Wife by Design

“Anyway, when I saw how my sister, who’d been raised, as I was—to be completely aware of the signs of mental and emotional abuse—fell prey to it, I knew this was a disease even more insidious than the cancers and viruses I saw at the hospital. I started volunteering here. When my marriage broke up, Brandon offered to put me through the yearlong master’s program I needed to certify as a midwife practitioner so that I could work full-time as a chief medical officer for a shelter. I was halfway through the program when the full-time position here opened up. I applied and they hired me, with the mandate that I complete my certification. I did and I’ve been here ever since.”

“How long is ever since?”

“Two and a half years.”

He counted backward.

“Your husband left you right after Kara was born?”

“More or less. She was five weeks old when I knew my marriage was over.”

The shadows in her eyes stabbed at him.

Grant had no idea what to say. Or do, either.

He shoved his hands in his pockets. And said, “I don’t think you should send her up there.”

What kind of guy walked out on his wife and brand-new baby daughter?

“I’m going to have to let her go sometime,” she said. “And Brandon’s so good about bringing her home to spend the night in her own bed on the weekends that he’s here for his visitations.”

“How often does he come down?”

“Every other weekend.”

“He comes down from San Francisco every other weekend?”

He did some more math. That meant the guy had been there, with Lynn and Kara, since he and Darin had been coming to the Stand.

“Yeah. Kara adores him.”

So. Good. They had it all nicely wrapped up.

They didn’t need him.

Which was fine, because he didn’t have room in his life for them, either.

* * *

GRANT HAD BEEN different when he’d said goodbye and left Lynn to meet Darin for lunch.

Distant.

She hadn’t liked it. At all.

On and off all afternoon, whenever she was in between patients, or in her office and supposed to be charting, she ran their cabin conversation over and over in her mind.

She went in to restock supplies in the exam rooms and thought of the morning Grant had been in there with her.

She’d wanted him to get intimate with her.

That morning, when she’d stood with him in the cabin, she’d actually felt weak with wanting him—wanting him to touch her. And she’d known that if he’d tried, she wouldn’t have stopped him.

She dropped the plastic jar that she’d picked up to refill with cotton balls. The lid rolled under the exam table.

It wouldn’t have been right. Letting him touch her. She’d have regretted it later.

But she’d have let him.

Opening the sterile sack of cotton balls with gloved hands, Lynn shoved a handful into the jar and set it back on the counter.

He had that way of staring at her mouth. As if he wanted to know what she tasted like.

On her hands and knees, Lynn reached under the exam table, retrieved the lid and dropped it in the sterilizer.

For all she knew, Grant Bishop eyed all the women he knew like he eyed her.

She didn’t think so, but what did she know? It wasn’t as though she had loads of experience.

But she did know one thing. She couldn’t just leave things as they were.

Finished stocking her supplies, she closed and locked the clinic doors and went out the back door, heading straight for the Garden of Renewal.

With any luck, Grant would still be there alone.

* * *

GRANT WASN’T AT the garden. No one was there. Lynn walked through the three-acre oasis, hardly able to believe what she was seeing. The garden had always been bordered and shaded by strategically placed maple and oak trees—some of which had been growing on the land before it had been developed. The trees created “walls” for a private roomlike feel, setting the garden off from the rest of the property.

Inside had been mostly ground-cover plants and the gazebo with its wooden picnic tables.

Today, while it was still taped off and not completely finished, the Garden of Renewal was exquisite. A haven. As close to heaven as anything Lynn had ever seen.

Feeling as if she was trespassing, she walked along a mulched pathway that threaded through various-size pine boxes, filled with every kind of plant and flower she could imagine. The scents wafted up, intoxicating her. The colors brought tears to her eyes. Wooden benches set apart for privacy not only lined the pathway but were placed off the path, as well, in the trees, surrounded by ground cover. And in the midst of it all was the fountain. Water trailing down over a boulder. Enough to make the sound of a waterfall, but not swift enough to give any sense of urgency or speed.