THE NEW YEAR brought heavy snows and freezing cold. Alice was sent home from school with influenza and Martha had to take the time out to stay home and mind her. Like dominoes it spread through their family, Mary Rose sick as a dog with it, shivering and shaking and running a sky-high temperature.
‘Mom, if you’re meant to be such a good healer then how come you can’t cure us?’ asked Alice through her stuffed-up nose.
Martha had no answer for such a simple, logical question! Patrick was floored with the flu and Martha was worn out running around after a house full of invalids, praying that they’d all get better.
Dan rang her every now and then, the two of them spending hours on the phone to each other. It was only when her own nose began to run and her bones ached that she realized she’d gone down with the flu too. She was lying in bed feeling absolutely awful when Alice gave her the sealed envelope that had just been delivered. Martha tore it open.
Stunned, she read it over and over again, not believing its contents.
Glenn Harris was initiating legal action against her for being involved in the death of his son. She was also being named in a similar suit by Beth and Tom Armstrong in respect of their daughter Cass.
Alice, seeing her reaction, ran and got her brother and sister. Martha tossed Patrick the letter to read.
‘Mom, what are you going to do?’ he asked, his young face like that of a ghost.
‘I don’t know, Patrick. I just don’t know,’ she replied, too sick and sorry to think.
She phoned Evie first in a panic, not knowing what to do.
‘God, you sound crap, Martha! Maybe you need to get a good lawyer. You can’t let people like that attack you and get away with it.’
Her brother Jack had told her to fax him a copy of the letter and he’d show it to a lawyer friend of his, promising her that they would find a loophole in the stupid charges and get them dropped.
She told Dan the next time he called. He took it seriously, telling her not to worry, he’d try to sort something out. Somehow Martha trusted him.
Lying in bed alone that night she gave in to her tears and anger thinking of the two young people she had tried to help, whose pain she had tried to ease, and how now it had all backfired and she was being held responsible.
She woke in the middle of the night, her temperature down, suddenly clear headed and feeling stronger. She had done nothing wrong and she would fight it!