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“We can go see Grandma on the way home,” Gretchen said, glancing at Aunt Patty.
“That would be lovely, dear.” Aunt Patty smiled and patted Gretchen’s hand. “Let’s go see how your daddy is doing.”
Gretchen knew how he was doing. She saw him nearly every day, and on days she didn’t, she texted or called. He wore a tube in his nose that fed him oxygen all the time now, and Gretchen had gotten used to the mechanical whirrings of the machine, and the somewhat robotic way he seemed to breathe.
She got out of the car and went to the back to collect the things she’d brought. Aunt Patty used a cane as she walked up the front sidewalk, and Gretchen went past her on the steps to the front porch and all the way inside the house.
“Daddy,” she called, and a dog barked from outside. They were in the back yard, and Gretchen couldn’t blame her father—or his dog, Howl—for that. Daddy’s backyard had a tiny stream flowing through it, and when Momma had been alive, she’d cultivated the Garden of Eden back there.
Gretchen had loved growing up in the two-story house with a steep roof, and she’d come to help her two brothers paint it last year after their grandmother’s death.
The back screen door screeched, and Howl’s old-man bark filled the air. Gretchen grinned as she slid the tray holding the eggs, croissants, and ultra-pasteurized milk onto the counter before turning to greet the little white dog.
He was a squatty little thing, part schnauzer and part Maltese. He only stood twelve inches off the ground, but what he lacked in height, he made up for in bulk. He was a healthy thirty pounds, and while he looked like he could be picked up, no one—including him—was happy when someone tried.
Gretchen bent down to pat him, finding his groomed schnauzer eyebrows so expressive. “Howdy, Howly,” she cooed at him. “Were you and Daddy out in the gardens? You better not have been doing anything.”
She spoke in a baby-voice, but she meant every word. Daddy hadn’t fallen and broken his hip, but he couldn’t really cart his oxygen tank around the back yard. Momma had put in octagonal pavers, and the wheels of the tank got caught on the edges, the tufts of grass between the pavers, and everything else.
Just now, as he came toward her, the tank jammed against one of the table legs. He yanked it free without even looking behind him. “Hello, sweetheart,” he twanged at her, and Gretchen enveloped her father into a hug. “You didn’t have to bring food.”
“I did if I wanted to eat something besides sprouted wheat bread and mushrooms,” she joked. But she wasn’t really joking. She’d never eat half the things her father put in his mouth. She started unloading the items from the tray so she could go get the rest, saying, “I’m going to make those egg sandwiches you like. Cut up some fruit. Can we eat on the back patio?”
“Should be able to, yes,” Daddy said about the time Aunt Patty made it inside the house.
“Reginald,” she yelled. “Your oak out front looks like it might have a disease.”
“She might have a disease,” Daddy grumbled, to which Gretchen could only smile. Aunt Patty and Daddy got along just fine, but she liked to tell him all the things wrong with his yard and house, and he liked to tell her to mind her own business.
As that conversation started, Gretchen retrieved the fresh vegetables and fruit from the back of her car and got to work in the kitchen. Just as the egg patties came off the heat and she yelled, “Brunch is ready,” into the living room, her phone rang.
It was Jon’s ringtone, and Gretchen hesitated at the same time she jerked into motion. She should answer it. She didn’t need to answer it. Not today. No one was working today. There was no emergency thatmustbe handled before another breath was taken.
She let the call go to voicemail as she went to help Aunt Patty to her feet. She managed that only to have to kick her father’s Army green camouflaged oxygen tank free from underneath the side table. He’d almost refused to bring the tank home with him, and Cory, Gretchen’s brother, had finally convinced him by saying they could wrap the tanks in Army green camo.
Daddy had served proudly in the Army for several years, and that had done the trick. Gretchen moved at the speed of a snail behind her aunt and her father as they padded through the kitchen and toward the back patio.
“I’ll grab this plate and be right behind you,” she said. Her phone rang again, and annoyance and acceptance rang through her simultaneously.
She plucked the phone from her apron pocket and answered Jon’s call with, “This better be life-or-death.”
“I’m with a gentleman that says it is,” he said.
“Who?” Gretchen demanded, her eyebrows drawing down. In her opinion, there wasn’t anything worse than cold eggs, and with the sloth-like movement of her family members, that had already happened.
“Well,” he drawled. “I was just at the shop to try out those grasshoppers. Remember you said I could come in to do that?”
“Yes,” Gretchen said, though she had forgotten. “We’re closed today, though.”
“William Cooper doesn’t seem to understand what that means,” Jon said, almost under his breath.
“Wait. What? Will Cooper?” Gretchen’s face flushed again, and the man wasn’t even here.
“Just let me talk to her,” came through the line in Will’s sexy bark. Gretchen couldn’t believe what was happening, and she checked the phone to make sure this call wasn’t a prank.
“Gretchen?” Will’s voice came through the line. “I just dropped by to talk to you for a second, but you’re not here.”
“We’re closed today,” she said as practically as she could. “Jon told you that.”
