“My heart is fine. I exercise every day,” he snapped.
“So do I, but we’re both stressed right now, and rushing will make it worse,” she said, panting.
The automatic doors swung open, and Fletcher headed down the hallway to a room marked:Surgery Waiting. Holly followed him inside and stood beside him with her hand on his arm while he watched the board up high on the wall.
“She’s out of surgery and in recovery,” he whispered, and turned to hug Holly. “She’s survived so far.”
“Mama is tough,” she reassured him.
“McLean?” a lady sitting behind the desk right inside the door asked.
“That’s us,” Holly answered.
“The doctor is on the way to talk to you. He should be here any moment.” She turned to look at the screen. “She is out of surgery.”
Fletcher swiped his palm across his wet cheeks. “I see that. Thank you.”
Holly had never seen her father cry—not even once. She had seen him angry, upset, and tense over business deals. She had seen him laugh so hard that tears rolled down his cheeks, but never so sad that it brought him to the weeping stage.
A young doctor opened the door and came into the room. He focused on Fletcher and smiled. “Mr. McLean, your wife did extremely well, and the appendix was severely inflamed, but we got it in time before it burst, and we were able to do the surgery laparoscopically.”
“That’s great. When can we take her home?” Holly asked. “We can get a private nurse to help until she is back on her feet.”
“We will want to keep her for a couple of days to be on the safe side,” he explained. “We are moving her from recovery to a private room as you requested, with a cot for you, in a few minutes.”
“You are sure that she’s going to be all right?” Holly asked. “I’m her daughter.”
“Yes, she’ll be fine and back to work within a couple of weeks. The volunteer at the desk will take you to see her as soon as we get her settled. I’ll be in to check on her each morning,” he said on his way out the door.
Holly sank down into a chair and covered her eyes with her hands. Fletcher sat down beside her and draped an arm over her shoulders. “I was so afraid we would lose her, and I’m not sure …”
“Don’t go there, Daddy. She’s going to be fine. You heard the doctor. She’ll be back in the office in two weeks, bossing everyone around like always. I bet she’ll be pitching a fit to go back to work as soon as she gets home,” Holly assured him. “This is one time you will have to tell her no.”
“I can do it in that case,” Fletcher said with conviction. “And she’s getting a complete checkup with all the bells and whistles every six months from now on.”
Holly looked him right in the eyes and did not blink. “So are you. I’ll make the appointments, and you will both go. I couldn’t stand to lose one of you. I want you to be around to rock your grandbabies or at least watch them play chase down the halls of the building.”
“I’d like that, and after this scare, we will make those visits,” he agreed.
Thinking about babies made her think of the conversation she had had with Bubba. She owed him more than a quick text, so she reached for her purse, but it wasn’t there. She hoped she hadn’t left it on the sofa in the living room of the house.
She went through step by step from the time that her father knocked on the door until she tossed it in the back seat of her father’s car after she had texted Bubba. He would have to wait until later. At that moment, her mother was more important.
The clock had struck midnight at least an hour before a taxi dropped Holly off at the front of the corporation building. She rolled her suitcase inside, said hello to the night guard, and went straight for the elevator. Noreen was in and out of sleep, but the pain meds were keeping her comfortable. Fletcher had promised that he would stretch out on the cot and get some rest, and had demanded that she go on home.
She used her card to allow access to the penthouse floor where two apartments were located—hers and the small one where her parents stayed several nights a week. She dug around in her purse looking for the key to her apartment, then remembered that she used a card for that, not a physical key like the one back at the house. When she was finally inside, she parked the luggage in the middle of the living room floor. The place smelled like the cleaner the housekeeper used—not like cookies baking in the oven like the little house she had lived in for the past week. The modern furniture didn’t look as warm and inviting as the worn sofa had in the living room in Darlene’s grandparents’ home. But Lula Ann lived in that little house. Holly McLean lived in the apartment.
She sighed all the way to her bedroom where she removed all her clothing and slipped into a silk nightshirt. She figured she’d be asleep out of pure stress-induced exhaustion two seconds after her head hit the pillow. But a vision of Bubba popped into her mind, and the story he told about the princess Lula Ann while he worked on the sandcastle. She tossed and turned for half an hour, but she couldn’t fall asleep, not when memories of Bubba were running rampant in her head—from the wildflowerbouquet to the thrill of kissing him in the water. Finally, she threw the covers back and padded into the living room to dig around in her purse for her phone.
She found two messages from Bubba and one from Darlene only five minutes before, asking if she was still awake. She was about to send a text back when her phone rang and Darlene’s face came up on the screen. “Well, hello! You look like crap. You told him, didn’t you, and it did not go well? Or …” Darlene gasped. “You are back in your apartment … What the hell is going on?”
“I didn’t tell him. Not yet, anyway,” Holly answered, and flopped down on the sofa and told her what had happened in the last several hours. “I was fretting about whether to come clean or just leave after our date tonight. Then Daddy showed up. I guess Fate answered the question for me.”
“Did he reply to your text?” Darlene asked.
“Yes, looks like about three times.” Holly yawned. “I left my phone in Daddy’s car, and I’ve been so scatterbrained that I haven’t thought about what to say when I do answer it.”
“Tell me what he said. I won’t be able to sleep if you don’t,” Darlene insisted.
