Chapter 4
Chapter
Four
By ten-thirty Thursday morning, Nora had already answered three questions about Jacob Morgan and at least twice that many about Christian.
She’d been back at work for only a few days.
Part of her was grateful for the routine.
During that time, she could be Nurse Nora instead of the woman whose brother had returned after ten years—and whose boyfriend had betrayed her, used their relationship to get close to her family, and kidnapped her nephew.
Most of the country had followed the case.
The other part of her dreaded the looks people gave her and the whispers she knew were happening behind her back.
Christian was home with Mom today. Wren planned to stop by later, and Marlowe had already texted twice to say she would too.
No one wanted to leave him by himself yet, and Nora still wasn’t comfortable leaving him alone with Mom all day.
Though her mother seemed more stable, it was too soon to know whether that would last.
Between the family and the reporters who occasionally lingered near the road, Christian was almost never alone anyway.
The family had stopped answering the door for anyone carrying a microphone. Calls from unfamiliar numbers went to voicemail. Interview requests went unanswered.
That hadn’t stopped people in Fog Lake from asking their own questions.
None had come from people with any business asking.
The cashier at the pharmacy had gone with “How are you holding up?” which at least sounded sympathetic.
A woman Nora barely knew from high school had asked whether she’d really had no idea what Jacob was doing.
Then Mr. Albright, whose wife Nora had cared for after a stroke earlier that year, had squeezed Nora’s hand and told her not to blame herself for being fooled.
That one had been the worst.
Nora sat in her car outside Shelby Dawson’s house mulling over everything before reaching for her nursing bag.
Fooled.
She hated that word.
It made her sound like someone standing at a carnival booth while a man moved a ball beneath three cups.
She’d known Jacob for nearly four months. She’d eaten dinner with him, prayed with him, and listened while he talked about his daughter. She’d introduced him to her family.
She’d told Wren he was steady.
She’d been wrong.
Nora had always prided herself on having good judgment. There were very few things she could count on in her life, but that had been one of them.
Not anymore.
The loss felt almost physical.
So now, when she looked at Christian and something didn’t add up, when her instincts screamed that something was wrong—how could she trust that instinct? Jacob had seemed trustworthy too. He’d been good at it.
Maybe her judgment had been broken all along and she was just now finding out.
Before her thoughts could stray any further, Nora climbed out with her bag.
Shelby’s house sat at the end of a short gravel drive. A trampoline tilted sideways in the yard, and two pumpkins flanked the porch steps. Someone had drawn faces on them with black marker. One looked angry. The other had eyelashes.
The front door opened before Nora reached it.
“I was determined to get the door before you had to knock.” Shelby held it open with one hand while tugging down the sleeve of her sweatshirt with the other. “Come in.”
She was a few years younger than Nora. Today, without makeup, with shadows beneath her eyes and pale skin, her exhaustion showed.
“You’re supposed to be resting, not racing me to the front door.” Nora stepped inside and slipped off her shoes. “How’s the incision?”
“Sore.” Shelby hesitated. “I may have overdone it a little.”
“What did you do?”
“I went to prayer meeting last night.”
Nora stared at her. “Five days after surgery?”
“I mostly sat. Dale drove us there and back, and everybody made sure I didn’t lift anything.”
“You still could have stayed home.”
“I know, but Preston wanted to go.” Shelby glanced toward her son. “Since the divorce, half the men at church have tried to step in for him. Not replace his father, exactly. Just make sure he has decent men around. They’ve all been good to Preston. He loves being there.”
Nora understood that. It still didn’t make attending prayer meeting five days after surgery a great idea.
“Next time, let them bring prayer meeting to you.”
“I’m beginning to understand that.”
Nora followed her into the living room. Preston lay on his stomach in front of the coffee table, driving a red Matchbox car along the edge of a coloring book. Nora taught his Sunday school class and had always liked the boy.
“Hey, Preston.”
“Hi, Miss Nora.” His car went airborne over a stack of crayons.
Nora set her bag on the couch. “Excellent stunt work.”
That earned her a glance. “It can jump four crayons.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Four?”
“Five if I make the ramp higher.”
“Sounds dangerous.”
“It’s just a car.”
“That doesn’t make it less dangerous.”
Preston considered her words, apparently decided she had a point, then returned to playing.
Shelby lowered herself carefully into the recliner. She’d had her gallbladder removed, and her surgeon had ordered several home health visits after the incision became red and started draining.
Nora took her temperature and pulse, then pulled on gloves and removed the dressing. No fever. A small amount of drainage Shelby had described as barely anything. Thankfully, the redness hadn’t spread.
“You taking your antibiotic?” Nora asked as she cleaned around the incision with saline.
“Yes.”
“Every dose?”
Shelby looked offended. “I’m not completely irresponsible.”
“I didn’t say you were.” Nora applied a fresh dressing and pressed the tape into place. “I ask everybody. And believe it or not, people do lie to nurses.”
Shelby smiled, but it disappeared almost immediately.
Lately, Nora noticed every hesitation. Every shift in tone. Every look that didn’t quite match the words coming out of someone’s mouth.
Before Jacob, she’d called that intuition.
Now she wasn’t sure what to call it.
She discarded her gloves and reached for the blood-pressure cuff. “Arm.”
Shelby pushed up her sleeve.
Nora wrapped the cuff around her upper left arm. “How are you sleeping?”
Shelby hesitated.
Nora glanced at her. “That sounds like a not good.”
“It’s not because of the surgery.”
The cuff began to inflate. “What’s going on?”
Shelby looked at Preston before lowering her voice. “His dad.”
Nora waited for the cuff to release before checking the reading. A little high, but considering the direction the conversation had taken, that wasn’t surprising.
She knew Mikey. He’d grown up in Fog Lake and now worked as a mechanic. Nora had always considered him a chauvinistic hothead.
“What’s happening with him?”
Shelby rubbed her palm against her jeans. “He says the custody arrangement isn’t fair anymore. He wants to see Preston more.”
Something in her tone made Nora pause. “Is he threatening you?”
“Not exactly.” Shelby’s bottom lip began to tremble. “But he keeps saying he’s going to fight me for custody, and when he’s done, I’ll be lucky to see my boy twice a year.”
Then she burst into tears.
Across the room, Preston made an engine noise as the red car shot down a paperback propped against the coffee table.
Nora’s stomach tightened as she remembered what Shelby had told her. “What does your custody agreement say?”
“Every other weekend. Dinner one night during the week.” Shelby picked at a loose thread on her sleeve. “But Mikey has missed a bunch of weekends and barely ever takes him out to dinner. Now all of a sudden he wants more time.”
Nora shifted and kept her voice low. “Has something changed?”
“I don’t know. Not really. I just think . . .” She glanced at her son across the room. “I just think he’s doing this to try to control me.”
Nora set the cuff aside and locked gazes with Shelby. “Has he ever hurt you or Preston?”
“No, never.” Shelby answered that one quickly. “He’s not like that.”
Nora nodded, careful not to let her thoughts get ahead of the facts.
Jacob hadn’t seemed like the type to hurt anyone either. She hated that the comparison came so easily now. But that was what happened when life taught you lessons you weren’t ready to learn.
She studied Shelby’s face again. “Have you talked to your lawyer?”
“I don’t really have one anymore. Not since the divorce. Money has been tight.” Shelby worked in the cafeteria at Fog Lake Elementary—a job that kept her on Preston’s schedule but didn’t leave much room for lawyers or unexpected medical bills.
“I’d probably call someone.” Nora closed the chart on her tablet. “Just in case.”
Shelby nodded slowly. “Maybe I will.”
Preston sat up across the room and carefully balanced the Matchbox car flat on top of his head. “Mom.”
Shelby turned. “Yes, sweetie?”
“Look.”
She stared at him. “What am I looking at?”
Preston sat very still, chin tucked so the car wouldn’t slide off. “I’m a parking garage.”
Shelby laughed despite the heaviness of the previous conversation. Her hand instantly went to her incision as if she regretted the action. “You’re something.”
The car slipped off his head and landed in his lap. Preston grinned and went back to building his ramp.
Some of the tension left the room. “For what it’s worth, being careful is smart. But fear has a way of growing when other people keep feeding it.”
Shelby’s gaze returned to her. “You think I’m overreacting?”
“No.” Nora slipped the blood-pressure cuff back into her bag. “But I do think that fear can make everything look like proof.”
The words were out before Nora realized how much they applied to herself.
Shelby studied her. “You’re talking about Jacob.”
Nora’s hands stilled. There it was. Question number four for the day.
Shelby’s eyes immediately widened with apology. “I’m sorry. That was rude.”
“It’s okay.” She appreciated that Shelby at least looked apologetic to go along with her words. Most people didn’t.
“No, it wasn’t okay. I’m sorry.”
Nora zipped the side pocket of her bag. “People are curious.”
Shelby lowered her voice. “For what it’s worth, I would’ve trusted him too. I met him a couple of times around town. He seemed nice.”
“He did.” The answer came automatically. “He was good at seeming nice.”
Good enough that Nora had handed him pieces of her life without ever wondering what he planned to do with them. She’d been so careful too. She’d hardly dated at all. She hadn’t wanted the hassle.
But Jacob had been different—or so she’d thought. She even considered him an answer to prayer at one point.
And again, she’d been wrong.
She stood and slung the nursing bag over her shoulder. “I’ll be back tomorrow morning. Call if the redness spreads, you develop a fever, or the drainage gets worse.”
Shelby nodded. “I will.”
Nora headed toward the door.
“Miss Nora?”
She turned.
Preston stood behind her holding out the red Matchbox car. “I can make it jump five.”
Nora set her bag down again and crouched beside him. “Five crayons? I’m going to need proof.”
Preston immediately laid five crayons side by side, then propped one end of the paperback higher to make a steeper ramp.
For the next thirty seconds, Nora watched the red car launch off the book, clear all five crayons, and crash into the leg of the coffee table.
Preston threw both arms into the air. “Five!”
Nora smiled. “Clearly you’ve been training for this.”
He beamed.
She picked up her nursing bag and stood. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Preston.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t try six crayons while I’m gone.”
His expression turned suspiciously innocent.
Nora pointed at him. “I mean it.”
Preston grinned.
Nora said goodbye to Shelby and stepped outside into the mild late-September air. As she walked toward her car, she replayed her conversation with Shelby.
She prayed Shelby was wrong to be afraid.
Lately, Nora hoped she was wrong about a lot of things.
But hoping and believing were different things. And Nora’s faith in her own ability to discern truth from lies had shattered when Jacob walked into her life. She’d prayed for wisdom then too. Prayed that she wasn’t making a mistake. Prayed that she was seeing clearly.
God had been silent. Or she had simply not heard.
Now, with Christian’s strangeness settling into her bones, she didn’t know whether her instincts screaming something was wrong were spiritual discernment or just her own broken judgment trying to protect itself from being fooled again.
She wasn’t sure God was helping her tell the difference.
She only knew she’d been wrong about a lot of things.