Page 88 of Lipstick Kiss

When Jennifer clocked Luke striding across the grass, she moved a lot slower towards him, clearly struggling with a hip or knee problem. He assumed she started bellowing after she couldn’t manage to walk any further. It wasn’t a quick walk from Turner Hall and would’ve taken her twenty minutes.

She leaned heavily on a cane. Something that sent a shiver up his spine.

The first thing he thought was, did she need the cane? Was she faking being frail? It was an unkind thought, but he remembered Jennifer from his childhood.

“What did you say?” she shouted when he was close enough.

“To whom?” Luke asked, ensuring he got his grammar correct in front of this woman who was a stickler for correctness in every form.

Sometimes he thought Jennifer was more like the old-generation Turners that his grandfather was.

“Don’t get smart with me, boy,” she hissed.

Archer and Jason’s cottages were to his left, Edward Hall was in the far distance behind Jennifer and somewhere behind him were Freya’s loving arms.

Archer had stepped onto the grass a few feet in front of his cottage. Erica was now standing in his periphery, her hand on her swollen belly. Jason stood next to Archer with his hands in his shorts pockets. He was wearing trainers now. Movement caught his eye as Freya wandered to Heidi, and they walked to where Erica was leaning against the wooden post of their back patio area.

“I only want to speak to him. You lot can go back inside,” Jennifer shouted to them.

No one moved.

The air was so still Luke could’ve sworn the tree branches were holding their breath.

“Will you say what you’ve got to say, Jennifer? I’ve had the best day celebrating my engagement. Don’t kill my buzz.”

“The doctor is with Cyn,” Jennifer said.

Luke tilted his head, not caring much about the news.

“You mean Miss Turner, right?”

“Yes,” she clipped. “Miss Turner,” she corrected, getting red in the face.

“Okay. She’s eighty. I’d be surprised if the doctor wasn’t with her weekly.”

“She collapsed.”

Her words came out as a wail, seemingly trying to get him to be as concerned as she was.

“What has that got to do with me?”

“You caused her heart attack,” she shouted.

“She’s had a heart attack?”

Luke switched to a medic in a moment. Jason and Archer were on the move getting closer but stopped five feet away.

“She thinks she did. She had pains in her chest.”

Her voice had lowered in volume but not lessened in pain.

Luke remembered for a moment that this woman had been at Cynthia’s side for sixty years. Luke’s mind took a stand-down approach. Pains in the chest could mean anything. It could be heartburn from her Sunday roast.

“When did this happen?” Luke asked, getting to the bottom of the link Jennifer was making between his conversation with his aunt and her situation right then.

“Two hours ago, I waited until you returned,” Jennifer said.

Luke instantly looked to Turner Hall. He could just about see the roof. Had she camped out in the attic rooms to wait for their return?

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