92 Pacific Boulevard - Debbie Macomber [9]
She’d taken a leave from her position as a family court judge and was gearing up, both emotionally and physically, for the treatments scheduled during the next three months. She knew some people worked through their chemo, but everyone had urged her not to. “Give yourself a break,” Jack said, and so she had.
The sound of a car door closing alerted Olivia to the fact that she had company. Glancing out the large kitchen window, she noticed that her visitor was none other than her mother. No surprise there.
Olivia frowned slightly when she saw that Charlotte was alone. Since her mother had married Ben several years ago, they were practically always together. They’d returned from a Caribbean cruise on Christmas Day and her mother had been a daily visitor ever since.
Knowing Charlotte preferred to park at the side of the house and use the back entrance, Olivia opened the door off the kitchen.
Her mother smiled as she entered the house. “I hoped I’d catch you before you had a nap,” she said. She placed the basket on the table and quickly divested herself of purse and coat, hanging them on the hook by the door. Charlotte rarely stopped by without bringing some kind of treat, generally something homemade.
“Mom,” Olivia joked, “I outgrew naps when I was four, remember?”
“I know, dear,” Charlotte said, without taking offense, “but you need your rest, especially now.”
“I slept in this morning.” Olivia’s normal routine had her out of bed at six and in the courthouse by eight-thirty. The sheer luxury of not setting the alarm each night could become habit-forming, she thought.
“Slept in until what time?” Charlotte asked as she folded back the basket’s red-checkered cloth and brought out a tin of cookies and an orange Bundt cake that just happened to be one of Jack’s favorites.
“Nearly eight.”
Her mother looked over her shoulder and pretended to gasp. “My, that’s so late.”
Olivia laughed. “Well, for me it is—and it was divine.”
“Jack got ready for work on his own and didn’t wake you?”
As a matter of fact, her husband had awakened her, but in the most romantic way. Jack had brought her a freshly brewed cup of coffee. Then he’d kissed her—repeatedly—before he’d left for the newspaper office. The memory of his kisses stirring her from a deep sleep filled her with a warm glow of happiness.
“Would you like some tea, Mom?” Olivia asked. Usually she had coffee only in the morning and tea after that.
“I’ll make it,” Charlotte said.
“I’m not an invalid,” Olivia protested, although she knew it was pointless to argue. Without waiting for a reply, she pulled out a chair and sat down, watching as her mother bustled about the kitchen.
Olivia tended to let Jack and her mother pamper her these days. There was so little either of them could do for her, and these small indulgences—coffee in bed, some home-baked goodies—made them feel better, too.
“Where’s Ben?” she asked as her mother put water on to boil and added tea bags to the pot.
“Home, in his lazy chair,” Charlotte said. “He’s feeling a bit under the weather.”
“Did you make him some of your chicken noodle soup?” This was her mother’s surefire remedy for just about anything that ailed the people she loved.
Charlotte nodded. “It’s simmering in the Crock-Pot at this very moment.” She took two teacups and saucers from the cupboard as she spoke. “Ben’s tired out from the cruise, and then, well, this whole business with David and the baby has really upset him.”
On Christmas Eve, a young pregnant woman by the name of Mary Jo Wyse had arrived in Cedar Cove looking for David Rhodes, Ben’s youngest son. David was the father of her child, and he’d told the naive young woman a pack of