Christmas On His Ranch. Diana Palmer

could she defend herself against knowing glances and haughty treatment? The gossip had hurt her mother most, leaving her virtually isolated from most of the people who knew her. She’d had a mild heart attack from the treatment of her only child as a social outcast. Ironically that had seemed to bring some people to their senses, and the pressure had been eased a bit. But Antonia had left town very quickly, to spare her mother any more torment, taking her broken heart with her.

      Perhaps if Powell had thought it through, if the wedding hadn’t been so near, the ending might have been different. He’d always been quick-tempered and impulsive. He hated being talked about. Antonia knew that at least three people had talked to him about the rumors, and one of them was the very minister who was to marry them. Later, Antonia had discovered that they were all friends of Sally and her family.

      To be fair to Powell, he’d had more than his share of public scandal. His father had been a hopeless gambler who lost everything his mother slaved at housekeeping jobs to provide. In the end he’d killed himself when he incurred a debt he knew he’d never be able to repay. Powell had watched his mother be torn apart by the gossip, and eventually her heart wore out and she simply didn’t wake up one morning.

      Antonia had comforted Powell. She’d gone to the funeral home with him and held his hand all through the ordeal of giving up the mother he’d loved. Perhaps grief had challenged his reason, because although he’d hidden it well, the loss had destroyed something in him. He’d never quite recovered from it, and Sally had been behind the scenes, offering even more comfort when Antonia wasn’t around. Susceptible to her soft voice, perhaps he’d listened when he shouldn’t have. But in the end, he’d believed Sally, and he’d married her. He’d never said he loved Antonia, and it had been just after they’d become engaged that Powell had managed several loans, on the strength of her father’s excellent references, to get the property he’d inherited out of hock. He was just beginning to make it pay when he’d called off the wedding.

      The pain was like a knife. She’d loved Powell more than her own life. She’d been devastated by his defection. The only consolation she’d had was that she’d put him off physically until after the wedding. Perhaps that had hurt him most, thinking that she was sleeping with poor old George when she wouldn’t go to bed with him. Who knew? She couldn’t go back and do things differently. She could only go forward. But the future looked much more bleak than the past.

      She went back to work in the new year, apparently rested and unworried. But the doctor’s appointment was still looming at the end of her first week after she started teaching.

      She didn’t expect them to find anything. She was run-down and tired all the time, and she’d lost a lot of weight. Probably she needed vitamins or iron tablets or something. When the doctor ordered a blood test, a complete blood count, she went along to the lab and sat patiently while they worked her in and took blood for testing. Then she went home with no particular intuition about what was about to happen.

      It was early Monday morning when she had a call at work from the doctor’s office. They asked her to come in immediately.

      She was too frightened to ask why. She left her class to the sympathetic vice principal and went right over to Dr. Claridge’s office.

      They didn’t make her wait, either. She was hustled right in, no appointment, no nothing.

      He got up when she entered his office and shook hands. “Sit down, Antonia. I’ve got the lab results from your blood test. We have to make some quick decisions.”

      “Quick…?” Her heart was beating wildly. She could barely breathe. She was aware of her cold hands gripping her purse like a life raft. “What sort of decisions?”

      He leaned forward, his forearms on his legs. “Antonia, we’ve known each other for several years. This isn’t an easy thing to tell someone.” He grimaced. “My dear, you’ve got leukemia.”

      She stared at him without comprehension. Leukemia. Wasn’t that cancer? Wasn’t it…fatal?

      Her breath suspended in midair. “I’m…going to die?” she asked in a hoarse whisper.

      “No,” he replied. “Your condition is treatable. You can undergo a program of chemotherapy and radiation, which will probably keep it in remission for some years.”

      Remission. Probably. Radiation. Chemotherapy. Her aunt had died of cancer when Antonia was a little girl. She remembered with terror the therapy’s effects on her aunt. Headaches, nausea…

      She stood up. “I can’t think.”

      Dr. Claridge stood up, too. He took her hands in his. “Antonia, it isn’t necessarily a death sentence. We can start treatment right away. We can buy time for you.”

      She swallowed, closing her eyes. She’d been worried about her argument with Powell, about the anguish of the past, about Sally’s cruelty and her own torment. And now she was going to die, and what did any of that matter?

      She was going to die!

      “I want…to think about it,” she said huskily.

      “Of course you do. But don’t take too long, Antonia,” he said gently. “All right?”

      She managed to nod. She thanked him, followed the nurse out to reception, paid her bill, smiled at the girl and walked out. She didn’t remember doing any of it. She drove back to her apartment, closed the door and collapsed right there on the floor in tears.

      Leukemia. She had a deadly disease. She’d expected a future, and now, instead, there was going to be an ending. There would be no more Christmases with her father. She wouldn’t marry and have children. It was all…over.

      When the first of the shock passed, and she’d exhausted herself crying, she got up and made herself a cup of coffee. It was a mundane, ordinary thing to do. But now, even such a simple act had a poignancy. How many more cups would she have time to drink in what was left of her life?

      She smiled at her own self-pity. That wasn’t going to do her any good. She had to decide what to do. Did she want to prolong the agony, as her aunt had, until every penny of her medical insurance ran out, until she bankrupted herself and her father, put herself and him through the long drawn-out treatments when she might still lose the battle? What quality of life would she have if she suffered as her aunt had?

      She had to think not what was best for her, but what was best for her father. She wasn’t going to rush into treatment until she was certain that she had a chance of surviving. If she was only going to be able to keep it at bay for a few painful months, then she had some difficult decisions to make. If only she could think clearly! She was too shocked to be rational. She needed time. She needed peace.

      Suddenly, she wanted to go home. She wanted to be with her father, at her home. She’d spent her life running away. Now, when things were so dire, it was time to face the past, to reconcile herself with it, and with the community that had unjustly judged her. There would be time left for that, to tie up all the loose ends, to come to grips with her own past.

      Her old family doctor, Dr. Harris, was still in Bighorn. She’d get Dr. Claridge to send him her medical files and she’d go from there. Perhaps Dr. Harris might have some different ideas about how she could face the ordeal. If nothing could be done, then at least she could spend her remaining time with the only family she had left.

      Once the decision was made, she acted on it at once. She turned in her resignation and told Barrie that her father needed her at home.

      “You didn’t say that when you first came back,” Barrie said suspiciously.

      “Because I was thinking about it,” she lied. She smiled. “Barrie, he’s so alone. And it’s time I went back and faced my dragons. I’ve been running too long already.”

      “But what will you do?” Barrie asked.

      “I’ll get a job as a relief teacher. Dad said that two of the elementary school teachers were expecting and they didn’t know what they’d do for replacements. Bighorn isn’t