Chapter Two
Crockett County Memorial Hospital was surprisingly modern, compared to what Nick remembered from all the times he’d been here for stitches and casts in his younger days. The late-eighties teal and peach pleather waiting room furniture had been replaced with dark brown—pleather—sofas and chairs. There was a giant flat screen monitor broadcasting health promotional videos featuring celebrities. Another screen flashed information about the hospital: visitors should proceed to the elevators to the left. Prenatal yoga was held on Tuesday nights in the atrium conference room.
An elderly volunteer greeted him and asked whom he was there to see.
“Raleigh Baker,” Nick told her.
“Ah yes. I know Raleigh.” She nodded sagely. “He’s keeping the nurses on their toes. They moved him to room 409 this morning. Turn right as soon as you get off the elevator.”
Great. His father had been here two days and had already alienated the staff. “Thanks.” He pushed the up button and hoped the elevator would hurry before—
“Yes, he’s a naughty one, is that Raleigh.” There was a degree of censure mixed with admiration in the attendant’s bright eyes. “Tried to pay the housekeeping staff to bring him a bottle.”
Thankfully, the elevator chimed its arrival before Nick had to hear any more. He smiled and escaped into the confines of the car and pushed the four button until the doors shut.
They opened again too soon to the sound raised voices.
Oh hell. Please don’t let it be—
It was. As he turned right, a huge guy in blue scrubs brushed past him, toward a similarly dressed woman in a doorway. She waved at him to hurry up and said something Nick couldn’t catch. The big guy nodded and followed her in.
Just as Nick reached 409, he heard, “Darlin’, here’s the deal. If your kitchen can’t give me what I ask for, I’m going to order out. You can’t make me eat rubber eggs and drink that piss-weak fake coffee.”
“Mr. Baker,” the male nurse said, “Egg McMuffins are fine. Not exactly the heart-healthy diet you’re on, but okay. But you can’t chase ’em with a quart of beer.”
The female nurse added, “And you have to stay in bed. You can’t get up without help.”
“What the hell do you want me to do if I have to piss? I’d be swimming in my damn sheets if I waited for you to hold the bucket for me.”
Damn. Hopefully Nick could get through the next fifteen minutes without getting arrested for patricide. He took a deep breath and went into the room.
Both nurses stood with their arms to their sides and feet spread, ready to head the old man off if he made a break for it.
Nick pushed between them and saw his father struggling to sit up, naked as a jay bird except for the wires, IV tubes, and a blood pressure cuff wrapped around his upper arm.
“Jesus.” Nick put his hand over his eyes.
“What the hell’s the matter, boy? Ain’t you never seen a real pecker before?” His laugh was wheezier than it used to be, but still infected the hospital staff. Both grinned, the woman shaking her head and laughing.
“Are you the son?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. He hadn’t met this nurse yet. He wondered if the last one had already begged to trade units.
“I’m Nick,” he said.
“How could you doubt it? He takes right after me, all handsome and everything,” Raleigh announced.
He wasn’t exactly sure where his dad got his definition of handsome, but no matter how much Nick might have wished to take after his mother, he shared Raleigh’s same light brown eyes and their jaws had come from the same damned mold. The square and stubborn one.
“You’re late,” Raleigh accused. “What’d you do, stop to jack off before you bothered coming? Oh, never mind, that would only take an extra thirty seconds.” He cackled, smacking the male nurse—Jake—on the arm.
“As you pointed out, I do take after you,” Nick told his father, putting the McDonald’s bag on the wheeled table next to the bed.
“Where’s my God damned beer?”
The nurses turned to glare at Nick.
He held is hands up and showed that they were empty. “No beer, Dad.”
“What the hell?” He snatched the paper bag from the table and began rooting through it.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?” Martha, a plump, middle-aged blond led him into the hall.
“I’m sorry about the food. I didn’t realize it was a problem.”
She shook her head. “It’s not. He’s healthy as a horse—well, except for the leg and the attitude. We put everyone on the cardiac diet when they’re in here.”
“Good to know.” The old fucker would be kicking around for God only knew how long. “I’m sorry he’s giving you so much trouble. It did say in his paperwork that he’s an alcoholic, though, right?”
She laughed. “Yeah. We pretty much would have figured that out anyway as soon as we caught him sucking on an alcohol swab someone left on his tray.”
“Ew!”
“Yeah.” She shook her head. “Wrong kind of alcohol. Fortunately, there wasn’t enough in there to do him any harm. We’ve got him on some meds that should help keep him from going into withdrawal.”
“Good. Good.” He felt no affection for his father, but he’d seen the man detox before, back when he’d promised Nick’s mom that he’d stop drinking for good—and it wasn’t pretty.
“I have good news and…good news?” the nurse told Nick.
“Hit me.” Whatever it was, he’d deal with it.
“His knee isn’t as badly sprained as we thought it was. The doc thinks he can start getting around with a splint in a few days, as soon as his back spasms calm down. If he cooperates with physical and occupational therapy, that is. The pancreatitis should be much better then, too.”
“Well, that’s good, right?” He could get the hell out of Kentucky and back to his life.
“Yes. Yes, it is.” She looked at Nick. “He’s not going to be able to stay alone for a couple of weeks, though, because he’s still a fall risk.”
Nick shook his head. “He’s always a fall risk. He’s a drunk. That’s how he got here in the first place.”
“I’ll have a social worker come by and talk to him about treatment.”
Nick snorted. “Have at it.”
“If he won’t get sober, you might want to consider some different living arrangements. In the meantime, he’s going to need to go into a nursing home facility, or you’ll have to make arrangements for someone to stay with him. Perhaps you can move in for a while?”
Oh hell no.
“You’ve got a couple of days to figure out what you can do. The administrator will be by later to discuss your options.” She patted him on the arm sympathetically.
Thanks, Martha.
He sighed. There was no money for a nursing home. Raleigh barely had health insurance—as a self-employed person, he’d always gone for the least expensive and least beneficial plans. He’d rather spend his money on new tools and alcohol. He wasn’t old enough to retire at barely fifty years old, even though hard living and outdoor work made him appear closer to seventy. And there wasn’t a soul in three counties who would stay with Raleigh and take care of him. No one but Nick. His mom would probably come back if he asked her, but he wasn’t going to do that to her. She had a good life without his dad down in Knoxville. No way would he put that on her.
He was just going to have to hope Raleigh got better fast.
“What the God damned hell!” Raleigh hollered from inside the hospital room. “Where’s my God damned Egg McMuffin?”
“It’s in the bag,” Nick said, going back in.
“That’s not an Egg McMuffin. It’s not even a real egg!”
“It’s the healthy kind,” Nick told him. “No yolks.”
“And there’s no God damned hash browns!”
“There’s oatmeal. Quit whining and eat.”
Scowling, the man shoved half the sandwich into his mouth and spoke around it. “I need you to spring me out of here, boy. I’ve got a job for a pretty little thing over in Crockett County.”
“Eve McGrath. She came looking for you this morning.”
“No kidding. I knew she had the hots for me. A little young for my taste, though.” Raleigh snickered. “I knew her mama way back when. She was a fine piece of ass, had all the boys panting around town. But then I met your mother, and…” He shook his head. “Anyway, maybe you should take a gander at the daughter.”
Oh, Nick had gandered. “She says she needs her job finished right away, and you’re in breach of contract. It doesn’t look like you’re gonna be back on your feet to get things done.”
“No, I guess not.” Raleigh sat back, glaring at his leg. “Maybe you could take over until I can get there.”
“I wasn’t planning to stick around,” Nick told him, thinking of what the nurse had said.
“Not my first choice to have you do it, but the first week or two is rough stuff. Nothing you can fuck up too badly.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
Raleigh ignored him. “That little gal made me write everything out in detail, so all you gotta do is follow the directions.”
“Dad, I’m not staying in Kentucky.”
“And use that trailer behind the shed to take all that old barn wood out there.”
Nick’s brain froze. “What barn wood?”
“That pile in the carport. It’s costing her an arm and leg, because it’s called ‘reclaimed lumber’ these days, instead of firewood, but she wanted it for her interior. The bar, the cabinets, tables, and stuff like that. And a carving for over the bar.”
Son of a bitch. That pile of scrap wood Nick had spent the two days cutting into shape for his own projects—busywork, with what he thought were cast-off materials—was intended for Eve’s job.
He took a breath, reminded himself to function. “Okay.” He’d figure it out. Somehow.
“Are you certain hiring the alcoholic’s son is a good idea? We really don’t know anything about him except his pedigree, and that doesn’t recommend him well at all.”
“Oh my God, Mom, he’s not a racehorse!”
Lorena sniffed and looked away. “I know that. I’m being careful.”
Her mother might call it careful, but Eve recognized it as paranoia. Fear that her roots might show. And not her carefully highlighted hair.
Her mom was a good person. She really was. She’d go for a week without sleep to make sure that a charity quilt would get finished in time for a children’s hospital raffle, and once donated her favorite diamond bracelet to a silent auction benefiting drug addicted runaways, but Lorena McGrath was a raging snob when it came to her family and Blue Mountain.
She had kind of a “help people up, but not with my ungloved hand” attitude.
“It might not be an issue,” Eve finally told her mother. “He hasn’t agreed to take the job. He said he’s got something else coming up, but might come and take a look.”
“He’s unemployed, but he has a schedule? I’m sure his book club will understand if he misses a few meetings.”
One. Two. Three…relax the shoulders… Why was Eve defending him? She barely knew the guy. “He’s between jobs. He’s got another one in a few weeks, he said. I think that’s different than being unemployed.” He hadn’t looked interested in the work, though. She really hoped he was able to take the job, because she’d already looked all over hell and half of Kentucky for someone who could both do the job, and do it the way she envisioned.
The distillery had already sunk a lot of money into the project—money Raleigh Baker had spent on valuable reclaimed lumber and other materials. Hopefully materials and not booze. She needed to check on that.
“Just know that you’ve got to get this job done in time for the fundraiser.” The David and Jamie McGrath Foundation fundraiser in a few short weeks. Eve didn’t need her mother to tack on the date—it was emblazoned in her frontal lobe like a neon tattoo.
“It’s all good, Mom.”
This was a huge deal for Lorena. As she did with everything, she’d put her whole life into this big event, and the stress was making her weird. Weirder than usual, that is. Lorena was high strung on a good day. When she was worried about something, she didn’t sleep, didn’t eat, cleaned the house to within an inch of its foundation, and pulled her hair out.
It was Eve’s life’s work to keep things running smoothly so her mother didn’t wind up in a straitjacket.
Lorena worked hard to keep her denial firmly in place. Eve and Allie were convinced their mother had never dealt with the way their father had died—she refused to talk about him in any but the most glowing terms. It had only gotten worse in the several years since her brother David was killed in Afghanistan.
But getting this center done was a huge deal for Eve, too. Not just because it was so important to the company her family co-owned with the Morgans, who lived a little farther up the hill. It was important to Eve, because it had been important to her dad. He’d had issues and had made bad choices. He’d nearly ruined Blue Mountain with his addiction and lies, but he had also been her dad. She’d been angry and confused after he died, but she’d gotten help to deal with it and was able to remember not only the way he’d driven his car off that bridge, but also the man who carried her on his shoulders and read Harry Potter to her, even after she was old enough to read the books herself. The dad who’d been there when her first cat died, and who convinced her mother to let her wear that awful blue checkered dress to school every day in second grade.
He’d always talked to Eve about the bar he wanted to have built for the visitor’s center he envisioned. Jamie McGrath was the big dreamer of Blue Mountain Distilling. No doubt too big—his grandiose plans had gotten him in trouble—but he did have vision. And now that they were in a position to have this built, Lorena had enlisted Eve to do it in a way that would have made Jamie proud. She was even using sketches she’d found in his office for the layout and wanted the carpenter to copy the detail work on the old photograph of the bar that her great-great-grandfather had owned in Scotland.
It would be awesome. Assuming Mr. Baker had ordered the materials needed for the project, and someone would do the work.
Eve called the phone number Nick had given her and waited for the ring. One, two— Beep! her call waiting pinged. She checked the number—it was the man himself.
“Were your ears burning?” she asked, instead of “hello.”
“Huh? No?”
“Sorry. My mother and I were just talking about you.”
“Oh. Okay.” A pause. “Why were you talking about me?”
Eve wouldn’t tell him that her mother had misgivings about him. She needed him there and didn’t want him to think he wouldn’t be welcome. Based on the work she’d seen—the stuff he’d been working on under the portico—he might be even more talented than his father. Hopefully he was more sober, too.
“I wasn’t going to bug you, really I wasn’t.” Though she wanted to. She tried not to think about the way his eyes had held hers when he laughed or the way his semi-naked self had looked in the summer heat.
“Okay…”
“I was wondering if you knew when you were coming out to see the job site. And whether your dad had the wood for the interior. He told me he had, and I just wondered—I mean, I’m not trying to be pushy in this difficult time—” She thought she heard a sigh at the other end of the line. “But the check cleared, and so he must have…darn it, I don’t mean to accuse—” She was making a big mess of this. Her normally calm professional mask seemed to slip off every time she talked to this guy.
“Are you asking if the old man spent your money on booze instead of supplies?” It sounded like he was suppressing a laugh.
“Yes.” Might as well just get it out there. She’d probably already offended the guy.
Instead, he chuckled. “Actually, he did get the wood.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful!”
“Or something.”
What was that supposed to mean? “So, what about doing the work for us?”
“I’ll come out and take a look.”
“You’re saving my life.”
His laugh made her tummy quiver. “No promises there, sweet cheeks. I’ll come out and look. Where is it?”
She rattled off the street address. “But it’s Blue Mountain Distilling. Not like it’s hard to find. Get off at the Tucker University exit and turn right instead of left.”
Silence.
“Nick?”
“This is a job at Blue Mountain?”
“Yes…”
More silence.
“Nick?”
“Okay. I’ll be there first thing tomorrow, but no promises I can do the work.”