“We’re losing him!” one of the technicians shouted.
“No!” Olivia screamed as she stood in the middle of her yard. “No—” Unable to watch, she covered her face. The aid car sped off.
She went back into the house, found her car keys and realized how badly she was shaking. In this condition, she’d be incapable of driving. It took three tries to dial Grace’s home number correctly.
“Olivia,” her best friend said when she answered. “I was almost out the door. You’re lucky you caught me.”
“Jack—heart attack.” The three words fought their way through the tightness in her throat.
“Where are you?”
“Home.”
“I’ll be there in five minutes.”
It was the longest five minutes of Olivia’s life. All she could think about was the day her son Jordan had drowned. She remembered what a lovely August afternoon it had been when the sheriff’s deputy came to the house. At first she didn’t believe him—didn’t want to believe him. Then she’d wanted her husband with her as quickly as possible.
The officer had called Stan, but her husband worked in Seattle. It took him nearly two hours to get home. Two hellish hours as the reality of their son’s death started to set in. Olivia remembered how she’d gathered Justine and James around her. The three of them had sobbed and clung to one another. Grace had been the first person Olivia had phoned that day, too. She’d come over and sat with her and the children until Stan arrived.
Olivia would never forget the wrenching ache in her stomach that horrible day in August and now she experienced it all over again. She didn’t know if Jack was dead or alive.
Jack hadn’t wanted to get on the treadmill. He’d tried every excuse, but she wouldn’t hear of it. Oh, no, she knew best and she wasn’t going to let him off. Then she remembered that he’d claimed he wasn’t feeling well. She’d insisted despite that. In fact, she’d badgered him into it.
Grace pulled up, and the moment Olivia saw her friend, she sprinted across the lawn, weeping and nearly hysterical.
“Get in,” Grace said. “We can talk on the way to the hospital.”
“I—I don’t think he made it,” she sobbed.
“We won’t know until we get there.”
Her dearest friend was the voice of reason, but Olivia was afraid to hope, afraid to believe that Jack would be given a second chance. Losing him now, so soon after finding love again, was unthinkable. Surely God wouldn’t be so cruel to her.
“Did they take him to Harrison?” Grace asked as she negotiated the curves on the winding road at well above the speed limit.
“I—no, the new medical clinic, I think.” All of a sudden she didn’t know. The Emergency Medical Technicians must have told her, but at that point she’d been beyond comprehension.
Sure enough, the aid car was parked outside the new Cedar Cove facility. Olivia hurried inside and to the front desk. “My husband is here—Jack Griffin.”
“Yes, Mrs. Griffin, the doctors are working on him now. If you’ll have a seat, they’ll be with you as soon as they can.”
“No,” Olivia argued. This woman didn’t seem to understand that the man behind those closed doors was her husband. Damn the rules and regulations! Jack could be dying and it was her right as his wife to be with him. In all the years she’d served as a family court judge, Olivia had never used her position for personal gain. In this instance, however, she didn’t care. She refused to remain silent.
“I’m a judge. And I need to be with my husband.”
“I’m sorry, but we can’t allow that.”
“You don’t understand,” she said, her voice raised and nearly hysterical. “I need to be with my husband!”
Grace stepped up to the counter and placed her arms around Olivia. “The doctors will be out shortly,” she said.
Olivia stood her ground. “I want to be with him.”
“You will be,” Grace promised in soothing tones.
“He needs me.”
“Right now he needs those doctors more. It won’t be long, Olivia.” Grace led her back to the waiting area and with only a token protest, Olivia sat down.
An eternity passed. Two eternities.
Charlotte and Ben arrived.
“Ben has a police scanner,” Charlotte explained. “When we heard the dispatcher say 16 Lighthouse Road, we knew it must be Jack.”
Charlotte sat next to her on one side, Grace on the other. Each held her hand.
When the physician finally emerged, Olivia saw that his name tag said Dr. Timmons. He walked over to her.
She stood, mentally preparing herself for the worst.
But Dr. Timmons gave her a reassuring smile. “We have him stabilized.”
“Thank God.” Her relief was so great she felt her knees buckle. Thankfully Grace was there to support her.
“He’s a fortunate man. Another five or ten minutes, and there would’ve been no saving him.”
Olivia stared at the physician blankly. “What do you mean?”
“Without the medical clinic here in Cedar Cove, your husband would have died on his way to the hospital.”
“Oh.” Olivia was only beginning to grasp the implications of what he was telling her.
Dr. Timmons continued. “We’ll need to transport him to Harrison Hospital, where he can be examined by a heart specialist.”
“Of course.”
“There’ll be some paperwork for you to sign before we do that.”
She nodded, and remembered how embarrassed she’d been when her mother and Ben and their friends from the Senior Center had been arrested for unlawful assembly after demonstrating for a medical clinic.
Little did Olivia realize that her mother’s demand for a medical facility in town would one day save Jack’s life.
Thirty-One
Corrie had been melancholy all day, but she didn’t want to mention it to Roy. Telling him the reason for her sadness wouldn’t help. On this date in 1975, she’d sat in the office of her father’s attorney and signed the adoption papers for her baby. In those days it wasn’t necessary to get the father’s permission to release the child; if it had been, Corrie would’ve been forced to lie and list the child’s father as unknown. That would have mortified her in front of her family and her father’s friend, but she would’ve done it rather than involve Roy.
Holding a just-brewed mug of coffee, Corrie watched her husband as he sorted efficiently through the mail, setting aside bills. Roy was so used to her presence at work that he usually didn’t pay much attention to her when she came into his office. This time, he looked up and frowned.
“You coming down with the flu?” he surprised her by asking.
“I don’t think so. Why?”
He shrugged off the question. “You’re pale.”
“I am not.”
“You also seem mighty quiet all of a sudden. That’s not like you,” he said, trying again.
“Count your blessings.”
A half smile came and went in the blink of an eye. “Perhaps I should, but if you’re not feeling well, go home. It’s a slow day.”
“Maybe I will,” she said, thinking about it as she returned to the front office. Roy had been hired to do a background check for a Seattle friend, Joe Landry. Joe had recently hired a new assistant and suspected the woman had lied about her employment history. He’d asked Roy to check her out, which he’d been doing for the last couple of days. These small jobs were their bread and butter.
After about half an hour, Roy came out of his office and sat on the corner of her desk. “You’re still here. Corrie, if you’re not feeling well, go home.” When she merely shrugged, he asked, “You talk to Linnette lately?”
“Not really.” Corrie had assumed that with her daughter living in Cedar Cove, they’d spend a lot of time together. That hadn’t been the case. They both led busy lives and sometimes a week went by before they saw each other or even spoke.
Her answer seemed to astonish her husband. “She was by recently and had a couple of questions regarding a, uh, dating situation. That horse guy you were so keen on.”
“You gave our daughter romantic advice?” This was frightening.
Roy bristled. “I didn’t really want to, but she needed help.”
“You didn’t say anything about this.”
Roy rubbed the side of his face. “The fact of the matter is, it slipped my mind until just now. You might want to talk to her.”
Corrie agreed and reached for the phone. Checking the time, she hoped she wasn’t waking Linnette. Because of her changing shifts at the clinic, it was difficult to remember the hours she worked.
“Why don’t you take her to lunch today? Do that mother-daughter thing?”
Corrie removed her hand from the phone. It occurred to her that her husband seemed awfully eager to get her out of the office. First he’d urged her to go home for the rest of the day. Now he was more or less telling her to take an extended lunch break. Something was going on and she wanted to know what.
Crossing her arms, she stared at him. “All right, what are you up to?”
His look of bemused innocence might have fooled some, but she’d been married to the man for nearly twenty-seven years.
“Nothing!” he declared, apparently shocked that she’d suggest otherwise.
“You’d better tell me, Roy McAfee.”
“What makes you think I’m up to anything?”
He wasn’t going to talk his way out of this. “Because I know you.”
He frowned and then shook his head. “You’re a suspicious woman.”
She wasn’t arguing with him. “That’s what being married to you has done for me.”
Roy slid off the edge of her desk and sauntered back into his office, as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
Corrie followed him and sat in the chair normally reserved for clients. “Do you remember what the first postcard said?”
Roy didn’t bother to pull it out. He’d apparently read it so many times that he was able to quote it verbatim. “EVERYONE HAS REGRETS. IS THERE ANYTHING YOU’VE DONE YOU WISH YOU COULD DO OVER? THINK ABOUT IT.”
“We’ve both been doing a lot of thinking the last few weeks,” she said softly. Her heart was filled with love and, yes, regrets. She’d never even held her baby but she’d loved her. Signing those adoption papers, she’d felt she was giving away a piece of her soul. Her parents would’ve helped her, had she decided to raise the child on her own. But young though she was, Corrie had understood that it would’ve been unfair to them, unfair to her and unfair to her child. A loving family had been waiting, eager for a child, and as emotionally painful as it had been, she’d signed her name and released her baby.
“I’d like to tell you that if I’d been told about the pregnancy, I would’ve stepped forward and done the honorable thing. But I just don’t know….”
