1. Against Doctor' s Orders

“About forty-five minutes.” He took the handle of her bag and headed for the exit. “Not much traffic out that way, so we’ll make good time.”

“Fine.” She followed along beside him into a sunlit morning. The air was crisp and a good twenty degrees cooler than she was used to at this hour of the morning. That was a bonus, of sorts, and about the only positive thing she’d noticed thus far. The airport was ridiculously small, which explained why she’d had to take two flights to get here. Really. Could she get any farther from civilization?

He led her to a black town car. While he took care of her bag, she climbed into the back and immediately checked her phone. Hopefully he wouldn’t want to chat once he saw she was busy. She scrolled through her several business email addresses and then her personal, sending instructions to her admin on several matters that had come up since the last time she’d checked. Thank God Carrie would be arriving the next day. Between the two of them, they ought to be able to wrap this up quickly.

The sooner they set the groundwork for a transition team to take over, the faster she could do what needed to be done and get out of here. The familiar anger at her brother and his maneuvering surged through her, and she tamped it down. Some battles were not worth fighting, and since he had the support of the board behind him, she’d had no ammunition with which to fight back. So here she was, pushed out of sight for the time being. The sooner she finished off the takeover, the better. Preston was mistaken, though, if he expected her to let him campaign for the CEO position while she was exiled in the ass-end of nowhere.

She glanced out the window at the city, or what there was of one, and discovered it had disappeared. Rolling hills and broad fields bordered the two-lane road. Farmhouses, white or yellow seemed to be the common color, sat along the road or back a distance on narrow dirt drives, the houses generally dwarfed by larger blood-red barns, silos, and a jumble of other buildings. No one had close neighbors. The landscape couldn’t be more different than Phoenix, where the starkly beautiful desert stretched for miles to the foot of the craggy mountain faces. Here, color exploded everywhere: greens in every shade and hue, deep yellows and rich earthy browns, purple-and-white flowers—lilacs, at least she thought they were lilacs—and other plants and flowers she could not name. The dizzying riot of bold colors was annoyingly distracting, and she turned back to her iPhone.

She opened a news app and after a second realized she had no signal. She stared at her phone. Was it possible? Really? No cell service? Where in God’s name was she?

Clutching her phone as if it were a lifeline to civilization, she leaned back and closed her eyes. The transition was projected to take six months. She’d give it three. Any longer than that and she was likely to lose her mind. Damn Preston and his maneuvering.

The vehicle slowed, and Presley sat up. A dented red mailbox with peeling reflective numbers perched atop a gray wooden post at the mouth of a dirt driveway. The car turned in and passed between fields of what Presley presumed was grass stretching as far as she could see on either side. Surely this was a mistake. “Are you certain this is the right address?”

“Says 246 on the mailbox, ma’am. And this is County Road 64.”

“Yes, but there’s nothing out here.”

“Well, there’s a house right up ahead past those trees. Isn’t that what you were expecting?”

“I was told a house had been rented for me, but I didn’t expect it to be—” She gritted her teeth. “Let’s just see what we see, shall we?”

The car bumped along a lane as long as two city blocks and barely as wide as an alley. The house was a neat wood-sided square structure—yellow, of course—with a broad porch running the full length of the front, the requisite red barn—not as big as some she had seen—fifty yards away, and a clothesline strung from the rear corner of the house to a big oak tree loaded down with sheets flapping in the breeze.

“Obviously, we have the wrong place. Someone lives here,” Presley said. Someone else, thank God.

The front door opened and a middle-aged woman in pale blue pants, a blue-and-white checkered shirt, and a flowered apron around her waist came down the porch and approached the car. Her graying blond hair was pulled back in a loose twist. Her smile was wide and welcoming.

Presley rolled down the window. “I’m very sorry to disturb you, I think we are in the wrong—”

“Would you be Ms. Worth?”

For a moment, Presley was almost too surprised to answer. “Yes. Who are you?”

“I’m Lila Phelps. The housekeeper.”

“The housekeeper.” Presley heard her voice rise at that. “I didn’t know the house came with a keeper.”

Lila laughed. “Well, I don’t live here, but the rental agency said you’d be needing a housekeeper, and I’m right up the road. My cousin Sue works for the agent and she called me, and I can use the extra with my youngest about to go off to community college in the fall. The house needed airing out and I just finished washing all the linens. Of course, if you don’t need me—”

“Do you cook by any chance?”

The woman beamed. “Does it rain in April?”

“Not where I come from,” Presley muttered. She pushed open the door and stepped out. “Breakfast at six a.m., dinner at seven thirty.”

“I can leave you something warming in the oven for your supper, but I’ll be needing to be home come four or so to see to the family’s meal.”

“Fine. Just leave instructions with it.”

“I can manage that. And do the wash and keep the place tidy and do the grocery shopping.”

“Excellent. I’ll give you a list of my preferences. I work in the morning over breakfast, so no radio.”

“Don’t like the noise myself.”

Presley nodded briskly. “We’ll get along fine, then.”

“I expect we will.”

Presley paid the driver, and he carried her suitcase up to the front porch. With her hands on her hips, she turned and surveyed her new home. All she could see were hills and fields and cows. There were a great many cows right up the road, and if she hadn’t been able to see or hear them, she could definitely smell them. She was going to make her brother pay for this.

Chapter Two

Harper’s mother turned with a cup of coffee in her outstretched hand just as Edward Rivers came through the kitchen door, greeting him as she had thousands of times before upon his return from a late-night call. He smiled, kissed her cheek, and took the coffee.

“Morning, Dad,” Harper said.

Edward sipped the coffee. “Mary and the baby doing all right?”

“Both fine.” Harper didn’t bother to ask how her father knew of Mary Campbell’s nightlong labor and early morning delivery. Somehow, he always seemed to know what was happening with everyone in the community, and certainly the condition of every patient in the hospital everyone still called the Rivers Hospital, as it had been named when her great-great-great-grandfather and several local mill owners had built it 150 years before. She hadn’t yet mastered his access to the local grapevine, but she was getting better every year. She’d only three years of medical practice to his thirty, so she didn’t feel too bad. “I’ll be heading back to check on her in an hour or so. Is there anyone you need me to see?”

He set down his cup, took off his suit coat—he always wore a suit and tie when seeing patients, in high summer or the dead of winter—and hung it on a peg inside the kitchen door. He rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt and took his usual seat at the head of the table.

“Nothing urgent. I’ll be making rounds myself midmorning.”

Tires crunched on the drive. Flannery’s Jeep, the top already off in homage to the long-awaited warm weather, appeared outside the window above the sink and disappeared again as Flann pulled under the porte cochere. Harper glanced at her mother. “Family meeting?”

“Edward?” Ida asked.

Harper’s father nodded slowly.

Ida said, “I’d better put on more coffee.”

Edward rubbed his face, and for the first time Harper realized he looked far more tired than a night up seeing patients should account for. Maybe her mother was wrong. Maybe he was ill. A spear of panic, completely unlike her usual steady, calm approach to a crisis, shot through her. Her father had been her hero, the primary presence in her life, for as far back as she could remember. She was the oldest child, the first he took on rounds with him, before Flannery and then Carson, and now Margie. Kate had not lived long enough to join him. Harper couldn’t imagine the family without either of her parents—her father’s quiet anchor or her mother’s unbending strength—or her life without them. The day would one day come. Just not now.

“Dad?”

His dark brown eyes met hers and he smiled briefly. “Wait till you hear the facts, Harper. Listen to your instincts, but never disregard the facts.”

“Yes, sir,” Harper said, remembering one of the first lessons she’d learned at his side.

The back door swung open and Flannery blew in, energy pouring off her as it always seemed to do. The second oldest, she’d been in motion from the time she could walk, and she’d walked earlier than them all, their mother said—always the first to climb the tallest tree, the one to ride her bike the fastest, the rebellious teen pushing every boundary she could find. Harper’s father said he’d always known she’d be the surgeon, and he’d been right. Whereas Harper favored her mother in appearance, Flannery had the golden-brown hair and chocolate eyes of her father’s side of the family, and the temperament of a thoroughbred born to race. She looked like the soccer player she’d been in high school, with a little less height than Harper and more breadth in the shoulders. She kissed her mother, squeezed her father’s shoulder, and pulled out a chair next to Harper at the table.

“I’ve got an eight o’clock,” she announced to the room in general.

“You’ll make it,” Edward said. “Routine hernia, isn’t it?”

“That and an appendectomy to follow that Harper picked up in the ER last night.” She nodded to Harper. “Good call, by the way. Thanks for letting me sleep.”

“I was there with a delivery. No reason for both of us to be awake.” Harper had called Flannery at five a.m. after seeing Bryce Daniels at three when the ER nurses had stopped her for a curbside consult. The sixteen-year-old had the classic signs of appendicitis, and she’d gotten his workup started before waking her sister.

The swinging door from the dining room pushed open and Margie, wearing a loose T-shirt and soccer shorts, came in rubbing sleep from her eyes. At fifteen she was rangy and still a little coltish, but destined to be the prettiest of them all with shoulder-length curly blond hair and vivid blue eyes. She shuffled toward the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of milk. “How come everybody’s here?”

“Your father has news,” Ida said.

Margie sat on the far side of Harper as the last vehicle, Carson’s Volvo, pulled in outside. Her nephew Davey’s laughter carried through the open window, and a second later, Carson ambled in with the ten-month-old perched on her hip. She leaned down and kissed her father, then her mother, and took the coffee her mother held out to her before settling into her usual place on the opposite side of the table from Flannery. Slim-hipped and ivory-skinned, she looked more Margie’s contemporary than ten years her senior. She kept her auburn hair short and feathered at the temples, giving her a touch of innocence that belied her core of steel. A soldier’s wife, she’d been battle tested as the war in the Middle East dragged on.

“Thanks, Mama,” Carson said when Ida handed her a cracker for Davey.

The room was silent save for the baby’s chortling while Ida laid strips of bacon in a cast-iron pan on the stove. She turned the heat down low, poured her own coffee, and took her seat at the opposite end of the table from her husband, the four sisters ranged between them. “Well then. Edward?”

As if he’d been waiting for his wife to give him permission, he cleared his throat and looked at each of his children in turn.

“The board of trustees has sold the hospital.”

For a second, Harper couldn’t think above the exclamations and one pointed curse word from Flann.

“Flannery O’Connor, we’ll not have that language at my table,” Ida said without raising her voice.

“Sorry, Mama,” Flannery muttered.

Everyone quieted.

“What do you mean,” Harper said, “sold the hospital. Sold the hospital to who?”

“Can they do that?” Flannery interrupted.

“Wait,” Carson said, shifting Davey in her lap as she pushed her coffee cup beyond his grasping hands. “Why haven’t the staff been informed? A lot of jobs are at stake, not to mention our patients’ welfare.”

“It’s complicated,” Edward said, “but like most community hospitals that were started by a few individuals, the hospital transitioned to a for-profit institution sometime during the middle of the last century. The bank and a few major shareholders and the board of trustees control the business side of things. Apparently, the hospital’s profits have been declining and the sale is the only way to pay our creditors.”

“Well, decreased profits is to be expected,” Harper said. “With the fall in reimbursement from insurance companies and the cost of new equipment, that’s true everywhere. Our beds are always pretty full—” She glanced at Carson, who’d opted for business over medicine and now headed patient admissions. “I think?”

Carson nodded. “We run at eighty percent capacity most of the time and sometimes close to one hundred.”

“So why wasn’t the staff informed?” Flann reached for a biscuit and glanced at her mother. “How long to bacon?”

“Until I put it on the table.”

Flann grinned. “Soon?”

Ida’s eyes softened as she rose, stroked Flann’s hair, and went to the refrigerator.

Carson started to get up. “I’ll get that, Mama.”

“You sit.” Harper rose. “You’ve got the baby. I’ll get it.” She took a carton of eggs from her mother. “I’ll do this. I can hear from here.”

“Keep the heat low so the eggs don’t get rubbery.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

As Harper cracked eggs into the skillet and listened to the questions and her father’s quiet answers, a hard knot settled in her stomach. The hospital was as much the center of her life as her family. Her friends and her colleagues there were her community. She knew the halls and stairwells as well as she knew the paths and streams that ran through the land she’d grown up on. The hushed murmur of voices in the dimly lit corridors at night and the steady beep of monitors from open doorways were as familiar as birdcall in the morning and the lowing of cows outside her bedroom window at night. The hospital was an extension of her world, and she’d never wanted to be anywhere else. Her father and his father before him and his before that had been the chiefs of staff, and she had known from the time she was twelve that one day she would be too. The hospital was her destiny, and she’d never considered any other path.

She flipped the eggs and tuned out discussions of profit and shares and stockholders and other things she didn’t care about. She cared about her patients, cared about the community she served, and the rest was of no matter to her. She wasn’t interested in profit. She’d never been interested in money or paid much attention to it at all. She lived in what had once been the caretaker’s house on four acres of land a quarter mile down the road from the big house. She had four rooms that were plenty of space until she met the right woman to start a family with, a garden where she grew her own vegetables in the summer, apple and pear trees, a dog who slept as often at her mother’s as he did on her back porch, three cats who’d claimed the woodshed, and chickens who roosted in a coop beside it and gave her more eggs than she could eat. Her life was going just according to plan.

She slid the eggs and bacon onto a big white platter and put it in the middle of the table. Margie took down dishes and silverware and stacked them at the other end. Everyone automatically helped themselves.

“What does this really mean?” Harper sat back down with a fresh cup of coffee. She didn’t take any food. She’d lost her appetite.

Edward shook his head. “No one really knows for sure. Maybe nothing. We’ve still got sick people to take care of, and that’s what we need to focus on.”

Flann drummed her fork on the table to a beat only she could hear. “What did you say the name of the corporation was that bought the hospital?”

“SunView Health Systems,” her father said. “They’re located out west somewhere.”

“Strangers.” Flann glanced at Harper. Fourteen months apart, they were as close as twins. They’d gone to the same medical school, had done their residencies at the same hospital, and on rare occasions had competed for the attention of the same girls.

Harper could read the warning in Flann’s eyes. Change was coming, and it couldn’t be good.

*

Presley lugged her suitcase and briefcase through the front door and found herself in a central foyer facing a wide staircase against one wall. Two large rooms opened on each side, and she took a quick glance into each. On the left was a sitting room with a sofa and several oversized chairs arranged in front of a stone fireplace. An oil painting of a red barn and fields of swaying green stuff hung above the broad granite mantelpiece. She shook her head. Didn’t they get enough of that view just driving down the road?

A faded Oriental rug in greens and browns covered the wood floor. The other room also had a fireplace against the far wall and walnut-stained, floor-to-ceiling wood shelves holding a haphazard assortment of hardback books, and a pair of comfortable-looking reading chairs with round, dark wood casual tables beside each one. The rooms appeared lived-in and surprisingly welcoming. She’d expected a rental house to be furnished, but this place looked as if the owner might return at any moment.

“Whose house is this?” Presley asked Lila, who waited for her at the foot of the stairs.

“It’s been in the White family for a hundred years or so,” Lila said. “Old Mrs. White finally gave in and went to live with her son downstate. They haven’t had any buyers, so they finally decided to rent it.”

“Can’t imagine there are many buyers for places out here.”

Lila laughed. “You’d be surprised how many city people like to try their hand at country living.”

“You’re right about that.”

Presley followed Lila upstairs where she found three bedrooms, one with a large bathroom attached, and a second bathroom down the hall. She’d never lived with anyone—she liked to work at odd hours and didn’t care to worry about someone else’s schedule, but Carrie could stay here for the short time they’d be on-site. They got along well and they wouldn’t actually be spending that much time in the house. Carrie had been her personal assistant now for almost three years, since Carrie had graduated from college and finished an internship at SunView. She was organized and efficient, respected personal space, and appreciated that Presley wasn’t a chatterer. Exactly the kind of person Presley could tolerate having around.

She took the master bedroom with bath, dumped her bag by a broad, tall four-poster bed, and walked to the open window. Lace curtains billowed in the breeze. The room overlooked a sloping lawn to the drive and, beyond that, a broad green pasture bordered by a wooden rail fence. The air was surprisingly clean and bright. She could almost smell the green in it. The thought struck her as ridiculously whimsical, and she turned away to study the room with its tall armoire in lieu of a closet in one corner and a matching dark wood dresser topped with a huge wood-framed mirror. Another Oriental-patterned rug covered the floor, and a small chair upholstered in a floral brocade design sat by the window with a standing brass reading lamp nearby. Homey. And absolutely nothing like her condo in Phoenix, where she favored glass and steel and modern art, highly polished tile floors, and a gleaming gourmet kitchen she rarely used. Not that she really noticed her surroundings when she got home late at night and put in a few hours’ work before bed.

“Talk about a fish out of water,” she muttered with a shake of her head. Frowning, she scanned the wall, checked what appeared to be a thermostat, and walked out into the hallway. Leaning over the wooden banister, she called, “Lila?”

Lila appeared below and looked up. “Need something?”

“Where are the controls for the air-conditioning?”

Lila stared at her for a few seconds. “Well, there aren’t any.”