Page 80 of Summer with the Single Dad

That made Keturah snort. “All right. Then tell me why you froze when Barnacle was choking.”

“That is the kid’s name?”

Keturah waved her hand. “Terrible name. We all know. His parents are both idiots. Common sense was chasing them, but they were faster when it came to naming their child. But why’d you freeze when he started choking on the popcorn?”

Justine was quiet for a while.

“Turn right here,” Keturah said, pointing her crooked right index finger with the big, turquoise stone ring.

Justine did as she was told.

“Hmmm?” Keturah probed.

“I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do.”

“No. I don’t. I know what I was supposed to do. Now. But in the moment, all I heard was this voice in the back of my head telling me that the last patient I touched died. That I wasn’t fit to be a doctor and shouldn’t touch people, because my touch—my doctor’s touch—causes more harm than good.”

Fresh tears burned the back of her eyes, so she bit down hard on the inside of her cheeks to allow that pain to mask the pain in her chest. Her throat grew tight again.

“I can’t trust my own instincts anymore.”

Now it was Keturah’s turn to be quiet. She merely pointed which direction she wanted Justine to turn.

The silence pounded between them.

“So you lost a patient and now you think your touch is fatal?” Keturah finally asked.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know if you lost a patient?”

“No. I did. I let my personal life and my emotions infiltrate the job, and I screwed up and a man—a man I really liked—died on my table.”

“How’d you screw up?”

Justine shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“I was a coroner for twenty years, dear. It does matter.”

Justine’s mouth dropped open again, and she pivoted to face Keturah, but that caused the SUV to swerve and Keturah’s eyes widened.

“Uh, eyes on the road, please.”

“Shoot. Sorry.”

“How did you mess up?” Keturah pointed to a long gravel driveway lined by thick evergreen trees. “Here.”

Justine slid her gaze to Keturah for a moment. “This doesn’t leave this vehicle.”

Keturah had the decency to cross her boney finger over her heart. “Of course.”

“I was in the bathroom before surgery and I was in the stall. Two nurses walked in and started talking. I don’t know why I stayed in the stall to eavesdrop, but I did. A part of me wishes I hadn’t. But I did. They started talking about how one of them was pregnant and the other said she was going to start showing soon so people would wonder who the father was. The pregnant one said it was complicated because the father was engaged to another doctor here. That he was a doctor, and he’d been promising her that he would call off the engagement and end the thing with his fiancée for weeks, but he hadn’t.”

“I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that you were the fiancée?”

Justine pressed her lips together.

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