A Child Under His Tree

He tossed his phone on the dashboard and drove out of the parking lot. He didn’t need company. For one simple reason.

He wasn’t lonely.

If he wanted a date, he got a date. There was never a dearth of willing women when you were single and had the initials M and D following your name. They usually didn’t even mind all that much when they came a distant third behind his studies and his patients. And if they did mind, they soon parted ways. No harm. No foul.

Definitely no broken hearts.

He’d learned his lesson well enough not to repeat it.

He drove down Main Street. Even on a weeknight, the lights were shining brightly at Colbys Bar and Grill. He abruptly pulled into the lot and went inside. “Hey, Merilee.” He greeted the bartender as he slid onto an empty bar stool. Considering the crowded parking lot, the bar was pretty calm. Only two pool games going and nobody dancing on the small dance floor. “Grill must be busy tonight,” he commented when she stopped in front of him.

“Have a school fund-raiser going on in there,” she told him. “What’re you having tonight?”

Restlessness in a bottle.

“Just a beer,” he told her. “Whatever’s on tap tonight.”

She set a round coaster on the bar in front of him and a moment later topped that with a frosty mug of beer.

“Jane not working tonight?” Jane was the owner. Married to another one of Caleb’s cousins.

“Thursdays?” Merilee shook her head. “Do you want a menu?”

He shook his head. “Just ate.” He glanced around again. The beer didn’t really hold any interest. Nothing in the bar held any interest. Not the trio of young women sitting at the other end who were nudging each other and looking his way. Not the hockey game on the television mounted on the wall.

The door opened, and Caleb automatically glanced over, then wished he hadn’t, because the woman walking in looked straight at him. Pam Rasmussen was a dispatcher at the sheriff’s office. She had been around forever and was one of the biggest gossips in town.

And she was married to one of Kelly Rasmussen’s cousins.

He looked down into his beer, resigning himself to being courteous when she stopped next to him at the bar.

“Evening, Caleb. How’re you doing?”

“Same as ever, Pam. You just get off duty?”

She nodded. “I came by to pick up Rob.” She tilted her head toward the breezeway that led from the bar into the attached restaurant. “He’s holding a fund-raiser thing tonight for his class at school.” She pulled out the stool next to Caleb’s and sat. “Heard you saw Kelly today.”

He gave her a bland look. “Oh, yeah?”

She wasn’t the least bit put off. “Shawna Simpson had her baby in your office today for her checkup. She told me.”

“It’s still Doc Cobb’s office.”

“Everyone knows you’re going to take over his practice for good when he retires.”

“He’s not retiring. Just on sabbatical.”

She shrugged, dismissing his words. “Shawna said Kelly looks just the same.”

He slid a glance toward the restaurant, wishing her husband, Rob, would hurry his ass up. “I don’t remember Shawna from school.”

“Sure you do. She was Shawna Allen then.” Pam’s eyes narrowed as she thought about it. “Would have graduated high school a year ahead of you and Kelly, I think.”

Whatever. He pulled out his wallet and extracted enough cash to cover the beer plus a tip and dropped it on the counter.

“Leaving already?”

“Hospital rounds in the morning come early.” Not that early. But as an escape line, it was pretty good. “See you around.”

“Probably at the funeral, I imagine.”

The wind was blowing when he stepped outside the bar, and he flipped up the collar of his jacket as he headed for his truck. When he drove out of the parking lot, though, he didn’t head for his apartment.

He headed for Georgette Rasmussen’s old place.

Even though it had been several years since he’d last driven out there, he remembered the route as easily as ever. When he turned off the highway, the condition of the road was not so good. More dirt than pavement. More potholes and ruts than solid surface. The fact that there had never been anything as convenient as streetlights on the road didn’t help. If he were a stranger driving out to the Rasmussen place for the first time, he’d have needed GPS to find his way.

But Caleb couldn’t count the number of times he’d gone up and down that road when he and Kelly were teenagers. Following the curves in the road still felt like second nature.

When he pulled up in front of the two-story house, though, he wasn’t all that sure what he was doing there. It wasn’t as though she’d welcome a friendly ol’ visit from him.

He turned off the engine and got out anyway. Walked up the creaking porch steps and stood in front of the door beneath the bare lightbulb above it.

She answered on the second knock.

She’d changed out of the formfitting gray dress she’d been wearing earlier. In jeans and sweatshirt, she looked more like the high school girl she’d once been.

“Caleb.” She didn’t close the door in his face, which he supposed was a good sign. But she didn’t open it wider in invitation, either.

“Kelly.” He wasn’t used to feeling short on words like this.

Her lips were compressed. She’d let her hair down. It reached just below her shoulders. When they’d been teenagers, she’d usually worn it braided down to the middle of her back.

He’d always liked unbraiding it.

She suddenly tucked her hair behind her ear and shifted from one bare foot to the other. “What are you doing here?”

He balled his fists in the pockets of his leather jacket. It’d been too long since he’d had a date if he was so vividly remembering unbraiding her hair the first time they’d had sex. “Wanted to see how you were.”

“Still standing.” She held one arm out to her side. “As you can see.”

“Yeah.” He glanced beyond the porch. Light shone from a few of the windows, but otherwise the place was dark. “How’s Tyler’s arm?”

“Fine.” Her tone was short. “He’s asleep.”

Caleb exhaled slightly. “He’s a good-looking boy.”

She shifted again, lowering her lashes. “What do you want, Caleb?”