I thought finding another woman in my bed was the worst betrayal I would ever face, but months later, in a forgotten Vermont town, I discovered that someone had been telling an old man he was dying for one reason only—to steal the land beneath his home.
Chapter 2
Life in Willow Creek settled around us slowly, like snow collecting on a quiet road.
I accepted a position three days a week at the regional health clinic. After years of glass towers, administrative meetings, and hospital corridors lit at every hour, the little one-story clinic almost felt like another century. Patients brought nurses homemade bread. People called ahead when roads iced over. If someone missed an appointment, chances were somebody knew why.
Ethan changed even faster.
In Boston, he had become quiet after months of tension between Mark and me. In Vermont, he came home with mud on his jeans and stories spilling out faster than I could follow. He made friends with a boy named Noah whose family kept dairy cows, joined an after-school nature club, and began collecting leaves between the pages of an old dictionary Walter gave him.
Walter and Ethan developed their own friendship.
Every evening Walter sat beside the fireplace and read aloud from books that had belonged to his father. He favored history, adventure, and biographies of explorers who had made spectacular mistakes before accomplishing something worthwhile.
“That’s the secret,” he told Ethan one night. “Most people who did anything important looked foolish at least once.”
I listened from the kitchen and realized I had gone an entire day without thinking about Mark.
Weeks became months.
Then Walter coughed.
Not the mild cough I had heard before.
This one was deep and wet, followed by a wheeze that made the physician in me stand immediately.
He waved me away.
“I’m dying, Rachel. Dying people cough.”
“Doctors are terrible patients, and apparently farmers are worse.”
“I am not a farmer anymore.”
“Then you’re an unemployed terrible patient.”
He laughed, then coughed again.
That evening I asked to see his medical records.
Walter reluctantly unlocked the rolltop desk in the parlor and brought me a folder from the local clinic.
The diagnosis was written clearly.
Probable advanced lung carcinoma.
Terminal prognosis.
Yet the documentation beneath it made no sense.
There was no biopsy.
No PET scan.
No tissue pathology.
The chest X-ray was poor quality, and the radiology notes described chronic changes without identifying a definite tumor.
“Who diagnosed you?”
“Dr. Monroe.”
Alan Monroe.
I knew him.
He was the senior physician at the clinic, an affable sixty-year-old man who spoke to patients as if campaigning for office. Everyone in town seemed to admire him.
“Did he recommend a biopsy?”
Walter shook his head.
“Said there was no point putting a man my age through all that. Told me to get my affairs in order.”
My stomach tightened.
“Did you seek a second opinion?”
“Why would I? Alan’s been treating people here thirty years.”
That night I scanned the records and sent them to Dr. Caroline Bishop, an old friend in Boston who specialized in pulmonary disease.
She called four days later.
“Rachel, where did you get these?”
“Why?”
“Because this man doesn’t have terminal lung cancer.”
I sat down.
“You’re sure?”
“I would want a CT and pulmonary-function testing before giving you a complete diagnosis, but this looks like chronic bronchitis and emphysematous change. There is nothing here that justifies telling him he’s dying.”
I stared through the kitchen window.
Walter and Ethan were outside repairing an old birdhouse.
“Could somebody honestly make that mistake?”
Caroline paused.
“With these records? Not somebody competent.”
The next morning, I arranged further testing under the pretense of reviewing Walter’s respiratory treatment.
The results confirmed it.
He had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Serious, yes.
Terminal cancer, absolutely not.
Walter stared at me when I told him.
“You’re saying I’m not dying?”
“Not from cancer.”
He laughed once, then stopped.
Tears appeared suddenly in his eyes.
“But Alan said…”
“I know.”
Walter lowered himself into the kitchen chair.
“I sold you my house because I thought I had months.”
My throat tightened.
“If you want to undo the sale, we will.”
His head snapped up.
“No.”
“Walter—”
“You didn’t cheat me. You gave me exactly what I asked.”
He stared toward the orchard.
“But why would Alan tell me that?”
I didn’t know.
Two nights later, I found out.
I had stayed late at the clinic finishing charts when I heard voices through Monroe’s partly open office door.
A man’s voice I didn’t recognize said, “The Hale property is still the key parcel.”
Monroe answered.
“The old man was supposed to sell to us before that Boston doctor showed up.”
My heart began pounding.
“What about her?”
“She won’t last. Woman like that? Fresh divorce, city career, no roots here. Eventually she’ll sell.”
“And Hale?”
Monroe laughed softly.
“He still thinks every morning is borrowed time.”
I stopped breathing.
The stranger said, “Once we control the river frontage, the resort project works. Without it, Cole Development can’t move forward.”
I backed slowly down the hall.
Outside, cold air struck my face.
Walter had not received a bad diagnosis.
He had been deliberately frightened into believing he would die.
Someone wanted his land.
And the respected doctor everyone trusted was helping them take it.
