my head. I wanted something with the least amount of daily fuss. One of my patients put them in.”
Over Kathleen’s shoulder I see Sofie finally approach her mother and sit beside her on the couch, her eyes still full of suspicion as she stares at me.
“Your hair looks funny,” her brother points out. “Like rope.”
Before I have a chance to answer, Kathleen does. “They’re called dreads. They look like rope but are really soft, come feel.” A smile plays around my sister’s mouth as she releases him so he can reach out when I bend down. His little fist closes on my hair.
“How do you brush it?”
“I don’t have to brush it. It stays exactly like this,” I answer, smiling down at him.
His head whips around to his mom. “I want dreads too,” he announces.
“You just don’t want to brush your hair,” his sister snaps, speaking up for the first time.
“So?” her brother fires back, but before the siblings can take the bickering any further, their mom jumps in.
“Guys, this is your aunt, Taz. Mommy’s sister.”
“Hi,” Spencer says, looking at me with even more curiosity, but his sister stays silent.
“Sofie?” Nicky prompts.
“Yeah, hi.”
My niece’s brush-off response doesn’t offend me in the least. I understand it. I see the awareness in her eyes and nothing she sees bodes well, and she knows it. My presence here is simply additional proof that things are not all right.
“You guys hungry?” I ask to break the tension.
As expected—he’s male after all—Spencer is quick to confirm with enthusiastic nodding of his head.
“Come on then,” I tell him, noting my sister’s eyes are closing again. “Let’s see what we can drum up.” I take the boy by the hand and start walking out of the room. “Sofie?” I throw over my shoulder, purposely casual. “I think your mom is ready for a nap, want to see if you can help her into bed?”
I can see her hesitation as she looks from me to the hospital bed on the other side of the room, before her eyes settle on her mom. I catch Kathleen’s eye, who seems to easily understand my silent communication.
“Come on, Sofie. Let’s tuck your mom in,” I hear her say, as I lead Spencer into the kitchen.
Fifteen minutes later Nicky is sleeping, Sofie snatched a banana and headed up to her room, Spencer is in front of the TV in the rec room downstairs, and Kathleen comes walking into the kitchen.
“Where is Rafe?”
I steel my shoulders, knowing a third-degree was coming. “Had to check on things at the clinic,” I answer, feigning a casualness I don’t feel.
But instead of the probing questions I was expecting, she mumbles, “Hiding already,” and slips out the back door.
From the kitchen window I see her stalking over to the clinic next door.
Rafe
I’m a coward.
I saw Kathleen pull up and my kids get out of her van, but instead of heading home, I ducked my head and kept going over the notes Rick Moore, a colleague from neighboring Winona who’d looked after my practice, had left for me.
Not that I was really processing anything I read, my mind still trying to come to grips with the upsets of this past week. Hiding out in the clinic had become a habit I’d grown into over the past year already and is a safe place to slip back to with life throwing a bunch of curves.
I plan. That’s what I do.
From when I was first placed with my foster parents at nine years old, I started plotting what my view of a perfect life should look like, since up to that point mine had been far from it. My foster parents—both since deceased—were kind enough, but being older and without kids of their own, remained detached during the ten years I lived with them. I craved the sense of family but realized early on I would have to rely on myself to create it.
I had it all worked out in my head. When I came to Eminence and met the Borans for the first time, I thought I’d found it. The town and the clinic were exactly what I’d hoped for, and the family it came with seemed perfect—as did their daughter.
Then I met Taz: younger than her sister by a couple of years and as different as the sun is from the moon. Opinionated, stubborn, irreverent, and uncontrolled, she was like turbulence on a smooth flight. Disruptive and jarring, but at the same time brightly exciting in an almost