LITMIR.BIZ

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woke him up. He cracked one eye open to a pitch-black room. Bethany was sitting on his rib cage.

      “Daddy! Are you awake?”

      “I am now.” He’d tossed and turned until the wee hours of the morning. It was too quiet here. He missed the white noise of traffic, horns, sirens. He liked the idea that there were people all around him. This house was too isolated. The only nearby neighbor was Amanda Dewhurst, and he’d managed to alienate her.

      The quiet had nearly driven him crazy.

      “I’m bored,” Bethany announced.

      Hudson checked the illuminated dial on his watch. It was a little after five o’clock. “Go back to bed. It’s too early.” It would be six, Boston time. He would already be on his way to the hospital, mentally preparing for his first surgery.

      “I can’t sleep,” Bethany said.

      Bethany had never awakened him before. Back home, if she cried in the night or had a bad dream, she went to the live-in housekeeper. She’d been told not to disturb his sleep, because he needed plenty of rest if he was going to stick a scalpel into someone’s heart the next day.

      Now he had no such excuses. His daughter was his responsibility, totally. It scared him a little.

      “Do you want to climb into bed with me?” he asked, a little apprehensively. He wasn’t sure that was proper, but maybe it would help her feel more secure if an adult was nearby.

      “No. I want you to get up. I’m hungry.”

      Hudson groaned. “Get a Pop-Tart. They’re in the cabinet.”

      “I can’t reach.”

      Hudson reached over and turned on the bedside lamp. His daughter stared at him earnestly. He would have to get up—he didn’t know what else to do. Maybe he shouldn’t have made Bethany take that long nap yesterday.

      He set her on her feet, then climbed out of bed and pulled on a pair of jeans.

      As he was fixing Bethany a Pop-Tart, he looked out the window and noticed lights on at the house next door. Amanda must be an early riser. He thought about asking her over for coffee. It would be nice to have another adult to talk to. He was going batty here, and he’d been here less than a day.

      Then he realized how stupid an idea that was. First, he didn’t have any coffee. And even if he did, the cabin didn’t have a coffee maker. Second, an attractive woman in his cabin would only make his blood pressure go up. And the objective was to make it go down. He’d brought a cuff with him and he intended to check it often. The moment he got the numbers down to normal, he was heading back to Boston.

      Third, Amanda probably wasn’t speaking to him. Although he hoped the cash left on her door would lessen her anger with him.

      He thought back to the way she’d gone off on him yesterday. Her eyes had sparked fire, and little wisps of blond hair had pulled free of her tight twist, framing her face in a shimmering halo. He’d liked seeing her that way, free of her ultraprofessional real-estate-lady persona. He just wished her anger hadn’t been aimed at him.

      He thought about her loss of composure and wondered what it meant. Yelling at him about the check he could understand. But that business about Mary Jo Whoever stealing her trophy—that was over the top.

      The light upstairs went out, and another came on downstairs. Maybe he could take her out for coffee. Did Cottonwood have a Starbucks? He doubted it, but he’d seen something called the Miracle Café that served breakfast all day.

      “Are you gonna give me that Pop-Tart or what?” Bethany asked.

      Hudson realized he’d been staring at the house, lost in thought. The Pop-Tart had popped up and was cooling off. He plucked it from the toaster, set it on a paper towel, and handed it to Bethany.

      “Grandma Ruth says we always have to eat at the table.”

      “At home, maybe. But we’re on vacation.”

      “What’s vacation?”

      “You know, a trip. Where we have fun.”

      “I’m not having fun.”

      “You didn’t like sleeping in the loft?”

      “Yeah. But I’m awake now.”

      “Let’s go watch the sunrise.”

      “Why?”

      “Because…because it’s pretty. Because that’s what people do when they stay in a lake house, I guess.”

      “What about fishing?”

      When Hudson had checked out the house yesterday, he’d seen some fishing equipment in the garage. “Sure, why not? We’ll eat breakfast, get dressed, and by then the sun will be up and we can go fishing.”

      Thirty minutes later, showered, dressed in old jeans and reasonably well fed with two Pop-Tarts, Hudson was in the garage sorting through a pile of dusty old fishing equipment. He selected what looked like the only two poles that actually had working reels attached. He sort of figured out how the reel worked. He found a tackle box that had an assortment of esoteric things inside, including hooks. He tied a hook onto the end of each line, using surgical knots.

      “Piece of cake,” he murmured.

      All the while, Bethany watched intently, asking him what he was doing each step of the way. He tried to act as if he knew the drill, but he’d never been fishing in his life except for the time he went deep-sea fishing on a yacht. This was a little different.

      “The fish bite onto these hooks?” she asked.

      “That’s right.”

      “Why do they do that? Are they stupid?”

      “No. We have to trick them into biting the hook by putting bait on it.”

      “What’s bait?”

      “It’s something the fish would like to eat.”

      “What do fish eat?”

      That was a very good question. He rifled through the tackle box, finally coming up with some rather crusty artificial worms. Maybe these would do.

      The point wasn’t really to catch anything, right? This was an exercise in boredom.

      The sun was just coming up as Hudson and Bethany walked out to the end of the rickety dock. Hudson put a rubbery worm on the end of each hook, then pulled out some extra line so the hook would dangle in the water. He gave one pole to Bethany, cautioning her for about the tenth time about being careful of the hook. Then he sat down beside her and put his own hook in the water.

      Nothing happened.

      “This is nice,” he said, trying to convince himself. “Just you and me, doing a little father-daughter bonding.”

      “Huh?”

      “Never mind. Is anything happening with your line?”

      “No.”

      “Mine, neither. But I understand you have to be patient to be a fisherman.”

      “Fishergirl,” she corrected him.

      Oh, Lord. At four years old, Bethany was a budding feminist. Her grandmother would have a fit. Finally, something to make Hudson smile.

      “I’m bored,” Bethany said after exactly seven minutes.

      “Let’s talk to pass the time.”

      “Talk about what?”

      He had no idea what. “What do you like to watch on TV?”

      “Princess Pony.”

      “Tell me about that.”

      “There’s a white pony, and she’s a princess, and then there’s a bad Palomino Queen who wants Princess

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