The Best Medicine

Chapter 29



I DREAMT THERE WERE SEVEN dwarves working on my house. They each had their own pickax, and they were tap-tap-tapping against my bedroom door. Then I woke up and realized the tapping was real. Fontaine must have let himself in to hang pictures. It was nice to know how little my opinion about such things mattered to him.

Tyler was still sound asleep beside me, his face pressed into the pillow. I’d loved him once more, during the night. Slow and sweet and full of comfort.

In the shower, it had seemed as if he’d been trying to prove a point or deny the frustration that lingered from bad news, but when the moon was high and we could hear the waves rolling over the sand, we’d taken our time. Defenses down. In bed we were always equal.

I slipped into the bathroom and freshened up, pulling on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. Then I went downstairs to tell Fontaine to find something else to do until Tyler woke up. I found him in my home office surrounded by thick black picture frames.

“Good morning, sunshine!” Fontaine sang out.

“Shhh!” I pressed a finger to my lips. “Tyler’s sleeping.”

Fontaine arched a dark brow. “Oh, is he now? Wore him out, you little minx? It’s always the quiet redheads who are such vixens.”

“That’s me,” I said. “Anyway, what are you hanging?”

“Your diplomas, girlfriend. You left a pile of them on your desk, and I couldn’t resist. I had them matted and framed so they all match. Do you love it? Tell me you love it, because I’m about to hang them regardless.”

He’d arranged them in a geometric pattern on the floor. All my years of hard work represented on card stock, now turned into lovely artwork. I’d moved those darned certificates from shitty apartment to shitty apartment, hardly having a place to stash them, much less a decent spot to hang them. Now that wall of frames would be a constant, lovely reminder of all I had accomplished. I blinked back a tiny little tear.

“I do love it, Fontaine. It’s wonderful. Can I help you?”

“Can you hammer a nail?” He had the nerve to look speculative.

“I’m pretty good with my hands, Fontaine.”

“All right. But be careful. I’ve marked the spots on the walls.” He handed me the hammer and nail. “See the dot? Put it right there.”

Tyler found us fifteen minutes later, just as I hung the very last diploma, and I realized in my excitement over this project I’d forgotten about trying to be quiet.

“Hey, good morning. I’m sorry if I woke you up.” I leaned over to kiss his unshaven cheek. He didn’t react, almost as if I hadn’t touched him at all.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“Those are all of your girlfriend’s diplomas. Can you imagine?” Fontaine said. “This is one smart woman. She’s practically a Rhodes scholar. Oh, hey! Get it? A Rhodes scholar? I am hilarious!” Fontaine snapped his fingers while I stared at Tyler staring at that wall. And it didn’t take a Rhodes scholar to see that all those framed certificates were making him see something he hadn’t before. The breadth of my education.


“That’s awesome, Evelyn,” he said. “It looks great.”

Evelyn? Since when did he call me Evelyn?

“Listen, I have to run, though. I have to take care of some stuff for Carl. And I work the next few nights. I’ll give you a call.”

His smile was so patently false he looked as if he’d had a bad injection of Botox.

“Tyler.” I wasn’t sure what I was going to follow that up with, but it didn’t matter anyway, because he was already out the door.



“And then he just took off?” Gabby asked.

She and Hilary were at my new house for dinner. Now that I had a kitchen, I wanted to show everyone I knew how to use it. And so we ordered pizza.

“Yeah. He’s taking this court thing hard.” I stole a glance at Hilary.

She shrugged and set down her virtually uneaten slice of pizza. “Well, what do you want me to say? Steve’s a shitty lawyer. He’s a shitty lawyer and a shitty husband.”

Gabby shook her head.

“Hilary, you have to talk to him about this. Acho que você é fazendo tempestade em copo d’água.”

“What?” Hilary snapped.

Gabby patted her hand. “I said you’re making a mountain out of a molehill.”

“You think him cheating on me is a molehill?” Hilary sat up straight, pushing her plate away.

“No, I think assuming your husband is cheating on you because he’s had lunch with a coworker is the molehill. Talk to him. Get it out in the open. You’ve been festering over this for months, and it’s time to deal with it.”

Hilary slumped back down. “I know. I know. I will. This weekend. I will for sure. I guess, it’s just . . . what if I’m right? What if he is cheating on me and I find out that all this time we’ve been living a lie? What if this whole relationship was a sham?”

I wrapped my arm around her shoulder. “Of course it’s not a sham. That’s crazy talk, Hilary. You guys have had a great marriage. And I think it’s still great.”

She sniffled and picked up a napkin to dab her nose. “It’s just . . . I followed the rules and married the kind of guy we always talked about. I had a list too, remember, Evie? I wanted to marry a smart, professional guy, and so I did. But all he does is work, and talk about work. And work some more. And I see you all aglow with Tyler this and Tyler that. It makes me think I made the wrong choice. Maybe I should have fallen for some unconventional guy like you did. Then I’d be happy now.”

Suddenly her recent behavior started to make some sense. Just as I’d felt betrayed by my mother when she fell back in love with my father, Hilary was feeling betrayed because I hadn’t followed the rules we’d set up back in our residency days. And she had.

“Hilary, honey, your relationship with Steve has nothing to do with my relationship with Tyler. We are different kinds of women, and we have different taste in men. Plus you seem to be forgetting the wonderful eight years you’ve had with your husband. I know you’re worried about things now, but I’m certain you’re going to work this out. If my parents can get back together, you guys certainly can. You just need to have a little faith.”

Have a little faith? Where had that come from? And since when did I start doling out marital advice? But deep down, I knew I was right.

“She’s right.” Gabby confirmed it. “Talk to him so we can all move on. And speaking of moving on, back to Tyler and the settlement. What do you think he’ll do now?”

Hilary sniffled.

“Are you OK?” I asked her.

She nodded. “We can talk about Tyler now. Even I’m sick of talking about me and Steve.”

I stared at her, just to make sure she meant it, but she seemed sincere. Then I turned back to Gabby. “I don’t know what Tyler’s going to do. Keep working and paying his bills, I guess. I just wish I could make it go away. It’s so unfair. He didn’t even—”

Hilary and Gabby both looked at me with interest. “He didn’t even what?”

I stopped myself in the nick of time. I’d nearly said, he didn’t even steal the Jet Ski. “He didn’t even tell me he was seeing his lawyer that day,” I said instead.

Gabby shook her head slowly. “That poor guy needs a do-over.”

“A do-over?” I took a bite of pizza, but suddenly it had lost all flavor.

“Yes. You know. Like in a game. You have a bad shot or a bad play and you get to call do-over. He needs a chance to just wipe the slate clean and start over. If he could magically get all that stuff paid off and do the paramedic training, he’d be great. It would be a whole fresh new start for him. He needs to win the lottery or something.”

A clean slate. A fresh start. A glimmer of excitement sparked low in my chest and grew with every passing beat of my heart. I was formulating an idea. A fabulous idea. I wanted to shout it out, but it was another secret for me to tuck away. I couldn’t share it with anyone. Not even these two.

I looked down at my watch and yawned. “Yeah, he needs a clean slate for sure. And I need to get to bed. Sorry to kick you guys out, but we need to wrap this up. Gabby, do you know what time my first patient is in the morning?”

I stood up and collected their plates.

“Probably nine. Why?”

I put the plates into the dishwasher. “No reason. Just hoping I can sleep in.”

But I didn’t sleep in. I was in the office at eight in the morning with a box of doughnuts for the staff and a teensy little request for Delle. I pulled her into my office and shut the door.

She looked nervous, as if I was about to reprimand her. As if I could.

“Delle, can you keep a secret?”

Her eyes went round behind her tortoiseshell frames. “Of course, Dr. Rhoades. I am a bastion of secrecy when the occasion calls for it.”

“OK. This occasion calls for it. I really, truly need you to keep this to yourself.”

She made the sign of the cross. “I’m your girl, Dr. Rhoades.”

“Excellent. You have access to patient billing, right?”

“Yes.”

I took a big breath. This was just the first step in my plan, and I hoped it worked. “I want to pay off Tyler Connelly’s medical bills. Not just the ones for our office, but all the bills from his emergency room visit too. Can you manage that?”

She stood, spine straight. For a moment I thought she might salute me. “I can certainly take care of that for this office. It might be a little trickier for the other bills, but I have a very reliable friend who works in the hospital billing department. She’d help us, and she can be trusted, especially if you took care of a little mole she has right here.” Delle pointed to the side of one nostril.

“Done,” I said.

She rubbed her hands together. “Oh my goodness, Dr. Rhoades. This is like a caper. I’m very excited.”

It was a caper, and that had been the easy part. Dealing with the other bills was going to require a little more effort. As soon as Delle left my office, I made a phone call.

“Good morning. Pendleton, Whitney, Pullman and Frost, Attorneys At Law. How may I help you?”



“What the hell are you thinking, Evie? Tyler’s a nice kid and all, but come on. This is a lot of money you’re talking about. Is he really that great in the sack?”

Steve Pullman sat across from me, a mammoth oak desk between us. He was clearly compensating for some sort of shortcoming with a desk like that. He’d lost a lot of hair in the last year or so, and he was starting to show his age. Maybe this alleged affair was his midlife crisis.


“Yes, he is that great in the sack,” I said defensively, “but that’s not why I’m doing this. I’m doing it because he deserves a break. He didn’t steal that Jet Ski. His idiot brother took it out for a joy ride and Tyler was bringing it back. I mean, really, did it never occur to anyone that a thief doesn’t return stuff?”

“Of course it occurred to people. That’s why the larceny charges were dropped, but he still crashed into the dock. He only has to pay for stuff he was actually responsible for.” Steve loosened his tie, a tie that probably cost as much as Tyler made in a night serving at Jasper’s.

I moved to the edge of my chair. “Do you really think that Jet Ski needs to be replaced? Or is this guy just taking advantage of an opportunity?”

Steve shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. If your boyfriend doesn’t want to fight the charges in court, then he has to pay the restitution. I don’t care who took what or who brought what back. The owner wants to be compensated.”

“Fine. Who do I make out the check to?”

Steve stood up and put his hands in the pockets of his navy blue pants. “Seriously? You really want to do this?”

“Absolutely.”

“You won’t get your money back. The kid’s broke.”

“I don’t want the money back. It’s a gift.”

He paused, then leaned over and pushed a button on his phone. “Bertie, bring me the Connelly file, would you please?”

Steve’s efficient secretary was there with it almost immediately. She handed it to him, perused me, and then left.

He sat back down and ran a hand over that thinning hairline. He looked up at me. “You must really be crazy about this guy.”

I was. I couldn’t explain it. I wasn’t sure when it had happened, and I sure as hell didn’t understand why, but one fact was clear. I was in love with Tyler Connelly. A man eight years younger with no immediate interest in marriage. A man who waited tables and drove a beat-up Jeep and an ambulance. A man whose highest ambition was to fish. And still I loved him, because in spite of all that, he was the sweetest, kindest, sexiest man I’d ever met. I loved the thrill of him. The caring and the loyalty. The raw edges and the vast potential. Like an undeveloped sculpture, Tyler was a work in progress, and I wanted to be there to see what emerged.

“I am crazy about him.”

Steve stared at me with the expression I must have had on my face when my parents told me they were getting back together. Disbelief. Suspicion. Concern.

“It’s just like how you used to feel about Hilary,” I said.

Oh, God. Where had that come from? Stop talking, Evie. Stop talking.

Steve frowned at me. “Used to feel? What’s that supposed to mean?”

Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Don’t say it.

“Hilary thinks you’re cheating on her.”

Oh, crap.

This town had turned me into one of them. Now I couldn’t keep anything to myself either. I’d become a Bell Harbor blabbermouth.

Steve’s face went pale for the space of a heartbeat, then turned a scalded red. “She thinks what? That’s insane. I’m not cheating on her. I would never cheat on her.”

This was so none of my business, but I’d kind of stuck my foot in the bear trap now. I owed it to Hilary to try to fix this.

“Then why have you been so secretive? And why are you working out at the gym all the time? And what’s with the tax-coding whore?”

“The . . . the what? The tax-coding . . . what?” He stood up and started pacing. I probably should have wrapped up things for Tyler before diving into this quagmire, but I was in it now, all the way up to my chinny-chin-chin.

“She says you can’t stop talking about this new lawyer who specializes in tax code. Let’s start with that.”

He scowled at me. “No, let’s end with that. First of all, I’ve been going to the gym lately because my wife goes to the gym. All the time. Do you know what it’s like trying to keep up with her? She looks just as beautiful as the day I married her, and I’m losing all my hair. Look!” He bent low and jabbed a finger at his scalp. He was right. It was shiny.

“I’m trying to get fit so she’ll pay more attention to me. She’s buying sex toys now, you know. Sex toys for herself. Where the hell does that leave me? Have you ever seen a Vagazzler? That thing can give her an orgasm and then make her a Frappuccino. I can’t compete with that. I don’t know how to make a Frappuccino.”

Steve sounded pretty sincere. I think Hilary might have been wrong about this after all. She’d be so relieved, just as soon as she was done being furious with me for nosing into her business.

Steve was still pacing, sweat coming out of every pore. He loosened his tie a little more and then just yanked it off and threw it on his big oak desk.

“Seriously? She’s talked to you about this? She thinks I’m cheating on her?”

“You changed your e-mail password.”

“So? I had to. Somebody hacked me. I didn’t change it so she couldn’t read them. God, you think I don’t know she reads my e-mails? She’s always read my e-mails, and I don’t care. Most of it’s boring as hell.” He crossed his arms and glared at me, trying to kill the messenger. “And which whore are we talking about, exactly?”

“The new hotshot lawyer who just joined the firm and works with tax codes.”

Steve wiped the back of his hand across his gleaming upper lip. Man, that guy could sweat. He leaned over and pushed the button on his phone again. “Bertie, would you please see if Felicity could come in my office for a minute. I have a quick question for her.”

The wait was awkward. Steve continued to pace, and I continued to wish I’d minded my own business and let Hilary take care of her own damn marriage. I was there to help Tyler out, not her.

A soft knock sounded on the door a minute later. It opened, and in walked Felicity. She was impeccably dressed, with fluffy blonde hair and big dark eyes. Like Hilary, she had mile-long legs. She also had an Adam’s apple. No amount of hormone therapy was going to hide that thing.

“You had a question, Steve?” Felicity’s voice was low and breathy, just this side of gender reassignment.

Steve gestured in my direction. “Felicity, this is Evelyn Rhoades. She’s decided to pay off the legal fees for one of our clients, and I just wondered if, by any chance, that was tax deductible.”

She smiled and shook her head, flipping that long hair over her shoulder with a manicured hand. “No, I’m sorry, it’s not unless perhaps the fees were incurred by a charitable organization. If it’s just for a private citizen, you’re out of luck.”

Steve crossed his arms again. “That’s what I thought. But you’re the tax-code expert, so I thought I’d check with you.” He glared at me again.

“Thanks so much, Felicity,” I said. “So sorry to interrupt your day.”

“No problem. Is that it?” She looked at Steve.

“Yes, I think you’ve answered all of Evelyn’s questions.”

She left and Steve flung himself back into his chair. “Are we good now?”

I leaned forward and whispered, “How could you fail to mention to Hilary that Felicity used to be a man?”

“Why would I? I had no idea my wife thought I was cheating on her. I think that’s the bigger secret here. And why the hell am I finding this out from you instead of Hilary?”


I sat back in my chair, suddenly feeling utterly drained. “That’s a fair question, Steve, but I think from here on out, you two should talk to each other. I’ve stirred up enough as it is. Can we get back to Tyler now? Who do I make this check out to?”