she
had coronary heart disease. And of course my daddy died of a heart attack, but I always attributed that to him being with that gold digger of a woman half his age. He died in her bed, but I covered it up. The scandal would have rocked Nashville—although I think some people suspected.”

Mr. Hardcrew had died in someone’s bed? Good heavens! Shelby tried to school her features.

Gail waved her handkerchief in the air. “The doctors tell me I have this family disorder, which no one ever knew about because no one talks about their health. Well, I’m done with that provincial way of thinking, not that I’m going to pass my bad genes on to any children. I think that ship sailed when I divorced my cheating asshole second husband two years ago and took back my maiden name.”

Calvin Henderson had cheated on Gail? Shelby had always disliked him, but even though she and Gail were close in their way, her boss usually didn’t get this personal.

“My doctor wants to put me on Lipitor and suggested I eat more kale and sprouts,” Gail moaned, throwing her handkerchief on the desk. “I suppose I should be grateful he caught it, but the news was like a splash of cold water in the face. I’ve been carrying this genetic thing inside me my whole life and no one knew.” Then she shot up straighter in her chair. “
Shelby McGuiness.
I know your daddy left you when you were a baby, but what do you know about his family’s medical history?”

Suddenly Shelby found it hard to breath. Every time she went in for her annual gynecology exam and filled in her medical history, her daddy’s information and that of his kin amounted to a bunch of white space on the paper.

“Nothing really.”

Now Shelby was more than nervous. Didn’t people inherit genes for cancer from their parents? Like Angelina Jolie? Everyone knew the actress had gotten a double mastectomy for cancer prevention.

Shelby put her hand on her stomach—her body. What if she had something inside her from her daddy that could hurt her?

“Shelby,” Gail said in that tough-as-nails voice she was known for. “You listen to me. Don’t make the same stupid mistake I did. I was ignorant, and I’m not proud of it. You don’t need to be. Can your mama tell you anything about his family’s medical history?”

“We…ah…don’t discuss my daddy.” Mama didn’t like to talk about the past, and Shelby had never felt the need to ask her about family diseases. She was only twenty-eight, after all.

“It may be none of my business,” Gail continued, “and you can ignore me if you want, but I highly encourage you to find out as much as you can about your father’s family’s medical history from your mama. My doctor said they can prevent many conditions if they’re armed with knowledge upfront. He’s doing a full work-up on me now that we know I have this disorder. I’m
praying
they don’t find anything else.”

Shelby thought back to her last doctor’s visit. It had been for a pap smear, and they hadn’t talked about much beyond the fact that she was healthy, ate well, and exercised. But what if Gail was right?

“The same is true with cancer,” Gail said, echoing Shelby’s earlier thoughts. “My doctor couldn’t scare me enough about all the new tests they possess that can detect a family propensity for breast cancer.”

She handed Shelby the flask, which she took without hesitation this time. Cancer? Who wasn’t scared of that? Her mama’s sister had died of breast cancer. She took a deep draw of bourbon and coughed at its potency.

Gail leaned her elbows on her desk and stared at her. “I can’t imagine how difficult it might be to talk about this with your mama, but you should bite the bullet and get it done. Your health is important, Shelby. Trust me when I say I will no longer be ignorant about mine. I’m calling all my kin this coming week and asking them enough personal questions to send the women into vapors and the men off to their bourbon, mistresses, or both.”

Her head was pounding now. “All I know about my daddy’s people is that they were from Memphis, not close, and didn’t have much in the way of money.”

“
Hmm…
” Gail said and held her hand out for her flask, which Shelby passed to her. She took a deep drink and extended it back. “How did your daddy come to be in Nashville?”

Talking about her daddy was stirring Shelby up something fierce. She took another drink of the bourbon, hoping it would burn away the lump in her throat. “He came to Nashville in the hopes of becoming the next country music star. Instead, he became a washed-out musician who couldn’t land a gig anywhere in town. He ended up volunteering for the church choir to keep his music alive, and that’s where he met my mama.” For a time, they’d been happy, and that’s all Shelby knew.

“Why did he up and leave y’all?” Gail asked, her eyes intent.

“No one seems to know,” Shelby said, fighting the urge to cry suddenly. “Mama never talks about it. She won’t welcome me asking these questions. I haven’t asked about daddy’s medical history before, but I’ve asked plenty of other questions. She always tells me to leave the past in the past.”

“Sounds like my family,” Gail murmured, taking a hold of the framed photo of her daddy and mama on her desk and showing it to Shelby. “One thing I learned from the school of hard knocks is that there’s always more than one way to get an answer to a question. Hell, when I suspected my ex-husband was cheating on me, I up and asked him. That son of a bitch lied to my face. Do you know what I did? Hell, I hired a private investigator and had his ass followed. You can bet I had photos of him with some blond-haired slut half his age to toss in his face the next time I confronted him.”

Shelby couldn’t imagine what a scene that must have been. “Good for you.”

Gail’s nod was crisp. “You’ll figure out something, honey. No one is more enterprising than you. Why else would I hire some fresh-faced kid with a one-page resume? You have fire and wit, girl. Like me. Use them.”

Awash in fear and hurtful memories of the past, Shelby didn’t feel very fiery or witty. In fact, she felt all too human.

“I’ll see what I can find out,” she assured Gail, but mostly she was assuring herself.

“I know you will,” Gail said, reaching for the flask and draining its contents. “Well, that conversation was very Yankee of us, wasn’t it? How about I have Jeffries make us a proper drink to drive that foul taste from our mouths?”

Another drink sounded like heaven about now, even if it was just shy of eleven o’clock. “Jeffries does make the best drinks.”

Gail waggled her brows. “The doctor told me to watch my alcohol consumption, and I probably should, but right now, I just don’t give a damn.”

Shelby didn’t really give a damn either. She decided then and there that she was entitled to something as important as her daddy’s medical history.

Somehow she was going to get it.

Chapter 11

Jake had already sweated through two shirts by the time he showed up for his counseling appointment with Reverend Louisa the following Tuesday. All the motivation he needed to get well was his near-daily work with Susannah getting his house in order. Nothing was going to stop him from being the man who could take her out for a date and kiss her goodnight.

Nothing.

Not even himself.

Louisa stood up from her desk when the church’s receptionist showed him into her office. The room was a cheery yellow, and there were pictures of her family and inspirational sayings scattered around as decoration. The Reverend was wearing a pink blouse paired with a gray skirt. Stepping forward, she gave him a hug.

“Congratulations on showing up,” she said, shooting him an encouraging smile. “That’s sometimes the biggest step.”

“What’s the other one?” he asked, trying to balance his nerves.

“Coming back,” she quipped, reminding him of Susannah. “What would you like to drink?”

Joking about wanting a bourbon would be in bad taste, what with her being a preacher lady and it being only one o’clock in the afternoon. “How about some water?”

“Water we can do,” she said, crossing the room to a small tray table that held glasses. She opened the mini-fridge below it and drew out a bottle of water.

“I don’t need a glass,” he added quickly, wanting to wet his whistle. He could taste the dust and sand already, and they hadn’t even started talking yet.

“Humor me,” she said, pouring the water out slowly.