Moonlight Masquerade (7 page)

But the answer had always been the same: no. “You want me to move my entire family to some backwater town for just two and a half years? Then what? Your cousin returns and I have to get out?”

No one was interested. Reede had even called a former professor and asked. Maybe the man would like to retire to a small town and deal with a lot of cases of poison ivy. He'd laughed at Reede. “Give up the comforts of a college city to move into one of those small town closed societies? Thanks for the offer, but no.”

No matter what Reede tried, he couldn't get anyone to take his place. Sometimes he felt like packing his car
and driving away and saying the hell with all of them. He was sick of being compared to his cousin Tristan. Tired of hearing people say, “Dr. Tris would have—” Fill in the blank.

If Reede hadn't grown up in Edilean he wouldn't have any idea what was going on, but he knew it all. The problem was that “the Tristans” were believed to be destined to be Edilean's physicians. Since the town was established in the 1700s, an Aldredge had been the town doctor. That's what the people wanted, and they weren't settling for something different.

But somewhere along the way, the Aldredge family had divided, and there were now two branches of it. One side inherited Aldredge House, which was just out of town and set on a beautiful lake, and they were the town doctors. But then, there were the “other Aldredges” . . . They didn't inherit the house and they had different jobs.

The problem came when Reede, like his cousin Tris, had been born knowing he was going to be a doctor. In other families that would have been treated as a gift, but in Reede's case he was looked on as an oddity. “So
you
want to be a doctor too?” they said, looking at him as though he'd said he wanted to grow a third arm.

The only person who saw nothing strange was Tristan. He couldn't understand why everyone didn't want to be a doctor.

The two boys, born the same year and third cousins, were fast friends while growing up, and they'd talked about their professions as something that couldn't change. It had made Reede feel secure knowing what his future was going to be.

So maybe he was a bit jealous of Tristan, but that couldn't be helped. Tris was going to live in town in the same house he'd been born in, and from the way the girls followed him around, he was going to have no trouble finding someone to share it with.

Reede was a very different person. Whereas Tris easily mingled with people, played team sports, and dated every girl who smiled at him, Reede had always been a loner. He had a few good friends and he stayed with them. He'd never been easy in large groups.

As for girls, he'd never been confident in asking them out. Quite a few of them had come on to him, teasing him, some of them even asking him out. But when he was with them, Reede had always bored them by talking of medicine.

When he was fourteen he'd met Laura Chawnley. Her family had just moved to Edilean, and when she was introduced to the class she'd look so scared Reede thought she was going to cry. Later, he saw her from across the hall. She was trying to arrange all her books into a pile and wasn't very successful at it. He smiled at her fumbling; she seemed so helpless. She seemed to need someone to come and rescue her. And Reede did.

He carried her books and made sure she found her classrooms, and he introduced her to people. She was so shy that she'd stood behind him, almost afraid to even look up. From the first, Laura had made him feel good as she looked to him for everything—to introduce her to people, to take her places, and even to do all the talking. He loved telling her of his dreams for the future—and from the beginning he included her in those plans.

His mother had a different view of the two of them. She said that Laura just sat and waited for Reede to come and get her. But Reede had liked that. Having grown up around his dynamic mother and sister, Laura's quiet passivity was refreshing. And most important, she made him feel as though he could see his future. He knew that they'd get married, live in Edilean, and have children. Reede even knew the house they would buy. Like Tristan's Aldredge House, it was a bit out of town, set on two acres, and the old house needed a lot of repair. Reede and Tris would jointly run the Edilean clinic and . . . Well, Reede's life would be set.

As far as he could see, the only bad part in his plan were the little comments people made. Especially his mother. One time she said, “You can't be Tristan no matter how hard you try.” When Reede said he had no idea what she was talking about, she'd glanced around his room. There were travel posters everywhere. Egypt, Petra in Jordan, the Galapagos Islands. “How are you going to see these places if you live with Laura here in Edilean?”

“We'll go together,” Reede had said enthusiastically. “Laura wants to go places and do things as much as I do. And Tristan can take over while we're away.”

His mother had looked skeptical. “From what I've seen of that girl, she's afraid to cross a street by herself.”

Reede narrowed his eyes at his mother, and she threw up her hands in surrender. “I'm sure you know her better than I do, but I do wonder if she tells you what you want to hear because she's so in awe of you.”

“Awe? Are you kidding?” Reede lowered his voice. “Mom, I know you have good intentions, but you really don't know Laura as I do. She's sweet and considerate and—”

“A dud,” Kim said from the doorway. “She stays with you because you get her included in everything. You think she was put on the yearbook committee because of her great personality?”

“Why you—” Reede began but his mother caught his arm.

“Kim, would you mind? This is a private conversation.”

“Whatever,” Kim said, shrugging as she went down the hall.

Reede had stood up, signaling the end of all that he was going to listen to.

It was years after that when he'd come home from med school and Laura had dumped him. With a coolness, a detachment, that shocked him, she'd told him that she was in love with and was going to marry a little man with watery blue eyes and spend her life as a preacher's wife. Reede's foundation was knocked out from under him. For weeks afterward, he'd had no idea what he was going to do with his life. If he had no one to share things with, if he was to be alone, should he even become a doctor? During those weeks, all he could do was sit and stare at the TV.

There was one incredibly low point when he'd climbed up Stirling Point and jumped off the cliff into a pool of water. As he'd gone down he'd thought that it wouldn't be a bad thing if he didn't come up. If it hadn't been for Kim's cute little friend, Jecca, jumping
in to save him then nearly getting drowned, Reede wondered if he'd still be alive. After that, he'd been so embarrassed by his depression and his reckless behavior, which had almost cost Jecca her life, that he'd packed up and left before she got back to the house.

He'd returned to medical school, but he'd rarely gone back to Edilean. At first all he could think about was that he was
alone.
Truly and deeply alone. But then he began to see some advantages in that. Other women were his first foray into a world-without-Laura. Then there was volunteering for jobs that other people didn't want, such as rescue missions. He was the one who put on fire fighter's gear and went into a burning building to search for trapped people.

It seemed that the more dangerous the mission, the more he liked doing it. After his residency, he went to Africa—and he found that he fit in there perfectly. The small town life of Edilean had prepared him for village life.

What he didn't want to see is how good it made him feel to be free of the stigma of not being Tristan. He'd not realized that all his life he'd been compared to his cousin—and found wanting. Reede was an Aldredge and he was a doctor but he wasn't Tristan. Tris made people laugh; Reede was too serious. Tris cared about everyone; Reede couldn't abide people who imagined illnesses that weren't there. Tris was sweet and kind, always in a good mood; Reede wanted his time alone, and he let people know it.

The list went on and on. In the Middle East, in the Gobi Desert, anywhere on Earth other than Edilean, Reede wasn't compared to anyone. And maybe it was
vain of him, but he liked being appreciated for what he did, what he risked to help people.

Reede stared through the windshield of his car. It wasn't until he'd returned to Edilean to help Tris out after he'd broken his arm, that Reede began to see things more clearly. With the constant comparisons, it's no wonder he wanted to leave and never return. After the first week in Tristan's office he'd begun counting the days until he could get out of town again.

Tris's staff of two women, one ready to retire, had nearly driven him mad. “Dr. Tris always—” began every sentence. They seemed to expect Reede to walk, talk, eat, breathe exactly as Tristan did.

And that Reede wasn't like his cousin made them roll their eyes, give grimaces, and make little comments under their breath. Reede gave up trying to appease them. Besides, when he found out he was going to have to endure all of it for three years while their beloved Tristan was in New York, Reede's ability to smile left him.

One of the women decided to retire early, and to replace her she hired a young woman who jumped at Reede's every word. But then, the truth was that by that time there was so much anger inside him that he probably did snap out an answer to her every question.

But yesterday had been too much. He'd been indulging himself in whining to Roan and Russell about his life when a pretty young woman poured beer over his head. Reede had been so shocked that all he could do was sit there and stare at her. Since he'd been in Edilean he'd become so used to people asking him about their ailments that that's how he'd come to
see them. Somewhere along the way his misery had even overridden his ability to appreciate a pretty girl.

The young woman had stalked out of the restaurant and Reede was shocked that some of the people had applauded her. Had Reede been so bad that a physical attack on him was
applauded
?!

Russell, as befitting a pastor, had gone after the girl, but Roan went to the bar and returned with a couple of towels. He tossed them at Reede. “I don't know what you did to that girl but it sounds like a lot of people think you deserve what you got.” He waited while Reede sopped up some of the beer, and they left together. Reede didn't meet anyone's eyes, but he saw the smiles.

Tomorrow, he thought as he left the tavern. Tomorrow he would call more people and do anything he could think of to get someone to take over for him in Edilean.

But that was yesterday. He'd spent today at the hospital in Newport, and he'd called people he barely remembered. He'd begged, pleaded, offered to pay, but no one wanted the job. He'd accomplished nothing.

So now he was driving back to that bleak apartment that came with the office. As he parked at the back of the building, he noticed that there was a light on upstairs. His first thought was that a patient was up there waiting for him. Or worse, it was a single woman who saw Reede as a challenge to win.

He slumped up the stairs, expecting . . . He didn't know what would be there when he opened the door.

Everything he'd imagined didn't come close to being what he saw. First of all, the apartment was
clean. Not just with the dust moved around as the last two women he'd hired had done. Surfaces sparkled. The ugly furniture looked brighter. There were half a dozen new pillows on the couch, and their colors almost made the room look cheerful. He turned to put his medical bag on the floor by the door, then saw a little table there. There was a chrome bowl on top, and he dropped his keys into it.

Hesitantly, as though afraid that if he moved too fast the dream would disappear, he stepped farther into the room. And that's when the smell hit him.

Was that
food
? He usually ate a frozen dinner, but that smell didn't come from something premade. Like a cartoon character, he followed his nose into the kitchen.

He lifted a lid on a pot on the stove and took a whiff of something heavenly. It was an orange soup. He couldn't help sticking his finger in it and tasting. Divine.

In the fridge he found a plate of chicken and vegetables with a note on top. “Microwave five minutes.” Salad was in the crisper, and there was a cold bottle of white wine in the door. As he got them out he noticed a note on the oven door. “Open” it read.

Inside was a small pan that held something that was oozing juice, with a crumbly crust on top. It took Reede only minutes to gather it all and put it on the old dining table—which had been set with a place mat and tableware. He ate everything, every drop of soup, every morsel of the chicken, and he practically licked the bowl of the apple dessert. He emptied the bottle of wine.

When he finished, he leaned back and saw that the room didn't look as bad as it usually did.

When his cell rang, he didn't hesitate in answering it.

“So how do you like Sophie?” Kim asked.

“Sophie?”

“Yeah, your new employee. Remember her?”

“I think maybe I ate her.”

Kim hesitated. “Are you drunk?”

“I've been more sober.”

“Did Sophie cook for you?”

“I think so,” Reede said. “Someone did. Orange soup. Chicken stuffed with something, and green beans, and some kind of mashed something, and—”

“Probably parsnips. She used to make them for Jecca and me. What I want to know is how you liked
her
.”

“Don't know,” Reede said, smiling. “Never met her. I got back and the place was clean and I had food.”

Kim was beginning to understand. “Not your usual Treeborne dinners? A little wine to go with it all?”

“Exactly.” Reede sat down on the couch. “She bought me some new pillows too.”