The Stars Are Fire(51)

Some of my best times were when we were out in the yard with the kids.

Love from your Rosie.



Dr. Lighthart



“How was the skiing?” Grace asks, shrugging off her coat at the office. It’s Monday, nearly noon.

“Spectacular. How did you do on your driver’s test?”

“I can drive your car legally,” she answers.

“Good for you. You’d better put your coat back on then. Here are the keys. You’ve made a list? Stupid question. Of course you have.”


“Are you happy here running the clinic?” the doctor asks the next day in the kitchen.

“I don’t run it, you do.”

“Nonsense,” he says. “Amy would agree with me.”

Amy and Dr. Lighthart can’t take their lunch breaks together. Ideally, none of them should, but Grace was already in the kitchen when Dr. Lighthart entered, washed his hands for a long time, and dried them on a clean dish towel. “I don’t want to sound like a parent, but do you wash your hands thoroughly before you eat here and when you leave for the day?”

She smiles. “I, too, have heard of the germ theory.”

“I deserved that.”

“Who makes your lunches?” she asks.

“I’ve hired a woman to provide food for the clinic when needed. She prepares my lunch and dinner, and I put my own breakfast together. Today it’s…drumroll…roast beef!”

Grace would die for a roast beef sandwich. With mustard. “You’re still living here.”

“I haven’t had a minute to look for a place. I think I’ll be stuck here forever.”

She likes the way he crosses his long legs. He has an elegance to his masculine frame that was either learned or inherited. “You must be making money,” she says.

“Well, I appear to be, now that you’ve uncovered a treasure trove in cash and checks in all that mess out front. Most of that will have to go back into the clinic, for supplies and so on. Amy’s salary.”

“Anything left over for you?”

“I hope so.”

“Maybe I could get the newspaper in the morning and look through the classifieds for you, call the landlords and ask them some questions.”

He takes a sip of water. “You’d do that for me?”

“What sort of place are you looking for?”

“A one-bedroom, not too far from here so that I could walk to work if I had to. I like a lot of windows. And all the regular things—heat, good hot water, electricity, some privacy, a bathroom to myself, a kitchen.”

“Furnished or unfurnished?”

“Furnished.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” she says as she finishes her sandwich.

“The Soviet Union has begun to jam broadcasts of the Voice of America,” he says, frowning.

Grace is startled by the abrupt change in subject. “Is it serious?”

“The VOA was the hope of freedom for thousands of people. Now there’s only silence.”

“Can the government do anything to override the jamming?”

“I think we’d have heard about it if they could. Do you listen to the radio?” he asks.

“I listened to the radio in your car when I went to get supplies.”

She doesn’t tell him that she was hoping for classical music. Instead, a soap opera was playing, and she became so involved in the plot that she missed the stationery store the first time she passed it. “That picture on your desk,” she says, spreading out the waxed paper to save, “is that your girlfriend?”

“No, she’s my brother’s wife, Elaine. He’s taking the picture. I sometimes go skiing with them and their kids. My nephews. Impossible to get a picture of all of us, since the kids are long gone the moment they hop off the J-bar.”

“Where do you ski?”

“Gunstock or Abenaki. They’re both about two and a half hours away,” he says, balling his waxed paper and trying for the basket, which he makes.

“Five hours driving. That’s a lot.”

“My brother has a place near Gunstock. If I have the time, I stay overnight with them.”

On clear days, Grace can see Mt. Washington in New Hampshire to the west from the top floor of Merle’s house. Majestic when the sun sets, lighting the snow ablaze.

“Someday you’ll go skiing with me,” he declares.

“I highly doubt that.”

“I keep the photo on my desk to discourage patients I see in my office from trying to fix me up. When they ask if it’s my girlfriend, I say yes, and the conversation usually ends there.”

“Why didn’t you do that with me?”

“Were you planning on fixing me up?” he teases. “We seem to have begun our conversation months ago by not lying to each other, which was why I told you the truth about the picture. Do you know how rare that is?”

“Telling the truth? Yes.”


“It’s interesting. We didn’t have these pneumonia patients in the beginning. We had burns in the throats and lungs and a lot of coughing up blood, but that was different, those were emergencies. Why the pneumonia cases now?”

“Do you think that the stuff the men inhaled stayed in their lungs and has only recently grown infectious?”