The doctor made such a quick sound of agreement that it meant she’d already given that some thought and had come to the same conclusion. “Tessie’s angry at something that happened between you and her, but she accepted responsibility for her drinking.”
Eve still wasn’t convinced. “If she’s here just to avoid me, then being here won’t help her. I’m thinking we should have family therapy sessions.”
“I agree about the family sessions. I’m hoping Tessie will let me set up something like that in the near future. For now though, being here might indeed help her. She needs to sort through her feelings and get her life back on track, and here at Hope Sanctuary, we can assist her in making that happen.”
Eve couldn’t argue with anything Dr. Patel was saying. Tessie did need to get her life back on track. But eventually Tessie was going to have to face her.
“How long will she be here?” Lawson asked.
The doctor lifted her hands, palms up. “That depends on Tessie and how fast she works through the steps in the program. It could be days or weeks.” She took out some brochures and handed a copy to each of them. “Read through those, and I’ll be contacting you about when you can visit Tessie. Remember though, she’s free to decline seeing you. And also free to check herself out of here at any time.”
Lawson’s phone buzzed again just as he opened the brochure. It wasn’t a call but rather a text from Dylan. Eve wasn’t about to see what it said, but it caused Lawson to get to his feet.
“Excuse me for a second,” he said. “I need to make a call.” He stepped out into the hall.
That got Eve’s attention because she doubted Lawson would hit the pause button on the meeting unless there was some kind of emergency. It was true that he didn’t really know Tessie, but the fact that he was here with her told Eve that he intended to be part of Tessie’s life. Or rather as much of a part as Tessie would let either of them be.
Eve had questions for the doctor. She wanted to know if she could press Tessie to see her. One minute she wanted to coddle her baby girl, and the next minute she wanted to ground her and demand that she move back home. But Eve decided to postpone the questions a few seconds and find out what was going on with Lawson.
“I’ll be right back,” she told the doctor, and Eve went into the hall with him.
One look at Lawson’s face, and she knew something was indeed wrong. This time, she didn’t think it was anger that had caused his forehead to bunch up like that.
“It’s my mother,” he told her after several snail-crawling moments. “She’s in the hospital, and Dylan said I should come right away.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ONCE AGAIN LAWSON found himself pacing in yet another room. This time, though, it was at the Wrangler’s Creek Hospital, where he’d had the taxi drop him off.
Lawson hadn’t had his truck in Austin because he’d ridden up there with Eve, and he hadn’t wanted to wait for someone from the ranch to send a vehicle. Since he couldn’t teleport, the taxi had been his best option to meet Dylan’s come right now request. Judging from the bits and pieces he’d learned, Dylan’s urgency was spot-on since his mom was still being worked on by the doctors.
Exactly what she was being worked on for, Lawson didn’t know. But there’d better be some answers soon.
At least Lawson wasn’t alone. His sister, Lily Rose, was pacing right along with him and nibbling her bottom lip. Dylan had apparently paced himself out because he was seated, his legs stretched out in front of him, his head resting on the back of the chair. To a casual observer, it might look as if Dylan was about to nod off, but Lawson knew his brother was just as concerned as Lily Rose and he were.
None of them were especially close to Regina. Hard to be close to someone who was never around. But blood was blood.
That thought stopped him for a couple of steps. Yes, blood was indeed blood, and that’s why he was torn between being here and being with Tessie. The difference was that Regina would want him to be there. And she knew that Lawson was her son. To Tessie, he was practically a stranger. One who had tattled on her for drinking. He was betting that was going to cause a rift between them for a long time to come.
A rift on Tessie’s part, anyway.
No way was Lawson going to let her shut him out of her life. Especially since Eve had shut him out all these years.
“Why aren’t they telling us anything?” his sister snapped. “And where the heck is Lucian? He should be here by now.”
Lawson didn’t have an answer for either question, but yeah, Lucian should have made it from his office in San Antonio by now. They’d let their other brother, Reed, know, as well. Or rather they’d tried, but Reed was a cop on an undercover assignment. His handler, boss or whatever the heck his job title was had told Dylan that he would try to get a message to Reed.
His phone buzzed again, something it’d been doing for the past half hour since he’d arrived at the hospital. His cousins and some of the hands had texted to find out if there was anything they could do. And Eve had sent a text, too, to give him an update about Tessie and ask about his mom. Neither Lawson nor she had had good news. Eve hadn’t been able to see Tessie and was on her way back home, and Lawson still had no word on why his mom had collapsed while Dylan and she were at the diner having coffee.
“I knew something was wrong,” Lily Rose went on. “When I saw Mom yesterday, she looked pale. Didn’t you notice that?” she asked Lawson.
He had to shrug. He hadn’t really noticed because that’d been the day Regina had interrupted Eve and him kissing. Lawson probably wouldn’t have noticed if Regina had walked in with a chicken on her head. And that made him only curse himself more. His head was a tangled mess right now at a time when he needed to focus.
“Should one of us try to get in touch with Dad?” Lily Rose asked.
Lawson’s first reaction was to say no. Truth was, his folks had never gotten along, and his dad had remarried. Multiple times. Lawson thought he was on wife number four now. His dad had clearly moved on. And on. And on. But there was a slim chance that he would want to know that the mother of his children was in the hospital.
“I’ll call him later,” Lawson answered. Once they knew what the heck was going on.
Since the pacing was wearing thin, Lawson went to the chairs and sank down in the one next to Dylan. His brother was texting, and before Dylan put his phone away, Lawson saw Eve’s name on the screen.
“She’s just worried about you,” Dylan said when Lawson tried to get a better look at the message, and he put his phone away. “Really, that’s all,” his brother added when he continued to stare at him. Actually, Lawson had to admit that he was probably glaring. “Sheesh. Jealous much?”
“I’m not jealous,” Lawson snapped. The rest of him nearly snapped, too, and that’s when he realized he needed to rein in everything that was bubbling up inside him.
“Any idea what you’ll do about Tessie?” Dylan asked.