The Last Letter(5)

I shook my head, but smiled, and offered her my iPad.

“Be careful with it, okay?” We couldn’t afford to replace it, not with three of the guest cabins getting new roofs this week. I’d already sold off twenty-five acres at the back of the property line to finance the repairs that had been long coming and mortgaged the property to the hilt to finance the expansion.

Maisie nodded, her blond ponytail bobbing as she swiped the iPad open to find her favorite apps. How the heck a five-year-old navigated the thing better than I did was a mystery. Colt was a wiz on the thing, too, just not quite as tech savvy as Maisie. Mostly because he was too busy climbing whatever he wasn’t supposed to be.

My gaze darted up to the clock. Four p.m. The doc was already a half hour late for the appointment he’d asked me for. I knew Ada didn’t mind watching Colt, but I hated having to ask her. She was in her sixties and, while still spry, Colt was anything but easy to keep up with. She called him “lightning in a bottle,” and she wasn’t far off.

Maisie absentmindedly rubbed the spot on her hip she’d been complaining about. The complaint had gone from a twinge, to an ache, to the ever-present hurt that never quite left her.

Just before I was about to lose my temper and head for the receptionist, the doc knocked before coming in.

“Hey, Ella. How are you feeling, Margaret?” Doctor Franklin asked with a kind smile and a clipboard.

“Maisie,” she corrected him with serious eyes.

“Of course,” he agreed with a nod, shooting me a slight smile. No doubt I was still five years old in his eyes, considering Dr. Franklin had been my pediatrician, too. His hair had more gray, and there was an extra twenty pounds around his middle, but he was still the same as he was when my grandmother brought me to this office. Nothing much changed in our little town of Telluride. Sure, ski season came, the tourists flooding our streets with their Land Rovers, but the tide always receded, leaving behind the locals to resume life as usual.

“How’s the pain today?” he asked, coming down to her level.

She shrugged and focused on the iPad.

I tugged it free of her little hands and arched an eyebrow at her disapproving face.

She sighed, the sound way older than a five-year-old’s, but turned back to Dr. Franklin. “It always hurts. It hasn’t not hurt in forever.”

He looked over at me for clarification.

“It’s been at least six weeks.”

He nodded, then frowned as he stood, flipping the papers on the board.

“What?” Frustration twisted my stomach, but I bit my tongue. It wasn’t going to do Maisie any good for me to lose my temper.

“The bone scan results are clean.” He leaned against the exam table and rubbed his hand over the back of his neck.

My shoulders sagged. It was the third test they’d run on Maisie and still nothing.

“Clean is good, right?” she asked.

I forced a smile for her benefit and handed the iPad back to her. “Honey, why don’t you play for a sec while I sneak a word with Dr. Franklin in the hallway?”

She nodded, eagerly getting back to whatever game she’d been in the middle of.

I met Dr. Franklin in the hall, leaving the door open just a smidge so I could keep an ear on Maisie.

“Ella, I don’t know what to tell you.” He folded his arms across his chest. “We’ve run X-rays, the scan, and if I thought she’d lie still long enough for an MRI, we could try that. But in all honesty, we’re not seeing anything physically wrong with her.”

The sympathetic look he gave me grated on my last nerve.

“She’s not making this up. Whatever pain she’s in is very real, and something is causing it.”

“I’m not saying the pain isn’t real. I’ve seen her often enough to know that something is up. Has anything changed at home? Any new stressors? I know it can’t be easy on you running that place by yourself with two little kids to take care of, especially at your age.”

My chin rose a good inch, just like it did any time someone brought up my kids and my age in the same sentence.

“The brain is a very powerful—”

“Are you suggesting that this is psychosomatic?” I snapped. “Because she’s having trouble walking now. Nothing has changed in our house. It’s the same as it has been since I brought them home from this very hospital, and she’s not under any undue stress in kindergarten, I assure you. This is not in her head; it’s in her hip.”

“Ella, there’s nothing there,” he said softly. “We’ve looked for breaks, ligament tears, everything. It might be a really bad case of growing pains.”

“That is not growing pains! There’s something you’re missing. I looked on the internet—”

“That was your first mistake.” He sighed. “Looking on the internet will convince you that a cold is meningitis and a leg pain is a giant blood clot ready to dislodge and kill you.”

My eyes widened.

“It’s not a blood clot, Ella. We did an ultrasound. There’s nothing there. We can’t fix a problem that we don’t see.”

Maisie wasn’t making it up. It wasn’t in her head. It wasn’t some symptom of being born to a young mom or not having a dad in the picture. She was in pain, and I couldn’t help her.