Page 27 of Clara Knows Best

“Come in.”

It was Clara. “Had some extras,” she said, setting a small vase of pink tulips on the desk. “I’m going to call you Dr. Flores at work. Sounds more professional in front of the patients.”

“Okay.”

“I just didn’t want you to think it was weird.”

“I’m pretty used to it,” he answered gravely.

She looked at him as though he’d made the worst dad joke, and then added, “Oh, and you’re Dr. Jesse in pediatrics.”

He blew out a long breath. “Okay.”

8

Jesse was ready to head out as soon as he’d seen the last patient, but he lingered in the kitchen until Clara and Yoli got the patient checked out and went through their closing routine.

“I’m stopping by the hospital,” he told Clara, waiting with his hands in his pockets while she set the alarm system. “Might be there a few hours.”

It was already dark outside. “Okay. See you later,” she said, locking the door now.

“Drive safely,” he replied, addressing both women.

Yoli peeled out of the lot as soon as she hopped into her SUV, but Clara liked to let the old Mercedes warm up for a while. Jesse, too, sat in his running vehicle, the light from his phone screen visible in the night, for nearly ten minutes, and then when Clara backed out of her space, he followed her out of the lot. They went separate ways on Main Street, and Clara got a warm, fuzzy feeling from the knowledge that he’d been looking out for her. Any male in her family would have done the same,of course, because they’d all been meticulously trained by her safety-conscious father. But it was nice.

She spent the drive to her parents’ house thinking about him. As a teen, he’d been quiet and studious, and though he’d started out distrustful, he’d warmed to the family eventually. In his twenties he was gone a lot, and when she saw him on special occasions or brief holiday visits, he was distracted and tired. She’d obviously missed a lot of the last decade of his life, but she was getting to know him now.

She caught glimpses of the kind of doctor he was by watching him in his work, but she was picking up clues about the man, too. And the man was lonely. Something about the guarded way he interacted with her and Yoli made her think that he wasn’t used to talking to people around his own age. Did he not have friends in Austin? What had he been doing on Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, for the last several years? Who did he turn to when he needed support?

Bottom line: he needed his family, and that meant the Wilders.

It was a logistical issue, as far as Clara was concerned, and that meant there was a solution.

She didn’t have an opportunity to mull it over while she helped her father cook dinner, because they were also entertaining her housebound mother, who sat at the bar and supervised the cooking.

“Claudia visited me today,” Dr. Wilder remarked. “She’s very worried about losing the land.”

Claudia Del Amo was one of her mother’s best friends, a high school math teacher who had taught all the Wilder children. She was a widow, and kept house for her widowered brother-in-law, Memo, who was a farmer.

“I thought Joe sends her money.”

“He does sometimes, but she hasn’t heard from him in months. She asked me to pray that they’d find a buyer for their cabin. And that Joe’s not dead.”

Clara had no use for Claudia’s only son. “They’re selling the family cabin? That’s so sad. Didn’t Memo’s grandfather build it or something?”

“His father built it as a hunting and fishing retreat. Memo, Tito, and the three other brothers inherited it together, but they’re all old now, and Tito’s dead. They don’t use it, and Claudia said the grandkids don’t even go up there anymore. If they can sell it, Memo’s and Tito’s shares will keep them afloat until next fall.”

“Will Claudia get Tito’s share? Or will Joe get it?” Clara asked.

“I don’t know the details of her father-in-law’s trust,” Dr. Wilder admitted. “Claudia seems to think she’ll have it.”

“She deserves it,” Clara said, and her parents both nodded automatically. It was well known that Tito Del Amo had not been a nice man. Luckily for his family, he had died fairly young.

It really was a shame about the family cabin. It was an outdated but solid building in a very picturesque location only an hour outside of town, and three or four generations of Del Amos had been vacationing there for fifty years. The Wilder family didn’t have anything like that, but Clara could imagine how special the place was to the Del Amos and how having to sell it must hurt.

On the other hand, their loss was another family’s gain, and all at once Clara hatched the notion of Jesse snatching it off the market and using it as a personal retreat from his stressful life in Austin. The older Del Amos would be relieved to sell it, the Wilders would be ecstatic to see Jesse more often, and most importantly of all, Jesse would reestablish ties to his hometown and family.

“How much are they listing the cabin for?”

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