Read Online Close Call by John McEvoy - Free Book Online

before continuing. “Track business started to pick up. Things were looking great. Then Bob started showing signs of illness. He stopped playing pick up basketball games at our health club. He cut back on his golf, then stopped completely. I could see all these changes, how, suddenly, he’d fall into these morose periods. I’d ask him what was going on and, for the first time since I’d known him, he said ‘I don’t want to talk about it right now.’ Finally, one morning when we were having breakfast, he said, ‘Celia, there’s something seriously wrong with my body. I’ve got to find out what it is.’
    “I could hardly believe my ears. This big, strong, vibrant guy who had never been sick a minute in all the years I’d known him, all of a sudden hit by one of the cruelest diseases there is. We got second and third opinions, but there was no getting around the fact that the initial diagnosis was correct. Bob has Lou Gehrig’s disease.
    “That was a little more than two years ago. Our lives have never been the same since. They never will be.”
    There was a long silence. Doyle hated it. He said, “Celia, I can’t imagine how hard this all must be. Dealing with your husband’s illness on top of running this racetrack.”
    “Nobody ever said it was going to be easy, Jack Doyle,” she said. “Not my parents before they were taken from me. Not the nuns. Not Uncle Jim. Not anybody I knew.”
    She took a sip of her coffee. “Actually, my job here has been a blessing in a way. I set my own hours, so I can spend as much time with Bob as need be. At the same time, it serves to distract me from concentrating full time on his horribly progressive decline. A double-edged blessing I guess you’d call it.” She gave a short, bitter laugh.
    “Irony,” she said, “it seems my life is thick with it.”
    “How so?”
    Celia said, “Another woman track executive I know—there aren’t many of us—once compared the sexes when it comes to positions of power. I’ll never forget what she said. ‘If a man in the position does his job correctly and efficiently, he’s considered a strong administrator. Women handling the same assignment exactly the same way are considered bitches.’ Unfortunately, I’ve found her to be correct when it comes to a lot of people I’ve had dealings with in this business.”
    For a moment she looked so dejected that Doyle almost reached across the table to take her hand. But then she shook her head, as if shrugging off a punch. “Enough of my war stories.”
    “All right,” Doyle said. “But I’d like to ask you something. How have you kept on fighting to keep the track going, following your uncle’s wish, with all you have to deal with concerning your husband?”
    “Oh, it’s not just a selfless act of obligation to Uncle Jim’s memory. Bob and I need the money from this place. Bob will never work again. A teacher’s salary wouldn’t begin to cover our expenses, not with his medical bills. His health insurance is not adequate. It’s like the physician who keels over, never having had a physical. Bob was in the insurance business, but was badly underinsured himself for health problems. Another sad irony.
    “But,” she added confidently, “this track will eventually make a lot of money. It’ll be very, very profitable once the video slots bill passes. That’s what we’re counting on.”
    “Aren’t you tempted just to sell the place?” Doyle said. “You’d come out well financially, there’s no doubt about that.”
    “Sure, I’m tempted,” she said, her green eyes flashing. “And my cousin Niall, the minority shareholder, would love to have me do it. But I look at that as a giving in, a surrender. Maybe I am, as some people have said, too stubborn. But selling this property for real estate development would go against Uncle Jim’s wishes. It would disrespect his memory. And it would be an admission of defeat. I’d be seen in some quarters as being incapable of