Last Chance Hero by Cathleen Armstrong Read Free Book Online Page A

stopped midway to her mouth. “What are you saying?”
    â€œNothing, nothing at all.” Jess laughed. “Just thinking a little nutritional information might not hurt, that’s all.”
    â€œWell, that may be, but all I can say is there is a whole valley of folks around here whose mamas ate pretty much what’s on this table, and they’re all doing just fine.” Elizabeth braced her hands on the edge of the table to help herself to her feet. “Now, who’s ready for some peach cobbler? The peaches came from the tree just this afternoon.”
    â€œLet me help.” Jess started to get up. She had the uneasy feeling she had just stepped on some toes, but Elizabeth waved her back into her chair.
    â€œNo, you just stay where you are. Ray’s going to give me a hand, aren’t you, honey?”
    â€œSure.” Ray still hadn’t said much since Lainie announced that Jess would be her doctor, and it may have been Jess’s imagination, but he did seem awfully eager to jump up from the table and help Elizabeth.
    Jess could have kicked herself for introducing so much awkwardness into what had been the most pleasurable evening she had spent in a long time. Trying again, she turned to Lainie with a smile. “So, how have you been feeling?”
    â€œI’m feeling great.” Lainie planted her elbows where her plate had been as Ray took it to the kitchen. “I felt a little queasy a coupleof mornings last week, but other than that I’ve been just fine. And as you noticed, there’s nothing wrong with my appetite.”
    Jess cringed a little. She had always struggled with this tendency to call things as she saw them, and she had wound up regretting it more times than she’d like to remember.
    â€œWell, if you sit down to meals like this every day, I can see why.” Jess tried again, hoping her smile was a little more confident than she felt. “Have you been taking your vitamins?”
    Lainie nodded, and Andy pushed back his chair and jumped to his feet. “Hey, I’m just sitting around like third base. Let me help.” He grabbed the nearly empty fried chicken platter and carried it to the kitchen.
    Jess sighed. For the last eight years, she had been eating, breathing, and sleeping medicine—with not a whole lot of sleeping, now that she thought about it. Would there ever come a time when she could have a simple conversation without clearing the room in the process? She took a deep breath and tried again.
    â€œSo, Lainie.” She pasted what she hoped was a friendly smile on her face. “I hear you’re from California too. What part? I’m from Mill Valley, just north of San Francisco.”
    â€œLA. Long Beach area, mostly.”
    By the time the table had been cleared and Ray and Andy had placed dishes of warm peach cobbler in front of them, Jess had discerned that other than starting out in California and winding up in Last Chance, New Mexico, she and Lainie had little they could claim in common. Lainie had been tossed out to fend for herself at fourteen, and she had not only survived but through God’s grace found her way to Last Chance and to him. The tiny house she shared with her husband and his grandmother was the first real home she had ever had, and it would always be a palace to her.
    Jess, on the other hand, had never wanted for anything—exceptmaybe time and sleep. She wasn’t even saddled with the monstrous burden of student loans that most new doctors labored under. Her parents, both physicians themselves, had seen to it that she had whatever she needed. Where Lainie’s parents could only be called criminal in their negligence and neglect, Jess’s family had been and still was close, using what little free time they did have to enjoy and nurture each other. Her parents had always supported her childhood ambition of practicing rural medicine, and even if, as the years passed and the