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Jolie stared at her sister. “Do we have that kind of insurance?”
“I guess.” Cassie shrugged. “You know Dad never shares anything about ranch business with anyone but Thea and Bobby. The whole situation could get nasty.”
“And Dan?”
“He had some sort of surgery that helped, but his family’s lawyers say he may never walk again.” Cassie rested a protectivehand on her son’s thin shoulders. “I hear he’s done with rehab for now, and they’ve got him back at the family’s ranch.”
Which meant either he’d reached the maximum benefit of therapy, or the family’s insurance and personal funds had run out.
Jolie’s heart sank at the thought of what the Aikens were going through. The emotional, physical and spiritual toll could be overwhelming for the family as well as the victim. “The last I heard, Dan was slowly recovering.”
“No miracles, that’s for sure. Still, his speech is better, and he can move his arms well enough to write.” Cassie shaded her eyes with a hand and watched Bobby ride out into the pasture. “That’s sad enough. But Bobby seems to be more concerned about the lawsuits and his truck than the welfare of the boy who was injured. Our little brother has a long, long way to go.”
Unbidden, an image of Matt came to mind. His firm but loving approach to parenting. His patience with his son.
If Bobby had been born to a father like Matt, would he have turned out better?
NINETY-SIX POUNDS.Fear washed through Annie as she stepped off the scale on Monday morning before school. A month ago she’d been a hundred-five. Two weeks ago, on the day she’d started school here, she’d been a hundred.
Her knees shaking, she braced her hands on the bathroom sink and stared at the hollows of her cheeks and the violet shadows under her eyes. Most of the other kids in middle school grew a lot at her age. She’d seen those changes in neighborhood friends back home.
Mom got thin before she died.
Annie sank onto the edge of the bathtub and wrapped her arms around her waist. The scared feeling was in her stomach allthe time now, making her want to scream and run, or hide under the blankets and not even get out of bed each morning.
Maybe I have cancer, too.But telling Dad how she felt, going to a doctor, might make it all too real.I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know.
Fragments of last night’s dreams floated back.
The way Mom’s beautiful face had turned yellow. How her skin felt like tissue paper. The way her shiny dark hair had fallen out in tufts until she’d looked like an old, worn doll at a garage sale.
The cold, numb feeling of standing at the silver casket and seeing her mother’s face for the very last time.
“Annie! Are you ready yet? You’re going to be late for school!” Dad’s impatient voice shattered the silence. “Charlie is already in the car.”
“Coming.” Annie stood up—too fast, because a wave of dizziness nearly sent her to the floor.
And then she prayed that she wasn’t going to die.
CHAPTER FIVE
“IF YOU NEEDEDthat inlay cutter, why didn’t you order it yourself?” With increasing impatience, Ed hunted through an overflowing file-cabinet drawer for a misplaced receipt.
Scraps of paper—and probably the missing receipt—fluttered to the floor around his chair.
Matt silently counted to ten. “Because,” he said evenly, “you said you’d ordered itlastMonday.”
“No. I didnot.”
The spare room in Ed’s basement was dimly lit, the air smelled damply of mildew. A cluttered desk, two four-drawer file cabinets, and a bookshelf crammed haphazardly with books and magazines took up most of the space.
Five minutes down here and Matt wanted nothing more than to escape outside to the fresh air.
Every Monday morning they took care of invoices, checked orders, and caught up on other business before getting out to the current job site.
If they ever got done this morning, they’d head over to the Thompson kitchen remodeling job in Fairfax.
Matt glanced at the lumberyard calendar on the wall and sighed heavily. They’d promised to finish the kitchen by the twenty-second of April, and today was the twentieth.
