Denny was already on his feet. “I got it.”
“Hey, Denny. Is that your girlfriend?” Nat Rhone asked from the opposite side of the aisle.
“Uh, no,” Denny said, flustered. “I was—”
“Ain’t much of a first date, taking her out to eat with your dad.”
The other men at the table snickered. Denny’s father sipped his coffee without a word.
“If you need any lessons on how to treat a lady, I can give you some pointers. Free of charge.”
“Hey, Casanova,” Abigail snapped. “My guess is you couldn’t get a date with a woman unless she was drunk, stupid, or paid for, so why don’t you mind your own business.”
The quote from Dr. Walter’s show rolled off Abigail’s tongue effortlessly, and the insult hung in the air like the smell of a firecracker that had gone off. Everyone had heard her. The sting of her remark reddened Nat’s face.
Denny clapped. “Ooh-wee, she told you.”
Nat sprang from his seat. In an instant, he had Denny by the throat with one hand and was pummeling him in the stomach with the other. Both men’s caps went flying from their heads. Denny was squirming and no one intervened, including his father. Abigail jumped to her feet but could only stand outside the fray, shouting at the men to stop while others egged them on. Then Merle Braithwaite walked into the cafe. In two strides he was between Nat and Denny. He put a massive hand on Nat’s shoulder and yanked them apart, but Nat broke free from his grasp to get in his last punch. Denny scrambled backward to avoid the blow. Lunging for Nat, Merle twisted awkwardly and went careening to the ground, overturning chairs in his wake. The sound of Merle hitting the floor silenced the entire restaurant.
Ruth rushed from the kitchen to Merle’s side. “Everybody out. Cafe’s closed. And you,” she said to Nat Rhone. “Don’t come back.”
He snatched his fallen cap and strode away. His buddies followed, along with the rest of the patrons, some groaning as they left behind freshly poured cups of coffee with the money for their meals. Janine shot Abigail a nasty glance when she walked by. Others stared. In a single swoop, Abigail had started a fight and injured three men. She hurried to Merle.
“Are you okay?”
“If being on the floor is okay, then, yeah, I’m dandy.”
“Let me help you.”
“Not unless you’ve got a forklift in your pocketbook.”
“I’ve gotcha.” Bert Van Dorst, the man from the laundromat, was shuffling over from the counter. “Saw you fall, Merle. That hurt?”
“You could say so.”
“How’s your laundry?” he asked Abigail.
“Bert, maybe now’s not the time,” Merle advised.
“Just making conversation.”
Ruth shut the door to the cafe and locked it as the bell overhead ceased to ring. “Denny, you and your father get on one side of Merle. Bert, you get on the other.”
Together the three of them hoisted Merle into a chair. Abigail tried to make eye contact with Denny’s father. He refused to meet her gaze. Her first thought was that he was mad at her for sparking the fight. Then it dawned on her that he was embarrassed, by Denny and by the fact that he didn’t have his own son’s back.
“Let me get a look at that ankle, Merle.” He winced as Ruth removed his boot. “It’s swelling already. Think you can put weight on it?”
Merle set his foot on the floor, testing. “Not for long.”
“It’s not broken.”
“How do you know?” Denny was squatting to have a look for himself.
“Because if it was, he’d want to toss his cookies when he stood on it. In the early days, people’d strike a tuning fork to tell if a bone was broke. The vibration would make the bone shake. The toss-your-cookies test will have to do.”
“Got plenty of forks here. I can get you some.”
“No, hon,” Ruth told him, patting Denny’s shoulder. “I think it’s only a bad sprain.”
“Shouldn’t we get him to a doctor?” Abigail asked. “To be safe?”
Ruth shook her head. “I’m not going to trouble the gals at the UC.”
“We got an urgent-care unit on the island,” Bert explained. “Two nurses and a doctor on call. People try not to bother ’em unless it’s an emergency.”
“Ruth’s right,” Merle said. “It’s a sprain, not a stroke, for Pete’s sake.”
Abigail was still processing the fact that there was virtually no medical care available on the island. “You’re saying there’s no hospital here and only one doctor on Chapel Isle?”
“During the off season, yeah,” Ruth informed her flatly.
“But we’ve got Ruth,” Denny chimed. “She’s practically a doctor herself.”
“Really?” Abigail said.
Bypassing the topic, Ruth instructed Denny and his father to take Merle home. “Bert, you go with them. They’ll
