Moonlight Masquerade Read Free

patients.”
    â€œYou mean he should be nicer to the many femaleswho come here with no real problems but always end up inviting Dr. Reede out?” Alice asked.
    â€œOr the men who live on beer and chicken wings but can’t understand why they’re so tired?” Betsy asked.
    â€œAnd what doctor today makes house calls?” Alice asked. “Dr. Reede does. If a person is genuinely sick, he goes to them. One time he delivered the baby of a woman pinned inside a wrecked car. He slithered in through the broken back glass while the EMTs cut the door open to get her out. And he’d cut his leg enough to require stitches, but he didn’t tell anyone.”
    â€œI don’t understand,” Heather said. “I keep hearing about this Dr. Tristan and how everyone loves him. What would he have done in those situations?”
    â€œThe same things, but his attitude is different. Dr. Tris would have gone through the back windshield too, but he wouldn’t have yelled that the EMTs weren’t doing their jobs quickly enough,” Betsy said.
    â€œAnd while he was delivering the baby he would have teased and flirted with the young woman until she was half in love with him,” Alice said.
    â€œWould he have put the knitting lady and the pregnant woman together?” Heather asked.
    â€œProbably, but he wouldn’t have done it in secrecy,” Betsy said.
    Heather looked from one to the other. “Didn’t some philosopher say something about it being better to give anonymously?”
    Alice and Betsy were looking at her with little smiles on their faces.
    â€œOkay,” Heather said, “so maybe I won’t quit. Maybethe next time he snaps at me I’ll try to remember some of his good deeds. But damn! He’s hard to be around. Maybe if he had a girlfriend he—”
    â€œYou think we haven’t tried that?” Betsy asked quickly. “We have paraded every pretty girl within fifty miles of here past him. Tell her about the party you threw at your house,” she said to Alice.
    â€œI cooked for three days, and along with the other guests I invited eight very pretty, young, single women. Betsy and I made a list, then filled it: tall, short, skinny, plump.”
    â€œNever married, been married with a child, even a young widow.”
    â€œBetsy and I made sure Dr. Reede talked to each of them, but he wasn’t interested.”
    â€œSo what’s his sex life like?” Heather asked.
    â€œI have no idea,” Betsy said somewhat stiffly.
    â€œAnd we certainly don’t ask,” Alice added.
    â€œIt seems to me that the only thing that’s going to make Reede Aldredge happy is to get out of Edilean,” Heather said.
    â€œThat’s the conclusion we came to.”
    â€œMaybe we can get another doctor to come here.”
    Alice pulled a thick file folder out of the cabinets. “These are the letters we’ve sent.”
    â€œAnd the replies.”
    As Heather flipped through them and noted the refusals, she said, “There has to be a way. I need this job. It’s a good salary and good benefits. If I could just figure out what he needs I’d give it to him.”
    â€œYou’re welcome to try,” Betsy said.
    â€œWe’re open to suggestions,” Alice said.
    â€œAnd we’ll help you,” Betsy said, and they all three nodded.
    They didn’t know it, but a bond had been formed by the women. They were united in a single purpose: to find out what Dr. Reede Aldredge wanted and to give it to him.

One

    Sophie tried to control her anger, but it wasn’t easy. She could feel it rising in her like bile, traveling upward from her stomach.
    She was driving her old car and she was about twenty miles from Edilean, Virginia. The scenery was beautiful, with trees sheltering the road, the fading sunlight playing on the leaves. She’d heard about Edilean from her college roommate Kim Aldredge.