Unfinished Business

owning a business, worrying about inventory and book-keeping. Antiques? Had she ever mentioned an interest in them?

    “No.” It seemed that talk would have to wait. “Go ahead.”
    “If you like, you can run down later and take a look.” Loretta began to fiddle with a button on her jacket. “It’s small, but I have a lot of interesting pieces.”
    “We’ll see.”
    “Are you sure you’ll be all right here alone?”
    “I’ve been all right alone for a long time.”
    Loretta’s gaze dropped. Her hands fell to her sides. “Yes, of course you have. I’m usually home by six-thirty.”
    “All right. I’ll see you this evening, then.” She walked to the sink to turn on the faucet. She wanted water, cold and clear.
    “Van.”
    “Yes?”
    “I know I have years to make up for.” Loretta was standing in the doorway when Vanessa turned. “I hope you’ll give me a chance.”
    “I want to.” She spread her hands. “I don’t know where either of us is supposed to start.”
    “Neither do I.” Loretta’s smile was hesitant, but less strained. “Maybe that’s its own start. I love you. I’ll be happy if I can make you believe that.” She turned quickly and left.
    “Oh, Mom,” Vanessa said to the empty house. “I don’t know what to do.”
     
    “Mrs. Driscoll.” Brady patted the eighty-three-year-old matron on her knobby knee. “You’ve got the heart of a twenty-year-old gymnast.”
    She cackled, as he’d known she would. “It’s not my heart I’m worried about, Brady. It’s my bones. They ache like the devil.”
    “Maybe if you’d let one of your great-grandchildren weed that garden of yours.”

    “I’ve been doing my own patch for sixty years—”
    “And you’ll do it another sixty,” he finished for her, setting the blood pressure cuff aside. “Nobody in the county grows better tomatoes, but if you don’t ease up, your bones are going to ache.” He picked up her hands. Her fingers were wiry, not yet touched by arthritis. But it was in her shoulders, in her knees, and there was little he could do to stop its march.
    He completed the exam, listening to her tell stories about her family. She’d been his second-grade teacher, and he’d thought then she was the oldest woman alive. After nearly twenty-five years, the gap had closed considerably. Though he knew she still considered him the little troublemaker who had knocked over the goldfish bowl just to see the fish flop on the floor.
    “I saw you coming out of the post office a couple of days ago, Mrs. Driscoll.” He made a notation on her chart. “You weren’t using your cane.”
    She snorted. “Canes are for old people.”
    He lowered the chart, lifted a brow. “It’s my considered medical opinion, Mrs. Driscoll, that you are old.”
    She cackled and batted a hand at him. “You always had a smart mouth, Brady Tucker.”
    “Yeah, but now I’ve got a medical degree to go with it.” He took her hand to help her off the examining table. “And I want you to use that cane—even if it’s only to give John Hardesty a good rap when he flirts with you.”
    “The old goat,” she muttered. “And I’d look like an old goat, too, hobbling around on a cane.”
    “Isn’t vanity one of the seven deadly sins?”
    “It’s not worth sinning if it isn’t deadly. Get out of here, boy, so I can dress.”
    “Yes, ma’am.” He left her, shaking his head. He could hound her from here to the moon and she wouldn’t use that damn cane. She was one of the few patients he couldn’t bully or intimidate.
    After two more hours of morning appointments, he spent his lunch hour driving to Washington County Hospital to check on two patients. An apple and a handful of peanut butter crackers got him through the afternoon. More than one of his patients mentioned the fact that Vanessa Sexton was back in town. This information was usually accompanied by smirks, winks and leers. He’d had his stomach gouged several times by teasing elbows.
    Small towns, he thought as he took five minutes in his office between appointments. The people in them knew everything about everyone. And they remembered it. Forever. Vanessa and he had been together, briefly, twelve years before, but it might as well have been written in concrete, not just carved in one of the trees in Hyattown Park.
    He’d forgotten about her—almost. Except when he’d seen her name or picture in the paper. Or when he’d listened to one of her albums, which he’d bought