A Match for the Doctor by Marie Ferrarella

pictures of your old house?”
    Ignoring her older sister’s pointed scowl, Meghan nodded. “Daddy said to pack away our pictures, but I wanted them with me so I could look at them. Mama gave me the album. I didn’t want to throw it away or lose it,” she explained.
    Gutsy little thing, Kennon thought with admiration. Simon Sheffield seemed as if he was capable of casting a large shadow over his children. Secretly defying the man took courage.
    â€œDaddy didn’t want you to throw it away, stupid,” Madelyn chided. “He just wanted to put everything we wanted to keep into that big storage place.” Seeing that her sister still didn’t grasp the concept of what she was saying, Madelyn explained what storage was. “It’s a big room for all our stuff, but it’s not in the house.”
    Meghan didn’t look as if she believed what she was being told. “Then where is it?”
    â€œSomeplace else,” Madelyn told her, this time letting her shortened fuse show.
    Pictures would definitely help, Kennon thought. But she wasn’t sure just how much they’d help until she had a basic question answered. Did the surgeon want to get away from everything that reminded him of the life he’d lost, or would he want to recapture that feeling? Or would it be a blending of old and new?
    She definitely needed help in coming to the right conclusion.
    â€œWhy don’t you two carry your plates to the sink?” she suggested.
    The two were instantly on their feet, grabbing up their plates as well as the silverware they’d used. Bothacted as if bussing a table was a treat rather than a chore. Kennon couldn’t help wondering if the doctor knew how lucky he was.
    She turned toward Edna. She’d given the girls the chore so that she could talk to the nanny privately. The questions in her head were multiplying. “You said that Dr. Sheffield was still hurting. Over his wife’s death?” Kennon guessed.
    â€œYes.”
    She could see by the look in the older woman’s eyes that this was not an easy subject for her either. The doctor’s wife must have been a very special person to merit such fierce love and loyalty.
    â€œHe blames himself,” Edna told her simply.
    â€œWhy?” Kennon could think of only one reason. “Was he to blame?”
    â€œNo!” Edna cried with feeling. “It’s because she took his place.”
    â€œHis place?” Kennon echoed. She tried to make sense of the answer. “You mean like on a plane?”
    Taking a deep breath, Edna started at the beginning. “Dr. Sheffield belongs to Doctors Without Borders. He joined because Dr. Nancy wanted him to. He was supposed to go to Somalia but at the last moment, his last triple-bypass patient took a turn for the worse a few hours after the surgery. The doctor didn’t want to leave the man in someone else’s hands, so Dr. Patterson—that was Mrs. Sheffield’s professional name—told him not to worry. She said she’d go in his place.”
    â€œDr. Sheffield’s wife was a cardiovascular surgeon, too?” Kennon asked incredulously.
    Edna smiled with pride, tears shimmering in her eyes. “My Nancy was a general surgeon. In a pinch,she could perform almost any kind of regular surgery that needed doing.” Edna’s voice grew very quiet as she added, “When the tsunami hit, she was one of the ones who was swept away.”
    â€œOh. I’m so sorry to hear that,” Kennon told her, genuinely feeling the woman’s pain. But Edna had caught her attention with what she’d said before recounting the abilities of the doctor’s late wife. “Excuse me, you said ‘your Nancy…’” Kennon’s voice trailed off as she waited for a clarification. The girls’ nanny couldn’t mean that the surgeon’s wife was her daughter. Could she? Dr. Sheffield wouldn’t be