Molly - Sarah Monzon Page 0,55

But I’d already lied once about my feelings. To Chloe of all people. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I wasn’t sure if what I was about to say would be the whole truth, a shard of honesty, or a little white lie.

Suzy waved her hands in the air. “That was too forward of me. I apologize. Maybe I just so want to see Ben happy again—I know Laura would want him to be—that I stepped into business that wasn’t my own.”

“That’s okay,” I whispered. Emotion clogged in the back of my throat, bared its claws and scratched. I pressed my fingers under my jaw to alleviate the pain.

“So.” She smiled at me in that let’s-be-friends sort of way. “Do you think we’re going to get any rain soon? I’m starting to worry about wildfires.”

16

Ben

Twenty-seven. Grunt. Twenty-eight.

My biceps burned as I pushed my body to complete a few more pull-ups. Sweat beaded along my forehead and stung my eyes, but I gritted my teeth and strained to lift my chin above the bar hanging from the frame of my closet. Twenty-nine. Thirty.

The front door opened and closed, the murmur of girlish voices being absorbed by the walls.

I lowered my legs and set my feet on the floor, flexing my fingers to work out the cramps in my hands. With a discarded dirty undershirt, I mopped up the sweat from my brow and across my chest then tossed it into the laundry basket. I swiped the top, neatly folded t-shirt from my dresser drawer and pulled it on over my head. A shower would be in my future, but after I got some hugs and kisses from my girl.

I emerged from my bedroom and crouched a little, prepared to swing Chloe up when she plowed into me like she always did. Only no little body hurled herself at me. In fact, the house seemed too quiet for a four-year-old to be in residence.

“Chloe?” I called as I rounded the corner of the hall into the living room.

Chloe looked up at me as she opened the storage chest and dragged a Sherpa blanket across the floor. Who needed a fuzzy blanket when the weather was a balmy seventy-eight degrees?

Molly’s form draped across the couch, her glasses resting on her stomach, and the back of her hand shielded her eyes. Chloe covered her with the blanket then retrieved her toy doctor’s kit from her room. She pushed a plastic thermometer into Molly’s sputtering mouth.

“Do we have a sick patient, Dr. Chloe?” I wouldn’t be one of those parents who wanted their progeny to follow in their footsteps, but boy did my daughter look cute with a toy stethoscope arranged around her neck.

Chloe velcroed a toy blood pressure cuff around Molly’s arm and nodded gravely. “Very sick.”

I peered down at Molly with a grin. She handled Chloe’s ministrations like a trooper. I’d never been thankful for someone else’s hardships before, but I selfishly rejoiced that Mrs. Bardowski had fired Molly that day. Her loss had been Chloe’s and my gain. She’d so seamlessly entered our lives that I had a hard time imagining her anywhere but here.

And that made me more nervous than I had been doing my first intravenous catheter in med school. I’d rather insert a hundred needles into people’s veins than inspect my confusing swirl of feelings.

I cleared my throat, hoping to clear away my unwelcomed thoughts as well. “Do you need a medical consult, Dr. Chloe?”

She stopped squeezing the blue ball that made the blood pressure cuff needle spin. “What’s a consult?”

“When you ask another doctor for their opinion.”

“Oh.” She shrugged. “Okay.”

Molly moved her hand and peeked up at me with one squinty eye. Her retina appeared glassy and bloodshot. My lips pulled down in a frown. Now that I was really looking at her, she seemed flushed as well. I gently grabbed her wrist with two fingers and lowered her arm beside her before resting the back of my fingers at her temple.

Warm.

“I’m fine.” Molly’s assurance, delivered around a plastic thermometer in a decidedly scratchy voice, came before I even had a chance to ask the question.

“You don’t look fine,” I quipped as I lowered my fingers to feel the pulse in her neck. Her heartbeat felt strong if a little fast.

“I’m sure you say that to all the girls, doc.” Her laughter turned into a cough.

I supported her back as her lungs worked to expel any unwanted irritants, returning her to a supine