What We Find (Sullivan's Crossing, #1)(43)

“Highly doubtful,” Maggie said.

“Hey there, Walter,” Sully said. “Want lunch?”

“That sounds great, Sully.”

“Ham or turkey?” he asked.

“Turkey. Thanks.”

Walter came up on the porch. He wore yellow golf pants with a peach collared shirt and white sweater. He was a handsome man, she’d give her mother that. Phoebe had had two husbands and both were fine-looking men. Sully was stockier and had those strong arms and shoulders; Walter was reed-thin with silver hair and a surgeon’s long, slim fingers.

“Can we sit?” Walter finally asked.

“Yes. Right. Listen,” she said while she was taking her chair. “I’m sorry about the money, Walter. All the money you invested in my education and career and—”

“Maggie, do you think I came here to talk about money? I thought maybe we could have a conversation without your mother. Doctor to doctor?”

Maggie frowned. This was rare with Walter. “Where does Mother think you are?”

“The club. Where else would I be?” Then he grinned like a naughty little boy.

Maggie could count on one hand the number of times she’d had a serious and private conversation with her stepfather, yet each one had been meaningful. It wasn’t just that Phoebe rarely gave him time to speak, though that was often the case. On top of that, Walter was hardly verbose. And he was relatively soft-spoken. They loved working with him in the operating room. While other surgeons were swearing and throwing things, Walter was saying please and thank you.

Sometimes it seemed as if Walter saved himself for those important messages while Sully spit out weighty and sarcastic wisdom all day long.

“Here you go,” Sully said, putting a tray on the porch table. There were two wrapped sandwiches, two prepared and wrapped green salads with a packet of dressing and fork enclosed, two bags of chips and two bottled teas. “I’ll leave you alone to talk...”

“Join us, Sully,” Walter said. Then he looked at their surroundings. “This is a nice place. Quiet. Comfortable.”

“It’s usually quiet during the day, except on weekends when there are more than the usual boats on the lake,” Sully said. “Most folks are exploring or hiking or rock climbing. They’ll all be back, stirring up their grills and washing off the grit of the trail. Let me get my lunch. Don’t wait for me.”

Walter immediately unwrapped his sandwich and opened his bottled tea, taking a drink. “Well, I’ll give you this—you picked a good place to unwind. What a beautiful day.”

“Walter, forgive me, but I’m overcome by the strangest feeling.” He just lifted one gray brow as he bit into his sandwich. Then Sully was with them again, sitting at the table, his half-finished lunch on a tray in front of him.

“You were saying?” Walter asked.

“I said, this is strange. I can’t decide whether to be touched, grateful or scared to death. Whatever prompted this little meeting... Are you going to lecture me about leaving my job?”

“I was under the impression it was a time-out,” Walter said. “Are you actually quitting?”

“No. I don’t know,” she said. She couldn’t eat her sandwich. “The truth is, I don’t know what to do. What if I didn’t go back to it?”

“You’d hardly be the first. A good dozen of my colleagues from medical school gave up practicing. They found it wasn’t right for them for a variety of reasons. One went into business...didn’t do so well, as I recall. But another quit to write romance novels and she’s cleaning up.” He chuckled. “Another is living on a farm, growing organic vegetables and manufacturing salad dressing. Very good stuff,” he added, taking another bite. “Sully, this is a delicious sandwich.”

“We get a delivery from a greengrocer in Timberlake every couple of days. Enid makes the sandwiches and bakes all the cookies, brownies and muffins. According to Maggie, they’re going to kill us.”

“I’ll have to have one,” Walter said.

“Okay, now you’re scaring me,” Maggie said. “Why don’t you get it over with? Rip off that old bandage, Walter. Say it. Yell at me. You poured a fortune into me and now I’m threatening to walk away to bag groceries and...”

“I’ve never once raised my voice to Maggie,” Walter told Sully.

“Course not,” Sully said. “I do whenever I please, however, so she’s not being neglected in that area.”

“We’ve only had a few serious talks in my life and as I recall, they were so mild I hardly realized until afterward that you had any idea what you were doing. There was that time when I was a freshman in college that you came all the way out here from Chicago. You said you wanted to see the campus again—you’d seen it before I enrolled. But that was a ruse. You wanted me to change my major.”

“No, not exactly,” Walter corrected. “I thought you were too young to commit to a course of study. I wanted you to check a lot of different things while you had the chance. But I didn’t insist, did I?”

“No,” she relented. “But you had a good argument. And then there was that little talk we had before I married Sergei, the artist.”

“That one didn’t go as well, regrettably,” Walter said.