“Aww,” Aubrey said to Penelope. “C’mere.” In one arm, she cradled a sleeping Madeline. She extended her other arm to Penelope.
Penelope intertwined her fingers with Aubrey’s and squeezed. “How are you?”
“Better than I was yesterday.” Aubrey, a true Southern lady, did not resemble her ladylike self at present. She’d gathered her blond hair in a messy ponytail. Much of her usual color was missing from her oval face. With an IV and monitors attached to her, she seemed frail. Vulnerable. Her poor body had barely begun to recover from the C-section when she’d received this second enormous physical blow in the form of a blood clot.
Separating from Aubrey, Penelope made an urgent grab for the box of Kleenex near the sink, then blew her nose.
“You’re sleep-deprived, aren’t you?” Aubrey said. “I recognize the symptoms.”
“I’m fine! I did get some”—hardly any—“sleep last night.”
“Little-known fact about me,” Theo said. “I burst into tears myself the day after we brought Madeline home from the hospital.”
Aubrey smiled. “No, he didn’t.”
“I don’t seem to be able to make it stop.” Penelope gestured irritably with a fresh tissue. “I so wanted to be the Rock of Gibraltar!”
They regarded her with confusion. “Why would you want to be the Rock of Gibraltar?” Theo asked.
“So many reasons!” Penelope wailed.
Theo put an arm around her shoulders. “Let’s step outside and take a breather.”
“’Kay.”
“Thank you for keeping Madeline last night,” Aubrey said to her.
“Of course. I adore Madeline and I want to help you guys any way I can.”
Theo steered her from the room and down the hallway to an alcove housing vending machines. He bought her a Snickers, her favorite candy bar. His favorite was Heath bar, which was why she’d named the Heath-bar-inspired pie on her menu “Theo’s Pie.”
They leaned, side by side, against a white patch of wall. A leggy brother and sister with matching brown curls that they’d inherited from their mother.
Her crying drifted away like a summer storm while she chewed her Snickers.
She’d won the sibling contest when God gave her Theo. He was three years older and, while she’d annoyed him when he was in middle school and hardly seen him when he was in high school, their vibe had never turned seriously rocky because Theo was good-hearted to the bone.
“What are the doctors saying about Aubrey?” she asked.
“Well, first of all, they’re taking great care of her here.”
“Good.”
“But, unfortunately, her risk factors make treatment complicated. She’ll need to stay here a couple more days, at least.”
“What are they giving her to treat the blood clot?”
“Blood thinners and clot dissolvers. For now, it looks like those might be sufficient. If not, they’ll thread a catheter through her blood vessels.”
“Yikes.”
“My focus right now is to get Aubrey and Madeline through this as smoothly as possible.”
“You’re going to need a lot of help.”
“Agreed.”
“And you have to take care of yourself, too. Can your employees at Blue Ridge Adventures cover your workload?”
