Free The Book of Hours by Davis Bunn

magpies flew to each side of her, seraphim sent to welcome her into this new day. She felt convicted by her inability to be happy with the gift, her heart made sadder still by this new failure. Tommy Townsend was not here, but he might as well have been. Her inability to help the little child left her veiled in a sorrow not even the morning’s glory could pierce.
    She was almost on top of Brian Blackstone before she saw him.
    Brian had a curious expression on his face as he watched her approach. Almost as though he was struggling with himself. And yet he offered her the quiet greeting, “You look so sad.”
    All the resentment she had been carrying came rising up, filling the morning so tightly she could scarcely manage, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
    â€œI understand.” He was silent a long moment, then added,“Would you like to sit down?”
    She hated the fact that it was his right to invite her. This was her table and her garden, no matter whose name might be on the papers. But there was no alternative except to go back to the house, and the morning beckoned too strongly to retrace her steps. Cecilia set her box down on the wrought-iron table, retrieved her mug, took time for a sip and a long look at the horizon. The sun was a rounded crest upon the eastern hills, framed by bare-limbed trees and clouds of fire.
    Brian’s hands were busy with something shielded from her by the table’s edge. The garden table was long and broad, intended to host as many as two dozen people. At each end, low iron side tables had been planted to support serving dishes and drinks. Cecilia liked to sit here and imagine how grand it all must once have been. But now wisteria vines clambered up the table legs and anchored the rusting chairs in place. Unswept leaves and wintry earth added their scents to the dawn.
    â€œYou were right.”
    The words were so quietly spoken that Cecilia had difficulty believing they were directed at her. “I beg your pardon?”
    â€œAbout the antibiotic. I didn’t need it after all.” Brian raised what appeared to be a tiny high-backed chair to his mouth and blew gently. But before she could see for certain, his hands disappeared back below the vine-covered table. “I’ve eaten three full meals since the stone passed and haven’t had any problems.”
    He looked at her then, the strengthening light turning his gaze as clear as a child’s. “I can’t thank you enough for your help in the night.
    If you hadn’t come, I don’t know what I would have done.”
    She dropped her gaze, unable to meet either his eyes or her own flush of shame. Even the cup’s faint tendrils of steam were laced with color from the sunrise.
    Brian sensed her muddled confusion and clearly misunderstood the reason. “I know, I know, doctors are like anybody else. They hate talking about their work outside the office. But I need to thank you.” He bent over his work, whatever it was, and continued, “In Colombo, the ward they stuck me on had twenty-seven beds and sixty-one patients. I had a bed all to myself only because I was so big. Most beds had patients at each end, and the beds with children held three, lined up like dark sardines.” Again he lifted and dusted and blew, this time holding what looked like a miniature chest of drawers. “I spent over a month staring through my mosquito net, watching the fans whirl overhead, listening to the other people around me, watching the families move back and forth in front of my bed and staring down at me like I was caged in a zoo, and wishing I was anywhere but there. It left me terrified of not ever getting better.”
    Cecilia’s own sense of remorse and confusion only deepened. She reached inside her box, pulled out the top item, and stared blankly at the page. She could not apologize. Yet no matter what her mind might be saying, her heart would not still its