Moonlight Road Read Online Free PDF Page B

It’s very boring and like being an inmate.” She plucked at the gown again. “The nurses don’t like me, I can tell. And can you believe this? They haven’t graduated to anything better than this for patients? For God’s sake!”
    Marcie just chuckled.
    “Are you feeling all right?” Erin asked her little sister.
    “Great. I’m sorry you got hurt, but I can’t wait to see the cabin. I hope it’s not too froufrou. I liked the old place.”
    “Guaranteed you’re going to think it’s too froufrou,” Erin said. “It’s completely livable, unlike before. There are lights and everything. Where are my clothes?”
    “I’ll find them. Don’t get up.”
    “Where’s Ian?”
    “He’s at the nurses’ station, getting your release instructions. I think we mainly have to check to be sure you’re still breathing about every seven minutes throughout the night. You’ll be a completely cooperative patient, won’t you?”
    “Just get me out of here,” she said. “They were going to have to hit me in the head again just to keep me here another hour.”
    “I think Ian was right.” Marcie found Erin’s folded clothes and shoes stuffed in her bedside chest of drawers along with her purse. “We’re not so much rescuing you as the nurses. I bet you’re no fun, as patients go.”

    Marcie drove Erin home to the cabin in her big SUV and Ian followed in his truck. He was impressed with the way the cabin looked, amazed by the impossible transformation. Very classy; very Erin. “God above,” he said in a whisper. “When I was thinking of fixing it up, I was thinking in terms of adding a septic tank for a toilet. Look at this place!”
    “But do you like it? Do you really like it? The rug is an Aubusson, the leather furniture is Robb & Stucky, there’s a whirlpool tub and what do you think of the fireplace?”
    Ian didn’t know from Aubusson or any Robb whomever. He stared out the newly installed French doors in the kitchen. Right outside the west end of the cabin was a deck that stretched the length of the house, taking advantage of the awesome view. “Incredible, Erin. Can we use it sometime?”
    She looked shocked. She blinked. They didn’t want to be there the same time as she was? “I thought…we’d all use it, now and then,” she said cautiously. “I mean, I didn’t want to wait to fix it up a little because I was taking vacation this summer, but, Ian, it’s your cabin. I think I have to ask your permission, not the other way around.”
    “Okay,” he said, smiling. “When I married Marcie, I married the family, Erin, and what’s ours is yours. You don’t have to ask permission.” He turned full circle, looking around. “I can’t believe you completely remodeled the whole place by e-mail! It’s amazing!”
    “I’ll be sure and ask if you’re already using it before I make any plans,” she said.
    “He was kidding,” Marcie said. “Ian, you’re such a dork. We’ll all come together. And when Drew visits, he can sleep in the shed.” She grinned.
    “But you like it?” Erin asked again.
    “I think it’s great,” he said. “You made it beautiful.”
    Marcie did a lot of oohing and aahing, and Erin seemed to puff up from that. “I don’t know how I made it without a real kitchen for so long,” Ian said, opening the refrigerator door. When he’d lived here, there was a sink with a pump handle and he’d cooked on a Coleman stove. His mind-set and the emotional landscape of his life back then had been all about deprivation. It hadn’t been so much a form of self-punishment as a paring down of baggage. The less he could make it on, the more competent he felt. It had been like an endurance test. And he had passed with flying colors; he had endured like crazy.
    Erin had been here almost a week. In the refrigerator he found yogurt, cottage cheese, egg substitute, skim milk, a loaf of thinly sliced low-cal bread, salad fixings, celery and carrot sticks, apples, cheese singles, tofu