nearest emergency care center, spending all our money on gas and those waiting room vending machines, only to be told by big shots who don’t even know us to take two aspirin and come on back down in the morning.”
A few people booed.
“And then this young lady showed up on my doorstep with her magic bag, wanting to buy my medicinal herbs for her new clinic, and we all felt the earth shift, didn’t we?” The room rippled with bobbing heads and murmurs of agreement. “My dear Cat, you’re blushing! You probably know from our collective blood pressure that we’ve all been sitting on pins and needles waiting to see if you’d survive your first winter here—and it didn’t go easy on you, did it? No one before has loved us enough to also abide our desolate location and our annoying small-town habits. We are, after all, kind of like that extended family that gathers for Christmas dinner and gets snowed in together for unbearable weeks.”
Cat rolled her eyes. “You are not.”
“And yet she so far has not tired of our quirks, our complaints, or our ailments, real and—in your case, Hank—imagined. My friends,” Garner said over the guffaws, “Dr. Catherine Ransom has decided to call herself one of the family. Her Burnt Rock private practice is, as of this week, officially permanent, and tonight we welcome her with joy and gratitude.”
Garner led the group in applause that swelled around the room. And as it grew, he felt the warmth of the little fire at his back and the peace that had been growing in his heart across the past year. Emotion rose in his throat, and he raised his hands for quiet.
“Many of you know that I . . . that I lost a daughter many, many years ago.” He briefly pursed his lips and removed his wire-rimmed glasses. “But tonight is not a night for sad stories. I just wanted to point out that the condition of our bodies is often an indication of the condition of our hearts, and when you came here last year, Cat, I was a dying man. But you . . . you have a gift of healing, and such a big heart, and I just want to say”—he resented these watery eyes that came with his age!—“that I think of you like my daughter come home.”
The moment commanded a respectful silence. Cat tilted her head sweetly, accepting the compliments with the sophisticated smile of a fine woman, the kind of woman he’d once thought his only child might grow up to be.
“I’d be a fool to leave a place full of this much respect and appreciation,” Cat said. “Some people have real families who are far less kind to each other than all of you have been to me. I hope you all know how much Burnt Rock has done to improve the quality of my life too. And so I thank you from the bottom of my heart for making it so easy to stay.”
She placed her hand over her heart and dipped her head while everyone beamed at her. Everyone but Nova, whose wide eyes and frail body had always reminded Garner of a starving baby bird. She stood at the back of the room behind the crowd where she was nearly invisible, her brows drawn together.
Garner returned his glasses to his face and clapped his hands once. “Well, I know each person here tonight feels similarly about you in one way or another, and so—everyone! Many of you have already had much to say to Dr. Ransom, but all compliments bear repeating. She’ll be manning the dessert table, and the price for Mazy’s cherry cobbler is a word of thanks to our very fine, very own doctor!”
Nova’s departure was as swift as it was stealthy. She received none of the syrupy cobbler and liquid ice cream at the outdoor dessert table, though she could have been the first in line. Garner tried not to fret over this. It seemed no one else had noticed. Except Cat, whose eyes alighted on Nova’s tiny form for mere seconds as the bookseller left alone via the dirt trail that led back into town.
It was the only time Garner had ever seen Cat scowl.
4
Java Java Go Joe died the night of her undoing, as Beth came to think of it. She was unconscious or sleeping or some combination of the two until the moment that the beautiful broken stallion was put down, after