“Frustration,” he said, kissing her tenderly. “To be honest, Kanye missed the meeting, and Kim wasn’t as wowed as I’d hoped. Maybe I’ll just have to rope in some bigger celebs.”
As she relaxed back into her simpler role as Jon’s girlfriend, she made a mental note to add discover all mitigating factors to her job description.
Chapter Nine
HOLLY
Life’s a performance. Make it convincing.
—“How I Lied about My Name and Discovered My Truth,” a TED Talk by Jon M. Wright
“Say, ‘Aah,’” Holly instructed.
“AAAAH!” blurted the adorable, towheaded seven-year-old Maeve.
Wrinkling her nose at the aroma of Cheerios, apple juice, and unbrushed teeth, Holly clicked on her otoscope and gently used the tongue depressor. It was important not to move too quickly: once, a little boy had flinched at exactly the wrong moment, activating his gag reflex and starting her day in the worst possible way.
“I ignored it for a few days,” said Maeve’s mom, Cynthia, “but she keeps complaining, and I’m wondering if it’s a problem with her immune system. Or maybe an allergy we don’t know about. God knows her vaccinations are all up to date, so it can’t be, you know . . . something like that.”
Tossing the tongue depressor in the trash and clicking the speculum into place on the otoscope, Holly gently tilted Maeve’s head back so she could peer inside her booger-encrusted nose. Then she instructed Maeve to turn her head left and right so she could look in her ears. In only a single generation, parents had gone from assuming the best on most childhood maladies to anticipating the worst. The way moms compared diagnoses during playdates when Holly’s own kids were little, she’d gotten the impression that some of them felt left out if their kids didn’t have at least one food sensitivity.
“Hmm,” she said, just so Cynthia would know she’d heard her.
Putting the ear tips of the stethoscope in her ears, Holly placed the bell on Maeve’s back.
“Breathe in and out for me. Nice, deep breaths.”
Maeve obliged, heaving like a horse after a fast lap around the track.
“Now cough.”
The little girl coughed so lustily Holly couldn’t help but smile. She might have a career on the stage.
“Good job, Maeve,” said Holly, draping the stethoscope around her own shoulders.
“What do you think?” asked Cynthia anxiously.
I think I could have been a surgeon, thought Holly wryly, a joke she often told herself when the pediatric stakes were particularly low. She and Jack had been on track for stellar medical careers but had both wanted a family. Neither liked the idea of having a nanny raise their kids. And when Holly became unexpectedly pregnant with Ava shortly after her residency, the issue was forced sooner than either of them anticipated. To his credit, Jack hadn’t asked her to abandon her career, but he didn’t exactly volunteer to stay home, either. The compromise left her with most of what she wanted—close relationships with their three wonderful kids, a part-time pediatric practice that allowed her to put her skills to some use, a lovely home, and, of course, Horse Stability—none of which would have been possible without Jack’s insistence on founding Cancura despite her initial reservations.
“I think,” she told Cynthia with a smile, “that we are looking at a case of the common cold. Her fever is slight, the irritation to her throat is minor, and the congestion in her nose and lungs seems consistent with a cold. It can take seven to ten days, or even more, for the symptoms to abate. In the meantime, give her plenty of rest and fluids. If the fever goes up, you can treat it with Tylenol, but it doesn’t seem to be bothering her at the moment.”
Both Cynthia and Maeve seemed slightly disappointed by the news. It was a familiar reaction: patients came to the doctor because they wanted medicine and a quick cure, not to be told things would work themselves out in time. Definitive answers and miraculous solutions for illnesses that so far had neither—that was exactly what Jack was on the verge of offering to the world. As a pediatrician, the idea was almost too heady for Holly to imagine. Even as the wife of Jonathan Wright, it was still beyond comprehension.
“Thank you so much, Dr. Wright,” said Cynthia unconvincingly. Then, as Holly opened the door for them, she added: “I almost forgot to mention it, but my husband saw your husband on a flight to LA earlier this week. He was too far away to say hi, unfortunately.”
“Don’t you mean San Francisco?” asked Holly.
“Definitely LA. I know because Aaron texted me a picture of Hugh Hefner’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.”
“Jack travels so much, I can never remember,” said Holly.
Had he really said San Francisco, or was she misremembering?
San Francisco or LA?
The question nagged at her for the rest of the morning and lingered into the afternoon as she went to the office to check on Horse Stability business, then ferried Logan to soccer practice and Paige to a final rehearsal for the eighth-grade class’s opening-night production of The Music Man. Jack flew thirty to forty times a year, and she was long past asking him to email his itineraries.
Certainly it was no big deal to ask him to remind her which city he’d traveled to. But the more she thought about it, the more she began to think even asking made her sound suspicious—and she was suspicious—so the wording was everything.
Remind me again—did you go to San Francisco?
She’d missed her window to text this morning, as he was now surely on the flight home, determined not to miss Paige’s performance as Eulalie Mackecknie Shinn. And really, what was wrong with waiting until he returned to ask, How was San Francisco?
Or should she ask, How was LA?
A
