Fools (Licking Thicket 3)

1

Tucker

2-Down: Fallacy; hallucination (8 letters)

“Doc Wright?” my office manager called. “Hey, Tuck, ya got a visitor! Where’d you get to?”

I froze, pencil in my hand and crossword book on my knee, glasses sliding down my nose, half an unchewed mint Milano cookie between my teeth, a thirty-six-year-old picture of guilt.

I reached up and flipped off the light on my headlamp.

Vienna Goodley had one of those voices that carried—as in, through the walls of my medical practice on the ground floor of the old Victorian and up the stairs to my apartment, down Walnut Street and over the highway, southwest as far as Nashville, and east to the Smokies. She was lovely and kind and terrifyingly efficient, but the way she yelled made vases tremble and cracks appear in the enamel of my teeth.

Still, I couldn’t exactly fire her. For one thing, I genuinely liked her most of the time. For another thing, I hadn’t ever really hired her. I’d just sort of inherited her when I bought the practice from Doc Thorne before he and his wife retired to Cape Coral a couple of years back, and I’d found it easier not to question things.

My first morning in the house, I’d stepped out of the shower dressed only in a towel and found her coming out of the utility room off the kitchen in my private living area carrying an enormous wrench.

“Mornin’, Tuck! I’m Vienna Goodley, your office manager,” she’d said cheerily, once I’d peeled my testicles off the ceiling and finished screaming. “I remember you from when you were a little boy. Noticed the hot water pressure was a little wonky, so I fixed it for ya.”

I hadn’t known it then, but this was Vienna’s MO: she identified a problem, and she solved it, by God. And she preferred to ask for forgiveness rather than permission.

Most of the time, this was a wonderful thing. She’d managed my bookkeeping and dealt with insurance hassles. She’d enforced a flawless scheduling system for patient appointments, working with my receptionist, Annie, that helped me run more efficiently and guarded my personal time for fishing and volunteering. She gave practical advice, and always made extra roast beef on Sundays so I could have her leftovers.

But there were also times when her take-charge attitude was less wonderful. Like the time she’d cleared my pantry of refined sugar (an incident I privately referred to as the Great Cookie Massacre of 2017), or the many times she’d leaned over my shoulder to provide unsolicited feedback on my crossword puzzles (if a man happened to spelled sassafras with the extra s in the wrong spot, that was his own damn business and nobody else’s), and most recently, after what I could only assume was a pumpkin pie–fueled Hallmark movie marathon, her insistence on overhauling my lackluster love life by inviting prescreened “gentleman callers” to the office for me to “interview” as potential lovers.

One guy had brought a list of references.

Not kidding.

I’d tried talking to Vienna about this a whole bunch of times, but she never seemed to get the message, and to be honest, that was probably my fault. I was shit at setting boundaries with people who cared about me.

Strangers and acquaintances, colleagues and patients? I could lay down the law without a problem. But how did you enforce a boundary when someone genuinely had your best interest at heart? How were you supposed to tell someone they weren’t loving you the way you needed, you know?

I’d found the easier thing to do was to simply avoid the situation entirely. Vienna couldn’t get me to agree to a date if she couldn’t find me.

“Doc Wright? You in here?” Vienna knocked on my office door before pushing it open with a squeak. “Well, I just don’t know where he could’ve gone! I’d swear I didn’t hear the door.” I could picture her in her fall wardrobe of black turtleneck and khaki pants, hands propped on her hips, peeking under my desk in case I’d somehow gotten stuck there and needed an assist. I heard her cross to the window and pictured her peering out at the leaf-strewn backyard, wondering if I’d made a break for it.

My mouth started to go cottony around my cookie, and I felt the urge to cough.

“No worries, Ms. Vienna,” a familiar, deep voice reassured her. “I’ll just sit right here, put my feet up—” I heard a squeak as my best friend settled his large, muscular frame into my chair and no doubt tilted himself backward with his hands stacked behind his head, like my ultra-ergonomic desk chair was the old, plaid recliner in his fishing cabin. “—and wait for Tuck to show up.”

The voice rumbled with hidden laughter I liked to think only I could hear. It made my heart squeeze and an answering smile hover on my lips. Dunn Johnson always, always found something in life to smile over. It was one of the things I loved best about him.