Eye of the Storm

“Lynley?”

“Thank goodness.” Her best friend’s voice, normally brisk and filled with energy, sounded tight and raspy through the receiver.

“What is it?”

“Mom’s disappeared again and this time I haven’t been able to find her.”

Megan turned from the window. No. Not again. Poor Kirstie. “How long has she been missing?”

“Maybe all night. I can’t believe I didn’t check on her, but she was doing so well the past few days and I was studying late. I remember laughing with her because she teased me about what she should call me when I got my doctorate in nursing. She named me Dr. Nurse Marshal. I was tired and I thought she’d gone to bed, and I fell asleep—”

“Lynley, calm down,” Megan said. “Call some neighbors and ask them to help search. She may have taken shelter in a barn again until it gets light enough for her to find her way home.”

“I’ve already called everyone whose land adjoins ours. No one’s found her. I know they’re getting tired of my calls, though Elmer Batschelet offered to use his dogs to track her. I’ll probably take him up on it if she doesn’t show up soon. Do you know how many times this has happened in the past month?”

Megan took her lower lip between her teeth. Now was not the time for recriminations, but couldn’t Lynley see the obvious? “This makes the second since I’ve arrived.” An average of once a week.

“It’s getting worse.”

“Have you called the sheriff?” Megan asked.

“He and his men are out searching. Again. Poor Sheriff Moritz. And poor Mom. She’s always so embarrassed when this happens.”

“We can help her deal with the embarrassment later. First get her safely home.” Megan stretched. “When she shows up, bring her by the clinic so we can check her out.”

“I’ll be in for work as soon as I find her.” There was a sigh. “If I do. If she’s okay. I doubt she’ll be in shape to even answer phones today.”

Megan allowed those statements to linger. Maybe Lynley would talk herself into doing the right thing and prevent a quarrel that neither of them wanted right now. Kirstie’s daughter needed to see reason before Kirstie got hurt.

“Megan?” The voice was tentative, almost as if Lynley could hear Megan’s thoughts. And she probably could. They’d known each other from the cradle. “What if she doesn’t come back this time?”

Instead of reassuring her friend as she had been doing since Kirstie’s mysterious episodes began last month, Megan pressed her lips together. It was a good question. Maybe Lynley needed to follow it to its logical conclusion and start dealing with the dangers of her state of denial.

“Megan?”

“I don’t know, but you can’t keep trying to do this alone.” Megan felt awful as she spoke the words, but as Kirstie herself had said, her daughter wouldn’t listen to reason. “You need help.”

“We just need to get through this until we figure out what’s really causing the problem.”

Megan forced a gentleness to her voice. “Then if you won’t accept help, place her into protection until we do get it figured out.”

“Protection?” There was a soft snort. “You mean imprison her, don’t you?”

“I mean arrange it so this doesn’t happen again.”

“Megan, she’s a vital, active, fifty-two-year-old woman, not someone accustomed to sitting in a rocking chair or being cooped up in a block of rooms. You think she deserves to be locked up in a nursing home?”

“I don’t think she deserves Alzheimer’s, but—”

“Don’t say that! I hate that word. You know as soon as that diagnosis is made and the patient is shoved into a lockdown ward, no one ever searches for other causes, they just treat the symptoms. I’m not giving up on her that easily.”

“I’m not telling you to give up.”

“This isn’t sundowner’s syndrome.”

Megan couldn’t miss the increasing tautness of Lynley’s voice. “It’s okay,” she told her friend. “You’re not alone in this. I’m here for you.”

There was a brief silence and then “How? You wouldn’t move in with us.”

Shame attacked Megan. She didn’t have the strength to explain yet. “I’ll do all I can to help you and Kirstie through it.”

“You mean help Dr. Kelsey convince us she really is losing her mind?” There was a plaintive sadness in Lynley’s words.

Megan closed her eyes. “I didn’t say that. I’m here as your friend.”

There was a quiet sigh. “Okay. Thanks. I’m glad you’re back in Jolly Mill even if we don’t agree about everything.”

“We’ve never agreed about everything.”

“This is different.”

“Can’t you just trust me for once? I am a doctor now.”

“And I’m a nurse. So is Mom.”

“So you’re saying two nurses trump a doctor?” Megan forced a smile so it would bleed into her voice. Anything to lighten the moment.

“Something like that. Megan, are you…” She paused, sighed. “Be honest with me. Why did you come back here?”

Megan closed her eyes. There it was. The question.

“Your family’s all in Cape Girardeau now,” Lynley continued. “Why didn’t you go there? Not that I didn’t want you to come here, because I did, but—”

“You should know why. This is still home to me.” Unlike being with her family. If she heard Mom tell her one more time how wonderful it was to have grandchildren, and that she wanted more, Megan would pledge lifelong celibacy. Let her big brother provide all the descendants for the Bradley family. Randy seemed happy to do it.

“Megan,” Lynley said, “did Mom ask you to come here and convince me to let her check into a nursing facility?”

Megan hesitated a second too long. “That’s not why I came.”

“But she did ask you.”

“She’s afraid you’ll waste the rest of your life taking care of—”

“Waste? Did you say waste?”

“She’s the one who said it, Lynley, not me.”

“Careful, or you’ll begin to sound like Dad.”