The Doctor's Secret Child

Caught between a burst of hysterical laughter and outright scorn, she almost squeaked, Rich husband? Who thought up that fairy tale? but brought herself under control enough to reply coolly, “Let’s not indeed! Assuming you’re telling the truth for once and really are her doctor, how do you rate my mother’s condition?”

“Poorly enough that I don’t want her trying to move around without assistance. A fall out of bed or down those steep stairs could finish her off. Even before the accident, she was in bad shape.”

“Bad shape how?”

He subjected Molly to a brief, clinical inspection, sweeping his glance from her glove-soft leather boots to the cashmere sweater showing above the fur-trimmed collar of her coat. “I find it depressing that you even have to ask. If you—”

“If I weren’t such a pitiful excuse for a daughter, I’d already know why,” she cut in. “Well, don’t let the clothes fool you, Doctor! Underneath, I’m still that shameless, unruly Paget girl whose parents deserved better than to be saddled with a child marked by the devil.”

“Those are your words, Molly, not mine.”

“They are the words which drove me out of town before I turned eighteen, and they were whispered loudly enough for everyone to hear. I imagine they’ll find new life now that I’ve returned.”

“Is that why you stayed away all these years? Because you felt you didn’t belong?”

She bit back a sigh, unwilling—unable—to tell him the truth: that after he’d grown tired of her and their clandestine summer fling, she discovered she was pregnant; that she was afraid her father would half-kill her if he found out; that she had no one to turn to because her mother hadn’t had the courage to defy her husband’s iron-fisted rule and help her. And that she hated all of them for what it had cost her.

“Never mind me,” she said. “I asked you about my mother. I know my parents’ car was hit by a train at a railroad crossing, that my father was killed instantly and my mother left seriously injured. I’d like to know the extent of those injuries and if she’ll recover from them.”

Something flickered in Dan’s eyes, a fleeting expression almost like regret. “You’ve changed, Molly. You’re nothing like the girl I used to know.”

“I certainly hope not!”

“You’ve lost your sweetness.”

“I’ve lost my juvenile illusions, Doctor. And if you’re still hanging on to yours, I’m not sure you’re fit to be in charge of my mother’s care. Which brings up another point: why isn’t your father taking care of my mother? He’s been our family doctor for as far back as I can remember.”

“He retired last year, so if it’s a second medical opinion you’re after, you won’t get it from him. But I’ll be happy to refer you to someone else, though if it’s a specialist you’re after, it’ll mean looking farther afield than Harmony Cove. I’ve already consulted the only orthopedic surgeon and respirologist in town, and both concur with my lowly family practitioner’s opinion.”

“I just might do that.” She tapped her booted foot on the worn linoleum and hoped he’d read it as a sign of impatience rather than the nervousness it really depicted. When she’d heard that Dr. Cordell had suggested social services contact her, it had never occurred to her that it was the son who’d assumed the mantle of medical expertise, and the idea took some getting used to. “Meanwhile, I’d appreciate a straight answer to a question you seem anxious to sidestep. How is my mother—and don’t bother to sugarcoat your reply. If she’s not going to recover or she’s likely to be left a permanent invalid, say so.”

His mouth, which once had inspired her to a passion so all-consuming that even now, eleven years later, the memory still sent a flush of heat through her belly, tightened grimly. “Prolonged use of steroids to treat her asthma have left her with secondary osteoporosis. Couple this with age, poor diet and general disregard for the maintenance of good health, and you’re looking at a woman whose ribs are so fragile that too energetic a hug could, quite literally, prove bone-crushing. The impact from the collision left her with a fractured hip which is being held together by surgically implanted steel pins. It’s possible she’ll become ambulatory again. It’s unlikely she’ll do so without the aid of a walker. It’s possible her bone health can be improved, but only marginally and only if she takes her prescribed medications. But she’s forgetful and depressed. I don’t think she’s particularly interested in getting well. I’d even go so far as to say she wants to die. Is that direct enough for you, Molly?”

Direct enough? Dear heaven, she was quivering inside from an up swell of shock and pain so acute they almost cost her her self-control. A great bubble of grief rose in her throat, as unexpected as it was inappropriate. “Quite,” she said, and yanked open the front door. The cold Atlantic wind slapped her in the face and she welcomed it. It restored her faster than any amount of tea or sympathy. “Thank you for stopping by.”

He took his time doing up his jacket and closing his black leather medical bag. “Your eagerness to see the back of me is premature, my dear. I want to be sure you understand your mother’s limitations and have some idea how to keep her comfortable before I turn her over to your tender mercies.”

She swept him a scornful glance. “The social worker who contacted me gave a very thorough picture of what to expect. I hardly need a prescription to change linen or empty a bedpan.”

“I doubt you’re as well-prepared as you think. It’s been years since you saw your mother, and you’re going to be shocked at the change in her. You might want to have me stick around for moral support, if nothing else.”

“No. I prefer to assess her state of mind and body without your breathing down my neck the whole time, so unless there’s specific medication or treatment—?”

“Both,” he said, “but the public health nurse stops by twice a day to take care of all that.”

“Then if I have any other questions, I’ll speak with you—or another doctor—later in the week.”

He regarded her levelly a moment. “You’ll have questions, Molly, make no mistake about that. And until or unless your mother elects to have someone else take over her case, you’ll address them to me. Furthermore, you’ll do it tomorrow. Make an appointment for midmorning. I’m not in my father’s old office. You’ll find me in the Eastside Clinic, down on Waverley Street, next to the old seamen’s union building. Cadie Boudelet from next door will sit with Hilda while you’re gone.”

“What makes you so sure you know Cadie Boudelet will make herself available? She and my mother were never that close in the old days.”

“Because she’s practically been living here ever since Hilda was discharged from the hospital.”

“She must have her hands full, doing that and minding everyone else’s business!”

“Well, someone had to step in and act the Good Samaritan, and you didn’t seem in any particular hurry to volunteer for the job.”

She closed her eyes because she couldn’t bear the censure she saw in his. When she opened them again, he was striding down the path, his shoulders bent into the wind, his dark head flecked with snowflakes. Not sparing her another glance, he climbed into his car, and drove down the hill toward the harbor.

From where she stood, Molly could see the lobster traps stacked by the sheds, and one or two hardy souls repairing fishing nets spread out on the paved area next to the docks. In another three months the snow would be gone and spring would color the scene in softer hues. The tourists would arrive in droves to exclaim over the picturesque sight of the lighthouse on the rocks jutting out at the end of the quay, and the petunias spilling down to meet the pavement from flower boxes nailed to the side of the wooden lobster shack.

Strangers would click their cameras and run their video film, and tell each other Harmony Cove was the prettiest darn town on the eastern seaboard. But right now, the entire scene was overlaid with gray misery relieved only by a slick of newly fallen snow on the steeply sloping roofs of the little houses lining the street.

She hated every last miserable stick and stone of the place. They brought back too vivid a reminder of the people who lived inside those houses—of their narrow-minded, judgmental outlook, their willingness to believe the worst of others, their certainty that the way they’d done things for the last hundred or more years was the only way, and that they were right and anyone who thought or acted differently was wrong.

Closing the door, she turned back to the hall just as Ariel came out of the kitchen. “We don’t need to go shopping, Mommy. The refrigerator’s full of food.”

“Maybe, but most of it’s probably been sitting there for weeks and should be thrown out.”

“No. The milk and eggs are fresh. I looked at the date on the cartons.”

If she said it was so, it was. Ariel might be only ten and still a little girl in most respects, but having only one parent had forced responsibility on her a lot sooner than other children her age. She’d been just four the first time she’d said, Don’t forget we have to take out the garbage today, Mommy. Sometimes, when things went wrong—and it happened often in those early years—Ariel had stepped into the role of comforter as easily as if she, and not Molly, were the parent.

Remembering, Molly tweaked one of her daughter’s long dark braids and held out her hand for a high five. “You’re such a little woman! What would I do without you?”

It was a question she asked often but today, for the first time, it took on somber new meaning. If Dan ever learned the truth and took Ariel away from her, how would she go on living?

Pushing aside the thought because it simply was not to be entertained, she tucked an arm around the child’s waist. “Let’s take your bag upstairs and go say hello to your grandmother. Maybe meeting you for the first time will cheer her up.”

The stairs loomed ahead, dark and steep, evoking in Molly memories of being banished to her tiny room when she was even younger than Ariel. The house had seemed full of threatening shadows then; of hidden monsters waiting to leap out and punish her for sins she never fully understood. Now, perhaps for the first time, she saw the place for what it really was: a desperately stark box as severe and confining as the man who’d once ruled it with an iron fist.

The door to her parents’ room door stood ajar. Pushing it wider, Molly peered inside and was immediately swallowed in another blast from the past. The same plain brown linoleum covered the floor. The thin beige curtains at the window were as familiar as the black iron bedstead hulking in the corner with a plain wooden cross hanging above it, on the wall.

Never had her father carried her from her own bed and snuggled her between him and her mother to chase away a bad dream. Not once had she been invited to climb in beside them for a morning cuddle or a nighttime story. In her child’s mind, that room had been as spartan as a prison cell, and looking at it now through an adult’s eyes, she saw nothing to change that perspective.

Aware that she was no longer alone, the woman half-reclining against the pillow shifted, raised one flannel-clad arm weakly, then let it flop down again. “Cadie, is that you?”

Shocked by the feeble voice, Molly stepped closer and saw that Dan had not exaggerated. Hilda Paget had never been a big woman but injury, illness, and a lifetime of hardship had reduced her to little more than a bag of fragile bones held together by loose skin.

Blinded by a wash of grief and guilt beside which the years of resentment and anger seemed suddenly pointless, she said, “No, Mom, it’s me.”

“Molly?” Again, the woman moved, this time trying to lean forward, but the effort cost her dearly and she sank back with a grunt of pain. But her eyes burned holes in her sunken face. “Child, you shouldn’t have come! People will start talking all over again.”

Swallowing the sudden lump in her throat, Molly bent to press a kiss on her mother’s cheek and stroked the limp hair away from her brow. “Let them. I’m here to take care of you, and that’s the only thing that matters.”

“But I already have someone. The nurse comes by twice a day, and Cadie from next door stops in every morning and again at night, and does a bit of shopping when I need it. And Alice Livingston brings me soup at noon.” But despite her protests, she clutched at Molly’s hands as if she never wanted to let go. “How did you know I was in trouble, Moll? Who told you?”

“The hospital social worker, abetted by your new doctor. Why weren’t you the one to call me, Momma? Did you think I wouldn’t care that you’ve been hurt or that I’d turn my back on you when you needed help?”