LITMIR.BIZ

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red brick house with its covered front porch looked the same as it always had except that the lawn was dry and nearly dying in spots.

      If it had been any other yard in the neighborhood Estelle Rogers would have marched up to the front door, rung the bell, and when the owner had answered, minced no words about how their laziness was lowering her property values. She would have given them a dressing-down that would have shamed them into improved lawn care. So the fact that Estelle’s own yard looked so bad in the August heat was an indication that something was amiss.

      And Ally needed to go in and see what it was. See her mother.

      Ally’s stomach—which had been in knots since yesterday’s phone call—tied itself into one more. But then, her stomach tied itself into that knot every time she came to visit her mother.

      Well, she couldn’t sit there and wait it out the way she usually did, so she charged from the car, taking only her purse with her.

      “She’s not there.”

      Ally stopped short before even reaching the front porch and turned to find a boy of probably five or six on his bicycle on the sidewalk that ran in front of the house.

      “Do you know where she is?” Ally asked, doubting that he did but desperate.

      “She got taked ’way in a am-buh-lance today.”

      Oh God.

      Ally’s stomach clenched even tighter as awful things went through her mind. Had Estelle been home alone last night when she’d called and called, maybe unable to get to the phone? Had she been lying on the floor all night?

      “When was this?” Ally asked the child.

      “After breakfast,” he answered.

      “Do you know where she was taken?” Ally inquired, feeling more frantic by the minute.

      “To the hospital,” the little boy said as if it should have been obvious.

      The neighborhood hospital—she’d start there. And hope she wasn’t already too late.

      Ally nearly ran down the porch steps and back to her car.

      “Thank you,” she said to the little boy as she went by him and got behind the wheel again. The hospital was only about a fifteen-minute drive away. Ally made it in ten, parking crookedly in the first spot she could find in the emergency-room lot before she nearly ran to the hospital entrance.

      “I’m looking for Estelle Rogers, she may have been brought in by ambulance—”

      “Those people are also here about her,” the receptionist said, pointing to the waiting room.

      Maybe the receptionist didn’t want to give her bad news…

      Ally turned in the direction the woman indicated. Among the other people in the waiting room, she spotted a group she recognized, if only slightly. Her mother had had routine gallbladder removal four years ago and Ally had come to Chicago then to help Estelle through the surgery and to convalesce afterward. There had been a steady stream of her mother’s friends from the Wilkens Senior Center who had visited Estelle during that time, and while Ally didn’t remember most of their names, their faces were faintly familiar.

      Faces that all looked somber and serious now.

      The worst…

      The worst has happened…

      Ally felt her knees go wobbly. Her head was light. The whole hospital seemed to be spinning.

      Without taking a step, she listed to one side and had to grab on to the reception counter’s edge.

      “Ma’am?”

      The receptionist’s alarmed voice seemed to be coming from far away.

      Then Ally was only vaguely aware of the receptionist jolting to her feet and calling, “Dr. Fox! I need help!”

      “So cold! Her hands are like ice, Jacob!”

      “It’s okay, Bubby. She’s coming around.”

      Ally forced leaden eyelids open. For a moment she was lost. She didn’t know where she was, or why she was lying on her back on a hard floor, surrounded by people she barely recognized.

      There was a very attractive man hunkered down on one side of her, taking her blood pressure. There was a much, much older woman who had Ally’s left hand between both of hers, rubbing vigorously. And there was a woman who looked like a nurse standing at her feet.

      It was the blood-pressure-taking and the sight of the nurse that cued memory—she was at the Chicago hospital where her mother had been taken by ambulance.

      “My mother…” she said, her own voice sounding fearful and sluggish at once.

      “You’re who we’re interested in right now,” the man said, despite the stethoscope in his ears.

      Ally looked to the elderly woman rubbing her hand and whispered, “Am I too late? Is she…”

      “Oh, no!” the older woman said quickly. “Not Estelle. She had a fall today. And there are some other things wrong, but she’s still with us.” The hand rubbing became more intense. “Just rest and let our Jacob take care of you.”

      The man being referred to as “our Jacob” took the stethoscope out of his ears and unfastened the blood pressure cuff from around Ally’s arm. As he did, he said, “You thought Estelle had died?” He actually looked…embarrassed.

      “I didn’t know what to think.”

      “You didn’t tell her what’s going on?” the older woman demanded of him.

      “I told her Estelle was in trouble,” he answered, turning even redder.

      “Jacob! Look at this poor girl! So worried!”

      Now she remembered the woman. Bubby had been the friend that Ally had liked most during Estelle’s gallbladder recovery. She was a tiny Jewish lady who had come every day with pastries and casseroles. Rayzel—that was her name.

      “She should be worried,” the man said under his breath.

      And that was when Ally knew that Jacob was Jake Fox.

      She bolted upright, sending her head spinning again. The spinning made her reel, and if Jake Fox’s long arm hadn’t snaked around her to catch her she would have smacked her head on the wheel of a nearby gurney.

      “Hold on! Where do you think you’re going?” he said.

      “It’s you!” Ally accused.

      “Lie back down,” he commanded, easing her to the floor again before he said, “Yes, we spoke on the phone last night.”

      His tone wasn’t warm, but at least it wasn’t as impatient as it had been the previous evening.

      Ally realized then that the hospital receptionist and the rest of her mother’s friends had gathered around, keeping some distance behind Jake. She hated that she’d made such a spectacle.

      “How about a chair?” he said to the nurse. “I think all we have here is a stress-related fainting spell. She doesn’t need a bed, but since she wants up, let’s let her try to sit. And maybe she can have a little orange juice and a cookie or a cracker…”

      With the excitement over, the receptionist returned to her post as the nurse left to do the doctor’s bidding. Only Jake Fox and Estelle’s friends remained.

      Then Jake said to Bubby, “You all can go out and watch for Nina—you don’t want to keep her waiting. I’ll deal with this.”

      “I could stay,” Bubby offered. “Nina could take everyone else.”

      “And miss your card games at the center? No, go on. There’s nothing you can do. You know what’s happening with Estelle, and her daughter

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