Wife by Design

“Lynn Duncan.”

“And she was my nurse.”

“Four years ago, yes.”

“I don’t remember her.”

“You might when you see her.”

With his chin jutting slightly forward, Darin nodded, his gaze toward the highway visible through the front windshield.

“You know what I miss most?” Darin asked.

“Besides your memory, you mean?” Grant quipped lightly. Because that was what the brothers did in these moments when Darin could focus clearly.

“I miss driving,” Darin said. “How come you don’t ever let me drive, Grant?”

Just like that, the child was back, the last words ending on a near-whine.

“You can drive sometime,” Grant said just as easily as he’d named the nurse they were on their way to see. “I’ll take you out to the desert this weekend.”

To the vast expanse of land they visited on occasion, just to let Darin get behind the wheel of a vehicle again.

His older brother turned to stare at him. “You promise?”

He’d hoped to have the weekend to tend to landscaping at the women’s shelter. Hoped to be able to do the job in his spare time. To spare Luke and Craig any additional work. “Yeah, I promise,” he said, because he had to.

And because he hadn’t even seen the women’s shelter landscaping. Maybe Lynn had been exaggerating. Seeing the job from a layman’s eyes. He and his guys had designed and installed a block’s worth of new landscaping in a day. Surely it couldn’t take Darin and Grant more than that to keep it up.

“But today is only Monday so we have to get a week’s worth of work done first,” he said now as they pulled into the parking lot outside the The Lemonade Stand.

“They make lemonade here?” Darin asked. “I like lemonade. Do you think they’ll let me have some?”

“There’s a cafeteria,” Grant said, information gleaned from his recent conversation with Lynn, Angelica and Lila McDaniels to finalize their plans and schedule Darin’s first therapy session. “We’ll see if they have lemonade. And you remember what I told you about the ladies, right?”

They’d been over this every day for the past week. Morning and night.

“They’ve been hurt and need me to stay away.”

It was the childish version, but at least the message was clear.

“That’s right.”

“I’ve never hurt anyone, have I, Grant?”

“Nope. As long as you don’t count those times you got me in a headlock and knuckle brushed my head.”

“Yeah,” Darin snorted as he grinned. “But you deserved it.”

“What did I ever do to deserve that? It hurt like hell.”

“One time you put my leather baseball glove in the bathtub.”

“It was dirty. I wanted to clean it for you.”

“You ruined it, Grant.”

“I know.” But he hadn’t meant to. He’d been four at the time.

“It was my first real glove and Mom and Dad didn’t have the money to buy me another one.”

Funny how things worked. Darin had damaged crucial parts of his brain attempting to save his wife. But he could still remember an event like this, which had happened more than thirty years before, as if it’d been yesterday.

“I’m sorry.”

Darin nodded. And gazed out at the nondescript parking lot.

“I’m afraid, Grant.” His tone was back to preaccident Darin. The admission was nothing he’d ever have expected to hear from his big brother.

“What if therapy doesn’t work?” he went on. “What if I never get the use of my arm back? I’m burden enough to you.”

Shoving the truck’s automatic gearshift into Park, Grant gave Darin a light punch on the shoulder. “It’s going to work, bro. And in the meantime, you’re going to be pushing a lawn mower with one hand. Just be glad it’s your right one that works.”

With one capable movement, Darin unfastened his seat belt and opened the door to the truck. Grant read the tension in the stiffness of his brother’s upper lip.

“Hey,” he said, a hand on Darin’s paralyzed limb. “We’re in this together, right?”

As long as Darin believed that, they’d be fine. Because Grant wasn’t going to let go. Or give up. Ever.

Darin took a long moment to answer. Grant waited.

“Right.” The answer finally came.

With that, Grant led his slightly taller and broader brother into the front hallway of The Lemonade Stand.

* * *

“LYNN!” THE CRY was a harried whisper. “That man is back.”

Sitting in her office close to the public access door at the Stand, Lynn glanced up from charting a twenty-eight-year-old pregnant woman who’d just been in for a checkup to see Maddie hovering in the doorway.

She frowned. “What man?”

A lot of men wanted access to their residents. The Stand’s job was to keep them away.

“The one who was here before, the baseball-cap-slapping-when-he-walked-in-the-hallway one.”

Ah. Grant Bishop. He was fifteen minutes early.