Page 37 of It Takes a Thief

“Yep.”

“Where does your ex live? I mean, where are you from?”

“Denver. I got my degree at Johns Hopkins and did my residency in Denver. So yes, the ex and kid live in Denver.”

And kid! But why was this so shocking to me? Why did I care? I was a married woman looking to refresh my career, not have a fling. “Oh! Boy or girl? I’ve got one of each.”

“Boy. Well, teenager, which is a completely different species. Brandon is thirteen going on thirty and the biggest know-it-all on the planet.”

Oh. I’d never thought about dating someone with a teenager. I’d thought more about someone with kids my own age.

Then what am I thinking? I don’t want to date anyone! I focused on the hike, my surroundings, the tops of cottonwood trees telling me we were nearing the canyon bottom, and I didn’t want the perfect hike to end.

“Mine are both under four. They present their own sets of challenges.”

His eyes seemed to twinkle when he grinned at me from under a bushy moustache. “That’s why you’re here, right? To get away from them?”

I knew he was kidding, but I went along with it. “You know it. One more temper tantrum or soiled diaper and I was about to lose it.” Actually, I’d been fairly serene with my kids. It was Ford, that adult child, who was driving me to take a one-way ticket on the Disorient Express.

We walked in silence for a while, then I blurted out, “It’s the husband.”

Dr. Chesbrough stopped walking, and turned to look at me. “What? The husband?”

“Yes. Mine. He’s a workaholic who’s never home, and the few times he’s there, he just rolls me over and assaults me.”

His eyes were shaded with concern. “Assaults?”

“No, don’t get me wrong, I don’t need no one calling no cops. It’s all consensual, because it’s all I’ve got. But a woman needs a bit more than wham bam thank you ma’am, you know?”

He looked sheepish. His specialty was orthopedic surgery, not anything vaguely GYN-related, so he probably didn’t hear this shit often.

I waved my hand. “Oh, never mind. I guess people feel the need to confess to doctors, don’t they?” I was sort of teary. As a doctor with twenty years’ experience—according to my assessing eye, his salt-and-pepper hair, and the bifocals sticking out of his tank top pocket—he no doubt heard or saw my tearful condition.

“No, don’t blow it off, Madison. How you feel is important. Emotions translate into illnesses—they affect every one of our systems. I was in a similar position as you, except I was the workaholic. My wife wasn’t in the profession, so we had very little in common. I got cancer.”

He said it out front like that, just a statement that hung in the air and made me uncomfortable, because I wasn’t accustomed to hearing people speak so bluntly. “Cancer?” I squeaked.

“Yep. First lung, then a mass on my chest that was pushing on my heart. Between my overwork and cancer, my wife just collapsed. She needed someone lower maintenance.”

He said it all so breezily, maybe paying me back for having confided in him. Judging from the length of his hair, maybe two inches long, he must’ve finished chemo two months before. “So she divorced you after the first cancer?”

“Yep. Can’t imagine what she’d say if she knew about the second. What I’m saying, I guess, is you need to find someone who shares your same goals and interests. That way you can be workaholics together.”

Was he suggesting himself? I actually got hot between the thighs as we finished the final steps of the hike. Someone who shares your interests. Ford and I had come together as teenagers, almost driven together by the neglectful abuses of our parents, who were lovers and roommates. We could’ve been as different as birds and bats, but we still would’ve stuck together as a united front against them.

Penny and the rest were gathered at the bottom of the trail, but Dr. Chesbrough paused and sat on a sandy ledge. With fingers braided between his knees, he looked at the ground. Uh-oh. I’m already getting a lecture. “Are you religious, Madison?”

Having no clue what the correct answer might be, I was honest. “Not at all. I don’t even know if there’s a God.”

“Well, let me tell you something that’s been bugging me lately. If life is supposed to be instructive, and allegedly we’re learning from our mistakes, why does the possibility of divine retribution scare us? Even if we agree that we alone are responsible for our own bad choices, why should God penalize us for mistakes we only made while treading the road to moral improvement and advancement?”

I smiled. Ford never talked like this. I liked the conundrum Dr. Chesbrough posed. “It’s stuff like that that makes me not believe in God. I think it’s all just random. I don’t think anyone’s actually being punished. Sure wish they were, sometimes. But I rarely see the bad guy suffer for the evil he’s done.” I thought of Ford’s twisted, abusive father, shot through the head in the Sonoran Desert. But he’d wrought evil for years before meeting that end. It still didn’t seem enough.

Now he looked at me. “Exactly. We see the bad guy all the time in our ER. Guts hanging out from a knife fight. Tire tracks across their back because they’re so out of it they can’t stand. Husbands whooping wives’ asses, and vice versa. The Rez is a horribly violent place, Madison. When I first came here a few years ago, 83 percent of crimes were violent, or they involved the physical or sexual abuse of a child. Two-thirds had to do with alcohol, despite a nationwide Navajo ban.”

“So sometimes you feel as though you’re pissing into the wind.”

Dr. Chesbrough slapped his thighs. “Exactly. You’ve got it.” He stood. “And now the lesson’s over, young Madison. You passed with flying colors.”