Chapter Eleven

Kate took Emmaline home and then brought her groceries into the house before unbuckling all the children and bringing them in as well. In the kitchen, Emmaline sat in a chair at the table and cuddled baby Alaina while Kate quickly put away the groceries and prepared two cups of tea. The other two children were sitting on the floor in the living room, occupied with the contents of a bag of toys Kate had set out for them.

Before she sat down, Kate opened an odds-and-ends drawer to put away a roll of Scotch tape that Emmaline had gotten at the Mercantile. There, on top of a haphazard pile of other items, lay three hospital bracelets.

At the exact moment Kate opened the drawer, Emmaline said, “Oh, wait, I’ll—”

Silence fell in the kitchen as Kate closed the drawer with a soft snick. Three hospital bracelets? Three admissions with overnight stays of at least one night? All Kate could envision was the hospital bill that she had seen laying on this very table the previous week. The one that indicated that Emmaline had no insurance.

Emmaline cleared her throat. “Those aren’t mine,” she said. But she wouldn’t meet Kate’s eyes. She was still holding the baby on her lap, nervously bouncing Alaina lightly, her gaze on the infant.

“Not yours.”

“No. They are, uh, my sister’s. From when she had each of her children. Little mementos, you see.”

“Your sister has three children?”

Emmaline nodded, then turned her attention to the baby and started speaking to her in an animated tone.

Kate took a sip of her tea as her brain hummed along at high speed. She suspected that the bracelets were really Emmaline’s. Her unease for the woman’s health increased, as well as her concern for Emmaline’s lack of insurance.

Kate considered Emmaline’s recent symptoms in a new light. Could the chest pain be from panic attacks? Financial stress could be a terrible burden. Was Emmaline not only sick but also broke? Was she living in her grandmother’s house—even though she obviously preferred to be in Philadelphia—because she didn’t have to pay rent or a mortgage?

It didn’t really fit, Kate thought, reviewing what she knew about panic attacks. Emmaline’s heart rate hadn’t been sky-high, she hadn’t been terribly short of breath, sweating or dizzy. She had seemed to have an overall weakness, but her symptoms certainly didn’t fit neatly into a diagnosis of panic attacks.

Still, if she’d been having panic attacks, Kate could understand why Dr. McLaughlin had so firmly told Kate not to worry. This didn’t explain why her activities would be limited, though. Or why she would ignore the doctor’s instructions, Kate thought, recalling Emmaline’s muddied gym shoes and Paul’s sighting of her at the gym. No, panic attacks probably weren’t the most likely explanation.

She decided she’d have to confirm her suspicions if she’d ever be able to help Emmaline.

“By the way,” she broached carefully, “Paul thought he saw you going into the gym on Pine Ridge Road this morning. He was positive it was you.”

The silence that fell after she spoke seemed suddenly electrified to Kate. Emmaline was perfectly still for a long moment.

Finally, Emmaline picked up her spoon with her free hand and placed it in her tea, beginning to stir methodically. Fixing her eyes on the motion of her spoon in the cup, she said, “Of course, it couldn’t have been me, could it?”

“I suppose that’s what I’m asking you,” Kate began. She was becoming more and more aware of how cleverly Emmaline played with vocabulary. The question Emmaline had just posed was such a subtle evasion that Kate knew most people would say she had told them it wasn’t her. When in fact—

Suddenly she realized that Anna was nowhere in sight. The tot had been playing happily with a set of stacking cups a moment earlier, and Adam was still sitting on the living room floor.

“Where did your sister go?” she asked him, abandoning her questioning.

Adam pointed toward the front of the house without even looking up.

Kate sprinted, ignoring the twinges in her arthritic knee. Anna wasn’t in the living room, and the doors to the dining room on the other side were both closed. Quickly, she hurried up the steps, cringing to think of the tot climbing the entire steep flight of steps alone.

As she neared the top, she heard splashing sounds. She skidded around the first door on the left, and there was Anna.

She was smiling. “Wawa!” she said when she saw Kate.

Kate groaned. “Oh, Anna, no.”

The little girl could just reach the top of the sink when standing on her tiptoes. Her tiny fingers clearly had grasped at anything she could reach and, with unerring accuracy, had tossed the item into the toilet.

Kate rushed across the bathroom floor and tugged Anna away from the sink. Anna, predictably, began to scream. Kate set her down on her bottom in the far corner near the cabinet and said, “You are in time-out. Do. Not. Move.”

Returning to the sink, she saw with relief that Anna hadn’t been able to reach Emmaline’s toothbrush holder or toothpaste. Kate peered into the toilet. Anna had, however, gotten hold of a number of other items. In the toilet bowl, the things Kate could see included a bar of white soap, a plastic dental-floss dispenser, and a bottle of some kind of over-the-counter medication. Floating merrily on top of the water were three tiny paper cups of the type people kept in bathrooms.

Kate glanced at Anna. She was still sitting in the corner, but the howling already had diminished, and she was watching to see what would happen next. Kate sighed and rolled up her shirt sleeve.

Just then, Adam entered the bathroom, followed a moment later by Emmaline. “Alaina’s asleep,” she said quickly. “I buckled her in her carrier.” Then she glanced around, taking in the scene. “Oh!” she said.

“I’m so sorry,” Kate said. “There are several things in here. I’m going to take them out.”

Emmaline chuckled. “At least I just cleaned the toilet bowl this morning.”

“Thank heavens she isn’t strong enough to flush yet,” Kate said with a small laugh.

“I’ll take them downstairs and give them a snack, if you like,” Emmaline said.

“That would be great.” Kate knelt and began fishing things out of the toilet as the threesome disappeared. As she brought up the dripping items, she tossed the replaceable ones into the trash. The bottle of medication, thankfully, looked empty. But as Kate glanced at it, she noticed a warning pasted vertically on the bottle, although the print had been partially erased by the water. The warning mentioned something about chest pain and shortness of breath, which Kate assumed were side effects of the medication.

Kate peered at the bottle. Could it be Emmaline’s? She turned the bottle right side up again and tried to read the label. Unfortunately, it had gotten a little too wet, and the name of the medication was incomplete. All Kate could see was “P-l-a-g-r-i.” And the patient’s first name was completely washed away, as was the last, except for three letters: A-s and what looked like the remnants of an h.

Kate wondered if it was anxiety medication. While she still wasn’t convinced that Emmaline was having panic attacks, she hadn’t come up with a more likely explanation. The day of the incident at the store, Emmaline had popped a small white pill, which seemed to act very quickly. Had it been for angina rather than some kind of panic disorder? She felt as if she was growing more confused by the minute.

KATE DROPPED OFF the Miller children and chatted with Frank’s mother for a few moments, telling her about Adam’s near miss with the boxes in the store. Then Kate headed for the library.

“Hey, Livvy,” she greeted her friend as she breezed past the front desk.

“Hey, yourself,” Livvy said. “You look...purposeful. Hot on the trail of an idea? And, hey, I have your scarf in the car. Remind me to get it before you leave.”

Kate stopped for a moment. “Okay. Don’t forget to get my scarf before I leave.” She snickered when Livvy gave her a narrow-eyed stare. “I need to look up information on a medication,” she said. “Try to, anyway. Do you have an up-to-date medicine index?”

“Prescription or over-the-counter?” Livvy asked.

“Prescription, I think.”

Livvy pointed a finger toward the ceiling. “I think your best bet, in that case, is to use the comprehensive indices upstairs.”

“Thanks.” Kate made a beeline for the stairs. At the top, she headed for the reference section and located the huge tomes of medical information.

Quickly, she looked up “plagri” and found that Plagridyll was the only one that fit. It appeared to be one of the brand names for a common allergy medication. There was absolutely nothing for any other medications with a similar spelling.

Kate looked up “panic attacks” in a different book of diseases and perused the information. There were several extensive lists of medications that were used to treat panic disorder. But nothing with “plagri” anywhere.

She returned to the book in which she had found the drug. The warnings for Plagridyll included instructions to call a doctor if the patient experienced any myriad of symptoms, including chest pain and shortness of breath. the description in the book said not one word about anxiety.

She snapped her fingers in chagrin and said, “Rats.”

Three other people around her lifted their heads and glared at her. One girl said, “Shhh!”

Kate mouthed “Sorry.” She closed the book and wandered back down the steps much more slowly than she had come up them.

Livvy saw her coming. She said something to Morty Robertson, and he nodded, then slid into the seat at the circulation desk as Livvy beckoned Kate to her office.

Kate followed Livvy, closing the office door behind her.

“No luck?” Livvy asked sympathetically. She handed Kate her scarf, which she apparently had retrieved from her car.

“Thanks.” Kate shook her head in answer to the question. “I thought I might really have a clue, but I was shot down in flames.” She grinned. “And then several people fussed at me for making noise.”

Livvy laughed out loud. “Problem child.” Then her amusement faded as she gave Kate a serious look. “So, what’s the latest on your investigation of the perplexing Emmaline Ashford?”

Kate sighed. “She wasn’t very pleasant to you, was she? If it’s any comfort, she treats Paul the same way.”

Livvy’s eyebrows shot up. “Really? So we’re the dogs, and you’re the bone.”

Kate blinked. “That’s one way to put it.”

She told Livvy about the hospital bracelets and the earlier finding of the enormous hospital bill.

“And, oh, I forgot to tell you I went fishing in Emmaline’s toilet this afternoon.” She described Anna’s adventure, and Livvy laughed.

Kate went on to describe finding the medication bottle and seeing the warnings about chest pain and shortness of breath.

“But as I researched it, I found out that this medication treats common allergy symptoms. Some of its side effects include chest pain and shortness of breath.”

Livvy’s eyebrows rose. “Yikes. If I were taking a medication and it gave me chest pain or shortness of breath, I’d quit taking it and go back to the doctor.”

“Me too.” Kate rubbed her temples. “I need to think about what to do next.”

Livvy patted her arm. “Hang in there. There will be an answer at the end of this adventure.”

After leaving the library, Kate went home, exhausted from her long day but anxious to tell Paul about everything that happened. But when she got there, she remembered that he had a dinner meeting in Pine Ridge with all the other area pastors. He wouldn’t be home until late, if the meeting followed its usual course. And by then, she was quite likely to be sound asleep.

LATE THE NEXT AFTERNOON, Kate returned home from an almost full day of running Faith Freezer meals to shut-ins and the elderly in town. When she walked in to find that Paul had made chili for dinner, she smiled.

“Oh, bless you,” she said. “I was looking forward to cooking about as much as I would having a cavity filled.” She hurried off to the bedroom to change into more casual clothes and wash her hands.

Paul had just called her to the table when the telephone rang. Kate reached for the receiver. “Hello?”

“Kate, the strangest thing just happened.”

It was Renee. Half the time she didn’t even bother to identify herself when she phoned. She didn’t seem to think it was necessary. Kate suspected it never occurred to Renee that Kate might receive other calls.

“Hello, Renee,” Kate said mildly.

The unspoken rebuke went right over Renee’s head. She took a deep, dramatic breath that was audible over the phone in preparation for her story. “This afternoon I took Mother to an audiologist in Pine Ridge. She’s certain her hearing aid isn’t working properly, although I told her she’s just getting older and therefore more deaf.”

And Kate just bet the older woman had loved hearing that blunt assessment. Which, doubtless, was exactly the way Renee had said it to her mother. Kate couldn’t help grinning. Renee definitely was an original.

To steer Renee back to the topic of interest, she prompted, “So you were driving...?”

“We were coming home when I saw Emmaline. I was near that gym on Pine Ridge Road when I saw her pulling into the parking lot. I would have stopped, but Mother was in a mood after the doctor told her she needed to turn up her hearing aid.”

Kate’s attention had sharpened the moment Renee mentioned the gym. “Are you sure it was her?” Although in her heart, she was sure Renee was right.

“I never forget a face,” Renee said grandly. “Or that hairstyle. It’s rather modern for Copper Mill, don’t you think? There was someone else in the car with her, but I couldn’t see who it was.”

Her sister had been scheduled to arrive that morning, Kate thought instantly. Most gyms offered guest passes, so Emmaline could have taken her sister with her.

Before Kate could respond, Renee said, “Besides, Kisses saw her too.”

Kate had to cough to disguise the laughter that nearly burst out. Renee wouldn’t have been at all amused. Kate simply had to ask. “How do you know?”

“He was sitting on Mother’s lap. He puts his paws on the windowsill, you know, and then he’s just tall enough to see out. He started to bark when we passed the gym, and I’m certain he saw Emmaline too. Why else would he have barked?”

Why else, indeed? Kate was afraid to wonder what it meant that she actually understood Renee’s logic. “Thanks for telling me, Renee,” she said. “I must go. We’re about to eat.”

“Wait,” Renee said. “How have you been doing?”

Kate frowned. “Fine. Why?”

“No reason,” Renee said hastily. “I was just checking.”

As conversations went, that one couldn’t have gotten much more bizarre, Kate thought.

Thinking back to the primary reason for Renee’s call, she wondered why Emmaline had denied visiting the gym the previous morning. Well, strictly speaking, she hadn’t denied it. But she had very carefully avoided answering when Kate had asked her about it flat out.

“As you surely heard, that was Renee,” she said to Paul as she returned to the table. “She saw Emmaline at the gym today.”

“Huh. So I’m not crazy.”

“I never thought you were.” She went on to tell him how Emmaline had danced around the question the previous day and about her suspicions regarding panic attacks.

“That’s very plausible,” Paul told her. “Good work. Are you ready to eat?”

“Sorry,” she said, “I’ve delayed dinner.”

“That’s all right. My chili only gets better the longer it cooks.”

Kate laughed. “Is that so?”

Paul had already set the table and added salad and warm bread. She took her seat and gratefully allowed him to serve her and offer the prayer.

Since they hadn’t had a chance to have any extended conversation during the day or the night before, Kate recounted the events of the previous afternoon from start to finish as they ate. By the end of her monologue about the incident with the toilet, Paul was laughing out loud.

“Oh, Katie,” he said, wiping tears from his eyes, “You always get yourself into the wildest adventures.”

Kate was laughing too, but then she sobered as she told him about finding the allergy medication and being disappointed that it had nothing to do with treating anxiety or panic attacks. “In fact,” she told Paul, “some of the major side effects of this medication include chest pain and shortness of breath. So now I’m wondering if that could be the cause of her problems. It might explain why Dr. McLaughlin told me she would be fine.”

“It might. At least now you have another clue to work with in trying to find out what’s wrong with Emmaline,” he said, clearly attempting to be encouraging.

“At this point, what is less important than why,” she responded. “Listen to all these facts and tell me if they fit any health problem you’ve ever heard of. Dr. McLaughlin says she’s just fine, but her in-patient doctor tells her to limit physical activity. She has episodes of chest pain and shortness of breath, she has hospital-admission bracelets, though she claims they belong to her sister, and she takes different kinds of medication. Yet she exercises and looks healthier than I do. She’s temperamental. And she stonewalls me every time I attempt to find out what’s really going on. I just know, Paul, that Emmaline is wrestling with some kind of major problem that goes beyond health struggles. I guess I need to do some research into anxiety.”

“Panic disorder is sounding less and less likely,” Paul told her. “Exercise is a recommended treatment for that, so it doesn’t make sense for her doctor to tell her to limit her physical activity.” He frowned. “Although after Renee and I both saw her at the gym, you’re pretty sure she is indeed exercising. That’s contradictory to the doctor’s instructions.”

“She has told me several stories that contradict each other, but when I try to ask her about them, she always manages to wriggle out of telling me the truth. It’s clear that she values and desires my friendship—maybe too much,” she added wryly. “But on the other hand, she won’t be vulnerable with me. My intuition tells me she’s definitely hiding something—several somethings, perhaps—that have to do not only with her physical health but also with her well-being in general.”

“Well, Katie, far be it from me to argue with your intuition,” Paul said. “I’m convinced that your intuition has a direct pipeline to heaven.” He smiled to lighten the atmosphere. “Don’t give up. Continue to befriend Emmaline, and don’t give up getting to know her. Of course, keep maintaining healthy boundaries too. There may be a reason Emmaline has been such a tough nut to crack.” Kate smiled as he continued. “I think God is testing your GSR.”

“My GSR...gunshot residue?” Kate asked in bewilderment. She was familiar with the term only because it was so widely used in both fictional television.

Paul chuckled. “No. Your Good Samaritan Rating.”