August then sent a thumbs-up emoji.
Cady:You guys okay? We’re here for you if you need any help at all!
Mack:At least your backside looked good in those white jeans of yours. You gave the whole wedding party a good, long view of it as you walked away in a huff.
He wasn’t wearing white jeans, thank you very much. They were white linen pants, something Zane’s older sister, Lorelei, ordered for him when he’d complained that he had no idea what to wear to a wedding that was in Silver Plum, let alone Jamaica.
Tory:Sorry about Liam’s text. That was inappropriate. As was Mack’s.
Tory:And also? If you did kiss her, none of us would be mad about that.
Ruby:Weston and I agree with all of the other texters! And, yes, come talk to us if you need to. Hoping you do…
Zane wiped the sweat off his brow and growled. The worst part? It wasn’t a group text. Those were sent directly to him only. Which means they were talking about him and sharing the texts.
He spun around and looked across the way. They were in a cluster near the wedding party. A couple of them shot an amused glance in his direction.
Where was Mabel, and what kinds of texts were they sending to her?
Not much was clear in his life. He felt like he’d been sort of sleep walking in it for a while now. Yeah, he’d made his way up to fire chief of Silver Plum, a job he enjoyed. And he was on the paramedic team for the county because, thankfully, there weren’t enough fires in Silver Plum to give him full-time work.
Yeah, he had good, although frustrating, friends, parents, and a sister who loved him.
Despite all of that, he’d been a little down for a long time.
But one thing was clear. He’d behaved badly. He’d made things about him instead of Parker and Anjali. Now was not the time toremedy that, though. This wasn’t the time or place to talk with Mabel about his feelings. No way. It had been clear from her reaction that her feelings were about as opposite to his as you could get.
He just needed to get through the weekend, get back to work in Silver Plum, do his best to avoid Mabel as much as possible, and try to—finally—move on with his life.
Chapter 3
Life in an emergency room nursing clinical at the county hospital wasn’t quite what Mabel had imagined as a little girl when she used to play with her mom’s stethoscope and otoscope. But there were elements of it that were close.
Things had been quiet all day, so she’d only administered a couple of IVs and a few doses of medication.
Not that she was complaining. A slow day in the emergency room was a good thing. It’s not like she wanted to have someone come in with a meat cleaver stuck in their body. But she did want to feel like she was earning her keep, that she was learning enough.
At age thirty, she wasn’t the youngest in her nursing class, but she wasn’t the oldest either. It had taken her a while to get to this place—longer than she’d wanted it to. There had been some meandering.
Becoming a nurse like her mom had been her goal growing up.
Until tragedy struck, and then it wasn’t. When she became disillusioned with the career shift she’d made along the way, she finally decided to wise up to her original calling.
She knew it was the right decision because she didn’t miss her job as a lobbyist in Boise. The politics, the jostling for control, therigamarole between warring ethics, and the very gray area she found herself swimming in—she’d had enough of it all.
Getting sick and leaving it all behind was what it took to wake her up. She’d spent that summer two years ago on her dad’s couch, barely able to move. By the end of it? She’d made up her mind.
Nursing was direct and clear. It was science mixed with care and compassion. She just had a couple more clinicals and then needed to pass the NCLEX before she could start her career for real.
As she focused on the words of Raylene, the RN her clinical instructor had assigned her to, she fiddled with the tiny glass bottle of sand on a chain around her neck. It hung inside her shirt to her mid-torso. Wearing it was an old habit.
“You’ll enter it like this,” Raylene said as she showed Mabel how to fill in the patient’s chart.
The sand was from the bank of a ditch in Silver Plum. One day, early in the school year when the KNO kids were fourteen and in denial that their carefree summer was over, a bunch of them went rafting down the ditch just as evening had descended. As they floated, Zane had dug into the earth with his fingertips and thrown the wet, sandy dirt at her. She’d thrown some back, and a fight ensued. She’d been covered in it, and so had Zane, mud and sand in their scalp and ears, hooding their eyes, their teeth glowing white when they smiled through the caked mud. When she went to shower it off at home, her head swimming with thoughts of Zane, she’d shaken some of it into an envelope.
A few short months later, her entire world would change.
She found the envelope later and pored a bit of it into the tiniest of glass bottles hanging from a long chain. It was a talisman now. And a reminder of the hope that had once been inside her.
