Not Quite Dead (A Lowcountry Mystery)

Chapter Fourteen

"Ms. Harper?"

The voice sounds far away by two hundred or so years, but eventually my brain remembers that's where I belong, too. I blink a few times, then look up to find Dr. Fields—the good-looking one—eyeing me with the same kind of worry Mrs. Walters displays. The kind that suggests they'd be only too happy to make me an appointment with the best shrink they can find on short notice.

"Yes?"

"You're certainly into whatever you're reading there. What is it?"

I cover the diary with the tissue, feeling protective of Anne's hopes and devastations and fears. "Nothing, just a journal."

"I have the results of your X-rays, and as we suspected, your ankle isn't broken. You've stretched and bruised a few ligaments, but it should be back to normal in a week or so. You should stay off it as much as possible, and I'll have a nurse wrap it for you." He rips a piece of paper off the top of his pad, scribbled with a prescription for painkillers. "Have you had a chance to talk to your grandfather about how he'd like to proceed?"

I shake my head, sneaking a guilt-laced glance toward the other bed. Gramps still sleeps, but has he been out this entire time? I've been reading for the better part of an hour.

"No, he's been asleep. My aunt will be here in the morning, I think. We'll discuss it with him then."

"Martin's daughter?" His look of relief bubbles irritation in my blood.

"Yes, why?"

"No reason," he covers smoothly. "It's just good to involve as much family as possible during these times. The support is invaluable."

I barely stop myself from snorting. If he knew my Aunt Karen, he wouldn't utter her name and the word support within six paragraphs of each other.

"I'll check in around lunchtime tomorrow to see what you've decided," he finishes lamely when I don't respond to his comment about the comforts of family.

The nice aspects of small towns such as Heron Creek are always the same things that grate on my nerves during times like these. Everyone thinks they know you, considers themselves friends, and therefore feel not only free, but obligated, to proffer unwanted advice. Apparently that extends to doctors I've never met, but I'm willing to admit my prejudice against physicians in general might be coloring my opinion.

In the last twenty-four hours I've gotten lost, found out my grandfather is dying, and read a two-hundred-year-old journal that left me feeling heavy inside, as though pregnant with sorrow that has no intention of leaving in nine months, or at all.

It's more than possible I'm not being fair to the handsome Dr. Fields.

"Thank you," I manage, mostly just to get him the hell out of the room.

He leaves, and I give myself a badly needed mental pep talk. I've been slacking on those of late, since there hasn't been much about my life or my future to paint in a positive light, but today definitely calls for some pump. And my own personal problems don't seem like much to write home about after learning of Anne's. And hers are two centuries old.

Her story intrigues me, for sure, but I'm not sure where it's going or why she needed so badly for me to find it. I'm convinced the woman who penned this journal is who she claims, and the true story of her life and what happened to her when she disappeared from the jail in Port Royal is invaluable, historically. It needs to be authenticated, cleaned, preserved, and filed with the rest of the things I stole from the archives.

Thinking of Mrs. LaBadie's hands on it makes me want to fling what's left of Gramps's dinner. I'm not sure why, or if it's residual from Anne's healthy paranoia, but I'm not at all convinced the mean old bag would take very good care of it. Whoever I turn it over to isn't going to buy the story that I found it because her ghost led me to the spot. I'm going to have to make up some tale about stumbling upon it in the dark, which isn't technically a lie. Either way, it can be authenticated.