Lonergan's Secrets: Expecting Lonergan's Baby / Strictly Lonergan's Business / Satisfying Lonergan's Honour

But despite how it went against the grain to admit it, the truth was there staring at him, so no point in avoiding it. “Yes, it was the only way. The boys haven’t been back since…”

A long pause fell between the two old friends as they both remembered the long-ago tragedy that still haunted the Lonergan boys. Finally Bert Evans broke it with a sigh of resignation. “I know. Fine, fine. In for a penny…”

Jeremiah grinned and tried to remember where he’d stashed his spare bottle of bourbon. It might be early in the morning, but he felt as if a toast was in order. Things were moving right along according to plan.

“Thanks, Bert. I owe you.”

“You surely do, you old goat.”

When he hung up, Jeremiah chuckled, took a long drag of his cigar and blew a perfect smoke ring in quiet celebration.

Coleville hadn’t changed much.

Sam drove down the narrow main street and let his gaze slide across familiar storefronts. Early on a Saturday morning, there were plenty of people filling the sidewalks and almost no parking spaces.

A small town, Coleville was fifty miles from Fresno, the closest “big” city. To keep its citizens happy, the town boasted a supermarket, a theater and even one of the huge national chain drugstores. And sometime over the years, Sam noted, it had also acquired one of the trendy coffee shops that were dotting nearly every corner of every street in the country.

The schools were small, as they’d always been, populated by the children who lived both in town and on the surrounding farms and ranches. And the only doctor worked out of a small clinic at the edge of town. Emergencies were handled here first and then, if needed, the patient was either driven by ambulance or airlifted into Fresno and the hospital.

Sam pulled his grandfather’s Jeep into the clinic parking lot and shut off the engine. The sun blasted down on him out of a brassy sky, and he squinted at the squat building in front of him. Bert Evans, M.D.

was written across the wide window in florid gold script that was peeling at the edges. The whole place needed a good coat of paint, but there were terra-cotta tubs on either side of the double front doors overflowing with bright flowers, and the walkway and porch were swept clean and tidy as a church.

He climbed out of the Jeep, shoved the keys into his pocket and headed for the door. As he walked, memory marched with him.

He saw himself as a kid, running into the clinic and badgering Dr. Evans with hundreds of questions. The doctor had never lost patience with him. Instead he’d answered what he could and provided old medical books so that Sam could discover other things on his own.

It was in this little clinic that Sam had first decided to become a doctor. Even as a kid, he’d known he wanted to be able to fix people. To help. He’d had grand plans back then. He’d wanted to be the kind of doctor that Bert Evans was. A man who knew his patients as well as his own family. A man who was a part of the community.

Well, things changed. Now he did what he could, when he could, and tried not to get involved.

A bell over the door jangled cheerfully when he stepped into the blessed cool of air-conditioning. Three kids and their tired mother sat on the green plastic chairs in the waiting room. The mom gave him a tired smile and an absent nod while two of her kids tried to kill each other.

Behind the reception desk a young woman sat typing on a computer keyboard, and Sam flinched inwardly because he’d half expected to find Dr. Evans’s old nurse still enthroned in this office. But the woman had been at least a hundred when he was a kid.

“Can I help you?” The young woman looked up from her task and gave him a smile that offered a lot more help than he required at the moment.

“I’d like to see Dr. Evans for a minute,” he said. “Tell him Sam Lonergan’s here.”

She stood up and smoothed her hands down her pale cream-colored slacks while somehow managing to showcase her truly spectacular breasts, hidden behind a light blue sweater. “If you’ll have a seat…”

He didn’t, though. When she left the room, he wandered around, looking at all of the framed photos on the wall. What Dr. Evans had always called his “trophies.” Babies he’d delivered, kids he’d treated, adults he’d cared for in life and seen into death. Dozens—hundreds—of faces smiled at him, but Sam only saw one.

That familiar grin slammed a well-aimed punch to Sam’s gut, but he couldn’t seem to look away. The boy in the photo was only sixteen—and would never get any older. Sam’s hands fisted at his sides. The sounds of the squabbling kids behind him faded into nothing and he lost himself staring into the face of the one person he should have saved and hadn’t.

“The doctor will see you now.” A tug on his shirtsleeve got his attention when the soft voice didn’t.

“What?” He stared at the doctor’s assistant, shook off the memories clouding his brain and reminded himself why he was here. “Thanks.”

Without another glance at her he stalked across the room, opened the door into the back and headed down the long hallway to Dr. Evans’s office. Much like the rest of the clinic, the office looked as though it had been caught in a time warp. Not a single thing was different.

The walls were still crowded with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. There was a standing scale in one corner, and on the edge of the wide, cluttered mahogany desk, a glass jar of multicolored lollipops still stood ready for the doc’s younger patients.

“Sam!” The older man leaped to his feet and came around his desk with a smile on his face. Doc Evans took Sam’s hand in both of his own and shook heartily. His blue eyes were still soft and kind, but his hair was almost snow-white now. “Good to see you. Been too long, boy. Way too long.”

“Yeah,” Sam admitted, though it cost him another pang of guilt. “Guess it has.”

“Sit down, sit down.” The doctor waved a hand at the deep leather chairs opposite his desk, then took his own seat, folding his hands atop a manila file folder. “So you’ve been to the house? Seen your grandfather?”

“Yeah. I got in last night.”

“Good, good,” the older man crowed. “Then I expect you’ve met Maggie.”

“Yes, I—”

“Fine girl, that one. Why, she’s been the best medicine Jeremiah could ever ask for. Just keeps the old coot smiling all the time now.” He steepled his fingertips. “Yes, she’s a fine girl.”

“She seems… nice,” Sam said because he had to say something and he couldn’t very well tell the older man that she looked great naked. Besides, he hadn’t come here to talk about Maggie. In fact, Sam was doing all he could to not even think about her. So he quickly shifted the conversation back to where he wanted it. “But about my grandfather—what exactly is Pop’s condition?”

Dr. Evans grumbled something unintelligible, then leaned back in his chair, stroking his chin as if he still had the beard he’d shaved off twenty years ago. “Well, now, that’s, uh… You say you talked to Jeremiah?”

“Yeeesss…” Suspicion curled in Sam’s mind and he narrowed his gaze on his grandfather’s oldest friend. “He said that you were taking good care of him and that I shouldn’t bother.”

“Well, then,” Dr. Evans said, trying another smile.

“Sounds like good advice to me, Sam. No point in you worrying yourself. Yessiree, it’s good to see you, son.”

“Uh-huh.” Sam leaned in even closer to the older man, keeping their gazes locked. Didn’t surprise him in the slightest when Doc Evans broke contact first, glancing first at the ceiling, then at his desk and finally settling for staring blankly out the window. “What is it you’re not telling me, Doc?”

“Now, Sam,” the older man whined, “you know all about doctor-patient confidentiality.…”

Sam’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “I’m not asking you to break a confidence,” he said. “But as one doctor to another, you could throw me a bone here. Have you done an EKG? What’re his cholesterol levels? Blood pressure? Has he had a stress test lately?”

Dr. Evans smiled and stood up, coming around the edge of his desk to pat Sam on the back as if he were a schoolboy acing his latest test. “All good questions, son. Glad to see you’ve become the kind of doctor I always knew you would be.”

“Thanks,” Sam said and let himself be nudged out of his chair and toward the door. “But you haven’t really answered any of those questions and—”

“Don’t you worry about a thing, Sam. Your grandpa’s in good hands.”

“I know that,” he assured the older man. “I only wanted to—”

“Best thing for you to do,” Doc Evans said, opening the office door and ushering Sam out, “is to visit with Jeremiah. He’s missed all of you.”

Guilt reared up again and this time took a huge bite out of Sam. “I know. We never meant to—”

“Hell, boy,” the doctor said, patting Sam’s shoulder, “I know that. So does Jeremiah. But years go by and a man misses seeing his family.”

“But his heart…?”