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 she and Margie 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 commonsense 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 week-day 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 New 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 Montand car just in time to catch a departing yacht. Now that she’d seen his house, Emma thought it might fit in to one of the Montand company’s glamorous commercials.
“I haven’t seen Montand in the two weeks I’ve worked here. I hear he’s very busy, but still . . .” Margie’s voice trailed away. She glanced toward the partially open door to the bedroom, but there was no way the patient could hear even if she were awake. The suite took up the entire floor. The rooms were large and draped with luxurious fabrics and several large paintings. Emma could hear her patient, of course, from a one-way monitor perched on the desk. “The maid told me there’s another reason for his absence as far as Cristina. According to all accounts, Montand hates her with a passion.”
“Hates his stepmother? I suppose it wouldn’t be the first time in history,” Emma said with a grin. “He certainly provides top-quality care if he dislikes Cristina so much,” she said, closing the chart and sitting back in the chair.
“The rumor is that he relishes seeing her sick and miserable. I’ve asked the other nurses. He’s never once been here to visit her, either while I’ve been on duty or during any of the other nurses’ shifts,” Margie said significantly.
“That would seem to negate the rumor, wouldn’t it?” Emma asked drolly. Margie was a little prone to gossip and sticking her nose in where she shouldn’t in family dynamics. Working in the mansion of an elusive billionaire sports car magnate was bound to amplify her sense of drama. Emma had learned to keep perspective in every new home where she worked, however. She was there to do a job and ease suffering, not take sides in family feuds.
“I just mean if Montand never comes to see her, he can’t be relishing the sight of her misery too much,” Emma explained when Margie just gave her a blank, non-comprehending look.
Margie’s dark brown eyes went wide. “You saw what happened today with the curtains,” she hissed, glancing significantly at a video monitor on the desk that showed Cristina’s motionless form sleeping in the bed.
“You know families often use surveillance cameras when a loved one is this sick.”
Margie rolled her eyes and took a swig of her soda. “Montand probably has a screen set up in his bedroom and office and private plane. Sick bastard. He’s glorying in every second of his stepmother’s death while he eats chocolates and sips champagne in bed.”
Emma chuckled. “You make him sound like a depressed Dynasty character.”
“It’s creepy, I’m telling you,” Margie said firmly, glancing warily at the television monitor and Cristina’s image again. “It’s not at all like our normal assignments.”
“Every family has different needs,” Emma said in an attempt at rationality. She glanced around the lovely living room. “Besides, there are much, much more uncomfortable and unpleasant places to spend one’s last days and hours,” she said mildly. “He must be rich as a Rockefeller to have a house like this. Maybe he’s too busy making money to visit his stepmother.”
“He travels a lot for work. Not that he has to work, of course. From what the maid tells me, he inherited this car company from his father that makes these superfast French sports cars.”
“I’ve heard of Montand cars. Very exclusive. Very expensive.”
“And he’d already started his own company here in the States before his father died. They make racecars, or something like that. He’s got like a couple dozen cars in this megahuge garage that he had dug into the bluff. It’s like some kind of billionaire playground or museum. At least that’s what Alice, the maid, tells me. She says Montand is hot as Hades, but all that sexy goodness is a waste, because he’s a cold, scary bastard.”