Wife by Design

“I guess,” Darin said.

And Grant was happy to let the entire incident pass.

* * *

ALL THROUGH LUNCH Lynn heard about the incident with Grant and Kara. Her three-year-old, apparently, was quite taken with “Mister,” pronounced with rs that sounded like ws.

Maddie was too sick to eat, and it took Lynn a good twenty minutes to get the other woman to agree to stay alone with Kara while she napped and Lynn went back to the clinic. She had only a couple of afternoon appointments, but needed to get her charting done.

“What if I screw up again, Lynn?” the woman asked, her eyes wide and filled with pain. She’d chewed her lip so much in the past hour Lynn was surprised it wasn’t bleeding. “What if she gets hurt? I’d rather die than that.”

“So would I.” Lynn turned from the sink where she’d been rinsing her glass and the knife she’d used to make sandwiches. “I also trust you with Kara. And we do our very, very best to see that she’s safe and healthy and happy.”

Sitting at the table, watching Kara finish her last bit of goo-smeared bread on her paper plate, Maddie gnawed at her lip, her knees bobbing up and down.

“Watch this!” Kara grabbed a handful of bread and put her fist up to her mouth.

“Uh-uh, little girl,” Maddie said, reaching out to pull Kara’s hand down. “You know we don’t put too much in our mouths at once or we’ll choke,” she said. She gently pried Kara’s fingers apart to take away half of the bread.

“You see,” Lynn said softly, hanging the towel she’d just used to dry her hands. “You take very good care of her, Maddie. Accidents happen. To moms and dads and babysitters. They wouldn’t let you help in the day care if anyone thought the kids weren’t safe with you.”

“But I got distracted and…”

They went around and around the issue for the next hour. But by the time Lynn left, assuring Maddie that she wouldn’t be doing so if she thought for one second that her daughter was in any danger, Maddie was smiling again.

But Lynn couldn’t get the incident out of her mind. As soon as she finished with her patient, she called Maddie’s cell to make certain that everything was fine.

Maddie, answering on the first ring, assured her that all was well. Kara had gone down for her nap right on schedule and was still asleep.

“I’m just worried that you’re mad at me,” Maddie tacked on in a rush at the end of the report.

“I’m not mad.” But she called Sara as soon as she hung up the phone, asking the other woman to find time for a talk with the upset woman. Maddie’s biggest challenge was learning how to rein in her agitation and she was afraid that the morning’s incident could cause a setback from the several months’ worth of progress Maddie had made.

She also told Sara about Maddie’s interest in Darin.

She was just hanging up the phone when her emergency pager went off. A 9-1-1 from Angelica, the Stand’s physical therapist. She’d turned to grab a towel for Darin and he’d picked up a heavier weight than she’d instructed, apparently determined that she wasn’t moving him along quickly enough. He’d dropped the weight, which hit his shin and split the skin wide open.

“It looks bad….”

Her bag of emergency supplies sat by her office door and, grabbing them, Lynn was on her way before Angelica finished that last sentence.

* * *

DAYS WERE SUPPOSED to go as planned. It was one thing Grant could usually count on. Because he thought ahead, planned for eventualities, left margin for plan’s error. And other than Luke, and in a small way Maura occasionally, Grant didn’t rely on anyone but himself. He didn’t open his life to outside sources that could waylay him.

And that Saturday was waylaying him all over the place. First the pond’s irrigation system had been clogged. He’d just done maintenance on all the water features the week before and everything had tested fine.

Then there’d been the incident with Maddie’s little girl, Kara, which had upset Darin to the point that Grant had to accompany his brother to lunch when he’d planned to eat granola bars and keep working through the hour or two Darin normally spent at the Stand’s cafeteria.