“Dale Tolliver may be a slick politician, but I’m thinking he didn’t invent that lie out of thin air.Dale hasn’t had an original thought since gas was a dollar a gallon.Somebody handed it to him.And I’m thinking I’m sitting in that somebody’s presence.”
A long exhale rattled out of Lucas.“Dale drove up here a while back.Not long after my heart attack.Wanted to know if I was running for mayor again, and if not, he wanted my blessing to take his place.”
There was a long, pregnant pause, and Hank waited out Lucas patiently.
Finally the old man huffed and caved in.“He figured Bonnie was the likeliest person to run against him and he wanted ammunition to use against her.I told him whatever the state found wrong with the paperwork would have Bonnie’s fingerprints all over it.She did all the filing.”A pause, and a ghost of his old defiance reared its head.“It wasn’tentirelya lie.”
“It was entirely a lie,” Hank said without heat.“She did most of your job.Kept the town’s lights on and the city’s employees paid.She covered for you for years while you let the accounts rot.And when the bill finally came due, you handed Dale a stick and pointed him at her.”He shook his head once, slowly.“She was the most loyal soul you had left, Lucas.And you spent that loyalty like pocket change.”
The old man’s jaw worked.Hank suspected that on a stronger, healthier Lucas it would’ve built into a roar that rattled the storm windows.What came out instead was barely louder than the oxygen machine.“I know.”
It was likely the truest thing the man had said in years, and Hank let it stand without piling any more on top of it.There was no profit in punching a man who’d already gone down to the mat.
“Here’s what I came here to say to you today.”Hank laid it out the way he would lay out a diagnosis, step by step.“Call your lawyer this week and get your will and your affairs in order.Not next month.This week.Tell your lawyer the truth even if you’ve never told it to another living soul.And whatever else you’ve been carrying all these years ...”Lucas’s gaze snapped to him, wary and defensive “...and get it off your chest.Write it down somewhere, talk with the pastor, I don’t much care how.But set your burdens down while they’re still yours to set down.Don’t make this town dig it all up from under your headstone.They’ve been digging long enough.”
For a long moment the only sound in the room was the machine pumping oxygen to lungs the man’s heart could no longer support.Lucas stared down the valley at the distant shape of Cobbler Cove.
“One last thing,” Hank said.“If your children want to see their father alive one last time, they need to come now.I’m going to ask Bonnie to call them.”
“They won’t come.”He stated it as flat fact, not self-pity.Just certainty.“Not a one of them has set foot in this house in years.I saw to that, one way and another.”
“Maybe they won’t come.”Hank stood and picked up his bag.“But they’ll have been asked.And you’ll meet your Maker knowing you made the effort to reach out to them.”He settled his hat on his head.“The rest of it is theirs to decide, and none of it is mine.I’m just the doctor.I’ll be back Thursday.”
He was at the door when Lucas spoke behind him, his voice thin as onionskin paper.
“Doc.That thing you said.About not being God.”A breath, hauled in with visible effort.“Does it ever bother you?All the ones you can’t fix?”
Hank stopped with his hand on the doorframe.The question shot through him with the force of a bullet and for one unguarded second he was assailed by a barrage of images.Lorraine hissing at him in a courthouse hallway in Bozeman.His prescription pad with pages gone missing.Mornings he’d made Madi breakfast and driven her to school because Lorraine was passed out, sleeping off something.
He yanked his mind away from the memories of the woman he’d failed to fix because this was a dying man’s bedside and not the place for his burdens.
“The ones I can’t fix bother me every day of my life,” he said, soberly.
He let himself out into the June morning.
Town Hall smelled like floor polish and printer toner.Bonnie Watson’s desk sat where it had sat for thirty years, in the outer office, standing guard over the dark and empty inner one.She was sorting campaign flyers when Hank stepped into view
She took a single look at Hank’s face and set the flyers down.“How bad is he?”
“He’s got a few weeks,” he said.“Maybe less.”
Bonnie sat back slowly in her chair.Hank had delivered a lot of bad news to a lot of people, and he’d learned that the complicated ones to read were the ones like Bonnie.She just went still and silent, and a host of complicated emotions passed through her eyes.But that was all she gave him.
“All right,” she said at last, her voice steady, if a bit wooden.“What do you need from me?”
“His children need to be called.Each of them.If they want to see their father alive, it has to be now, and that news ought to come from a voice they know.”He paused.“Lucas says they won’t come.”
“He’s probably right.”Bonnie pulled open the bottom drawer of her desk and lifted out an address book.Of course she had their phone numbers.She had everybody’s numbers.She was the single most organized person in this entire town.“Ellie might come.Trent might come if Ellie works on him.The others ...”She stopped herself and smoothed one hand flat across the book’s cover.“It doesn’t matter what I think.You’re right.They should be invited to come.”
“Today, if you can manage it.”
“I can manage that.”She looked up at him, her eyes dry and overly bright.“Thank you for being there for him, Hank.He may or may not be the man who killed my husband, but he’s a human being, and he’s staring down death all by himself.Somebody should be there with him at the end.”
“I’m his doctor.It’s my job to be there to the end.”Hank put his hat back on and left the office.
Bonnie sighed, opened the address book to the S’s, and picked up the phone.
By six that evening, Hank’s house had filled up the way it did most nights now.Supper was spaghetti for eight around Madison’s bargain table.
