Page 42 of Clara Knows Best

He was eating with the enthusiasm and focus of a very hungry man.

She, on the other hand, could not seem to work up any interest in her dinner. “You’re acting like I’m a hypnotist or something.”

“Maybe not,” he said around a mouthful. He shrugged philosophically. “But youarekind of witchy. Like your mom.”

Her mouth fell open—a slur against her mother! “Witchy?”

“Just glad I don’t live around here,” he reflected. “I’d constantly be doing stuff I don’t want to do.”

“Wow,” she managed, speechless in the face of this new development.Witchy.

“Great lasagna,” he added.

Clara looked at her mother to see that the doctor was intent on her own dinner and looking totally innocent.

The Colonel met Clara’s eyes benignly, apparently feeling no need to rise to anyone’s defense. Which meant, she thought, that heagreed.

11

He should have gone upstairs immediately after dinner.

Jesse wasn’t sure why he hung around when Col. Wilder built up the fire and the women moved to the couch to get comfortable. That was his cue to excuse himself, but he found himself taking an armchair.

It was easy to remember how it had felt living in the big old house. So many years had passed, but the place had once beenhome. They had felt like real family.

He didn’t want to think about that, so he turned to Clara, who was looking elegantly casual in some kind of matching leisure suit. “Who you texting?”

“Birdie,” she answered absently.

He recalled her cousin Elisabeth from the old days: blonde, soft-spoken, slightly older than Clara but happy to follow her lead. A yes man, probably. “Is she trying to tell you that witchy means enchanting? Don’t believe her.”

“We’re not talking aboutyou,” Clara said defensively, looking up from her phone.

“Oh.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Whatdoesit mean? Evil?”

“Well—” He let the word trail off.

“Let’s play Racko,” Dr. Wilder interrupted.

He’d forgotten about Racko. They’d played the card game dozens or hundreds of times after family dinners, sometimes with so many people that they had to combine two or three decks of cards.

And then? Then he’d graduated from med school and never heard from any of them again, and now he knew it was because Dr. Wilder had told her kids thathewanted it that way. He couldn’t think of any legitimate reason for her to do that, and it was getting harder to pretend she hadn’t done it.

“I’m going to bed,” he announced abruptly, and got to his feet. “Thanks for dinner.”

“Good night,” his foster parents said in unison.

“Don’t forget to wash your face,” Clara said earnestly. “And use the moisturizer I gave you.”

Talk about wacky priorities. He yanked lightly on her hair when he walked past her—sign language forno hard feelings.

“Ow,” she growled, and he smiled faintly to himself as he started up the dark stairs.

Why had he told her that she should move back to Austin? Good thing she hadn’t taken him seriously.

As he entered Romeo Family Health on Thursday, Jesse was aware that he had developed an unprofessional new habit of looking forward to seeing what his office manager would be wearing. Yoli encouraged it, of course, by exclaiming over Clara’soutfit every morning like it was a new episode of her favorite show, but Jesse should have been impervious.

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