Prodigal Son by Danielle Steel Page B

entrance, he turned onto the dirt and gravel road. He could feel his heart beat in his chest as though he expected to see someone there, and as he squinted past the light from his headlights, he saw it, the house where he had spent his summers as a boy. It was dark and deserted, and if he closed his eyes, he could hear his mother calling his name as he hid in the trees playing games with Michael. For him, thiswas a trip back in time to a place filled with dangerous memories and people who had disappointed him, but his earliest memories here were those of any ordinary boy. Peter could feel his heart beating faster in his chest as he got out of the car and walked slowly toward the house.

Chapter 4
    Michael McDowell hurried up the steps of the small tidy house on the other side of town from his home and office. He had been there before. There was a neat picket fence surrounding the property, rose bushes in front of it, and a deep rose garden on the way to the house. The fence was freshly painted, and the house was not imposing, but in good repair. He had come to see an elderly man with bronchitis. Seth and his wife, Hannah, had been patients of his father’s, and their only daughter had come up from Boston. She owned her own business and had done well, and she was as attentive as she could be to her parents, while leading a busy life, running a business by herself, with three nearly grown children of her own, and living three hours away. Hannah had recently died of pneumonia after a long battle with cancer, and now Barbara was concerned that her father was so ill. She had driven up from Boston, and called Michael on the way. They were old friends, although they didn’t see each other often. But she counted on him to check on her parents whenever they were ill. And he had been wonderful to her motherbefore she died—they often told their daughter that he was like the son they’d never had.
    It was a relief to Barbara, living farther away, to know that someone like Michael was nearby. She trusted him implicitly, had always liked him, and there was no question in anyone’s mind, he was the resident saint. He had taken over where his father had left off, taking care of all the sick people in town. He had given up a potentially great career in Boston in anesthesiology, to come back and take on his father’s general practice in a less exciting small town. But he seemed to love it, and always said he had no regrets about the career he had given up. Everyone could tell by the way he spoke to his patients that this was where his heart was. Both Barbara and the doctor were concerned that her father had lost his will to live since his wife died six months before.
    Seth was sitting huddled on the couch with a blanket over his shoulders, and a wracking cough. He had refused to have anyone care for him in the months he’d been alone, and insisted he could do it himself. The house was in good order, but the old man on the couch looked very, very sick. He was eighty-five years old. His wife had been eighty-seven when she died. They had been married for sixty-seven years, and had been childhood sweethearts. Michael knew only too well that a loss like that was tough for a man his age to survive, and he didn’t like what he saw now.
    “How are you feeling, Seth?” Michael asked gently as he sat down next to him on the couch and opened his bag. He could see from the old man’s eyes, without touching him, that he was feverish, and he shivered as though he were cold.
    “I’m feeling all right,” the old man said politely, as Michael tookhis stethoscope out of his bag. “All I have is a cold.” He glanced at his daughter in annoyance, and she smiled. “There’s no need to make a fuss over it. A couple of days, and I’ll be fine. Barbara made some soup for me, that’s all I need. She shouldn’t have called you.” He scolded his daughter, and the doctor smiled.
    “If she didn’t call me, how do you expect me to feed my family?”