4
Jess never thought of herself as a food fanatic, particularly. She just ate sensibly, as she saw it—whole grains, plenty of steamed vegetables, lean meats and fish, and fresh fruit. She would never express it, but secretly, she wondered how anyone could eat any other way. Now she knew. Elizabeth’s table held some of the best-tasting food she had ever eaten in her life.
“Have some more chicken.” Elizabeth passed her the platter of golden fried pieces. “One little piece of white meat can’t have filled you up.”
“Oh, but it did.” Jess held up a hand to ward off the platter. “With the mashed potatoes and gravy, and all those vegetables, and the biscuits, I’m completely stuffed.”
Elizabeth passed the chicken on to Andy, who speared a drumstick before passing it on to Ray. Undeterred, she picked up the basket of bread. “Then at least have another biscuit while they’re warm and some of this plum jam. It was my mother-in-law’s recipe, and I’ve made it every year for about as long as I can remember.”
Jess eyed the biscuits. She really did feel as if she were about to pop, and she had eaten more bread tonight than she usually ate in a week, but those biscuits were beyond anything she had ever tasted. The battle she fought with her conscience was short, brutal, and over in the amount of time it took her to smile and accept the basket offered her. “Thanks. Maybe just a half.”
“Tell us more about this office you’re opening here in Last Chance.” Elizabeth tried to pass the nearly empty bowl of mashed potatoes to Lainie and then to Ray. Both declined. “We had a doctor here years ago when my children were small, but when he passed on, no one took over his practice and everyone just got used to going on up to San Ramon.”
“So I hear.” Jess shrugged. “In fact, just about everybody I’ve met has told me how happy they are that Last Chance has its own doctor, and then in the same breath told me that they already have a doctor in San Ramon who’s been looking after them for years. Not that I’m trolling other doctors’ practices.”
“Well, I’ll be your first patient.” Lainie smiled at Jess. “I don’t have a long history with some other doctor. And I’d love it if I didn’t have to run up to San Ramon to see a doctor.”
Jess couldn’t miss the quick glance Ray and Elizabeth exchanged before Ray cleared his throat. “Um, Lainie, you don’t have a long history, but you have already seen a doctor. Do you think it’s a good idea to switch now? I mean, he already knows you and everything.”
“I’ve had one appointment, and I saw a nurse practitioner. She just confirmed what we already knew, gave me a bunch of vitamins, and told me I should come back in about six weeks to see the doctor.” Lainie reached for the last biscuit and broke it open on her plate. “Pass me that gravy, would you, please?”
When the gravy was passed in silence and no other conversation was forthcoming, she looked up. “What? I’m eating for two now, you know.”
It was Jess who broke the uncomfortable silence. “Well, as you say, you have about six more weeks before you need to see a doctor. I’m sure you and Ray will be able to decide the best course for you to take.” She watched Lainie ladle the cream gravy, rich with chicken cracklings, over the split biscuit. “Although I’d like to send over some information on prenatal nutrition, if you wouldn’t mind. He may be little right now, but he’s growing at a rate you wouldn’t believe, and I know you want to make sure he’s getting everything he needs.”
Lainie’s fork stopped midway to her mouth. “What are you saying?”
“Nothing, nothing at all.” Jess laughed. “Just thinking a little nutritional information might not hurt, that’s all.”
“Well, that may be, but all I can say is there is a whole valley of folks around here whose mamas ate pretty much what’s on this table, and they’re all doing just fine.” Elizabeth braced her hands on the edge of the table to help herself to her feet. “Now, who’s ready for some peach cobbler? The peaches came from the tree just this afternoon.”
“Let me help.” Jess started to get up. She had the uneasy feeling she had just stepped on some toes, but Elizabeth waved her back into her chair.
“No, you just stay where you are. Ray’s going to give me a hand, aren’t you, honey?”
“Sure.” Ray still hadn’t said much since Lainie announced that Jess would be her doctor, and it may have been Jess’s imagination, but he did seem awfully eager to jump up from the table and help Elizabeth.
Jess could have kicked herself for introducing so much awkwardness into what had been the most pleasurable evening she had spent in a long time. Trying again, she turned to Lainie with a smile. “So, how have you been feeling?”
“I’m feeling great.” Lainie planted her elbows where her plate had been as Ray took it to the kitchen. “I felt a little queasy a couple of mornings last week, but other than that I’ve been just fine. And as you noticed, there’s nothing wrong with my appetite.”
Jess cringed a little. She had always struggled with this tendency to call things as she saw them, and she had wound up regretting it more times than she’d like to remember.
“Well, if you sit down to meals like this every day, I can see why.” Jess tried again, hoping her smile was a little more confident than she felt. “Have you been taking your vitamins?”
Lainie nodded, and Andy pushed back his chair and jumped to his feet. “Hey, I’m just sitting around like third base. Let me help.” He grabbed the nearly empty fried chicken platter and carried it to the kitchen.
Jess sighed. For the last eight years, she had been eating, breathing, and sleeping medicine—with not a whole lot of sleeping, now that she thought about it. Would there ever come a time when she could have a simple conversation without clearing the room in the process? She took a deep breath and tried again.
“So, Lainie.” She pasted what she hoped was a friendly smile on her face. “I hear you’re from California too. What part? I’m from Mill Valley, just north of San Francisco.”
“LA. Long Beach area, mostly.”
By the time the table had been cleared and Ray and Andy had placed dishes of warm peach cobbler in front of them, Jess had discerned that other than starting out in California and winding up in Last Chance, New Mexico, she and Lainie had little they could claim in common. Lainie had been tossed out to fend for herself at fourteen, and she had not only survived but through God’s grace found her way to Last Chance and to him. The tiny house she shared with her husband and his grandmother was the first real home she had ever had, and it would always be a palace to her.
Jess, on the other hand, had never wanted for anything—except maybe time and sleep. She wasn’t even saddled with the monstrous burden of student loans that most new doctors labored under. Her parents, both physicians themselves, had seen to it that she had whatever she needed. Where Lainie’s parents could only be called criminal in their negligence and neglect, Jess’s family had been and still was close, using what little free time they did have to enjoy and nurture each other. Her parents had always supported her childhood ambition of practicing rural medicine, and even if, as the years passed and the dream never wavered, they did occasionally turn the conversation to more lucrative disciplines of medicine, they never seriously tried to talk her out of it.
She looked across the table at Lainie, who was laughing up at Ray, and found herself wishing two things. First, she would love it if Lainie did decide to come to her for her obstetric appointments, although it was pretty clear that if Elizabeth and Ray had anything to say about it, that might not happen. And second, she really hoped she and Lainie would be friends—close friends. Whatever her early circumstances had been, Lainie was funny, confident, and easy in her skin. Jess liked that.
Elizabeth sat down and picked up her spoon. Everyone else at the table followed suit, and not for the first time that evening, Jess found herself eating until her spoon scraped the bottom of the bowl.
“Elizabeth, I honestly can’t remember having a meal I enjoyed more.” Jess finally put her spoon down and leaned against the back of her chair. “I thank whatever gods there be that you were outside this morning when Andy and I came by. I wouldn’t have missed this meal for anything.”
This time there was no mistaking it. Andy, Ray, and Lainie did exchange glances, but Elizabeth didn’t bat an eye. “Well, I’m thankful too.” Her blue eyes crinkled in a smile. “I hope this is just the first of many meals you take at this table. Now, why don’t you all go on into the living room, and I’ll get things put up in the kitchen.”
“Nope.” Lainie got to her feet and put her hands on Elizabeth’s shoulders to direct her toward the living room. “It’s your turn at the recliner. I’ll get these dishes done in no time.”
“Nope.” Ray stacked all five empty peach cobbler bowls into one tower, causing his grandmother to gasp a little. “You go sit down too. Put your feet up on the coffee table if Gran will let you get away with it. And take Jess with you. I’ll do the dishes and Andy’ll help. Right, Andy?”
“You bet. It’ll be just like old times.” Andy scooped up a handful of silverware and winked at Jess over his shoulder as he headed for the kitchen. “Miss Elizabeth treated everyone like her own. If you were here at mealtime, there was a chair at the table for you. If you were here at bedtime, she found a place for you to sleep. And if chores needed to be done, you did those too.”
“I remember those old times.” Elizabeth shook her head. “It didn’t always work out well for the kitchen.”
“Give us some credit, Gran. We might have grown up a little in the last, oh, fifteen years or so.” Ray tried to balance an iced tea glass on his forefinger and caught it as it fell.
“Ray! For pity’s sake, be careful!” Elizabeth marched across the room to snatch the glass from his hand, but Ray held it out of her reach.
“Just teasing you, Gran. We’ll be careful.” He grinned and put the glass on the counter just inside the kitchen door. “Go on in and sit down. We’ll join you in a little bit.”
Even after Elizabeth was settled in her recliner with her feet up and her crocheting on her lap, she seemed to keep an ear directed toward the kitchen, flinching whenever a dish clanked too loudly against another.
Lainie laughed. “Seriously, Gran. Ray does know what he’s doing. He’s no stranger to the kitchen, I promise you—no matter what he’s tried to make you believe since we came back.”
“I know. I’m just not used to having men in my kitchen unless they’re eating, that’s all.” Elizabeth rearranged the afghan she was crocheting and wrapped the yarn around her fingers again. “Take that sofa cushion, honey, and put it under your feet. You’ll be more comfortable.”
Lainie did as she was told and turned to Jess. “How about you? Want to put your feet up too?”
“No, I’m good.” Jess smiled at the laughter coming from the kitchen. “Sounds like they’re having a good time in there.”
“Those two would.” Elizabeth shook her head. “They were as different as they could be when they were boys, what with Andy playing every kind of sport you could think of and Ray wanting to draw or paint all the time, but they became best friends as soon as they met in grade school and stayed friends until they both went off to college. Andy was over here so much I came to think of him as one of my own.”
“Ray’s told me about Andy practically living here.” Lainie adjusted the sofa cushion under her ankles and leaned back against the sofa. “He never said much about going to Andy’s house, though.”
Elizabeth’s face took on an expression that was hard to read, and she turned her attention to her crocheting. “No, they didn’t spend much time over there. And that was fine with me. I always loved having my boys right where I could see them. But tell us about you, Jess. What was your family like?”
Jess had the feeling that the subject had been deftly and firmly changed, but she complied and told Elizabeth about growing up in Mill Valley.
“My sister’s three years older than I am, and she’s a research cardiologist in San Francisco. She’s the smart one in the family and I’m really proud of her.”
“It sounds like you’ve got a whole family of smart people.” Elizabeth raised her eyebrows. “I don’t see how you can all be doctors and say one of you is the smart one.”
“You don’t know Catherine. There’s smart and then there’s scary smart. She got her MD and PhD at the same time and is doing some pretty impressive work at UCSF.”
“I hope I do get to meet her someday. I’d like to meet all your family.” Elizabeth looked up as Andy and Ray came in. “All finished in there already?”
“Yep.” Ray turned the piano bench and straddled it as Andy took the remaining empty chair. “Didn’t break more than two plates and a bowl. Oh, and that little blue bird that’s always been on the shelf over the sink? It’s sort of toast too. Hope you don’t mind.”
Elizabeth just looked at him over the top of her glasses, and Ray laughed.
Jess glanced at her watch. It wasn’t really all that late, but she had had a long day, and from the looks of it, so had the others. Lainie actually appeared to be dozing on the couch, and the lively conversation had slowed to an occasional comment. She smiled over at Elizabeth. “I think I should be going, but I want to say again how much I loved that dinner. Thank you so much for asking me over. I’m really starting to feel at home here in Last Chance.”
“Oh, you’re not going already.” Elizabeth began to struggle out of her recliner. “It’s early yet.”
“Don’t get up.” Jess crossed the room and took Elizabeth’s warm hand. “I hope I’ll see you again soon.”
“I hope so too, honey.” Elizabeth patted Jess’s hand with her own free hand. “You know where I live now, and I’m almost always at home these days. Don’t hesitate to drop in. I love company.”
“I should be going too, I guess.” Andy went to drop a kiss on Elizabeth’s cheek before following Jess to the door. “It’s been like old times.”
“You know, it has been.” Elizabeth smiled up at him. “With Ray back home, and now you. I’m counting on seeing a lot of you.”
“Don’t worry about that. You’ll probably get sick of me.”
Ray got up and followed them to the front door. “Jess, it was good to get to know you a little better. Glad you came.” He turned to Andy and offered a handshake with one hand and a half-hug with the other. “I’m really glad that you’re back in town. I thought we might not see you again, except on Monday Night Football.”
“Good to be back. And I mean that.” Andy slapped Ray on the shoulder and followed Jess down the steps. Ray waited on the porch till they reached their cars and then, with a final wave, disappeared back inside.
“That was fun.” Jess dug around in her purse for her keys. “I’m glad I got to meet your friends. I really like them.”
“They really like you too. I can tell.”
“One thing you’ve got to explain, though.” Jess paused with her hand on the door handle. “There was a moment when I caught you and Ray and Lainie looking at each other like I had said something wrong. What was that all about?”
Andy’s brow puckered as he considered. “Oh, yeah. I think I know what you’re talking about. Didn’t know you caught that.” His grin was a little sheepish.
“Well, I did, so what was going on?”
“I think it was when you were thanking whatever powers or gods that be, or something like that.”
“So?”
“Well, I’m sure you just meant it as a saying, but Elizabeth gets real literal when you talk about God. She’d have been real happy, if the conversation had taken that turn, to tell you that you didn’t have to be unsure about what gods there were. She’d have told you that there’s just one and then probably joined you in thanking him that she was in the yard too. That’s just how Elizabeth is.”
“Really? I guess it shouldn’t surprise me, considering her age and background, but I have to confess it does, a little. She seems so sharp and aware.”
Andy’s whoop of laughter caused Jess to raise both hands in an effort to quiet him. “Shhh! They’ll hear you through the screen door. What’s so funny, anyway?”
“First of all, you’re right. Elizabeth is sharp and very aware. And well educated too, for that matter. But as to the rest of what you said—well, as I said earlier, never make the mistake of underestimating Elizabeth Cooley.”
“I wasn’t aware I had been.” Jess felt a little out of sorts. What was wrong with admitting that a country woman of Elizabeth’s generation might be a little less forward-thinking than, say, a younger person from the city? It wasn’t an insult, after all. Taking a deep breath and reminding herself that she was the fish out of water here and should concentrate on thinking before she spoke, she opened her door and slid behind the wheel. “Well, good night. The run this morning was great. We’ll have to do it again sometime.”
“What about tomorrow?” Andy leaned down to peer in her open window. “I run every morning, and we might as well run together, unless you really prefer to run alone.”
Jess hesitated. Truth be told, she really did prefer a running buddy, someone to keep pace with, and her run with Andy this morning had been great, but it was pretty clear that everyone in town considered Andy Ryan the catch of a lifetime. That wasn’t why she had come to Last Chance, and she didn’t want anyone, least of all Andy, to get the wrong idea. Then again, he was the one who knew all the trails. Maybe when her schedule really kicked in in a couple weeks, she’d know some too.
“Sure, why not? About 6:00?” Right now she felt as if she could sleep for about a year, but experience told her that like it or not, by the time the sun came up, she’d be up too.
“I’ll be waiting outside. See you then.” He slapped the roof of her car lightly with the flat of his hand and ambled off to his truck.
Everything looked different in Last Chance at night. There were so few streetlights and it was so dark, but she could see the headlights of Andy’s pickup in her rearview mirror, and when she finally did pull to a stop in her driveway, he gave two friendly beeps before he drove by.