A Wedding on Lilac Lane by Hope Ramsay (best book clubs .txt) 📕

old flame, or where the Methodists were warring with the Episcopalians, or where little Jackie Scott pulled another prank. Although the child insisted that he’d spilled his drink into the fountain by accident.

As engagement parties went, this one was a disaster from top to bottom, with the only exception that the fountain chose to delay its malfunction so that she and Ella could make it through the five-minute duo without a single wrong note. For those five minutes, Brenda had been utterly happy.

“I think it went pretty well, all things considered,” Jim said as the last guests stepped up onto the pier and headed off toward the parking lot. “It was certainly a lovely evening, wasn’t it?”

She clamped down on her thoughts, her heart rocking like crazy in her chest. Jim always saw the bright side of things. He was a dewy-eyed optimist who could find the silver lining in every cloud. She loved him for it.

And thank the Lord Jim hadn’t tied himself to that Tammy woman. She’d been all over the boat gossiping with the Methodists about Jim’s decision to abandon Grace Church. To hear them talk, Brenda was evil incarnate for insisting on that.

When she’d done no such thing.

How had Jim managed to tune out all that nasty party gossip? When every word of it flayed Brenda until her emotions were raw.

Jim was such a good soul. She didn’t deserve him. And that worried her most of all. Everyone thought he was marrying beneath him. And maybe he was.

Now that the party was over, her heart should have been calming down, but instead, it was galloping away with her, leaving her winded and worried.

She needed a moment to regroup. To calm down. “I need to go down and get my purse from the—”

Dizziness hit her, and she stumbled sideways, her knees buckling. Then everything went black.

*  *  *

Dylan floored the Honda and sped over the bridge. The ambulance had a good head start on them because they’d taken Ella’s grandmother home first to await word on Brenda’s condition. She hadn’t gone willingly, but her quilting group friends had met them at the condo and were organizing a prayer session.

A long night in the ER seemed likely, after which Brenda would probably be admitted to the hospital. So prayer seemed like the order of the day.

Ella sat in the passenger’s seat, tears falling down her cheeks. “This is my fault,” she kept saying. But of course she wasn’t to blame. It was his fault for the way he’d been behaving for weeks.

“It’s going to be okay.” He used his bedside voice. “It’s going to be fine.”

“She’s my mother, for goodness’ sake. What if I lose her?”

Dylan shut up. He’d lost a mother. He understood her panic. It would be ten times worse to lose a mother suddenly, on the day of an engagement party, than to lose one after a long illness during which you had plenty of time to say goodbye.

Oh hell, it sucked to lose a parent any way.

He gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. Death was the ultimate enemy.

But Brenda wasn’t going to die. She’d lost consciousness, yes. And chances were, she’d had a cardiac episode of some kind. But she’d regained consciousness, and Dad had administered aspirin, and she hadn’t gone into cardiac arrest. So chances were good she’d live to see another day. But that didn’t change the suckiness of this situation.

He pulled into the hospital’s physician’s lot, which was much closer than the visitors’ lot. Ella bailed out of the car before he’d even set the brake. He grabbed his hospital ID from the glove box and chased after her. She’d taken a wrong turn across the parking lot, and he had to catch her and point her in the direction of the emergency room entrance. Like all hospitals originally built in the 1950s, this one had been added on to wherever space could be found. The result was a hodgepodge of buildings and entrances.

Brenda had already been taken into the ER, but Ella had to stop and speak to the gatekeeper at the intake desk before being allowed to go sit with her. And, as usual, the woman behind the desk wanted all of Brenda’s insurance information before Ella could go inside. Evidently, Dad hadn’t supplied it, even though he’d come in with the EMTs, no doubt because he’d flashed his hospital ID.

“I have no idea what her health insurance information is,” Ella said in a rising voice.

“No need to yell,” the woman at the desk said in a condescending voice that ticked Dylan off.

He whipped out his hospital ID card and flashed it at the woman. “She’s with me. We’ll get the information from the patient and be back.” He snagged Ella by the arm and pulled her toward the double doors that led to the ER.

“Is the patient one of yours?” the gatekeeper asked.

“No. She’s my stepmom.” He used his badge to unlock the doors and stepped into the organized chaos of the emergency room.

“Hallelujah,” Ella muttered, “you’ve finally accepted the inevitable.”

“What?”

“You called her your stepmom.”

“Oh, yeah, I did.”

They hurried down the row of cubicles and finally found Brenda. She was conscious and had a nasal cannula supplying supplemental oxygen. Her dress had been unbuttoned down the front to expose the EKG electrodes the EMTs had placed on her chest. She appeared pale, but her lips were nice and pink. He didn’t need to read the pulse oximeter output to know that her blood oxygen was within reasonable levels.

“Where’s Dad? Where’s the ER doc?” he asked.

“Jim’s talking to the doctor,” Brenda said, sounding winded, which was concerning. Did she have pulmonary edema? That could be serious. A sign of heart failure. She needed a cardiac ultrasound right away.

“I’ll be back,” Dylan said, and then hurried to the nurse’s station to check the telemetry data on Brenda’s heart and oxygen levels. She was in atrial fibrillation, and her blood pressure was low.

“Who’s the attending?” he demanded.

The ER nurse gave