Sophie's Path by Catherine Lanigan Read Free Book Online Page B

she’d never had a chance in the first place?
    Sophie drove out of the wooded glen and back to the road that led to town. She turned left instead of right so she could drive around the lake. The lake helped her collect her thoughts. Often, after a particularly hard day of surgeries, if she couldn’t run the lake trails, she would at least drive around it to clear her mind. The water, whether choppy or placid, gray or crystal blue calmed her. But not today.
    Today, Sophie didn’t feel much like giving thanks or praise. Her heart was as heavy as Jack Carter’s. She wondered if one of the reasons he’d urged her to leave so quickly was because he wanted to drown himself in tears just as she was doing.
    * * *
    I T HAD BEEN two weeks since Aleah’s death and today was the first day Sophie had felt like stepping beyond the boundaries of the hospital or her apartment.
    She sat on a red-leather-and-chrome fifties-style stool at the lunch counter at Lou’s Diner, sipping an iced tea while she waited for her lunch. She liked the former train car that had been turned into a retro diner years ago. In the next car over was The LTD, also run by Lou, which served gourmet meals that made Sophie drool just reading the menu. She’d only eaten in The LTD once. That was the night of her graduation, when she’d received her RN. Her father had been healthy then and her mother was electric with pride. Even her Italian grandmother, who spoke little English, agreed to eat in an American restaurant. It had been a hallmark day for the Mattuchi family.
    Sophie tried to remember what dreams she’d had for herself then. Mostly, she’d just been happy to be done with finals and evaluations.
    However, she must have had some ambition because she’d only worked for a year at Grand Rapids Hospital before she realized she wanted more. She’d decided to specialize in cardiac surgery. She went back to school to get her master’s degree in nursing science and then she entered a highly competitive fellowship program to specialize in cardiovascular care. During her placement, she often felt she was only a half-step behind the heart surgeons she worked alongside. Until she returned home to Indian Lake. Once she started working with Nate Barzonni, she realized that there truly were gifted, intuitive talents in every field. Nate was a virtuoso. A genius. He could have written his own ticket to the country’s top hospitals, but Nate had decided the fast lane was not for him. He spent nearly as much of his time working at a free clinic on an Indian reservation as he did in the high-tech ablation unit at Indian Lake Hospital.
    Still, Sophie supposed that Nate’s main reason for setting up shop in Indian Lake was Maddie Strong—now his wife. Sophie grimaced, remembering how she’d literally thrown herself at him when he’d first moved back to town. She had decided that to win Nate Barzonni, she’d attempt a makeover. Granted, her initial thoughts were veering down the right path because she’d needed to make changes. But she should have realized that her tactics had “disaster” written all over them.
    Sophie had chopped off her hair and streaked it blond to look as much like Maddie Strong as possible, since Maddie had been Nate’s type when they were in high school. She went on a diet and lost eight pounds. She bought new clothes and fell back on her old standby—flirting.
    But Nate was a one-woman man and he’d chosen Maddie.
    Rightfully so. Maddie was the best woman, a fact that Sophie had known all along.
    The following spring, Sophie flung a bit of caution to the wind and—not coyly—made a pass at Nate’s brother, Gabe. Gabe was very forthright and told her he just wasn’t into her. Little did she know that a few months later he and Liz Crenshaw would be married. Frankly, at the time, she didn’t think Gabe knew Liz at all. In fact, Sophie could