Doris blinked.

“You know, it doesn’t even have to be Lorna Doones. It can be Oreos or Malomars for all I care, and they aren’t even my favorites. The important part is he’s naked and some type of cookie is involved.”

Doris blinked again.

“I’m just pulling your leg, Dr. Lehman.” Lucy gave her an exaggerated grin. “I sometimes worry that my issues aren’t fancy enough for you, you know? I come in here week after week, just a Pittsburgh girl who took off her clothes in front of the wrong man ten years ago,

56 Susan Donovan wiped out a college football dynasty, and enticed a 60 Minutes camera crew to camp out on her parents’ lawn. I worry that I bore you.“

Doris smiled politely. “What I wouldn’t give for all my patients to be so boring.”

Chapter 4

March

“Go away. Leave me alone. You make me mad.”

Theo sat down on the edge of the bed, his coffee balanced in one hand while the other stroked his brother’s wispy blond hair. “You gotta get up, Buddy. I need to take you to Aunt Viv’s so she can drive you to school later.”

“Go away.” Buddy grabbed the edge of the comforter and yanked it up over his head, hitting Theo’s arm, spilling his coffee, and sending Norton the devil cat leaping for safety. Theo checked his watch. This was insanity. Trying to get Buddy out of the house by 4:15 every weekday was getting harder as time went on, not easier.

Not for the first time, Theo wondered if a hundred grand was worth this hassle.

“We gotta rock-‘n’-roll, Buddy. I have a client waiting for me.”

From under the comforter came a muffled, “Another girl who loves you?”

“Get up, Buddy.”

“Do you still miss Jenna? I do. Why did she stop liking you? Because you’re not a doctor anymore?”

Theo was quite used to Buddy’s filterless questions but was still half-asleep and more vulnerable than he would have been at a later hour. He took a sip of coffee, gulping down the sadness that could still pierce him when he thought of Jenna. “Yeah, I still miss her sometimes. Now get up.”

“Buzz off.”

“I don’t appreciate your attitude.”

“Go away.”

Theo checked his watch. He was growing desperate. “Look, Brian. If I get back in med school I’ll really need your cooperation, so let’s practice now. I have to meet my client. Get up.”

“The funny fat lady from TV?”

“Yeah. Her. Now get up.”

“No!”

“We can have cheesesteaks for supper.”

“I’m up.” And with that, Buddy burst forth from under his covers and nearly knocked Theo to the floor as he made his way across the bedroom, fully dressed, all the way down to his Reeboks.

Theo shook his head and laughed. He’d been got again, by a teenager alleged to have an IQ half his own.

He used the corner of the comforter to mop coffee off his work shorts, taking a moment to look around Buddy’s room, listening to the usual morning humming coming from the bathroom down the hall.

The bedroom looked like your average teenager’s room. Computer on the desk. An MP3 player and headphones tossed casually on the floor by the dresser.

Clothes spilling out of the hamper. Sports posters all over the wall-with Lance Armstrong, Marian Jones, and Michael Phelps predominating.

But the trophy and medal collection surrounding Theo wasn’t average at all. Pinned to a strip of cork-board encircling the room were hundreds of ribbons and medals. Dozens of trophies sat on a low shelf above the desk, engraved with the name “Brian Redmond.” Though Theo couldn’t read the small print on each from where he sat, he knew well enough what they were for. In swimming, the hundred-meter butterfly and the hundred-meter freestyle. In track, the long jump, hundred-and-ten-meter hurdles, high jump, marathon, half marathon, and pentathlon.

They were from school meets, local and state competitions, invitationals, and last year’s international games. They reflected eight years of athletic achievement by a boy who surprised his parents by arriving sixteen years after Theo, with Down syndrome.

Theo’s eyes traveled to the neat little cross-stitch slogan that hung on the wall over Buddy’s bed, matted under glass and nicely framed. Their mother gave it to Buddy a few months before she died. It was the Special Olympics athlete’s oath, in a graceful cursive script:

Let me win.

But if I cannot win,

Letme be brave in the attempt.

Theo knew those words by heart. And he knew they applied to him and the rest of the world as much as they did to Buddy and his fellow Special Olympians.

A horrible noise jarred Theo from his quiet thoughts.

“I like the way you moo-oove!”

As usual, Buddy’s singing was very loud, very off-key, and had no identifiable time signature. And like he did nearly every morning, Buddy sang while brushing his teeth and flossing.

“I like the way-ay…”

Theo slipped into the bathroom doorway to watch Buddy groove his way through his oral hygiene. “Anything cool going on at school today?”

“Never is.” Buddy spit and rinsed. “So probably not today, either.”

“Track after school?”

“Yep.”

“Got your gear packed?”

“Yeah.”

Theo watched Buddy swivel his hips in front of the bathroom mirror, and couldn’t help but smile at how happy he seemed. After the accident three years ago, Buddy had simply shut down. He stopped competing. He wouldn’t hang out with friends. He became so angry at the world and so lost that it broke Theo’s heart.

He did everything he could to make it easier for Buddy. Theo dropped out of med school halfway through his M-3 year, right in the middle of a general surgery rotation, which didn’t go over well with the attending physician, not to mention Jenna. Then Theo moved back home to Miami Springs and took over his dad’s coaching post with the Special Olympics of Miami-Dade.

Theo had no choice. His aunt and uncle were too old to keep up with Buddy, and Theo couldn’t pull him out of his school and away from his friends and definitely couldn’t move him out of the house. Buddy didn’t do well with even the smallest changes in his routine, like grape instead of the usual strawberry jam on his peanut butter sandwich. Moving would have killed him.

Looking at him now, combing his hair and humming, Theo was proud that Buddy was doing so well. Theo was proud that with Aunt Viv and Uncle Martin’s help he’d managed to keep his brother’s world intact for these last three years.

Even at the cost of Theo’s own.

“I have to work the door at Flawless Friday and Saturday nights, so you’ll be staying with Aunt Viv and Uncle Martin. But we can train Saturday afternoon.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“Get your backpack and let’s roll, stud.”

Buddy laughed, and Theo enjoyed watching him tilt his head back and squint his already-squinty eyes behind his thick glasses, smiling so big that his gums showed all along the ridges of his small top teeth.

When Buddy stopped laughing, he playfully shook his finger at Theo. “You’re the stud in this house,” he said, strolling into the hallway and toward the foyer.

“Nope.” Theo grabbed his car keys off the hall table and opened the door for his brother. “You’re the only stud around here, dude, and we both know it.”

“How much have you lost now, Lucy?”

Veronica hadn’t asked that question in about six days, which might have been a record for Lucy’s assistant. “Not sure. The month’s not over yet.”

Maria Banderas munched on her taco salad and waved her fork around. “I don’t know how you do it! I’d be weighing myself every ten minutes if I were losing weight as fast as you are. You’re a better person than I am!”