Chapter 23
“Of course we do,� another voice came from the background. Frannie smiled at the sound.
“Mommy,� she said, running over to her.
Frances “Baby� Houseman Castle was now fifty-five years old and she hadn’t changed a bit. Well, not exactly, Frannie thought, she graying a bit. Other than that, everything looked the same.
They hugged each other with Johnny looking on, beaming.
“What have you been up to?� Frannie asked when her mother released her. “Looks like you’ve become a waitress.�
Johnny walked over and put his arm around her. He brought her up close and hugged her.
“Your mother is a doctor, remember? She’s become the house doctor as long as we live here, Frannie. You should know that?�
Frannie had almost forgotten. There were so many other things that her mother was capable of doing. She was a doctor it was true. After her birth, Baby had gone back to school to finish what she started. They lived in the city where Johnny directed and starred in some of his Broadway plays.
Baby didn’t work until Johnny retired and they moved upstate to what Baby called their “country cottage.� They had bought not too far from Kellerman’s where Johnny could keep an eye on the renovation. Baby practice began when one of the workers had fallen off a scaffold.
She had opened up her own office, more on popular demand than anything else. There really were no hometown doctors and Baby was good. She became the most sought after physician in upstate New York, although she didn’t make too much money at it, it gave her satisfaction to know that she was helping people, just the same as she had done years earlier in the Peace Corp.
Now she was the Kellerman’s house physician and she wasn’t making a cent for her services
She loved it that way.
“So you were the one who treated Lynn?�
“Yes,� Baby said, “but it wasn’t such a bad break. She has to stay off of it, Frannie, at least for a few weeks until she is out of the cast.�
“And the two of you intend to be take over for Lynn and Danny, if I understand correctly?�