As for Maddie, she wouldn’t give Taylor the satisfaction that she might have flustered her.
“I did. And Rex is happy about it.”
Taylor pursed her lips. “Okay. Well, if you all will excuse me, I should get back to him.” She turned and knocked twice on the door. No doorbell needed. Not for her, the EMT. The next of kin.
“Will you call with any updates?” Maddie asked.
“Sure,” she said, unconvincingly.
The door opened. Before entering the unit, Taylor reached into her pocket and turned back to Maddie. “And I guess this is yours,” she said, and handed Maddie a piece of paper.
As the door closed behind Taylor, Maddie glanced down at the paper and saw the words:GET OFF THE ISLAND. AND DON’T COME BACK.She knew her name and phone number were on the other side, right where she’d hurriedly scrawled them for the ICU attendant.
Later in the evening, Maddie’s phone rang. The caller was “Unknown.” When Maddie answered, all she heard was breathing.
I never took a likin’ to that girl, Taylor. Maybe she’d been sweet and cute with that mop of red hair when she was a kid, but she turned into a nasty adult.
Or maybe she was only that way with me. Maybe I have a way of doing that to people on account of all I went through way back when. Winnie Lathrop once told me I have a way of shutting people out. If that’s true, and if Winnie really knew me, she wouldn’t need to wonder why. But nobody knows me, not why I feel the way I feel or why I did the things I did.
Nobody knows those things, not even Joe.
I made sure of it.
Besides, doesn’t having secrets make me just like other folks?
Chapter 30
May
Maddie spent the next several days drowning her anxiety by organizing the bookshop, worrying about Rex, and once in a while, feeling sorry for herself. She called the ICU every day to see how he was doing, and Kevin filled her in whenever he heard something. Taylor stayed at the hospital the whole time.
Just before the calendar turned to May, Rex was moved to a room in the main hospital until he was stable enough to return to rehab. Maddie breathed more easily. But any hope she had to visit him was quickly squashed.
“Unfortunately, setbacks, even small ones, can interfere with the progress he’d been making, in unrelated ways,” Maddie had learned from a doctor—via Taylor, via Kevin.
So Maddie promised Taylor, via Kevin, that she wouldn’t try to see Rex unless he asked for her. It was for the best; her guilt was more massive than she could have imagined, and she wouldn’t blame him if he never wanted to see her again.
Meanwhile, her second appointment with Dr. Mason went well—the baby was growing nicely, and Maddie continuedto be physically healthy. Again, however, she declined to know the baby’s sex.
“Maybe next time,” she said. She didn’t add that it depended on if Rex was still interested.
With the bookshop’s interior “paint and polish,” as Kevin called it, finished and looking great, the time had come to start setting out the products. She planned to hold off on filling the bookshelves for another week or so when more books arrived; for now, she’d begin with the baskets.
Opening a box of the large- and medium-size baskets that Grandma had made, Maddie was awed by the blend of craftsmanship with simplicity that included decorative accents of hand-tooled dots that outlined the shapes of shells and butterflies. A few had strips of light, creamy ash; others were from hickory, a richer brown with golden hues. The results were breathtaking; that they’d been made by a woman over ninety, with severely arthritic hands, was astounding. Maddie was proud that that woman was her grandmother, herwutt∞kummissin, in their Native language.
Next came the two dozen small baskets that Rafe had shipped the week before: Of the same ash and hickory, they weren’t as elaborate as Grandma’s, but nonetheless were charming and should sell well. Best of all, Grandma had given him an A++ for the quality of his work.
Maddie was trying to determine how to arrange the different basket sizes and styles when the door to the shop opened.
“Sorry,” she called, without looking up. “We’re not open until Memorial Day weekend.”
“I know that.” The voice was familiar.
Setting down a basket, Maddie turned, and saw Taylor standing in the doorway.
“Oh,” Maddie said, her throat tightening. “Is Rex …?” She didn’t know how to finish her sentence.
“He’s fine. Got moved back to rehab this morning.”
