Independence Day. Amy Frazier
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Название: Independence Day
Автор: Amy Frazier
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
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“No. I was just curious how many meetings you have to attend.”
“Way too many.”
“Well, you’re going to have to attend standing up. I don’t think even a hemorrhoid doughnut would give you any relief.”
Fine. He was going to have to do enough explaining as it was. He didn’t need a shiny red rubber prop to add to the merriment.
“There. Finished.” The resident backed away. “Mrs. McCabe, you’re going to have to make sure this wound is kept—”
“I can handle it.” Nick gingerly found the floor and stood.
“Not unless you have eyes in the back of your head,” the resident countered. “Besides, you have a bigger task.”
“What?”
“Thinking up a list of snappy comebacks.” The woman flashed him a bright smile. “No doubt, you’re going to be the butt of a lot of jokes this week.”
“And you wanted to inaugurate the agony.”
“My pleasure.”
He pushed aside the curtain that separated him from his fellow E.R. sufferers and moved stiffly toward the exit. His left cheek felt numb. He no longer cared that the protective Macy’s bag lay at the bottom of a hazardous waste can. He just wanted to get home. What he really wanted was a return to the day before the Fourth of July.
“Isabel said they saved us some of the dinner they picked up at Boston Market,” Chessie informed him as she followed him to the parking lot.
“I’m not hungry.”
“How long are you going to stay angry at me?”
“If you don’t mind, I don’t feel up for a long drawn-out discussion.”
“What’s really going on here, Nick?”
He stopped short of the SUV where Martha sat reading a magazine. Damn, he’d forgotten the neighbors were involved. He turned to his wife. “What’s going on here? Frankly, I don’t know. You seem to be the one with all the answers. Trouble is, I don’t understand them.”
He opened the double doors at the back of the SUV, and crawled in.
Feeling shut out, Chessie climbed in the passenger side.
“How’d it go?” Martha asked.
“He’ll live.”
“But will Eban’s dog?”
“No jokes, Martha,” Nick said from the back. He sounded like a principal presiding at a rowdy assembly. “I’ve reached my quota.”
When Martha shot Chessie a questioning look, Chessie mouthed, “Later.”
They rode home in silence. Nick didn’t forget to thank Martha, but he didn’t stick around for Chessie to follow him into the house.
“Call me if you need anything,” Martha said before backing across the street into her own driveway.
It was eight-forty and starting to get dark, but there wasn’t a light in the house. Chessie entered the kitchen to stare at a sink full of Fourth-of-July dishes and a table littered with paper plates and containers of half-consumed takeout. The girls were nowhere in sight.
She made her way upstairs. All three bedroom doors were closed. She knocked on the closest. Gabriella’s.
“Go away!”
“Gabby, what’s wrong?”
“As if you didn’t know.”
Chessie did know. Having witnessed the debacle on the square, her younger daughter would be mortified. She tried the knob only to find the door locked.
“I said go away.”
Perhaps they all needed a little breathing room. A little perspective. But she couldn’t resist the urge to reassure herself her family was at least minimally okay.
Isabel’s door was cracked a hair and gave when Chessie knocked. Her older daughter, sprawled on her bed with the ubiquitous headphones stuck over her ears, sat up and turned off her CD player when her mother poked her head in the room.
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