she was also afraid she would run into Chris.
Now she had, and it wasn’t as hard as she’d thought it would be. Same old Chris, eager to pitch in, as long as you didn’t try to tie him down. Never with one woman too long, judging from what she’d gleaned from social media. Chris’s own page hadn’t been updated since she’d set it up for him back when they were dating, but he was always being tagged in pictures, usually by some blonde bragging about the “real Alaska man” who made her vacation the “best ever.” Not that Marissa was stalking him or anything. In fact, Chris barely even crossed her mind anymore. She just happened to stumble across the photos now and then when looking up other old friends from Alaska. At least that was her story, should anyone ask.
Across the pasture, Oliver’s old truck bounced up the lane. Good, they were back from the doctor’s appointment. Marissa had been home for a little over a week, but Oliver and Becky had been very closemouthed about his health status. Hopefully, the doctor had suggested a different prescription or treatment—something to help Oliver’s heart and build up his strength—because the current medicine didn’t seem to be working.
The truck circled behind the old farmhouse, which could definitely use a coat of paint. Even from where she stood, Marissa could detect spots where the white paint had flaked off, exposing the weathered wood siding. It was one of those sprawling houses built in stages. Wood-frame additions had grown up and out from the original two-room log cabin as the homesteaders added rooms to accommodate their eight children.
Even though Oliver and Becky had closed off a whole wing and added insulation, Marissa suspected the fuel bill to run the main boiler must be enormous.
After checking to make sure the heater was keeping the water trough clear for the reindeer, Marissa made her way home.
She stepped over the broken front step and onto the porch, noticing as she opened the front door that one of the small panes in it had a crack in the corner, temporarily mended with duct tape.
In the living room, Oliver lay back in his recliner, his face paler than ever. But he greeted her with a smile. “There’s my girl. How’s the herd?”
“Just fine. Snowflake was begging for treats.” Marissa could hear Becky banging around in the kitchen. She shed her coat and sat on the sofa. Tiger, the yellow house cat, jumped onto her lap and purred.
“Snowflake has a long memory.” Oliver paused to breathe. Just walking from the garage to the living room had left him winded. “Remember how she used to try to follow you into the house?”
“I remember.” Snowflake’s mother had sustained an injury a week after the calf was born, and Marissa took over bottle-feeding her. Before long, Snowflake was following her all over the farm, and couldn’t seem to understand why she wasn’t allowed to come into the house when Marissa ducked in to grab a snack. She would stand on the porch, grunting and snorting, until Marissa returned for her.
“I thought I heard you in here.” Becky bustled in, carrying a tray with three steaming mugs, which she set on the coffee table. “I made orange spiced tea.”
“Thank you.” Oliver accepted his cup and set it with shaking hands on the table beside his chair. His breathing slowly returned to normal.
“So what did the doctor have to say?” Marissa asked.
“Nothing much. It’s all about the same.” Oliver was trying for nonchalant, but his smile looked forced.
Becky’s mouth tightened. “That’s not what he said.” She turned to Marissa. “His heart is getting weaker. The doctor says a transplant is really our only hope. He’s on the list, but—”
“Transplant?” Marissa stared at her.
Becky shot an accusing glance at her husband. “You said you told her.”
“I did.”
Marissa shook her head. “When you called, you said you were having some trouble with your heart, and the doctor gave you medication. This is the first I’m hearing about a transplant.”
“I didn’t want you to worry.”
“How long have you known about this?”
Oliver wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Four months or so.”
Marissa sat in a chair across from his and leaned forward. “You should have told me. I would have come home a long time ago.”
“That’s why I didn’t tell you. There’s nothing you can do. I’m not that sick. I’m what they call status two, which means I can stay at home and don’t need any special IV meds while I wait.”
“So how long will it be before the transplant?”
“Nobody knows.” Becky plopped into the chair beside Oliver’s and took a sip of tea. “The sicker patients get first priority, of course. They’re the ones in hospitals, hanging on and waiting for a match.” She left unspoken that if he didn’t get a transplant soon, Oliver would be one of those people in the hospital, hanging on.
Marissa caught Oliver’s gaze. “So, if I hadn’t lost my job and come home, were you not going to tell me at all?”
He patted her arm, the way he used to when she was a little girl with a skinned knee. “Of course I was. But I was hoping to sandwich it in with the news that I was getting a transplant.”
“Oh, Oliver.” Marissa blinked back tears. “You and Becky have always been there for me. When my parents died, you were there. When Jason took off and everything fell apart at the River Foundation, I didn’t know who to trust, but I knew I could count on you and Becky to take me in and love me. Don’t you know I want to be there for you, too? We’re family. We share the bad times as well as the good.”
He gave her a gentle smile. “You’re right. I should have told you, but you’ve had so much on your plate. I didn’t want to be a burden.”
“You could never, ever be a burden. Not to me.” She kissed his cheek. She’d been nine years old when her parents died. Oliver and Becky had been her family ever since, and she couldn’t have asked for a better one. From the very first night when they tucked her under the quilt in the cozy bedroom beneath the eaves and kissed her forehead good-night, she’d felt cherished. She still did. “How can I help?”
Becky reached over to rub her shoulder. “It’s out of our hands. All we can do is hope and pray.”
Oliver gave her a wry smile. “I can’t in good conscience ask you to pray for someone with a healthy heart to give up his life for mine. But if you really want to help, you could go get me some of those oatmeal cookies Becky made this morning.” At his wife’s pointed look he amended, “One cookie.”
“All right. I’ll be right back.” Marissa gave him a brave smile and went to the kitchen. When she opened the snowflake-printed tin, the scent of cinnamon wafted through the air. It smelled like home. Her vision blurred as tears welled up in her eyes. She couldn’t lose Oliver. She just couldn’t.
Becky and Oliver were her rocks. After the fiasco with Jason and all the nasty accusations launched in her direction, it made all the difference to know there were two people in the world she could count on to believe in her no matter what. People who knew she would never embezzle money, never lie to donors and never be involved with a man who did. At least not knowingly.
Jason. Who would have thought he was capable of something like this? His philanthropic efforts had established the research center she’d worked for in Louisiana, or rather had worked for until they were forced to shut down. They were studying the recovery of a riparian ecosystem once devastated by a chemical spill, but steadily recovering. She and the other two scientists at the River Foundation were documenting the recovery, observing how the various building blocks of the ecosystem linked together. The information they’d gathered would help others trying to reestablish similar ecosystems.
But it turned out Jason was using the River Foundation as a front, part of the elaborate Ponzi