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course. Clam chowder by the aroma. A favorite of mine. Or at least it used to be. Today, the smell makes me nauseous.
    “Are you in pain?” she asks.
    “If you must know, yes.”
    “Isn’t there something you can take for it?” She sounds like she cares. Wish I could believe it. “I can go get it if you wish.”
    “No, Ms. Bennett. You’ve done enough today.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    A suspicious sniff puts me on alert. Can’t afford for her to get sick. “You’re not coming down with a cold, are you?”
    “No.” Her voice quivers. “I didn’t mean to add to your troubles.” She sniffs again.
    Is she crying? God damn it. I will down my pain, my anger. I can’t take out my frustration on her. “You didn’t. I visited my eye doctor today. He shone a bright beam into my eyes which gave me a splitting headache.”
    “Oh.” The tension drains out of her voice. “The light in the dining room is really bright. Would dimming it help?”
    I smile at the image of Moseley serving our food in the dark. Unfortunately, the gesture makes my pain worse. “That won’t work. You won’t be able to see your soup.”
    “Yes, I would.” She walks toward the wall where the light switch is located. A flick and the room grows dim. What little I could see vanishes. Truly in the dark now, I’m a moment away from begging her to switch the lights back on when she asks, “Is that better?”
    Her words thrum through my senses, soft as silk, sensual as velvet. Why hadn’t I heard the melody in her voice before? I take a deep breath, let it out. As long as I have her words to hang on to, I’ll be fine. She’ll be my anchor in the dark. “Yes. Thank you.”
    “When my mother suffered from headaches, I would massage her temples to relieve the pain. Do you think that would help?”
    I don’t know that it would, but at this point I’m willing to try anything. “Maybe.”
    The air shifts, and I sense her walking toward me.
    “She enjoyed the scent of lavender oil. But since you’re sensitive to smells, we’ll skip that part.”
    Knowing her, she probably has a bucketful of the stuff in her room. “Yes. That would be best.”
    She rests her fingers on my brow and lightly rubs my skin in a circular motion. “Let me know if I’m hurting you.”
    “You’re not.” I feel better just from having her hands on me. But there’s one thing that would help more—her voice. “Tell me about your mother.”
    She clears her throat. Does it pain her to talk about her? “She was beautiful.” Caitlyn lets out a self-conscious laugh. “I suppose all children think that about their mothers.”
    “Mine was beautiful as well.”
    “Most of my life it was just her and me.”
    A sharp pain stabs my eye, stealing my breath. But then her soothing massage rubs it away, and I’m able to breathe again. “What happened to your father?”
    “He died when I was very young. She never remarried. No man could ever measure up to her memory of him. She loved my father that much.”
    Much like my own. “Must have been difficult.”
    “It was. To make ends meet, she worked two jobs. As soon as I became a teenager, I got a part-time stint at the mall to help out, but she insisted I save the money for college.”
    “Mothers want the best for their children.” Mine did, until she was no more.
    “Yes. Our house was small, but I never lacked for food or love. Whenever I came down with something, she’d rush me to the doctor. Unfortunately, she didn’t take as good a care of herself.”
    “What do you mean?” Without meaning to, I scrunch my brow, and the cruel pain stabs again. Closing my eyes, I allow her healing touch to soothe away the ache.
    “She waited too long to check out a lump in her breast. By the time she went to the doctor’s, it was too late. Stage 4 breast cancer. That was a year ago. They gave her six months to live. Unwilling to let her go, I insisted on chemo and radiation treatments which only prolonged her misery. She