Lakeside Reunion Read Online Free

great to see you, too.” She pulled away from Grandma and edged toward the bed. “How’s Mom doing?”
    â€œWhy don’t you come over here and find out for yourself?” Mom’s sleepy voice drifted toward her. She turned, giving Lindsey full view of the reddish-purple bruises and abrasions streaking the side of her face.
    Lindsey bit back a gasp as she sat on the side of the bed.
    Don’t cry. Please don’t cry.
    She caressed her mother’s swollen cheekbone. “Stairs one? Mom zero?”
    â€œSomething like that. I told them not to call you. It’s only a broken leg.”
    â€œActually, it’s a little more serious than that.” A petite, dark-haired woman dressed in a white lab coat over green scrubs with a folder tucked under her arm knocked on the partially opened door before entering the room. She crossed the room and shook hands with Granddad, Grandma and Lindsey. “Rachel Warren, attending physician.”
    Lindsey shook the doctor’s hand. “Just how serious?”
    Dr. Warren leafed through the pages in the folder and turned to Mom. “Mrs. Porter, your blood work looks good, but I wish I could say the same about your X-rays. You have a compound tib-fib fracture near your ankle joint. I’ve called in Dr. Geis, our orthopedic surgeon. She had a cancellation and will be able to do surgery right before lunch.”
    â€œTib-fib?” Mom tried to sit up, but sucked air between clenched teeth.
    Dr. Warren laid a hand on her arm. “Please lie back and try not to jostle your leg. Tib-fib refers to the tibia and fibula—the bones between the knee and ankle.” Pulling back the blanket and using a pen as a pointer, she ran it along the front of Mom’s left calf. “Your fracture occurred in the lower portion of your leg, close to the ankle. With this serious of a fracture, surgery is necessary to be sure the bones heal properly.”
    Granddad and Grandma asked more questions, but Lindsey’s thoughts swirled like a shaken snow globe. Surgery? People died on the operating table.
    Lindsey wandered to the window. She stared at the ugly blue parking garage that grew out of the asphalt and towered above the two-story hospital. Cars the size of ladybugs crawled into parking spaces. She pulled her BlackBerry out of her purse and scrolled through the list of events for the rest of the month. One by one she deleted them from her calendar.
    â€œLindsey, is everything okay?” Grandma placed her hand on Lindsey’s arm.
    She forced a smile. “Of course.”
    A few minutes later, Dr. Warren left and a nurse came in to prep Mom for the move to the surgical wing. Lindsey returned to the waiting room with her grandparents.
    Molly and Nana were gone. Maybe they were eating in the cafeteria. But Lindsey couldn’t think about them right now.
    Granddad struck up a conversation with a man next to the coffee machine. Grandma sat and resumed knitting.
    Lindsey paced, clenching her hands as a million thoughts ran through her head. Leaving Shelby Lake was definitely out of the question now. She couldn’t abandon Mom right before surgery. She needed to call her assistant Rita and give her a heads-up.
    And, oh, yes, the quilt.
    That meant heading out to Mom’s house—the house where Lindsey spent her first twenty-two years. The house so full of memories that she hadn’t returned in five years.
    Grandma reached for Lindsey’s hands and pulled her downto sit in the empty seat beside her. She rubbed a thumb over Lindsey’s knuckles, forcing her fingers to unclench. She stared at Lindsey with her faded aquamarine-colored eyes as if reading the thoughts racing through her head. “Everything is going to be fine, honey. You can spend the night at the farm, if you want. Or I’ll come to your mother’s house with you.”
    Part of her wanted to pounce on Grandma’s offer, to curl up next to her in the