“Hey, two years ago…weren’t you here with him then?”
And that got right to something that had been bugging Jason badly.
“Yeah.”
“And you didn’t know he’d been disciplined?”
“I had no idea.”
Tara tipped her head. “Did you ever notice him drinking? Did you ever smell anything on his breath?”
“I saw him have a drink once in a while after hours. Scotch at dinner or something.”
“Okay, well, that’s not the same thing as drinking on the job.”
He knew that. He’d been telling himself the same thing. But the niggling doubt remained. As much as he hated it. “When you’re a small-town doctor, there is no after-hours,” he said. “You never know when people are going to need you.”
Tara nodded. “I guess that’s true. But…one drink doesn’t mean he’s impaired. Or that he couldn’t do the job. Right?”
“No. It doesn’t mean that.” He huffed out a breath. “I don’t know what it means.”
“Isn’t it better to assume the best?” she asked. “I mean, he’s gone and I…”
Jason cocked an eyebrow. “What?”
“I want you to remember him the way you did when you first came to town,” she said with a small smile.
In spite of his mixed-up emotions, he smiled too. “Yeah?”
“You drove me crazy when we first met at the lawyer’s office and you thought David was this huge hero, this perfect guy, and with everything I had found out about him, that was the last thing I wanted to hear. But now… I feel like over the past few days I’ve gotten to know David better, and even though I think he screwed up not letting me know who he was sooner and being more involved with me, there was still a lot of good there. And you were the reason I gave him a chance. And I just really wish you could still feel the way about him that you did when you first came to Hope Falls.” She grimaced slightly. “I’m afraid I’m part of why you’re feeling less…generous about him.”
“You’re—” But he couldn’t say that she wasn’t. He supposed she’d made him look at David more realistically. David falling down as a father had opened Jason’s eyes to the possibility that he wasn’t perfect in other ways as well. “My favorite part of this trip,” he finished. It was the truth. In spite of his image of David being tarnished, Jason wouldn’t have changed meeting Tara.
But…and he hated that there was a but…the trip had made him think differently about a lot of things. He wondered what other things he had been looking at naively.
Like falling in love.
He hated the thought even as it went through his mind. But he had to admit…falling in love with someone in one day seemed silly and overly optimistic.
Tara stepped closer. “Ja—”
And Jason took a step back.
Chapter Eight
Tara hated the way her heart seemed to fall to her stomach. “Jason?”
“I’m sorry. I just…need a second.” Jason shoved his hand through his hair.
“A second for what?”
“To figure out how I’m feeling. And what I want to do.”
“What you want to do?” she repeated. “About what?”
“About all of this. David and the clinic and…”
Tara’s stomach twisted. “And what?”
“You. Us.”
Yeah, that’s what she was afraid he was going to say.
“Why are you suddenly so upset?”
“Why are you not upset?” he threw back to her. “You just found out that David was drinking and he might have missed a big diagnosis and…” He trailed off, almost as if he’d run out of words.
Tara got it. “You just found out another reason to be disappointed in him,” she said.
“Yes!” Jason exclaimed. “Yes, definitely! And why aren’t you disappointed?”
She shrugged. “Because I didn’t have huge expectations of him prior to all of this. I liked him, I cared about him, I felt close to him, but the pedestal I had him on was much shorter than the one you had him on.”
Jason took a breath and nodded. “Yes, you’re exactly right. I did have huge expectations. And for years I’ve been thinking of him as this person I wanted to emulate. Not just as a physician, but as a person. I thought he was the perfect role model in every way. And then I come here, to honor him and his life now that he’s gone. And instead I found out that he’s not who I thought he was—as a doctor or as a man—and I’m now questioning everything. He used to be the one that made sense out of things for me, and now, I’m more confused than I’ve ever been. Because of him.”