winced. Aunt Elva and Uncle Paul were her favorite relatives. “Hello?” Unfortunately, she was speaking to a hospital social worker. Her aunt and uncle had been driving along minding their own business when a truck plowed into their sedate sedan. Aunt Elva had bruised ribs and a broken arm, needing pins put in to stabilize the fracture. Uncle Paul had a broken leg but wouldn’t require surgery as long as he kept off his feet. “No head injuries or broken hips, pelvises, nothing like that?”
The social worker assured her that wasn’t the case and Julia quickly explained to her mom and dad. Broken hips and pelvises were almost a death sentence for the elderly, few recovering well from that injury.
Julia made a few notes on the paper that her mother shoved at her. They were in a hospital in the Boston suburbs, one with a good reputation for patching people up. She told the social worker someone would be there in a couple days when they were released and got the direct number for their hospital rooms to call later. She hung up. “So when are we going?”
Dad looked up from the laptop, peering over his half-moon reading glasses. “We can get a flight out tomorrow morning and be in Boston in under five hours.” Thanks to the large Azorean community in Boston, direct flights were pretty frequent, by Azorean standards.
Her mother twisted her hands together. “But what will we do about Julia?”
“What do you mean? You don’t need to do anything about me. I’m coming with you. Aunt Elva and Uncle Paul won’t stay in the hospital for very long. When they go home, they’ll need nursing care, and I am a nurse. A nurse practitioner, even.”
Her dad shook his head. “They need somebody who can help them up and down to the bathroom, move them around in bed. Basic nursing assistant skills. Brute strength that you don’t have. You fall over if you stand up too fast.”
“Dad!” He had all the tact of a bull from one of the local ranches.
As usual, her mother stepped in to smooth Dad’s bluntness. “I know you would do anything to help, but Julia, honey, you’re not strong enough right now.”
Great. Her parents thought she was as much an invalid as her poor aunt and uncle. At least she could make it to the bathroom on her own.
“We want you to come back with us,” her mother continued. “You can sleep on the pullout couch at their apartment.”
Julia winced. Aunt Elva and Uncle Paul had a modest two-bedroom apartment, big enough for them, but a tight squeeze for five adults plus whatever nursing staff they needed.
Her dad raised his eyebrows. “Come on, Evelyn, you know we’re going to be packed in like sardines, anyway. And what is Julia going to do all day with us old folks? Watch game shows and soap operas?”
No need to watch soap operas, her life had been one for quite a while.
“We can get you set up at your condo, and then you can come spend the day with us!” her mother exclaimed with a sudden bright idea.
Julia caught Dad’s sympathetic gaze. He knew she would be climbing the walls within a few days. At least it was spring in Boston, although mid-April was a toss-up with the real possibility of snow. “No,” she said impulsively, “I’ll stay here.”
“What? No, you can’t,” Mother protested. “By yourself?”
It sounded better the longer she thought about it. Go back to gray, cloudy Boston, bundle up in her down parka and stagger around in the slush or stay here in the sunny green Azores and eat fresh oranges from the trees? “I’m doing much better.” Julia ticked off the points on her fingers. “I haven’t had a bad headache in the past week, I’m not dizzy very often, and Senhor de Sousa can help with anything I may need. He would do that anyway.”
“Oh…” Mother fretted. “I would worry so, with you so far away.”
Dad unexpectedly came to her rescue. “Evelyn, we’d be only four hours away by plane. The girl is getting stronger and we can’t be hovering over her like a helicopter. She’d be more likely to have a nervous breakdown than a relapse with us.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
He pointed a thick finger at her. “But we expect you to have some common sense. Carry your cell phone with you and stay away from cliffs and those rodeos they call bullfights around here.”
“And call Dr. da Silva if you start feeling funny.” Her mother rummaged in the papers on the table. “Here’s his number. But I don’t know…”
“I’ll be fine,” she assured her mother. “I’m just not…ready to go back to Boston yet.”
“Understood,” Dad said. “But just say the word and I’ll hop a flight back to São Miguel to collect you.”
“Thanks.” She smiled at him. Master Sergeant Robert Cooper, United States Air Force (ret.), was an expert at hopping flights and collecting people.
The rest of the evening was spent helping her parents pack, mostly her mother since Dad could pack anything into a small duffel bag and proclaim himself well supplied.
When Julia brushed her teeth that night, the memory of that dark-haired man in the plaza popped to mind. Was she staying behind just in case he was Frank? And what on earth would she do if it was her former lover? Her first lover, she mentally corrected herself. The first man she’d loved.
FRANCISCO DUARTE DAS Aguas Santas stared at a wall of paint chips until spots formed in front of his eyes. Yes, he knew the villa needed a fresh coat of paint, but why was he the one picking out colors? He glanced at Benedito, whose dark brown eyes were rheumy with age. Ah, that was why he was the one picking out colors. He supposed his mother or one of his sisters could have done it, but he had offered to get the villa ready for Stefania’s honeymoon and this was little enough he could do for her.
“What do you think, Benedito? What color for the kitchen walls? Does that yellow have too much green in it?”
The old man looked at him as if he had grown two heads, or more likely, lost both testicles. “Don Franco, this is a job for women. Women choose paint, men paint it on the walls. We are not supposed to know these kinds of things. And why do you think yellow has green in it? Yellow is yellow, green is green.”
Frank grunted. “We don’t have any women handy.”
“And whose fault is that? I am not a young, handsome duke who owns a huge ranch in Portugal and a private island here in the Azores. No, I am a poor, ugly old man whose devoted wife is far away.”
“And she’s probably glad to have you several thousand miles away, you old reprobate.”
“She is grateful for the rest. I am an insatiable man,” Benedito leered.
Frank rolled his eyes but didn’t doubt the bandy-legged old coot. After lifetimes of hard manual labor and plenty of olive oil and red wine, elderly Portuguese men were as hearty as men half their age.
“You should be so insatiable,” Benedito scolded him. An elderly lady picking out pink chips the color of a stomach remedy gave them an interested look.
Frank ducked around to the next aisle, filled with bolts and screws. Benedito followed him. “Enough about my personal life. Besides, I am thinking of asking Paulinha to start accompanying me to social functions.”
Benedito made a phlegmy sound of dismay. “Don Franco, you know that is as good as becoming engaged to her. She has been chasing you since she was old enough to walk.”
Frank shrugged. Paulinha was his sister’s best friend and had been unofficially matched with him, like the princes of Portugal who became engaged to French princesses at the age of six. A dynastic merger, rather than a matter of love. “I am thirty. It is past time for me to settle down.” He’d had enough of the hardware section and turned into the garden aisle. Everything grew well in the fertile, volcanic soil here, so all they had to do was weed and trim the grounds.