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CHAPTER FIFTY
“Mom?” Paige called toward the bedroom. “What are you doing? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, darling,” Joan said, adjusting her white silk shawl over her light-blue cotton dress as she walked into the living room where Paige was sitting, still struggling with the novel she’d been reading. “You have to stop worrying about me.”
“You don’t give me a chance! Three visits to the ER in as many weeks! That’s probably some sort of record. Did you take your antibiotics?”
“I did, although I don’t think they’re really necessary anymore. I’m feeling much better now.”
“You have to take them until they’re all finished,” Paige reminded her. “If you stop before you’ve taken the entire course, the infection will only come back, and the antibiotics will be less effective. Didn’t you hear what the doctor said?”
“To be honest, it’s a bit of a blur. I was in a lot of pain.”
“Well, urinary tract infections are nothing to sneeze at. You’re lucky it hadn’t spread to your kidneys.”
“Yes, dear.” Joan twirled around in a small circle. “How do I look?”
“Beautiful. As always. Where are you off to tonight?”
“There’s this dinner cruise down the Charles River. Believe it or not, I’ve never been on one, and Harry says they’re quite magical.” She paused, looking at Paige expectantly.
“What?” Paige asked.
“You’ve never said…what you think of Harry.”
“Well, we didn’t exactly meet under the best of circumstances.”
“I know, but…”
“A crowded emergency room isn’t the ideal place to get to know someone.”
“You don’t like him,” Joan said.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You haven’t said anything.”
“He seems very nice,” Paige told her. “It’s just that…”
“What?”
An awkward pause. “He’s the reason you were in emergency in the first place.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I think you know.”
Another awkward pause, this one longer than the first.
“You’re talking about sex,” her mother said finally.
“Well, you’ve obviously been having a lot of it lately…and as the doctor explained, things tend to…thin outas women age, and it’s been a while since you were so…busy.You put two and two together and you get…”
“A urinary tract infection.”
“Exactly.”
“But you can’t blame the thinness of my uterine wall on Harry,” her mother offered in his defense.
