Instant Gratification

Emma wasn’t happy either.

But…but now that she knew how bad her dad was at the bookkeeping and billing, she was worried that he’d run out of money by year’s end if he didn’t make some changes.

She had ideas for those changes. He could be treating bigger cases, could be far more successful if he tried to compete with the South Shore clinics.

But Eddie Sinclair didn’t think like that. He was much more laid-back than she, preferring to just let things happen. Every time she’d tried to bring up business talk, he got an amused look on his face and told her everything would be fine if she remembered to keep breathing.

She was breathing, dammit, but his lackadaisical ways didn’t help. How he’d ever lived alone all these years was beyond her. He’d chosen to do so. Chosen to let her mom leave, chosen not to have joint custody, or any sort of visitation.

Old wounds, she reminded herself. She was over it. So over it. She got over things quickly, always had. Except usually she had something to occupy her mind, something like work.

At least Spencer was flying in for a few days. She was counting on her co-worker and closest friend to liven things up around there.

She set down her casserole and walked through her father’s place. It was familiar to her. It should be, she’d lived here for her first six years, and being here gave her an undeniable sense of nostalgia. Oddly enough, she remembered every nook and cranny of the three tiny bedrooms, two tinier bathrooms and postage stamp size living area and kitchen. She remembered her mom cooking in that kitchen…

She swallowed the sorrow that never seemed to go all the way down, and right there in the middle of the living room, she let it all wash over her.

Her mom had been born in New York. A city girl at heart, she’d fallen in love on a college science field trip in the Sierras with the brand new young doctor teaching the course.

Her father.

Blinded by nineteen-year-old love, Sandy had given up everything and moved across the country to be with him. They’d lived in wedded bliss until her first Sierra winter.

It’d hit hard.

The twenty feet of snow had been a rough shock, but going weeks at a time with no contact with the outside world had slowly done her mom in. When a bear had broken into their kitchen and eaten the Junior’s Cheesecake she’d had shipped from Manhattan, she’d tossed up her hands, said, “Stick a fork in me, I’m done, Eddie”, and had packed herself and Emma up.

Eddie hadn’t tried to stop her.

Back in New York, Sandy had rented a one room flat, and though Emma knew now that money had been tight as Sandy worked sixty hour weeks nursing, Sandy had never once let on.

Emma wandered to the log mantle over the fireplace, and looked at the frames. There was one of herself as a newborn, another of her around five and missing her two front teeth. Then there was a glaring gap in the pictures because the next frame was of Emma at her college graduation, when her father had made an unscheduled appearance.

But the one that caught her by surprise, the one that grabbed her by the throat, was of her mom. She looked to be in her early twenties, and was smiling with easy whimsy into the camera. Emma reached for the frame, picking it up, running her finger over the glass as if she could touch her mom one more time. “I’m back,” she whispered. “Back in Wishful. Who’d have thought it, huh?”

Yes, well, make sure you check for spiders before you get into bed, darling. Those wolf spiders are everywhere.

Her mom’s soft, laughing voice echoed in Emma’s head, clear as a bell, making her laugh in shock. Clearly, she was far more tired than she thought. That, or she needed a mocha latte pretty damn bad.

She settled on sleep.

The next day, Stone took a group on a moonlight hike up Sierra Point. It’d been five days since his accident, and he felt much better. Finally. After the hike, his guests, who were up from the Bay Area, requested he drop them off at a local bar, where they could drink the rest of the night away.

Though there wasn’t much left to it—it was nearly one in the morning—he dropped them off at Moody’s, then walked back out to his truck and faced an annoying dilemma.

A flat tire.

He pulled out the tools and changed it himself, somehow managing to kneel on a rusty nail, cutting open his knee in the process. Probably the same rusty nail that had wrecked his tire to begin with, and besides bleeding down his leg, it hurt like a son-of-a-bitch.

As if he didn’t have enough injuries to deal with.

With a sigh, he went to the glove box for his first-aid kit, and found…nothing. “Goddammit, TJ.”

TJ was always too lazy to restock his own kit, far preferring to grab Stone’s. He looked down. He was bleeding like a stuck pig through the new hole in his favorite Levi’s. Shit. Maybe if he just cleaned it out really good, he’d be fine—which seemed to be the theme of his life lately.

Problem was, he didn’t want to die of tetanus. He could go the twenty minutes home to clean out the cut, or be at Doc’s in two.

In the old days, he’d have had no problem showing up on Doc’s doorstep in the middle of the night. Hell, Doc had given each of the Wilders a key, and there’d been many, many times when Stone had just let himself into the clinic, grabbed what he needed, gone on his merry way without waking Doc, who’d appreciated not having to get up.

Hoping the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree, even while knowing it had, Stone put the truck into gear and drove to the clinic. It was locked up tighter than a drum, all lights off. Limping now, dammit, he knocked lightly on the door to be polite, then fished out his key and let himself in. He flipped on the reception room light because if Emma woke up, he didn’t want to scare her. Doc had always kept the staff kitchen stocked up for the few times he had to use it as a third exam room. Stone limped across the room and flipped on that light as well, heading for the supply closet. He pulled out the hydrogen peroxide, some gauzes and—