50 Harbor Street - Debbie Macomber [5]
Linnette was talking about the apartment and the move-in date and her job at the clinic. Corrie nodded at the appropriate moments but only listened with half an ear. Roy returned to his work while Corrie walked back to her desk, Linnette following her.
“Mom,” Linnette said as soon as they were in the other room. She lowered her voice, and her face was thoughtful. Concerned. “Are you sure everything’s all right between you and Dad?”
“Of course! What makes you ask?”
Her daughter hesitated. “Just now, when I came into the office, it looked like you were ready to cry, and Dad…he—his eyes were so…hard. I’ve never seen him that intense. I didn’t know what to think.”
“You’re imagining things,” Corrie insisted.
“No, I’m not.”
“It’s nothing. We’ll talk about it later.” Her daughter could be obstinate, definitely a trait she’d inherited from Roy. The last person Corrie intended to share her worries with was Linnette. Eventually, perhaps, once this was all settled, they could laugh about it over lunch. But for now, these postcards were no laughing matter.
“You dropped a piece of mail,” Linnette said, gesturing toward the desk.
Corrie froze. “I did?”
“Yes, there was a postcard on the floor when I came in. I put it on your desk.”
Roy must have heard because he came out of the other office. His eyes met Corrie’s. “Give it to me,” he instructed.
A small protest rose from her throat as she walked over to retrieve the card. Carefully she turned it over and read the message before handing it to Roy.
It said in large block letters: ARE YOU THINKING YET?
“Mom,” Linnette demanded. “You’d better tell me what’s going on.”
Two
Charlotte Jefferson Rhodes worked cheerfully in her kitchen, baking a large batch of cinnamon rolls, Ben’s favorite. After nearly sixty years as Charlotte Jefferson, she had to think twice to remember that she and Ben were actually married. A woman her age didn’t expect to find love this late in life. Like so much else in the past few years, romance had come as a very nice surprise.
“It sure smells good in there,” Ben called out from the living room where he sat, feet propped up on the ottoman. The Bremerton morning newspaper was folded over as he completed the New York Times crossword puzzle. Charlotte was impressed by his skill with words and his wide general knowledge. She also liked his lack of arrogance—he used a pencil to fill it in.
“The first batch will be out of the oven soon,” she promised. She enjoyed baking, especially when there was someone who appreciated her homemade treats. Ben certainly did, but he preferred his cinnamon rolls without raisins. She liked the raisins and Jack, her rascal of a son-in-law, did too. The solution was easy enough; she simply split the batch in half.
Her husband of little more than a month was a handsome man, a Cesar Romero lookalike and a few years younger than Charlotte. Their age difference of four years didn’t bother him and it didn’t bother her, either. Charlotte was a young seventy-seven. While still in her teens, she’d married Clyde Jefferson; that was toward the end of the Second World War. Women married much younger back in those days, she reflected. Together Clyde and Charlotte had raised their children in Cedar Cove. Olivia, her daughter, was a family court judge and still lived here. Her son, Will, had moved to Atlanta.
Cedar Cove, where she’d lived for most of her life, was situated on the Kitsap Peninsula across Puget Sound from Seattle, and it was a thriving community. With a population of little over seven thousand, the town was small enough to be friendly, but large enough to have its own medical facility.
The new Cedar Cove Medical Clinic was due to officially open in the middle of November. Charlotte beamed with pride, knowing that without her and Ben and her friends from the Senior Center, there wouldn’t be a clinic.
Even Olivia, her own daughter, hadn’t seen the need for one, since the hospital in Bremerton was less than half an hour away, and there were good doctors in town. All of that was true,