outsiders will fall for? For goodness’ sake! It’s August. Who eats any kind of melt this time of year?”
“Am I to understand that your lunch invitation is actually a dare?” Garner said. This was just the medicine his spirits had anticipated.
“If that makes you more inclined to come. I’m just doing my part to keep this town alive. A twelve-dollar sandwich will take us a ways. And it’ll buy you and me some goodwill come January when all she’s offering to everyone else is canned tomato soup.”
Garner started chuckling as Dotti returned to the main level of the house.
“I want a few sprigs of your perfect mint if you’ll cut some before you come up,” she called. “You put the grocery store to shame, Garner—it’s algae, what they sell. Don’t make me wait. Lunch rush is upon us.”
When he stood, his hips were flexibly fiftyish again. He picked up his clippers and marched to the mint. Snip-snipped quickly and headed for the stairs, light on his feet. Surprise, surprise. What tea couldn’t fix, perhaps a stringy, greasy meal with a decent woman would.
“You coming?” he asked Cat when he reached the bottom step and realized she wasn’t following him.
“Mm, no. It’s still a bit early for me to be eating.”
“Well, I can see why a young thing like you wouldn’t want to hang out with old fuddy duddies like us.”
“I’ll watch the shop if you like,” Cat offered. “No appointments until three, and the tourists have been keeping themselves out of trouble.”
“No, don’t bother with that. I’ll just hang the sign in the window.”
From upstairs, Dotti hollered, “Are you down there getting cold feet? It’s lunch, dear! Not a wedding!”
“Right there!” Garner hollered.
“And change out of those ridiculous red clogs! They’re an embarrassment.”
“Only if you take the tangerines off your feet!” He started to ascend. He said to Cat, “Go do something fun for once, if you have free time.”
She was still nodding when he reached the top of his stairs.
Was Garner leaving her? The question rattled Cat to the core. She wasn’t asking whether he was leaving her for lunch, or leaving her for another doctor. She wanted to know if he was leaving his role as her surrogate father. What man who intended to stay in her life could be tempted away so easily by a heartburn-inducing sandwich? Had he heard anything she was trying to tell him?
The story she told was true. It was the story of Katrina White’s childhood.
Cat sank onto the stool Garner had vacated and stared at the rows of plants. She didn’t cry. Her lifetime allotment of tears had been spent by the time she was sixteen. But she fretted and she worried. And she felt the pressure of anxiety closing in around her lungs.
Garner was a better man than her father. That much had been made clear from the first day she met the herbalist. It was the reason why she had decided to stay on in Burnt Rock after the first year. In twelve months the old man had showered her with more praise and affection than her father was capable of producing in a lifetime.
Cat had hoped that Garner would also be a better man than Newell Reinhart, the father of her young patient Amelia. Cat—no, Katrina—had first fallen in love with the child, a precious thing with a weak body and a strong, strong spirit. Amelia thought Katrina ruled the stars. Amelia brought her gifts. Amelia filled her office with crayon drawings and second-grade poetry.
As for Newell, Cat fell in love with his devotion to his daughter before she’d fallen in love with the man himself.
But he too went away. As it turned out, most people in the world did not know that love was created to be reciprocal. Katrina White especially was victimized by this failure, used up by ungrateful souls who demanded she cure their every ailment and then disappeared without even a thank-you the moment they could manage their own health again.
Cat’s breathing had wandered into the shallow memories of Newell and Amelia Reinhart. She had cured Amelia, and in thanks, Newell had returned the child to her previous life—a life that did not include Katrina White.
She couldn’t live with that again.
Walk with me, Garner, she said to her father figure.
No, fool girl. But I will walk with Dotti.
Dotti had a sturdy build that was more agile than it appeared, and better suited to this high-altitude environment than a body that age ought to be. The