The Summerhouse Read online

  At that Thomas’s eyes widened in surprise.

  “Yes, my sister,” Brooke continued. “Dr. Dorothy Oliver. You do remember her, don’t you?”

  Thomas stood still, ignoring his mother’s sarcasm.

  Frank stepped forward and put himself between his son and wife. He was the peacemaker in the family. “To us, this visit was just a normal thing of Scotty’s asking his old college friend to visit, but it seems that there was a lot that we didn’t know. Over two years ago when Roger was first injured, it seems that he called Scotty, as Scotty had mentioned that he had an aunt who worked with physical therapy. Roger told Scotty that he needed ‘the best.’”

  “Which you know that my sister is,” Brooke said in pride.

  “Yes, but . . .” Frank hesitated and looked at his wife. “Roger’s parents are . . .”

  “Skinflints,” Brooke said. “I’m sorry to say it, but they are. What they did is . . . Well, it’s abominable. You tell it, Frank, or I’ll get too angry.”

  “It seems that Roger’s parents consulted with your aunt Dot about their son’s massive injuries. They even flew Dot out to Montana, but after she told them what was needed to rehabilitate their son, and even then he might never walk again, and—”

  “And how much it was going to cost,” Brooke added. “They told my sister, ‘Thank you, but no thanks.’ Dot said that it was six months before they paid her consultation fee.”

  Thomas knew that his parents were going somewhere with this story, but he couldn’t guess where.

  At times like this, when Brooke was so angry, it could be seen where her son got his scowl. “Dot thinks that Roger’s parents encouraged their son to call his old girlfriend, Madison—a girl he had crassly jilted, by the way—and beg her to return to Montana, just so she could be his free nurse. She’d had previous nursing experience, so they knew she could do the job.”

  For a moment his parents were silent, and Thomas knew that he was to see something that he wasn’t seeing. “So?” he said.

  “So she did it,” Brooke said. “That poor girl went back to Roger, married him, and has spent that last couple of years doing nothing but rehabilitating him.”

  Thomas hadn’t graduated from medical school yet, but he had been interested in the extent of his brother’s friend’s injuries at the time, and he’d found out about them. Thomas knew the monumental amount of labor that must have been done to get Roger up on canes in a mere two and a half years.

  Thomas gave a low whistle under his breath. He was impressed.

  “Right,” Frank said. “And during the rehabilitation, it seems that young Madison and your aunt became friends. Three times Dot and her family flew out to Montana on vacation, and she always spent as much time as possible with Madison.”

  “Smart,” Thomas said. “That way she could deduct most of the trip.”

  Frank narrowed his eyes at his son in warning; then he continued. “Your aunt thought it was unethical to tell us about her clients, so we never knew any of this. However, Dot saw that her friend needed—and deserved—a holiday, so she planted the idea in Scotty’s head to invite his old friend Roger here to the cabin. Of course your aunt never dreamed that Roger wouldn’t have told Scotty about his marriage. The idea was to give Madison some time off—a rest.”

  “I see,” Thomas said softly. “But now I have changed the situation.”

  “So what do you propose can be done to change it back?” Brooke asked her son, her eyes narrowing into slits that resembled his.

  “I will apologize to her, of course,” Thomas said. “It was really just a misunderstanding anyway. She was . . .” Now that he thought about it, her explanation that she had slipped behind a cupboard to escape being seen so she could go fishing early made sense. The truth was, Thomas had often climbed out his bedroom window in order to evade all the people his parents invariably had at the cabin, just so he could get to his favorite fishing hole early. “It will be a heartfelt apology.”

  “And then what do you think she will do?” Brooke asked.

  Thomas looked surprised. “I have no idea. I don’t know the woman. I assume she’ll unpack and . . . and do whatever it is that women like to do.”

  Brooke shook her head at her son. How could he have lived this long and know so little about women? “Let’s see. She came here thinking she was an invited guest. But she found out that her husband hadn’t told anyone that she was coming. Actually, he hadn’t even told anyone he was married. Your sister, your cousin, and their little friend Robbie have done nothing but look down their noses at her since she arrived because, as even you have probably noticed, Madison is beautiful enough to make a goddess jealous. Then she—”

  “Venus.” When his mother squinted her eyes at him in disapproval for his having interrupted, he said, “Botticelli’s Venus.”

  “Well, I am glad you noticed,” Brooke said sarcastically. “In addition to the abominable way my other guests have treated her—as well as that philandering husband of hers—I find that my eldest son has done something so intolerable that she is now asking to leave. If it wouldn’t be too much to ask, could you please tell me what you said to her?”

  Thomas looked down at the floor. His shoes needed to be polished. He looked back at his mother. When he was a child, she was the only person on earth who had ever been able to frighten him. And right now he felt about four years old and that he’d just done something he shouldn’t have. “Blackmail,” he said softly.

  “I beg your pardon,” Brooke said, her voice full of disbelief.

  I should have studied law, Thomas thought. Maybe if he had, he’d be able to think of a clever defense of himself, but medicine didn’t prepare one for defenses. He put his shoulders back. “It was a natural mistake to make,” he said. “I thought that she was probably—”

  Brooke put up her hand to cut him off. “I can’t bear to hear this. That lovely girl, and you . . . you . . .” Stepping backward, she sat down on a heavily padded club chair, and when she looked up at her son, she looked as though she might cry. “Twenty-four hours ago I would have sworn that if I had taught my children nothing else, it was good manners. I know that you children grew up in a different age than I did, but we had—”

  “Flagpole sitting and swing dancing,” Frank said loudly, looking at his wife. “I think we should cut out the melodrama,” he said, then turned to his son. “Look, the situation is that you’ve once again put your foot in it and now that beautiful girl is leaving. If she does, for one thing, it will make it very boring around here, but the major problem is that your mother is going to be in hot water with her sister. Thomas, you’re young and you don’t yet fully understand what you have to do in this world to keep peace in a family. If that girl storms out of here and your aunt Dot finds out about it, then one of those annoying family feuds is going to start, and those things can take years to die down. Every Thanksgiving and Christmas for years to come is going to be filled with ‘what-you-did.’ And I can tell you from experience that it makes for extremely unpleasant get-togethers.”

  Thomas’s frown deepened. “I told you that I’d apologize to her. I don’t know what else I can do. If I apologize and she still decides to leave, that isn’t my fault, is it?”

  Brooke, still seated, opened her mouth to speak, but her husband beat her to it. “Son, there’s logic and there’s women. They don’t have anything to do with each other.”

  “Really, Frank!” Brooke said. “What a dreadful thing to teach your son.”

  “Someone should teach him something!” Frank snapped back. “Come on, Thomas, you’re smart; what can you do to make her want to stay?”

  For a moment Thomas looked blank. His mother thought that it was nice to see him without his perpetual frown, but she did wish he hadn’t been so very stupid. Unfortunately, Frank was right and her younger sister was going to be livid when she heard that her protégée had walked out after spending less than a day with them.

  “Buy her a new fishing pole?” Th