Dedication
This book is dedicated to my good friend and critique partner, Cindy Harding, who was a godsend in the writing of this book.
In the course of my twenty-year novel writing career, I had two critique partners who died, way too young, and other critique partners, who have come and gone. Relocations. Bad fits. Work commitments. But always, Cindy has been there.
A most remarkable woman, Cindy is an extremely talented writer, of course. Look for her books in the future. She writes wonderful women’s fiction. But more than that, she has a knowledge and expertise in so many things that flesh out her own books and add to the color and details of mine.
Most important, she is a wife and mother of five children. She lives on and runs a farm. Yes, she is up at the crack of dawn to take care of cows (many, many cows), and, yes, she has birthed more than a few calves, and yes, she sometimes has to cancel critique for “haying,” or mowing fifty acres (an exaggeration, but not by much), but then she does so much more.
She maintains the tradition of all the generations of women in her family by visiting all the family graves on Memorial Day where they discuss the history of each individual and lay flowers. Oral history, so to speak.
She occasionally makes personality-specific floral wreaths for coffins. I know, weird. But interesting.
She paints landscapes and then paints walls, as well, in the 200-year-old farmhouse she restored. Only Cindy would know about a designer paint that probably cost about a thousand dollars and went on the consistency of oatmeal. Did I mention she ran a kitchen redecorating business for awhile?
She knows all about weapons and teaches a course on “Women and Guns.”
She has a son who does rodeo, so she therefore can tell you anything about the rodeo circuit.
She owns a beautiful fawn-colored Belgian draft horse and can tell you more than you ever wanted to know about horses in general.
She recently arranged an elegant “Afternoon Tea on the Farm,” for a friend’s wedding shower, complete with china and fine tablecloths, and then she provided the floral arrangements for the wedding reception tables from her own flower garden.
She is an avid antiquer, like me, accompanying me to many an estate auction, and regaling me with all her incidental knowledge on so many subjects. Who else would consider buying a $700 poster of a cow?
She has a love of purebred bulldogs.
She has lived among the Amish and often hires them. There isn’t anything she doesn’t know about the Plain People.
No wonder her husband Jeff surprised her with a BMW convertible for their last anniversary. He knows the treasure he has.
So, if I ever write an artist heroine who likes elegant teas and antique china, but can stick her arm up a cow’s butt to help with a breech delivery, and shoot a target with a rifle at fifty paces, who falls in love with a cowboy who can ride rodeo as well as a tractor, when he isn’t riding his Belgian draft horse around his farm or a BMW up the lane where a bulldog is barking . . . well, you can be sure I got the details just right.
Thanks for all your help and humor over the years, Cindy.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Epilogue
Reader Letter
SHRIMP GUMBO
An Excerpt from Cajun Crazy Chapter One
About the Author
By Sandra Hill
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter One
The Big C strikes again . . .
The first time Dr. Daniel LeDeux met ten-year-old Deke Watson, Deke asked him what it felt like to have sex. The second time they met, Deke asked what it felt like to die.
Lying back in one of a dozen leather reclining chairs at the Juneau, Alaska Pediatric Medical Center, with a first dose of chemo blasting into his IV, Deke looked like any other pre-adolescent kid, iPod blaring in his ear, baseball cap turned backward on his head, freckles dotting his pug nose, a wide mischievous grin on his face. He was a little on the thin side, having been feeling lousy for a long time and only recently diagnosed with Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia. CML.
“Seriously, if I’m gonna die from this crud, I’d like ta know what it’s like ta boink a girl.” He batted his stubby eyelashes at Daniel with fake innocence.
Boink?
Deke was joking, of course. At this stage, he was full of hope for a complete remission, as he should be. No time, or need, for fearing death. As a pediatric oncologist, Daniel had seen hundreds of cases, many of which defied the odds for survival. No need for a miracle here. Unless Deke’s CML morphed into AML, Acute Myelogenous Leukemia, his chances were good. Deke’s question was a blatant guilt trip ploy to get some info Daniel might not otherwise be inclined to share.
While Daniel checked his patient’s pulse and heart rate, he said, “I think those kinds of questions should be put to your dad, don’t you?”
“Sure. If I had one!”
Daniel arched his brows.
“He skipped out when I was five. Cokehead.”
Daniel nodded. Not an unusual story. He recalled now that Deke’s mother, Bethany Watson, a special ed teacher, had been raising him single-handedly for a long time. Dealing with childhood cancer was a kick in the gut for a couple; it was a body blow for one parent to handle alone. He had to admire her bravery.
“If you don’t wanna give me the goodies . . .”
“Goodies?”
“The details about sex,” Deke explained. “You could always just give me a Playboy magazine . . . you know, if you’re too shy to talk about sex. One of the old magazines, not one of the new PG versions.” More batting of eyelashes.
Daniel laughed. “Nice try, kiddo.”
“My buddy Chuck says it feels like every hair on your body is doin’ the hula, and your cock is like a train racing to the finish line.”
Cock? A ten-year-old using that word? Daniel shouldn’t be surprised. Kids today knew things that would have been shocking twenty years ago. Still, he stopped checking the latest white cell count on Deke’s chart to stare at him. “Chuck has had a lot of sex, huh?” Now, that would shock him.
Deke ducked his head sheepishly. “Nah! He’s only ten, too, but he has seen a Playboy magazine. Three of them. The good ones, too. He has older brothers.”
“Wow! A man of experience!” Daniel could remember the time his identical twin, Aaron, now a pilot, had shown him a stash of Playboy magazines he’d hidden under his mattress . . . a cool trade scored with AJ Coddington for five Snicker bars and a Big Blaster water pistol. Come to think of it, they’d been about ten, too . . . more than twenty years ago.
That evening he went to his mother Dr. Claire Doucet’s house for dinner. Already he could hear Barry Manilow crooning through the sound system he and Aaron had given her for a Christmas g
ift last year. Big mistake, that. Now they got to hear Barry in every room of the house and outdoors on the patio. Their mother and Melanie Yutu, her longtime significant other, best known to them as Aunt Mel, had attended dozens of the crooner’s concerts . . . thought nothing of flying cross-country, one end of the United States to the other, to hear him in person.
Sad to say, he and Aaron knew the words to every Barry Manilow song ever written, and there were lots of them.
But tonight he had something else on his mind. After he sat down at the dining room table, he asked Aaron, who’d also been invited for dinner, “Do you remember those ratty old Playboy magazines you used to hide under your mattress?”
Aaron grinned at him. “No, I don’t think I do. Unless you mean . . . oh, let me see . . . um, Karin Mantrose, May 1992. Turn-ons: Being naked on a fur in front of the fireplace. 36–20–34. Which had nothing whatsoever to do with that Sherpa bath mat I bought from Walmart with my paperboy money. Uh-uh.”
Daniel grinned. “Or DeLane Velasquez, June 1991,” Daniel reminded him.
“Turn-ons: Bubble baths for two,” they both said at the same time, then gave each other high fives.
“How about Patti Ann Jones? Remember that one,” Daniel said.
“How could I forget? Her ideal date was with a brown-eyed, curly-haired male.”
“And our hair was curly in those days. We were sure she was just waiting for us to grow up.” It was amazing what stuck in a young boy’s head, Daniel thought. Hell, a man’s head, too.
“You two are idiots,” his mother said as she placed the big tureen of jambalaya on the table. “Thirty-something adolescents!”
Coming up beside her, Aunt Mel scoffed, “Any gal with a twenty-inch waist beyond the age of twelve is anorexic or wearing a corset.”
“Could someone please turn down the volume on that music? I can barely hear myself think,” Daniel said.
“Barry is best at full volume,” his mother asserted, although she did go over and turn a knob so that “At the Copa” was only a distant backdrop.
“What brought up the skin mags? You’re not usually a memory lane kinda guy.” Aaron leaned back in his chair and studied him in a way he knew would annoy Daniel. “Oh, don’t tell me. You met a centerfold today at the medical center. You have all the luck!”
“I wish! No, it was a young kid, a new cancer patient, who wanted me to buy him a Playboy.”
“Don’t you dare,” his mother said. “With all the malpractice suits today, you could be sued. Somehow they’d find a way to prove that pornography causes cancer.” His mother was a GP in a small medical group that struggled under the burden of monumental malpractice insurance premiums.
He noticed his mother’s hand shaking as she sat down next to him and placed a napkin on her lap. Reaching over, he took her hand in his. “Mom? What’s up?”
She and Aunt Mel exchanged odd glances.
Oh, this is not good.
“Tell them,” Aunt Mel prodded, her eyes welling unexpectedly with tears.
Definitely not good. Aunt Mel was not a crier.
Squeezing Daniel’s hand, which she still held, his mother took a deep breath and said, “I have cancer.”
He and Aaron said the same foul word under their breaths. To show how serious the situation was, neither woman reamed them out, as they would normally.
For a moment, Daniel felt faint with shock, but then he choked out, “What kind of cancer?” Being an oncologist, that was the most important question he had to ask.
“Uterine.”
The most deadly. “What stage?”
“Two. It’s already spread to my lymph nodes.”
Oh, shit!
“And that’s all I’m going to say on the subject tonight,” she declared. “I’ll show you all the records tomorrow, and you can start interfering in my medical care then. For tonight, I just want to have a nice family dinner.”
He and Aaron, who was equally stunned, looked at each other. They didn’t have to be twins to read each other’s minds this time. Their mother was in big, big trouble.
“I knew it!” Aaron stood angrily. “Mom, I even asked you last month if you were sick when I noticed how much weight you’d lost, and then I caught you at home in the middle of the day, puking your guts out. You said it was the flu.”
His mother shrugged. “I didn’t want anyone to know yet. I was waiting for the right time.”
“There’s a right time to discuss cancer? Coulda fooled me, and I’ve been dealing with it for ten years. How long have you known?” Daniel narrowed his eyes when his mother squirmed in her seat.
“Three months, and don’t take that tone with me, Daniel. I have a right to handle this any way I want.”
Daniel stood now and shoved Aaron in the chest. He had to have some way to vent his fury, and, yes, fear. “You knew something was wrong and didn’t tell me? I’m a doctor, lamebrain!”
“Mom’s a doctor, too, in case you hadn’t noticed.” Aaron shoved him back.
“Yeah, but she’s a GP, not a specialist.”
“Whatever!”
“Both of you, sit the hell down and listen,” Aunt Mel yelled.
Duly chastened, they sank back into their chairs and watched with disbelief as their mother calmly served up the jambalaya and salad, then passed slices of warm bread to each of them. Aunt Mel poured iced tea into four glasses.
They expect us to eat? Now?
“And don’t be such sad sacks,” Aunt Mel added. “Things aren’t hopeless. Your mother and I are still going to Hawaii this summer.” They had been planning that two-week vacation for years. Icing on the cake was the fact that good ol’ Barry would be performing there at the same time for a few days.
Four months away, Daniel thought. Please, God, let her get a chance to wear that lei. Help her and I’ll lobby for Barry Manilow songs, rather than Muzak, in the hospital elevators . . . a penance for all my past sins . . . and any forthcoming ones, too.
Nine months later . . . prayers are answered, but not always the way we expect . . .
Daniel’s eyes burned, and he blinked back tears as he approached the little house on Arctic Lane.
His mother had died two days ago at the far-too-young age of fifty-three, after what had turned into a painful battle with cancer, despite several trips to the Mayo Clinic, and some experimental treatments outside the U.S. Cliché though it was, death had been a blessing. Didn’t make the loss any easier, though.
And now here he was, asking for another dose of heartache. He should have developed thicker skin by now, considering his specialty, but instead he felt like he was at the end of his rope. He had no business coming to this particular house over which the heavy cloud of hospice care hovered. His work as a pediatric oncologist had ended when Deke left the medical center last week, for good. In-home nurses had taken over.
The hospital lawyers would deem it unwise, from a legal standpoint, for a physician to involve himself personally with a patient. Especially off-premises.
Lawyers! They couldn’t know, or care, how close Daniel had gotten to the kid over these past nine months, even with all the time he’d taken off for his mother. There was just something about Deke that touched him, deeply.
He was dragging with him the most pitiful example of mankind. Jamie Lee Watson, once a promising Marine lifer, now a thirty-five-year-old thin-as-a-skeleton, nose-bleeding cocaine addict. Apparently, the man had seen things in Iraq that only drugs helped him forget. Daniel had found the whereabouts of Deke’s father last week, but it had taken him all that time, when he wasn’t at his mother’s bedside, trying to get the man halfway lucid, showered, and dressed in clean clothes. The new, barely improved Jamie Lee was not a happy camper.
“This is a train wreck about to happen,” Jamie Lee complained.
“Not if I can help it.”
“My kid . . .” His words trailed off as he choked up, fully aware of Deke’s rapidly deteriorating condition. “My kid doesn’t need a loser li
ke me.”
“He needs you, all right.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re his father. Simple as that. He doesn’t care if you’re the President of the United States or a circus clown.”
“Bethany is gonna have a fit.”
“She’s the one who asked me to find you.”
Jamie Lee stared at him with the most incredible hope in his bleary eyes before he masked the emotion by rubbing his hands over his face, a face which Daniel had personally shaved for him, removing a year-old beard. Jamie Lee would have probably slit his own throat.
Before Daniel had a chance to knock, the door flew open and Bethany smiled . . . a smile that did not reach her bloodshot eyes. “You came.”
It wasn’t clear if she was referring to Daniel or her long-absent husband.
Daniel stepped aside and shoved Jamie Lee forward. “Go for it, buddy.”
“I am so sorry, Bethany,” Jamie Lee said. That apology covered a whole lot of ground, Daniel suspected.
She nodded, seemed to hesitate, then opened her arms to give Jamie Lee a comforting hug. Almost immediately, she stepped back, putting space between them.
“Deke’s been in and out of a coma for days, but he asks for his daddy when he wakes up.” She laughed, but there was no mirth, just an odd tone of near-hysteria.
With a squeeze to her shoulder, Jamie Lee walked into the dining room which had been converted into a sickroom with a hospital bed and medical equipment. The oxygen machine whooshed away while an obscene number of tubes ran from the child’s frail body, no attempt to hide his bald head under its usual baseball cap. A nurse moved away from the bed to give the stranger room. Daniel and Bethany stood in the open doorway, watching.
It was odd the things you noticed in times of crisis. Birds chirping outside the open window. A Disneyland souvenir glass on the sideboard. A framed photo showing a much younger Deke with his mother and a guy in a buzz cut and military uniform, all of them smiling.
“Hey, slugger,” Jamie Lee said, clearly uncertain what to do, where to put his hands. But then he leaned over and kissed his boy’s cheek. “That’s what I always called him. Slugger,” Jamie Lee nervously told Daniel.