Read Online The House on Sugar Plum Lane by JUDY DUARTE - Free Book Online

Davila walked along the tree-shaded sidewalk to Pacifica General Hospital with slow, deliberate steps. She’d hoped that the trips to visit her son would get easier, but they hadn’t. Each day was still a struggle, and she suspected they would be until his discharge.
    For almost two weeks now, Joey had been in the cardiac unit, and each time she pushed through the revolving doors into the lobby, she was swept back to a time in her life she’d tried to forget.
    But maybe today would be different. There was talk of a heart bypass once his blood sugar level was acceptable, and she hoped that one day soon they’d announce he’d been stabilized, surgery had been scheduled, and he was finally on the road to recovery.
    She was eager to get him home, where she could oversee his care and help him get back on his feet again.
    She hadn’t told him or his wife yet, although she was sure they’d be delighted, but she’d decided it would be best if he recovered at her house in Rancho Santa Fe. It was so much more spacious and comfortable than the small condo in Fairbrook where he and his wife lived. Barbara could also afford round-the-clock help and would spare no expense at making him comfortable. She just needed to get him home.
    Who would have believed that something like this could have happened?
    At forty-eight, Joseph Davila Jr. had appeared to be the picture of health, with a ready smile, a booming laugh, and a robust complexion. He ran every day—and worked out, too—but on the inside, where no one could see, he was a mess. And to make matters worse, his pancreas had been acting up and his heart had been a ticking bomb.
    She entered the lobby, walked past the pink-frocked volunteers, made her way to the elevator, and rode it up to the third floor. While awaiting the doors to open, she wondered if she should have chosen to use the stairway for the exercise. After all, she had no idea what shape her own heart was in. But she’d worry about that later. She’d never liked hospitals and had managed to avoid them ever since her husband’s recuperation at the military hospital in Honolulu, so she was in a hurry to get in and out.
    Had it been anyone else, she’d have sent an expensive floral arrangement and come up with some plausible reason why she couldn’t stop by for a visit. But this was Joseph Jr., her only son.
    Her only child. She wouldn’t—she couldn’t —be anywhere other than here. So she pressed on and continued the forward momentum.
    Whenever she found herself stressed, she’d learned to inhale deeply and blow it out, but she couldn’t do that here. The medicinal smell was enough to send her running and gagging.
    Besides the odor, everything about the hospital—the irritating squeak of rubber-soled shoes upon the polished linoleum, the hollow clunk of a plastic lunch tray on a cart, the blips and beeps of the machines keeping people alive—seemed to send her back in time to the mid-sixties. But she’d fought the mental spiral by forcing her thoughts on the present.
    When she reached the nurses’ desk, she waited for the woman on duty to glance up. When she did, Barbara said, “Good morning, Simone. How’s Joey doing today?”
    The dark-haired Florence Nightingale managed a smile. “About the same. His minister is with him now.”
    Barbara nodded, then proceeded to her son’s private room. She’d never understood how Joey had come to be so religious, since he hadn’t been raised in the church. Her mother had carted her off to Sunday school for as long as she could remember, and she’d refused to do that to her son.
    So needless to say, Joey’s faith had surprised her.
    She could understand why it would flare up now, when his health and recovery were questionable, when he was facing his own mortality. But he’d held those same beliefs for years.
    It probably had something to do with his