Chapter 10: The Jewelry Box

Bailey's POV

Rhett called me from the clinic parking lot on Monday and read me the doctor's words through the phone.

I listened with my hand on the hardware store counter.

Then I said the thing I had been rehearsing since the lake.

"Bridget wouldn't lie to you about that."

"She asked the doctor to change the form," Rhett said.

"People do stupid, kind things when someone they love is in a hospital bed."

"Maybe."

"Let me ask her," I said. "Quietly. Tomorrow, at the pancake dinner. If I go in swinging, she'll cry and you'll apologize."

There was a long silence on the line.

"You're giving her the benefit of the doubt," he said.

"She packed my whole life into boxes when I couldn't stand up," I said. "I'm giving her one conversation."

He said he would meet us there at eight, after Edith's.

So on Tuesday evening I stood in Bridget's kitchen with a bag of blueberries, and I watched her pour batter into the pan.

She had put on a red apron that said Kiss the Cook.

"Effie, baby," she said, "go find the dress-up scarves in my room. They're in the bottom drawer of the dresser. Pick the green one for Gerald."

"Okay!" Effie said, and ran.

I washed the berries.

"Bridge," I said. "Can I ask you something about Rhett's hospital stay?"

The spatula paused for half a second.

"Sure."

"The doctors in Germany. Did they ever say anything besides final?"

"What do you mean?"

"Did anyone use words like unlikely? Or one in a thousand?"

She flipped a pancake without looking at it.

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