“Yes, I told her you wouldn’t want them opened, but she seems to think she knows best. Yes, I’ll see to it immediately,” Mrs. Shaw said. Emma glanced uneasily at one of several surveillance cameras installed in the large suite. Had the enigmatic owner of the Breakers, Michael Montand, been the one to call?
Mrs. Shaw hung up the phone and marched over to the floor-to-ceiling wall of windows. She drew the drapes closed with a sweeping gesture, shrouding the room once again in darkness. Emma had her answer. Surely the nasty woman wouldn’t be so smug if she hadn’t been given permission to behave so dictatorially by her boss.
“What is that cagna doing here?” Cristina asked angrily when she saw Mrs. Shaw pass the door. Emma didn’t speak Italian, but she had a pretty good idea that calling someone a cagna wasn’t a compliment.
“This is his home. I do what he asks me to do.” Mrs. Shaw cast one last glare in Emma and Cristina’s general vicinity and exited the suite.
Emma exhaled the breath she’d been holding. “She’s gone,” she told Cristina quietly as she stepped aside so that Margie could push Cristina into the bedroom. “Do you want the drapes opened?”
Was it fear or anger or wistfulness she saw flicker across her patient’s lined face at the question? Emma couldn’t be sure, but one thing was for certain.
This family had some serious secrets.
“My stepson is the owner of the Breakers, and I’m dependent upon his charity. His father and the courts have made that crystal clear. I’ll live by his rules,” Cristina replied flatly.
“Nevertheless, the choice is yours,” Emma assured.
“I’m very tired after my shower,” Cristina said after a pause.
“Say no more,” Emma said calmly.
Cristina gave a regretful glance at the drawn curtains after Margie and she had transferred her to the bed from her wheelchair.
“I caught a glimpse of the sunlight from there in the bathroom. Was it a very beautiful day?” Cristina asked Emma in a gravelly voice when Margie left the room.
“One of those days where the sunlight hits the water and is absorbed by the air, and you feel like it’s a living thing, it’s so brilliant.”
Cristina smiled. “I remember days like those on the Riviera, days reserved for the young and healthy,” Cristina said as Emma straightened the bedding around her frail form.
“A day like today is as much yours as anyone’s.”
Disease hadn’t entirely erased the slicing quality of Cristina’s smile. “Only someone young and beautiful would be so foolish as to think that.”
Emma arched her eyebrows at the thrust but didn’t respond. Cristina had an edge to her, there was no doubt about it. Emma figured if she was in as much pain as Cristina was as cancer slowly ate away at her flesh and pride, she might be a tad testy too.
She had recognized Cristina’s forceful character during their initial meeting earlier in the day. “You’re not going to preach to me, are you?” Cristina had queried archly at that meeting.
“Preach to you?” Emma had asked, taken aback.
“About heaven and hell and all the good things I’ve got ahead of me whenever this gives out in a few weeks or days or hours if I repent.” She’d glanced scornfully at her wasted body. “Your predecessor tried to, and that’s why she’s gone.”
“I’ve never liked being preached to,” Emma replied. “I don’t do anything to anyone else that I wouldn’t like being done to me.”
“That sounds like a religious answer,” was Cristina’s reply.
“No. It’s a common sense one.”
That had earned her a small, appreciative grin, but Emma was aware that she was still on trial. She might be for the remainder of her patient’s life. She’d grown used to the jury being hung on many occasions before.
* * *
“Mrs. Shaw certainly has her opinions, doesn’t she?” Emma said quietly to Margie a while later. They sat in a luxurious living room off the bedroom, Emma doing some paperwork while Margie sipped a Diet Coke. Margie worked a regular eight-to-five shift, while the registered nurses had been hired to provide twenty-four-hour care for Cristina. Emma covered the three-to-eleven shift, Monday through Friday. It would be a change of pace to have a regular weekday schedule. Margie had paused to chat with her for a few minutes before she left for the day.
“Mrs. Shaw is the devil’s minion. How else is she supposed to act?” Margie asked, shrugging.
“Devil’s minion?” Emma choked back laughter. “You mean the stepson’s?” She’d already learned from her briefing with the night nurse, Debbie Vega, that Cristina had no close family to speak of beside the stepson, and that the stepson preferred not to be involved in day-to-day care. What had occurred this afternoon with the phone call and the drapes seemed to go against the idea that Michael Montand was uninvolved, however. Every family and patient was unique, but this entire situation with the Montands was singular for New Horizon Hospice. Hospice nurses typically provided palliative care and comfort to the dying patient as well as support and education to family members. They were only in the home three to fifteen hours per week or so, depending on what the family needed. Cristina’s stepson had insisted upon twenty-four-hour care from fully qualified hospice nurses, however. Emma suspected he must have made a sizable donation to Horizon Hospice to make up for the highly unusual circumstances.
What’s more, Michael Montand and his family were famous, although not for something familiar to Emma’s world. She vaguely associated the name Montand with fast European sports cars and commercials featuring impossibly gorgeous men and women doing things like sipping champagne at red carpet events and then racing across scenic highways in a high-performance