The following afternoon, Maisy drove her grandmother to visit the family physician, Dr. Lubberman. Dr. Lubberman had been seeing the Gallagher family for as long as Maisy could remember. It surprised her that he hadn’t retired.
Grams needed an appointment for her annual Medicare checkup. There’d been pages of paperwork Eileen had been required to complete, and she’d asked Maisy to stop by earlier to review the answers and be sure she hadn’t missed a question.
Everything looked good, and now the two sat in the waiting room. Maisy felt her grandmother studying her. It looked as if she was about to question her, when the nurse stepped into the area.
“Eileen Gallagher?”
Her grandmother stood and glanced down at Maisy, as if she didn’t feel comfortable leaving her behind.
“Do you want me to go in with you?” she asked.
“No, no, not at all.” And with that her grandmother followed the nurse into the examination room.
While waiting, Maisy reached for aPeoplemagazine and flipped through the pages. Many of the names and faces of these Hollywood stars were familiar. She recognized their names from social media. To pass the time, she scanned the articles and was about to set the magazine aside when she stopped, recognizing an all-too-familiar face.
Chase Furst.
The evening was a Hollywood charity event, with several important names in attendance. The camera focus was on an Oscar-winning actress. However, the background showed Chase with one of the women she’d seen him photographed with online. She recognized the woman and frowned, trying to remember her name.
Angela…No, that wasn’t it. The name was more unusual than that.
Amelia? That didn’t sound right, either.
Adeline? Maybe, but that still felt off.
Then it came to her. Astrid. And she was stunning. Tall, elegant. Gorgeous.
Perfect in a way that Maisy never would be unless she grew four inches and lost fifteen pounds.
Closing the magazine, she checked the pub date and saw that it was over six months old. The other photo on the Internet with the same woman had been more recent. Not that she knew what to read into that, if anything, other than the fact the two had been seeing each other for some time. To be fair, there were any number of images Maisy had viewed with Chase and other women.
While still deep in thought, Maisy was surprised to look up and find her grandmother standing in front of her.
“Sorry, I didn’t see you.”
“I know,” Eileen Gallagher said with meaning. “Your head was a million miles away.”
Feeling guilty, Maisy stood and smiled weakly. “How’d the appointment go?”
“Great. It looks like I’ll be good for another year. All I need now is for the lab downstairs to draw my blood, then we can be on our way.”
The two took the paperwork to the lab below Dr. Lubberman’s office and her grandmother was taken right in.
Once they were back in the car, Grams didn’t wait to connect her seatbelt before she told Maisy, “Out with it. You best tell me what’s wrong.”
She should have known hiding anything from her grandmother would be impossible. Limiting the discussion to as little of an explanation as possible, Maisy described the events from the night before.
“Later, Sean apologized for confronting Chase. The thing is, he’s right. There’s no good reason Chase Furst would be interested in me.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“Yes…no.” Both were true.
“You’re saying, then,” Grams said, with that twinkle in her eye Maisy knew so well, “that you’d welcome the chance to see him again.”
That was the very crux of the matter. “I would,” she admitted reluctantly, “and I know I shouldn’t.”
“That’s an uncomfortable place to be, isn’t it?”
