Kentucky Rich by Fern Michaels Page A

do with the business accounts. It will be damn near impossible for you to run this farm into the ground. Everything’s been taken care of. There’s a fund for wages for the next five years, funds for everything under the sun. We need to set up a meeting with the broker, who is going to educate you on the different holdings. Maud was . . . is insistent on that. You ask all the questions you want until you understand everything. Now, is it okay if I drink from this bottle?”
    â€œOnly if you let me have the first drink,” Nealy shot back.
    â€œDone!” Jess said as he handed over the bottle.

6
    Nealy watched with tears in her eyes as the ambulance attendants wheeled Maud into the house and then into Carmela’s small apartment off the kitchen on the first floor. The housekeeper had moved to the second floor a week after Maud’s stroke. It had been Jess’s idea to switch the rooms, saying it would make it easier on everyone. Nealy had done her best to take away the hospital atmosphere of the room with the hospital bed, medication bottles, charts, and the nurse herself by bringing down the pictures from Maud’s room and re-hanging them. She’d gone to the florist in town and had brought back some green plants the doctor frowned on, along with some knickknacks the nurse said she wasn’t dusting. Emmie watered the plants and dusted every other day. The florist delivered fresh flowers daily. There was nothing she could do about the sick smell to the room except open the windows from the top for a little fresh air.
    Today was, according to Jess, the last time he was subjecting Maud to the ambulance trips to the local hospital for weekly testing, citing Maud’s fear of hospitals. “What will be will be.” Maud had blinked her acceptance of his decision early on, he’d said. The consensus now was that everything that could be done had been done, and the only thing left to do was to see to Maud’s comfort.
    Three long, agonizing weeks had passed since Maud’s stroke. While her condition hadn’t worsened, it hadn’t improved either. The doctor stopped by daily. Jess said he didn’t know why, since he didn’t do a thing except take Maud’s blood pressure. “He’s doing it for the money,” Jess had said sourly. Nealy decided he was probably right.
    Nealy’s gaze sought out Jess, who was hovering near the hospital bed. To her untrained eye, he had gone downhill steadily since Maud’s stroke. His once-robust frame seemed shrunken now, his steps slower, his face almost as gaunt and haggard as Maud’s. Nealy knew he wasn’t sleeping, and he barely ate enough to keep him alive. On more than one occasion she’d woken and tiptoed into Maud’s room in the middle of the night to see him sitting by the side of the bed, whispering or talking to his wife with his fingers.
    Satisfied that Maud was settled and comfortable, the nurse in attendance, Nealy reached out to Jess, and whispered, “Let’s go for a walk, Jess. Just once around the house. You need some fresh air, and it’s snowing out. You know how you love snow. Emmie’s down at the barn, and this is our quiet time. Maud is sleeping. I don’t think she would want you to be giving up, and you are giving up, Jess. Please don’t let Maud see that.”
    â€œShe’s not going to get any better,” Jess said as he slipped into his denim jacket. “I always thought I’d be the first to go since I’m older. I’m having a hard time with this. Nothing seems to matter anymore. Why is that? The farm should count, the horses should count, but they don’t. I don’t give a good rat’s ass about another Derby winner. Maud doesn’t care anymore either. I know she doesn’t. She wants to die. I see it in her eyes. What in the damn hell kind of life is blinking to communicate? She can’t hear, she can only see out of