Page 18 of You Had Me at Chocolate

Pulling away from him, she gripped his biceps firmly and locked her gaze with his. “We’re not going to lose her,” she said, fiercely. “Do you hear?” She shook him a little. “She’s getting top-notch medical care and everyone in Marietta is praying for her.”

She’d talked to her mom’s doctors a half dozen times since her father’s phone calls last night. They’d been very informative all along, telling Clem the blood clot had occurred in the right-side of her mother’s brain which meant Trina’s left side would be affected but, they’d also been very guarded in their prognosis. All they were willing to say was, should she get through these next few days in intensive care, then that was encouraging. They’d also warned Clem that, should she pull through, her mother would most probably have significant neurological deficits that would require long-term rehabilitation.

Possibly a couple of years. And that she might never get full function back.

Clem’s research had indicated as much but it had still been sobering news when she’d desperately needed something positive. She pushed it away now, though. The most important thing was to get through these next few days.

Looking ahead was futile—this was going to be an hour-by-hour thing.

“She’s going to pull through,” Clem reiterated. “She is tough. She is strong.” Trina had grown up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin. She’d been in the milking sheds and doing chores from the time she could walk. “Do you seriously know another woman who is tougher or stronger?”

“No,” her father said, his voice tremulous as he wiped a hand across his nose.

“And you really think she’s going to leave this earth before I give her a grandchild?”

He laughed. His eyes were still watery but he didn’t seem so stooped anymore. “Absolutely not.”

“Right then.” Clem smiled and gave his arms an encouraging squeeze. “Let’s go in and see her, shall we?”

*

At seven that night, Jude answered the knock on the door, a blast of bracing October night air hitting him in the chest. He was surprised to see the woman from Clementine’s party standing there. The one in the purple skirt. Although she was in jeans and a sweater tonight.

“Hey,” she said. “Sorry to interrupt your evening but Clem has asked me to come and pick up some stuff for her and take it to the hospital.”

Jude frowned. The hospital? A spike of alarm stabbed into his chest like a lance. “I’m sorry… what? What’s happened? She’s supposed to be in Athens.”

“She didn’t get to Athens. Her mom has had a stroke. Her father got to her just before she boarded the plane. She flew back to Bozeman this afternoon.”

Well that explained why she hadn’t answered his how’s Athens text. He’d been disappointed then annoyed at himself for being disappointed. She was in Athens at the start of her grand adventure. And they were just friends.

He shoved a hand through his hair. “Is she… okay? Her mom?”

“They don’t know yet. The stroke was significant. She’s in ICU. It’s touch-and-go at the moment. Clem and her dad will be staying in Bozeman for a bit. If I could just…” She gestured for him to let her in.

“Oh god, sorry…” Jude fell back and the woman entered. Clearly very familiar with the layout of the house, she headed down the corridor to Clementine’s bedroom and Jude followed. “Clementine must be frantic.”

“Yes, she’s very worried. We all are.”

God, poor Clementine. She’d been so excited about her trip and now she must feel utterly wretched.

Jude hovered on the threshold, watching as the woman crossed to the desk against the far wall. He absently noted the bookshelf to the side—one of many dotted around the house—stuffed with books, spine out. Several neat stacks sat on top. There were stacks like that everywhere, on every available surface from the kitchen to the hallway stand to the coffee table in the living room. He’d even had to remove a pile from the single-seater couch before he’d sat down to watch a movie last night.

Surprisingly—or maybe not—over half of them had been nonfiction, from biographies to history texts to scientific tomes.

He watched as Clementine’s friend grabbed her laptop and its cord, shoving it in its bag. Opening the desk drawers, she hunted through until she found several different plastic folders and slid them into the side pocket of the laptop bag. Grabbing the highlighter pens from the ceramic holder next to the printer, she tossed them in as well. The colorful print just above the holder, popped against the neutral mint green of the walls.

Walking to the bedside table occupied by a leadlight lamp that could easily have been at home in a church window, she grabbed the three books sitting in that pile—they appeared to be novels—and balanced them on top of the bag. The bedspread was a kaleidoscope of pastels, falling all the way down to the floor to brush the honey-gold of the wide floorboards.

“Okay. That’s it for now.”

Jude frowned. “You’re not taking any clothes?”

She shook her head. “Clem has two months’ worth of clothes with her.”

“Right.” She already had a packed suitcase. He gave a deprecating smile. “I’m sorry… I don’t know your name.”

“It’s Rhonda,” she said. “Clem and I have been friends since ninth grade.”

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