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“Nothing. Forget it.” Hannah walked back into her room and Posy stared after her, exasperated with her sister and furious with herself. She shouldn’t have snapped. This would have been a perfect time to be caring and concerned and find out the result of that test.
Hearing coughing, she hurried to her parents’ bedroom.
Her mother was doubled over.
Posy crossed the room in a flash and set the tray down. Everyone else vanished from her mind as she rubbed her mother’s back. “I’m going to make you hot honey and lemon to see if that will help the cough.” She put her hand on her mother’s forehead and was alarmed by how hot she felt.
“Don’t come near me.” Suzanne’s voice was rasping. “You’ll catch it. And you don’t need to make me a drink. I’m getting up so I can make it myself.”
“You’re staying right there. And I won’t catch it. I don’t stand still long enough for germs to land on me.”
“I can’t stay in bed. There’s too much to do.” Suzanne tried to sit up but immediately fell back on the pillow. “I feel so weak. I can’t believe the timing of this, with Christmas so close.”
Posy sympathized, but she knew her mother’s best chance of recovery was to stay in bed. “You can give me a list of things that need doing.” She tried not to think about the list she already had. If she took a few shortcuts, she could handle it.
“All right.” Suzanne broke into another fit of coughing. “There’s a pen and pad over on the table.”
Posy grabbed it. She hadn’t expected her mother to literally give her a list. “Okay, go for it.” Please don’t let there be too many things.
“You need to make the cranberry sauce, and freeze it. The cranberries are in the fridge and there are fresh oranges in the bowl. The children love my cinnamon spice biscuits, so you need to make two batches—” The list went on and on until Posy’s hand ached almost as much as her head.
How was she supposed to get all this done? Would her mother notice if she used cranberry sauce from a jar?
“No wonder you’re ill. Just looking at the length of this list is bringing on flu symptoms and I was healthy five minutes ago.”
“I still have ten stockings left to knit for the team fund-raiser. You can’t do that, I know, so bring me my wool and needles and I’ll do it here.”
“You need to sleep.”
“I can’t sleep knowing there is so much to do. You look pretty.” Suzanne’s voice was raspy. “I don’t often see you wearing makeup. Are you going out?”
“Only to the café.” Which she was now going to handle alone as both Vicky and her mother had now been felled by flu. “Beth did my makeup.”
“I love seeing you girls having fun together. And I’m glad you have help.”
Help? So far Beth had been about as much use as a fan in a blizzard.
Nothing was the way it was supposed to be.
Beth, normally her steady, predictable sister, was here without the children and on her phone every two minutes. Hannah, who was the most together person she knew, had been decidedly untogether even when she’d picked her up from the airport. Even the skilled application of makeup couldn’t disguise the shadows under her eyes. She wore an air of desperation, as if she was on the verge of running from everything and everyone, including herself.
“I’ll send Beth up with lemon and honey.”
“No! She shouldn’t come near me.”
“Why not?”
Suzanne’s eyes drifted shut. “If she catches this, it might harm the baby.”
“What baby?”
“You don’t need to pretend to me. The word is out in the village. Obviously, I would have liked her to tell me first, but I’m thrilled she’s pregnant again.”
Posy decided she was going to kill Aidan when she saw him. “Mom, she’s not pregnant.” But Hannah might be.
“Then why would people think she was?”
“Misunderstanding. That’s what happens in a place where people don’t mind their own business. We were talking generally, and someone overheard. Now sleep and don’t worry about a thing. I’m going to fix everything.”
