Tuesday’s Child

when he’d been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. He’d sworn her to secrecy. Like she would ever breathe a word of Nick’s business to anyone. Not even to Jed.

The tears continued to flow. What would Nick do if he couldn’t play golf? She couldn’t even begin to imagine what he would do. Maybe write a book. Nick’s writing a book was the silliest idea she’d ever had. Maybe not a book per se but more like a golfing manual. He’d do better writing a book about what it meant to be a friend and benefactor to St. Gabriel’s. Who would buy something like that? Other golfers? Even that was doubtful. Teach kids to play golf the way someone had taught him? Good possibility. Sell his own brand of golf clubs?

How could life be so unfair? The four of them had started off their lives with no parents, been put in an orphanage, and never knew what it was like to have a real family. That part was even okay because the four of them had found each other. They were their own little family. Then Sophie was arrested for murder and sent to prison for life for a crime another person had just confessed to committing and lost ten years of her life. Then Jon, who only wanted to do good in the world, had died from some crazy-ass jungle virus. Now Nick with his bone-on- bone hip. She couldn’t help but wonder what was in store for her. She felt a shiver of apprehension ripple up her spine.

Patty swiped at her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt as she got up to talk to the EMTs. In the end, they really couldn’t tell her anything that she hadn’t seen on television other than to say that Nick’s doctors were on the way.

Outside, in the now-pouring rain, Patty could see the media vans rolling up. She saw her replacement from AJC, who groaned when she saw Patty. Patty flipped her the bird and hustled over to the Fox reporter and asked him up front if he wanted to interview her since she was first on the scene and had actually spoken to her friend Nick. The reporter snapped her up like she was the last donut on the plate. When no one except her replacement was looking, Patty offered up a single-digit salute for the second time.

Ten thousand miles away across the Pacific, Sophie Lee watched a recap of the day’s news before retiring for the night. Her eyes almost popped out of her head as her jaw dropped when she saw her best friend in the whole world tumble down the portable set of steps that had been wheeled up to the plane. She clutched at her chest at the pandemonium she was witnessing. She hardly dared to breathe as she watched an ambulance careening across the tarmac minutes later, and her best friend in the whole world was loaded onto a stretcher and into the wailing ambulance. She listened to the words, heard them, digested them, then started to really cry.

Sophie continued to listen as reporter after reporter vaguely implied that there were rumors about Nick’s hips and what it would mean to his golf game and to the sport in general. Then they went on to Nick’s endorsements and what it would mean to all the companies who sponsored him. It always came down to money with these guys, Sophie thought. She hugged Sula, who was busy trying to lick at Sophie’s tears.

“Money really is the root of all evil, you know that, Sula?” She gasped when she saw Patty and the Fox reporter. Good, good, really good. Patty was there for Nick. Good old Patty. God, how she missed her. Sophie listened to what she was saying as she hugged Sula close. How great she looked. She couldn’t believe it when she heard the reporter say Patty had been fired from the AJC and was now working as an investigator for the Aulani law firm.

An hour passed as Sophie flipped from one station to the next. She couldn’t get enough of the rehashing. She had the reporters’ verbiage memorized as the hour moved on. She needed to go back to Georgia. She really did. Another hour passed, then, gloriously, there was Patty standing outside the hospital talking to a Fox reporter. Again. Sophie’s tears welled once more at the sight of her friend. How good she looked. How pissed she looked. Sophie saw how upbeat she was trying to be, but she was hurting big-time. Hurting for Nick. Patty tried to make light of what he’d said to her as he was being rushed into the operating room, and she ended with, “And I still don’t know what he brought me back from Hawaii.” In spite of herself, Sophie laughed. That was Patty.

Then the reporter overstepped his bounds by asking Patty her personal opinion on what she thought Nick would do if the rumors were true about his physical condition. Patty backed away, her eyes narrowed into slits. She waved airily and headed for her car, the AJC reporter hot on her heels.

“Hey, Patty, don’t blame me for getting fired.”

“What?” Patty retaliated. “Do you have a guilty conscience or something?”

“No, I don’t. They handed me your job. You know how it works. Either I took it, or I was on the unemployment line. You would have done the same thing.”

She was right. It was an ugly business. “If I had a secret and wanted to share it with a newspaper, and your paper offered me ten times what another paper offered me, I’d turn it down and go with the other guy. You guys got bought off, you blinked. That’s not the kind of journalism I subscribe to. Good luck,” Patty said as she stomped away through the rain.

Patty got in, slammed the car door, and started up the engine. She was going home to cry some more in the little house Nick held the mortgage on. The day after Sophie had been taken off to prison, Nick came by the apartment she had shared with Sophie and helped her move, along with three of his friends. It wasn’t like she had a choice. Nick and his friends had just showed up, packed up hers and Sophie’s stuff, and moved her into an investment house he had only recently bought with the proceeds from his first tournament win. He said she had enough going on in her mind and didn’t need the memories of her life with Sophie in the ratty little apartment they lived in. And, of course, he was exactly right. Nick was always right. Well, almost all of the time.

And it was a nice little house, three bedrooms, three baths, a nice family room, wraparound deck, wonderful shrubbery, and flowers galore in the spring and summer. Nick even cut the lawn for her from time to time. Big brother Nick.

Patty started wailing so loud, she turned on the radio to drown out her misery.

Big brother Nick. God, how she loved him. Even if she had a flesh-and-blood brother, she couldn’t have loved him any more than she loved Nick. How blessed she was that Jed understood her feelings for Nick and wasn’t the least bit jealous. Jed truly understood that Sophie and Nick would always come first in her life no matter how much she loved him.

Chapter 16

RETIRED JUDGE BEN JEFFERSON STOOD ON THE BALCONY OF THE hotel he and Kala were staying in. It offered a perfect view of Paris in all its romantic glory. Not that he was actually seeing or appreciating it; his mind was a thousand miles away. He never should have insisted on this trip, but he and Kala had been planning it for over a year. She’d been as gung ho as he was in the planning stages and had done most of the work on it herself. All was well until the day Adam Clements, a.k.a. Adam Star, walked into Kala’s office and turned her world upside down. And his world as well.

The trip simply wasn’t working, that was the bottom line. Kala was forcing herself to enjoy herself, but the effort it took was beyond painful to watch. She barely picked at the delectable food, she hurried from one sightseeing adventure to the next like she had a time frame where she couldn’t waste even a minute. He knew if he quizzed her at the end of the day, she would have struggled to remember what it was they had seen or where they had gone.

Ben looked down at his watch just as the phone in the elegant suite rang. He walked back inside and picked it up. He thanked the concierge as he jotted down what he was being told on a notepad alongside the phone. He looked around the room, then across the hall to the door, where their packed bags waited for a bellhop to take them to the lobby. On his own, he’d made the decision to leave, to go back to Georgia. He knew in his heart, in his gut, Kala would not protest. If she had to, she would run all the way to the airport and leave the bags behind if she knew that was the only way to return to Georgia.

Ben looked at his watch again. Kala should be returning any minute now from her spa appointment. There would be just enough time for her to shower and dress in the clothes he’d laid out on the bed for her before he finished packing their bags. He no sooner finished his thought than Kala breezed through the suite.

“What’s up with the bags?” she asked as she headed for the bathroom.

“I packed for us. I had the concierge change our tickets. We’re going home, so shake it, or we’ll miss the