Free Last Chance Hero by Cathleen Armstrong Page A

wasn’t about to badger her into doing something she didn’t want to do. Even if it was for her own good.
    â€œOh, all right. We’ll give it a try.” Elizabeth set her cup down with a little clank. “But I’d like to be back home and settled by 9:00 every morning. That’s when they run Rockford Files , and I like to crochet a few rows while I watch it.”
    â€œThat won’t be a problem at all.” Jess held her cup up in salute. “I’m looking forward to this. It’s going to be fun.”
    Elizabeth clinked her own cup gently against Jess’s. “Well, we’ll see about that.”

6

    Y ou know, I have this funny pain in my knee sometimes. Not really a pain, more of a twinge, I guess.” Juanita set Jess’s salad on the table in front of her and bent to rub the offending joint. “It just comes and goes for no apparent reason. There’s no bruise or anything. Do you have any idea what it might be?”
    â€œIs it swollen?” Jess knew better than to engage in casual encounter diagnoses, but the question just seemed to pose itself.
    â€œNo. There’s nothing you can see that might be causing it. It just up and hurts awhile and then it quits.” Juanita’s forehead furrowed. “What do you think?”
    Jess looked at Juanita’s knee, covered as it was with thick support hose. “I really can’t tell anything without examining it. Why don’t you call the office and make an appointment? We shouldn’t have much trouble fitting you in.”
    â€œOh, don’t worry about it.” Juanita’s expression relaxed and she flapped a dismissive hand. “I have an appointment with my regular doctor in a couple weeks. If it’s still bothering me, I’ll get him to check it for me. I just thought since you were here and all that you might be able to tell me something.”
    She moved off, without a trace of a limp, to ask the next table if they needed any more iced tea, and Jess picked up her fork. And there you have the second most effective way of dealing withtableside medical consultations—the first being to ask the patient to disrobe .
    Jess looked around the room as she ate her lunch. Every time she came into the Dip ’n’ Dine, she felt a little less like a stranger, and that felt good. In the excitement of her plans, she had dismissed her mother’s concern that she was moving somewhere where she wouldn’t know a soul. She liked people and never had trouble making friends. But she had never encountered a place like Last Chance, where everybody seemed to have known everybody else all their lives. They were friendly and even welcoming, but she still had that feeling that she was company and they were family.
    Across the room Lainie Braden, still slim in her uniform, took an order from two men perched side by side on counter stools. Lainie had been new once, but now she was as much a part of the town as the craggy eastern mountains or the faded asphalt highway that called itself Main Street as it ran through town.
    Jess munched thoughtfully on a bite of lettuce. I wonder if I would sound pathetic if I asked her what her secret is. Probably. I’ll just give it a little more time.
    As if she could sense Jess’s gaze, Lainie looked up and met her eyes with a wide smile. She murmured something to the men at the counter before making her way across the room to where Jess sat by the window.
    â€œHey there. How are you doing?” She really did seem glad to see her, and Jess felt her loneliness shift a little to make room for the warmth of Lainie’s smile.
    â€œI’m fine, but how are you doing? Still feeling good?”
    Lainie laughed. “I’m feeling great. And if you could turn that into a medical diagnosis and tell my husband and his grandmother, I’d really appreciate it.”
    â€œGlad to hear it.” Jess let the comment about the diagnosis