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“Dr Reede used to smile a lot,” Betsy said “When he was a child he loved to come to the office to visit cousin Tristan’s father as the doctor then Reede was a very sweet little boy who always kneanted to be a doctor But then”

“What happened?” Heather asked

“Laura dumped him for the Baptist preacher,” Alice answered

“Where?”

“Where what?” Betsy asked

“Where did this Laura find a preacher so dynamic that she left a hottie like Dr Reede?” Heather asked

“A hottie, is he?” Alice asked “Even though he never smiles?”

“If I just saw hieous But he opens his mouth and I can’t stand hio to find a man?”

“Nowhere She lives here in Edilean Her parents moved here in the 1970s”

“Wait a s, do you? The wife of the Baptist preacher here in Edilean?”

“The very one,” Alice said

“But she’s”

“She’s what?” Betsy asked

“Drab,” Heather said “She looks like she was always so the Great Love of anyone”

“But she was She and Reede were inseparable froe Then he went away to medical school and she took up with the new pastor” Betsy lowered her voice “The rumor is that Dr Reede was so depressed that he tried to kill himself, but he was rescued by Dr Tris’s wife This was before they were er”

“Wow!” Heather said “Dra that Dr Reede has been sulking ever since Mrs Billings ran off with another man?”

“More or less,” Betsy said “Although he’d never admit it For years he was a world hero”

“Everyone falls back on that,” Heather said “Africa, Afghanistan, and countries I’ve never even heard of, but that doesn’t excuse him now”

“If you ask o so fast that he’d outrun his past”

“And now he’s stuck back here in Edilean,” Betsy said with a sigh