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  “Maybe I’m a little scared of commitment.”

  Ginny shook her head. “Maybe you’re afraid of letting someone else take care of you.”

  “John doesn’t need to suffer too.”

  “Maybe you don’t realize that trusting your life to him may mean humbling yourself to let him care for you.”

  Claire frowned. “He loves me like I am. What if he doesn’t love me when I look like my father?”

  “Sometimes love finds its sweetest expression in illness.”

  It sounded like a platitude. Claire didn’t want to argue, so she forced herself to smile. A happy face. “Sure.”

  “So what about Wally?”

  Claire’s smile melted. Leave it to Ginny to launch another probe. “Daddy?” She shifted in her seat. “He’s getting so thin.”

  “I want to know about your feelings. How has knowing he passed the gene to you changed your relationship?”

  Claire took a deep breath. Ginny’s pick-a-scab approach to counseling was effective and painful. “HD seemed to settle a lot of issues for me in terms of relating better to Daddy. Once I knew about HD, I was able to forgive him for his erratic behavior.” She paused. “I was able to put some of the hurt behind us.” She dabbed the corner of her eyes. “He tells me he loves me now.”

  “But?”

  Claire didn’t want to uncover this scab. She pressed her eyelids with the fingers of her right hand. She opened her eyes and raised her head. “How do you know there is a but?”

  “There always is with HD.”

  A tear escaped the corner of her eyes. Her voice cracked as she spoke. “For the longest time, I was able to be so positive, even around Daddy. I suppose down inside I always held out the hope that I’d be negative, so I didn’t let it get to me.”

  “And now?”

  Claire paused. There was no polite pretending with Ginny. “I hate seeing him now. As long as I am at work, or busy with John, or planning the wedding, I’m okay. HD is in the background somewhere, but I’m not thinking about it.” She shook her head. “But when I’m with Wally, all I see is so horrible. He can hardly speak a clear word anymore. His head, arms, and legs are constantly banging against the padded bed rails. It’s like a cruel glimpse into the future.”

  “So what do you do?”

  “Avoid going very often.”

  “Are you angry?”

  “At my dad?” Claire thought for a moment. “It’s not his fault. He didn’t even know he had a disease to pass along.”

  “So where’s the anger coming from?”

  “Who says I’m angry?”

  “You’re clenching your fist. You started when you mentioned your father.”

  Claire looked at her right hand and uncurled her whitened knuckles.

  “I’m not judging you for being human, Claire. Anger is often a normal response to finding out about HD.” She shrugged. “You blame the parent who passed it on to you. You blame God.”

  Claire nodded. “So what do I do?”

  “Do?” She leaned forward. “You’re such a doctor. You want to fix everything.”

  Claire held up her hands. Surrender.

  “This isn’t something you fix.”

  “I sleep with a loaded gun by my bed.” She decided not to mention the three locks on her bedroom door and the pepper spray. She looked into Gin-ny’s face. “My mom says I’m trying to protect myself against the future.”

  Ginny leaned back and crossed her legs. “Is she right?”

  Just like a counselor. Answer a question with a question. “I have nightmares about the rape attempt,” she said, shrugging.

  Ginny nodded and didn’t speak.

  “Okay, maybe she’s right. I know no one’s after me, so maybe my fears represent something else.”

  “You’re good at looking strong, Claire. In fact, I think you’re a very strong woman.”

  “But.”

  “But you’re human. Women who’ve been victims of sexual assault often benefit from talking things out.”

  “Two against one. No fair.”

  Ginny looked puzzled.

  Claire explained, “My mother said the same thing. I don’t suppose you do that kind of counseling too?”

  “Outside my league, kiddo. I can make a referral if you’d like.”

  She sighed. “I’ll think about it.”

  Ginny pulled the yellow pencil from its resting place. From Claire’s angle, it looked like she pulled it straight out of her brain. The effect was chilling.

  The counselor tapped the pencil against her lap. “Wally is dying.” She paused, perhaps to be sure the words had a chance to penetrate. “Now begins the final chapter in your relationship to your father. Avoiding him now is losing something you’ll never regain.”

  “Maybe you don’t get it. Wally can’t walk anymore. He can barely swallow. His arms and legs swim over the sheets like a drowning man. He can’t get to the bathroom, so he pees in his diaper. The constant movements keep him in a stinky sweat. I get nauseated just going in the room.” She hesitated, locking her eyes on Ginny’s. “And all I can see is me in his place.”

  “I know, Claire. It must be horrible.”

  “It’s worse than that. I hope somebody puts me out of my misery long before I look like my father.”

  Ginny nodded with understanding and spent a moment with her hands folded in her lap before speaking. “May I make a suggestion?”

  Claire tilted her head. “Find a silver lining.”

  “Am I that predictable?” Ginny laughed.

  She grinned. “Maybe.”

  “Tap some of that Claire McCall optimism. Make every visit with your father a reminder to live today to the fullest, not an excuse to dread the future.”

  The thought resonated with her. She wanted to do that, longed to do it, in fact. She and her father had been too far down a healing road to let her own fear spoil her final months with Wally.

  She looked up at Ginny. “It’s a plan.”

  Claire hugged her counselor and walked down the hall wondering how all the talk was supposed to equip her for the future.

  I’m engaged to marry John Cerelli. I should be delirious with joy. So why do I doubt I’ ll ever walk the aisle for him?

  Chapter Two

  The next morning, Claire awoke before her alarm at 6:00 a.m. She uncurled her blanched fingers from the small can of pepper spray and groaned, working her fingers, wondering how long they had been frozen in flexion. After taking a warm shower, she made coffee, allowing the first cup to drip straight into a large purple mug emblazoned with the name of a drug used for treating acid reflux.

  After adding a large dollop of French vanilla creamer, she looked up to see her mother.

  “Morning.”

  Claire forced a smile, not wanting to hash over yesterday’s early morning encounter.

  Fortunately, it appeared Della didn’t want to either. “Shall we go to Brighton to the bridal shop Saturday?”

  “John wanted to go to the mountains.”

  “That man is in no shape to hike.”

  “Not hike, Mom. He just wants to meander along Skyline Drive to clear his mind. Sitting around his parents’ home in rehab is making him stir-crazy.”

  Della poured herself some coffee. “Give him some time in the afternoon. We have a wedding to plan, remember?”

  Claire smiled. “I remember.” Leave it to her mother to bring some joy into her life.

  “It will be the most beautiful wedding Stoney Creek has ever seen.” She’d used this phrase so many times that it had become a joke.

  “Mom!”

  “I’m serious.”

  “I’ll talk to John. I’ll let you know.” Claire touched her mother’s arm. “Did Wally talk to you yesterday?”

  Della shook her head. “Not a word. It’s like your father goes into his own world. Maybe he’ll talk next week.” She shrugged. “He’s done this before.” She put her hand on Claire’s. “There’s a second patient on his wing
with Huntington’s disease, you know. The nurses tell me he does the same thing.”

  Claire busied herself at the sink, washing a lonely supper dish. She knew the next request before her mother spoke it.

  “Maybe you could visit Wally.”

  She paused and leaned against the counter. Why did Della have to continue to poke the tender spots in her life? What may be a joy to her father often left her sullen and depressed. “I’ll think about it.”

  “He loves you, honey. It will brighten his day.”

  Claire locked eyes with her mother. “Don’t you understand that every moment I spend with that man is like looking into a crystal ball for me? I see the future.” She threw the dishrag into the sink. “I watch him lying there twisting and turning, barely able to utter a comprehensible word, and I wonder when my dance will begin.”

  Della’s gaze was unbroken. She wouldn’t unlock her eyes from her daughter’s face. “I know. But for now, you’re okay, and your father needs you.”

  “Thanks for the guilt trip.”

  Claire saw the sting in her mother’s eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Mom.” She hesitated before adding, “Maybe I’ll drop by to see him after work.”

  Della nodded without speaking.

  John Cerelli looked in the mirror and turned on his father’s electric beard trimmer. It was time to try to do something with his hair. The trauma surgeons had given little thought to his hairstyle when they shaved a diagonal stripe across his head to repair a jagged laceration sustained in his accident. Now, with his long brown curls falling away from the stripe on both sides of the shaved path, he looked like someone with a kind of reverse Mohawk.

  He set the guard to clip everything to one length, one-half inch from the scalp. In ten minutes, he was done. His thick hair stood on end like a Brillo pad in an electrical storm. “Ugh,” he sighed. “Claire is going to kill me for this.”

  John was at the home of his parents, recovering from a serious car accident in which he’d sustained a head injury and fractured his thigh bone. He’d careened off the road in front of Claire’s Stoney Creek home while in the process of rushing to her side after she’d had emergency surgery for appendicitis. His rebound from the head injury had been too slow for John and scary for Claire, as John had manifested a loss of some of his social inhibitions. Fortunately, his conduct improved, and John’s only knowledge of his misfit behavior came from Claire’s jokes about his actions.

  He frowned at his reflection. Claire’s going to think this haircut is evidence that I’m still not thinking straight. He loved his physician fiancée, and chuckled at his next thought. She’ ll probably insist that I get a head CT scan when she sees what I’ve done.

  He put on a baseball cap emblazoned with an “A” for the Atlanta Braves and hobbled out past the kitchen, hoping his mother wouldn’t see him. He was recovering nicely from his left femur fracture, thanks to a sixteen-inch metal rod supporting the shaft, but he still used a cane, mostly to speed his progress when he walked outside. Today, he ventured to his parents’ mailbox.

  Inside, he found a small envelope addressed to him. He opened it standing next to the road. The return address said only “Ami,” spelled with the “i” dotted by a little valentine-shaped heart. Inside was a short encouragement to get well and was signed, “Yours with love, Ami.” Again, the “i” was dotted with a heart, but also small hearts formed the “o” in yours and love. She included a copy of a small digital photograph taken a few weeks earlier at the corporate office of the software firm where they worked. Ami had grabbed his elbow as the picture was taken. They had all the appearance of a happy young couple.

  John shook his head. Ami Grandle was a nice young woman, a new secretarial assistant to the sales force, of which John was a part. She probably oozes loving care over everyone who gets sick, he thought.

  He looked at the picture. Ami had dark eyes, wide with mystery and beauty, and the slender figure of a woman addicted to exercise or calorie counting or both.

  He shoved the photo into his pocket and moved slowly back to the house. There, he dropped the card into the kitchen trash. It wouldn’t do to have Claire drop by and see the heart note. John didn’t want to have to explain when there was no explaining to do.

  Claire McCall pressed through the morning with the assistance of an efficient nurse and two more cups of Kenyan AA coffee. By late morning, she paused at her desk to sign her charts and to initial the lab work results she’d ordered in the last few days.

  Ms. McCormick had high calcium, probably a disorder of her parathyroid glands. Claire checked a box on a sticky label beside the words, “Call for appointment.”

  Jeff Richardson had red blood cells in his urine. Claire scribbled a note to schedule him for an IVP, a special X-ray of his kidneys.

  Blake Stevens turned fifty. Claire dictated a referral letter for a screening colonoscopy.

  A hand-addressed letter in her in-box caught her eye. The return address just said, “Women Care.” Inside was a brief letter of introduction to a new counseling service directed to women who had endured sexual assault. It included a business card with a phone number of a licensed social worker. Claire held the letter over the trash, but retrieved the business card and slipped it in her jacket pocket. The address was Brighton, but the phone number of the counselor was a cell phone.

  Claire shrugged. Perhaps Ginny had contacted this counselor and told her about Claire. Or maybe this was an ambulance chaser who’d read the news of the assault. At any rate, it seemed too timely to be a coincidence. Maybe God really wanted her to do what her mother had been bugging her to do the last two weeks. Get some help. Talk to someone.

  It would be just like God to drop such an obvious clue. She withdrew the card and nodded. Maybe calling this counselor for some information wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

  By midmorning, the temperature in the Apple Valley rested at a balmy seventy-five degrees. Perfect golf temperature, Jimmy thought. He squinted down the fairway and sighed. He hated this hole. It was 420 yards with a dogleg left. He lined up his shot, paying attention to every detail, trying to remember just what the club pro had instructed. He’d taken up the game to please his wife. “You need some fresh air. Why don’t you take up golf like other doctors?” He hooked the ball into the woods.

  He shook his head and wondered if she would force him out of the house when the weather cooled. Soon, the air would carry the scent of firewood and the promise of a respite from the moisture of summer. The leaves would color and camera-toting tourists would photograph the transformation of green to a palette of paint that rivaled the bright lights of Times Square. Dr. Jimmy Jenkins had purchased his own digital camera for the event. Now that he was retired, he was determined to capture just the right reflection of the morning dew from a red maple leaf.

  He had risen, unable to sleep at 5:30. It seemed his internal clock had been forever programmed by a career that groaned under the weight of the town’s medical needs. For thirty-five years as the only family doctor between Stoney Creek and Carlisle, Jimmy pushed himself to his own limits and beyond. Now, several months into retirement, the free time he’d craved began to give rise to a listlessness in his soul and a desire for meaning beyond the pursuit of rest.

  He’d made coffee and stared at the thirty-page manual for his new digital camera. After ten minutes, he tossed it aside and took sixty-seven (he had time to count) pictures of his sleeping black Lab, experimenting with just the right angle to capture the light reflecting from the edge of the dog’s nose.

  That, however, was two hours ago. Now he cursed his lack of golfing skill and watched as he hooked another ball toward the forest on the left of the fairway. He muttered about the amount he’d spent on equipment and set off in search of another lost ball.

  Twenty minutes later, he trudged through ankle-deep grass pulling his golf cart beside the fairway between holes five and six at the Apple Valley Country Club. In one hand, he lugged a large plastic bucket brimming with
golf balls. Once he was just shy of the green, he detoured into the woods, all-too-familiar territory for a golfer of his stature. Twenty yards from the fairway, at a spot overlooking the North River, he teed up his first shot, aiming for a spot on the opposite rocky bank two hundred yards away.

  Plink. Splash. Plink. Splash. Dr. Jenkins sliced and hooked his way through the first fifty balls, exhilarating himself and scaring the trout. He sat on the ground and wiped the sweat from his forehead. After a few minutes he practiced his way to the bottom of the bucket, never once reaching the far bank. With that, he fixed a sticky note to his golf bag, indicating the set would belong to the next amateur who ventured this far off the course in search of a ball.

  He shook his head. Golf was not Jimmy’s game.

  He struck out from the parking lot of the club, lighter for the absence of his gear and the burden of needing to golf his way through retirement. But a nagging anxiety remained. So far, with all the extra time on his hands, he hadn’t been able to squelch the inner voice critiquing his life. He had dreamed of years spent traveling with Miriam with the freedom that accompanied the escape from responsibility, but after so many years of a demanding career, he found he hardly knew the woman he’d married. He had time to know her now, but an open, loving relationship was a long way up a steep path that Jimmy seemed too tired to pursue.

  He knew the way back into a stronger relationship with Miriam. Honesty. But after so many years, uncapping the well of hidden secrets he’d kept seemed too painful. But necessary. He sighed. He’d counseled too many couples over the years of his career to know he couldn’t sing a different tune for his own marriage.

  He slowly drove the streets, his Jeep Cherokee following the pattern they’d taken together almost daily since retirement. Through Stoney Creek, up to the next town of Fisher’s Retreat for coffee at Fisher’s Café, and back through the center of the small town. There, he passed the small brick ranch belonging to Mabel Henderson. He’d probably made a hundred house calls to the diabetic Mabel over the years, and he found himself wondering how she had adjusted to a new face in his office. He had been so significant to her once. Now, instead of stopping to check her blood sugar or clean up a foot ulcer, he just slowed and stared at the windows as he passed.