A Family for Hank (Cobbler Cove #9)

Chapter 1

The dream always started kind.

That was the worst of it. He saw Lorraine in the kitchen of their old house with the morning sun on her face, laughing at something he'd said, back when she still laughed at things.

Then the light went wrong in his dream and she was across a courtroom from him, her face empty and gray, a scraped-down version of her he'd spent years pretending he hadn't seen coming.

Her mouth shaped the words, but the sound came from everywhere around him at once.

You ruined my life.

You ruined me.

He reached for her the way he reached for anyone coming apart in front of him. He tried to form words, to say, I've got you. But his hands closed on nothing, and she turned to wisps of smoke between his fingers.

Hank Steele woke with his heart slamming against his ribs, and the flat darkness of almost-morning at the window.

He lay still and let the worst of the nightmare pass, doing the same thing he told his patients. Don't brace against a bad dream. Let it crest and roll on through. Your fear will roll through and leave with it.

His pulse came down gradually. The ceiling sorted itself back into his bedroom ceiling and not a courtroom.

It was June, and the earliest robins were already picking a fight in the maple outside.

The house was quiet, but not empty, around him in a way it hadn't been in years.

Madison was here now, asleep down the hall.

Although being solely responsible for his daughter came with its own stresses and fears, he purely loved having her live with him.

He didn't try for more sleep. He'd given up on that somewhere around the third bad night in a row.

He dressed in the dark, eased his door open so the old hinge wouldn't squeak, and headed downstairs. He let himself out of the big old Edwardian house into the first pale stirrings of morning.

The tree-lined street was hushed and blue in the glow of the old-fashioned streetlights. Dew silvered people’s lawns, and the mountains across the lake were just starting to emerge from the darkness of night, hulking silhouettes looming over the valley.

Somewhere toward the edge of town a rooster crowed in rather lackluster fashion. Air came off the lake cool and damp, smelling like cut hay and melted snow. He walked by Mabel Brown's house and took an appreciative sniff of her lilacs going sweet and brown on the fence.

Summer was getting on with itself whether he slept or not.

It was a good walk. Cleared his head and filled his lungs with fresh air.

He walked down to the lake and back. He passed by several blocks of houses, a hodgepodge of craftsman bungalows, cottages, farmhouse style homes, and the dozen big Edwardian houses built in the late 1800’s by a group of lumber barons who made Cobbler Cove their private summer getaway spot.

He headed for Main Street and downtown Cobbler Cove, such as it was. Four blocks of storefronts lined each side of the street. The good news they were mostly occupied these days. The local businesses, if not exactly going gangbusters, were alive and doing reasonably well.

Rose's Diner, in the middle of Main Street had its lights on, but its CLOSED sign still faced the street. He knew the front door would be unlocked, though, and let himself in anyway. Rose would give him heck if she found out he’d been up and about, in search of a cup of coffee, and hadn’t come on in.

“Morning, Rose,” he called toward the kitchen in the back.

"Hey, Hank. You're early even for you." Rose Henderson didn't look up from the grill. "Sit. First pot of coffee's almost ready."

He took the stool he always took, in the middle of the counter facing the pass through window to the kitchen. In under a minute she came out and set a mug in front of him, filled it, and he took an appreciative sip of the hot, rich brew.

For a stretch neither of them said anything, which was one of the things he liked best about Rose. She was happy to talk, but she was also content to let silence do its work.

She was a slender woman with movie star looks, even flour to her elbows and a smudge of butter on her cheek.

She'd run the diner ever since the fire that took her husband going on five years ago. His best friend besides his brothers, Cooper Lawton, was engaged to marry Rose, and he couldn’t be happier for the two of them.

“How’s your wrist doing? You’re not lifting things that are too heavy, are you?” he asked.

She gave it a flex for his benefit. “It’s much better. The stretching exercises have really helped. And I’ve been rolling it with a rubber ball the way you showed me.”

Rose had sprained her wrist a few months back when she took a fall at the Apple Pie Creek Theater.

She was a talented actress and had been rehearsing for a new play when she tripped on some ropes across the stage and fell, landing badly on her wrist. Frankly, she was lucky she hadn’t broken it.

And, he allowed, she was lucky the town had a doctor now, who’d been able to jump on taping, icing, and doing therapy on the wrist fast after she hurt it so it didn’t swell too much and began healing quickly.

He specialized in treating sports injuries when he wasn’t doing the day-to-day work of treating Cobbler Cove’s everyday illnesses, keeping everyone’s prescriptions up-to-date, and monitoring folks with chronic health problems. And, as a small town’s only doctor, he also wore a cardiologist, obstetrician, pediatrician, psychologist hat from time to time, too.

He found the variety of medical work more interesting and challenging than he’d expected.

Like last winter when he’d steadied Rose through a bad stretch when her fourteen-year-old son was accused of robbing her diner.

That was before Cooper proved her son, Jack, was innocent.

Since then, she'd fed him for free more times than he cared to admit.

He tried to pay her every single time, but it always turned into a wrestling match that she won.

"Another rough night?" she asked quietly. She never pried. She just held a door open and waited to see whether he'd walk through it.

"Wasn't my best.”

Rose went back to the kitchen and flipped whatever was sizzling on the grill.

She came back out and said, "You've got the look. JB used get that look when a call out went wrong on him or his guys at the fire station. Like a man pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks uphill." She looked at him directly. "What's got your mind so stirred up it won't let you rest, Hank?"

He knew the answer. He'd known it lying in the dark with his heart pounding.

He couldn’t tell her the truth. Or at least not the main truth. Instead, he chose a lesser problem in his life.

He wrapped both hands around the mug. "In all my years of medical practice, I've never kept my own ledgers. There was always somebody in the office to do my billing, file insurance claims, chase down checks that bounce. Now, I’ve got this shoebox overflowing with receipts, a drawer full of unpaid accounts, and a stack of envelopes from insurance companies I can’t bring myself to open.

Those claims adjustors might as well be writing to me in a foreign language for all I understand their mumbo jumbo. "

All of that was true. None of it was the thing that had him walking around town before dawn, though.

He said ruefully, "I'm a fair hand at fixing people up. But I’m drowning in paperwork."

"So hire somebody," Rose said practically.

"In Cobbler Cove?" He almost smiled. "You know of any bored and unemployed medical office managers hiding around town somewhere?”

“Can’t hurt to post a help wanted ad,” she replied.

“I supposed I could put up a job posting between the church bulletin and the lost-dog flyers.”

"Mm." Rose headed back to the grill, and he got the brief, distinct sense that she’d filed away his complaints for later. She called from the kitchen, "Somebody'll turn up. They always do."

She set a plate in front of him. Scrambled eggs, bacon, a fresh out of the oven biscuit, and the good hash with fried onions, crispy potatoes, and finely chopped corned beef that wasn’t on the menu and she only made when she felt like it.

"I only came in for coffee," he protested.

"You came in looking like you haven't eaten a decent meal in a week, which you probably haven’t." She topped off his mug. "Eat. You can't pour water out of an empty glass, Doc, and the whole town's drinking from yours."

He ate. It was easier than arguing, and she wasn't wrong. Plus, the food was delicious.

"How's Madison settling in?" Rose asked, wiping down the counter. "Been near three weeks now."

"Fine." He reached for the biscuit. "Good. She's fine."

Rose's mouth tugged sideways. "Fine, huh?"

"She is."

"Hank Steele, that girl has been in my diner at least six times, ordered exactly the same thing every time, said please and thank you, ate every bite, and told me precisely nothing about herself.

" Rose leaned on the counter. "She’s quiet. Watchful. Keeps her to herself more than any girl that age I’ve ever known.

Tell me, where do you suppose a child picks up a habit like that? "

He found, abruptly, that the biscuit needed his full attention.

"Chip off the old Steele block," Rose said, not unkindly. "Apple didn't fall far from the tree, did it? Not a big talker about her feelings, that one."

"She's been through a lot. Had a lot of practice keeping quiet," Hank said, and it came out rougher than he meant it to.

“She’s in a good place now. She’ll open up when she feels safe.”

“I hope so,” he said in a tone that revealed more worry than he’d intended.

Rose's face softened. She didn't push. She just refilled a coffee that didn't need it, which was her version of a hand on the shoulder, and let him finish his breakfast in friendly silence.