Katherine reached over, her smile poorly hidden, and patted his hand. “Why don’t you bring in my suitcase from the car?” she softly suggested. “Then head back to the hotel and register yourself back in for the night. Elizabeth and I will cook a nice dinner, and you can return at seven o’clock and eat with us.”
She looked at Robbie. “Does that sound acceptable to you, young man? You have my word we won’t try to steal Elizabeth away from you tonight.”
Robbie shot an uncertain look at his father, frowned at Michael’s nod, and looked back at Katherine. “That sounds okay, I guess. And her name is Libby, not Elizabeth,” he told her.
“It’s Dr. Elizabeth Hart,” James interjected, attempting to salvage some of his dignity.
“She’s a very important surgeon back in California.”
Libby winced, darting her own uncertain look at Michael when Robbie gasped and spun around to face her.
“You’re not a doctor!” he shouted. “Ya make jewelry.”
Libby tossed the apple and the knife onto the counter and took the angry boy by the shoulders. “I do make jewelry,” she told him gently. “But I’m also a doctor, Robbie. I operate on people who have been in terrible accidents.”
He pulled away from her, stepping back and balling his hands into fists again. “Ya can’t be,” he whispered desperately. “Ya need a hospital to do operations, and we don’t have one. You’ll leave!” he shouted, spinning around and running out the door as quickly and as loudly as he’d come through it.
Libby ran after him, but Michael caught her before she could step off the porch.
“I have to go to him,” she said, struggling to get free. “I have to explain.”
“Nay,” Michael said softly, turning her to face him. “He’ll not listen to ya right now.”
“But I have to make him understand.”
“He’ll calm down once I tell him you’re not leaving.”
“And just why are you so sure I’m not?”
He pulled her into his arm, lifting her chin to look at him. He smiled and squeezed her until she squeaked.
“Because I’ve decided not to let you,” he said, kissing her on the end on the nose and then setting her away.
He stepped off the porch and swaggered toward his truck and Robbie, without looking back.
“Michael!”
He stopped at his truck door and looked at her.
“I want a nice bed, with a fancy headboard and footboard.”
The grin he shot her was filled with pure arrogance. “I can’t promise ya fancy,” he said, sending shivers up her spine. “But I can promise ya it will be large and solid.”
Chapter Eighteen
“What did Robbie mean,you make jewelry?” Katherine asked as she ran water in the sink and started peeling the potatoes.
They had just gotten back from town and unloaded the groceries and were busy preparing dinner. Libby looked up from sliding the huge roast into the oven and gave her mother a sheepish smile.
“I work with glass. I make pendants and earrings and bracelets.”
Katherine stopped peeling. “Those are your creations? The little birds and plants you wear?”
“You mean the ones all your friends have been trying to buy?” Libby asked, nodding.
“Yeah. I made them.”
“But how… where did you learn that? No, wait. My mother, right?” Katherine said with a sigh, shaking her head and turning back to her chore. “I should have guessed when you refused to give my friends the name of the artist.” She looked at Libby with dawning awareness. “The wood thrush you gave me for Christmas two years ago? You made it.”
Libby nodded again, went to the fridge, and got out the carrots. “And the ivy leaf tie tack I gave Dad five years ago. I made that, too,” she confessed, coming to stand beside her mother at the sink.
“But they’re beautiful,” Katherine exclaimed. “No, wait. I didn’t mean for that to sound like it did. Of course, they’re beautiful, if you made them. You’ve always been good with your hands.”
“Thank you.”
Katherine stopped peeling again and stared at her.
“That’s why you’re such a good surgeon, Elizabeth. You’re so damned good you make it seem like magic. Please don’t give up your career. What happened in your operating room was a mistake.”
“It wasn’t a mistake, Mom.” Libby took the potato and the knife away from her mother and led her over to the table, gently pushing her into one of the chairs. She sat opposite her and looked directly into Katherine’s concerned brown eyes.
“Grammy Bea wasn’t just making it up, Mom, and I think you know it. And you know that Aunt Sylvia could heal people, but all these years you’ve been denying it because you were afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Not afraidof what butfor whom,” Libby told her. “You were afraid for me, weren’t you?
You didn’t want me to have this gift because you knew how deeply it would affect me. I healed Esther Brown, Mom, and it was a miracle.”
“You perform miracles every day, Elizabeth.”
“Not this kind of miracle,” Libby said, reaching out and folding Katherine’s hands inside hers. “This is the power to heal people without using my skills as a surgeon.”
Katherine tried to pull away.
Libby wouldn’t let go of her hands but squeezed them instead. “I felt her, Mom. I actually became part of Esther Brown. I felt her emotions and her determination to live.”
“That’s impossible, Elizabeth,” Katherine whispered.
“That… it’s just not… it just can’t happen like that.”
“But why is it impossible? How many miracles have been documented throughout history? Why can’t Esther Brown’s unexplainable recovery be one of them?”
Libby finally let her mother have her hands back, which Katherine immediately folded on her lap while she stared at the tablecloth. She finally looked up, her huge brown eyes swimming with worry.
“I don’t want Bea to have been right all these years.”
“Do you think I do?” Libby asked.
Katherine reached out across the table to Libby. “But it might not even be you, Elizabeth. If it was a miracle, what makes you think you had anything to do with it?”
“Because I did it again.”
“What?”
“I did it again, Mom. I was the attending physician for James’s patient that morning.
Jamie Garcia is only six years old. He’d been hit by a car and was in a coma. But that afternoon, after what happened with Esther Brown, I went to his room, sat beside him, and prayed for him to wake up. And just like before, I felt his emotions, his fear, and his desperate struggle to get back to his parents. And he opened his eyes and smiled at me.”
Katherine stared at her mutely. “So you ran,” she finally added softly. “Here. But why here?”
“I don’t know why. I think the mountains had something to do with it. The distance. The reputation of stoically grounded New Englanders.” Libby suddenly smiled.
“But mostly it was Robbie MacBain. There was a picture of him in the ad he’d posted on the Internet.” She shrugged.
“There was just something about him… a wisdom that had nothing to do with his age.
As if he holds the key to all the secrets of the universe. And I thought—no, I knew I had to come here.”
Katherine smiled. “At least, that’s something I can understand after meeting him. He’s very self-contained for a twelve-year-old.”
“Robbie’s eight.”
“Eight?” Katherine gasped, leaning back in her chair.
“He can’t be eight, Elizabeth. He’s too big.”
“He’ll be nine in January.”
Her mother fell silent again, standing up and going back to the sink to peel potatoes.