All Chapters of Engaged to His Brother, Raising His Daughter : Chapter 1 - Chapter 5

ISLA“Mommy, how do you spell promise?”Junie asked it from the break room table without looking up. She had my work tablet propped against the coffee maker and her clipboard under her elbow, and the tip of her tongue was poking out of the corner of her mouth, which is where she keeps it when she is doing something important.“It’s P, R, O, M, I, S, E,” I said. “Who are you writing to, baby?”I spelled it slowly. It is not a word I use much anymore.“It’s confidential.”She is five and three quarters. I have no idea where she learned the word confidential, but I suspect a television judge.I was eating cold noodles at the counter, because it was twenty to seven and I had not sat down since seven that morning. My whale scrubs had a juice stain on the knee shaped exactly like Ohio.It was my ninth day back in Halbrook, Michigan, and my ninth day on the Juniper Ward at Cole Memorial Hospital. At four o’clock somebody had pinned a memo to the bulletin board outside the nurses’ station.I

ISLA“Do I stand up when I present, or do I sit down?”Junie asked it in the elevator at two minutes to nine, with her clipboard pressed to her chest and her purple coat open. I had buttoned it twice. She had unbuttoned it twice, because she said a lawyer’s coat has to be open so the jury can see the tie.She was not wearing a tie. I have chosen not to fight that battle.“You do whatever the man says, and you say thank you,” I said.“Even if he’s the liar?”“Junie, we agreed on nicer.”“Even if he’s the man who broke the promise?”That is worse. That is so much worse, and she said it with a smile.The elevator opened on the ninth floor. Six years ago I knew every supply closet on the third floor and the fastest way from the cafeteria to the roof, and I had never once been invited past the eighth.A bald man in a cardigan was waiting at the glass doors with his hands behind his back. Everybody at Cole Memorial knows Hollis Grant by sight, mostly so they can hide from him.“Ms. Penn,” h

ADRIAN“Four million dollars a year, Adrian, is a very expensive way to feel sentimental.”Raymond Sterne said it pleasantly, the way he says everything, while his daughter’s slides glowed on the boardroom wall. He had a tan that did not belong in Michigan in February, and he was looking past me through the window at his own house on the lake.“The Juniper Ward is not a sentiment,” I said. “It is twenty-four beds.”“It is twenty-four beds that lose money every night they’re full.” He turned to the committee. “Paige, would you take them through it?”Paige Sterne stood beside the screen in a white suit, holding a laser pointer she did not need. She is thirty-three and the smartest person on her father’s side of any table. I was engaged to her for fourteen months once, and neither of us has mentioned it in five years.“Pediatric inpatient services lost four point one million dollars last year,” she said. “MeridianCare can absorb our patients in Grand Rapids at a third of the cost per bed