The Love Note

by Joanna Davidson Politano

  My eyes flew open then. “What on earth would I do in America?”

  Especially if Gabe was sailing to Asia.

  “Save all those lives you talk about.” He gave a crooked grin. “There’s a hospital there run by an acquaintance of mine, Dr. Sjöberg, that’s in danger of being shut down. The number of preventable deaths there is staggering, a matter just begging for what you and your father already know. He needs help to make changes or he’ll lose everything. All his life work will melt away, not to mention the countless lives that would be lost. I told him a little about your research, and since your father isn’t fit to make the trip at his age, he wants you, Willa Duvall, to go there and help him modify his Boston hospital. He’s at the end of the line, and willing to do anything you say. He was ecstatic about your ideas—what I told him, anyway.”

  I could feel my mouth hanging open like a regular monkey, but I couldn’t seem to get it closed. “Pardon?”

  “It’ll take at least a year, and he’d pay for everything. Your passage, living expenses, even a small stipend. If you managed to save the hospital together, it would mean a whole new life for his dreams—and yours, Willa. I could see him paving the way for you to study medicine, and you’d become . . .”

  “A doctor.” I could barely breathe out the sacred title. It fit—all of it fit, and I felt it slipping into my heart like a key into a lock. This was what God had in mind all along—I sensed it immediately. “And he isn’t bothered that all this help is coming from a woman?”

  He shrugged, an impish grin peeking out. “I may have underemphasized the a in your name.”

  “Gabe Gresham!” I smacked his arm.

  “He’s desperate, and you’re brilliant. It’ll be fine. You’re not in the habit of letting refusals stand in your way, as I remember.”

  I pinched my lips together.

  He gripped my shoulders, squeezing with a gentle strength that nearly undid me. “You can do this, Willa. You’re no longer just a voice shooting out opinions, but one that brings beauty and life. Truth.”

  Tears pricked my eyes. Both rejected and magnificently accepted in this moment, I hardly knew what to feel or—in this rare instance—what to say. “You’re certain he wants me?”

  “After what I said of you, he believes you are his miracle. I told him how brilliant you are, how capable and intelligent, how you had the ability to turn everything around.”

  I tipped my head. “You said all that?”

  A tender smile spread over his face. “I told you, I always speak up when it counts.”

  A lump in my throat threatened to strangle me, bobbing up and down and refusing to go away, but that was all right. Speaking my feelings for him would somehow desecrate this splendid act of love. Instead I leaned near, this great man with a heart the size of a continent, and stood toe to toe with him. Grabbing hold of his lapels, I pulled him down and kissed him with abandon, and I felt the heat of those embers flare into a blaze when he answered back with great fervor and warmth.

  I breathed in the fresh scent of his wild nature, that faint aroma of cinnamon, bottling it up to store in my most precious memories. Where words failed, my lips expressed years of gratitude, respect, and deep affection for the man who now folded his arms and his whole heart around me, embracing me as he’d done all these years in so many ways. I tasted the rugged sweetness of him in those lips, the strength and softness combined into one striking man, and I couldn’t get enough.

  Finally I pulled back, looking up at him, and found my voice again. “There are horses in America, you know.”

  “Not the sort waiting in Asia.”

  “Where is it you’re going again?”

  “Mongolia.” He drew out the syllables. “Has a nicer ring to it than Ammenemonie.”

  I burst out laughing, which was a blessed relief. “Oh, Gabe.” I took his hand, looking down at our hands clutched together. The feelings in my heart billowed with even more intensity and ached for release, but I couldn’t form them into words. They were simply too big, stretched too wide over my life.

  He ran his thumb over my knuckles. “Come.” He dropped my hand and strode out the door. When we reached a small lean-to behind his cottage, he threw open the doors, and there, in all her wild glory, was my white horse. She tossed her head when she saw me, pacing.

  I ran my hand along her gray snout, laid my face against it. “Hello, old girl.”

  “It’s time.” Gabe looked at me, assessing something in my face, and I knew what came next. “I figured it would be the last thing I did before I left.”

  “I’m not ready.”

  “I know. But that’s what makes it loving.”

  With a deep breath, I gave a single nod and stepped back. He opened the gate, one hand on her nose to steady her, and threw it wide. “Go on, git!” She froze, glancing over at me as if also deciding between two things. For a fleeting, heart-pounding moment I wondered if she’d stay. But she danced out, paused to get her bearings, and broke into a sprint toward freedom. I clutched Gabe’s arm as Luna tore across the field, sand flying under her hooves and tale rippling like a flag. How glorious she looked, nose to the wind and muscled legs pounding.

  Tears budded and began to leak. “What’s in Mongolia, Gabe?” It was on the tip of my tongue to beg him outright to join me in America. Maybe I could have both love and my career.

  He inhaled and released it over top of my head, scattering stray wisps of hair. “You think she’s beautiful, your Luna, but it’s nothing compared to the creatures in Mongolia. Here the so-called wild horses are merely feral creatures, the abandoned descendants of horses in captivity, but in Mongolia they’re truly wild. It would be incredible to be near them, uncover their true magnificence, and see what they’re capable of.”

  The brilliant glow of his face touched my heart, warming it to the truth. This was his dream just as medicine was mine, and I needed to release him to this the same way he had for me. The raw love in my heart would let me do no less. I gulped back my pronouncement. How selfish my view of him had been, as if his only role in my life was that of my flagpole. He had color of his own, and now was the time for it to fly.

  His voice was low when he spoke again. Solemn and deep. “Burke insisted on this trip, but I find it’s calling to me, Willa.” He rested his hand on my shoulder. “Those horses, all that wild open land . . .”

  I stared up at his dear, dear face, memorizing the lines of it, the scar along his jaw, the exact color of his gold-flecked eyes, the jagged indents along his cheeks. “Yes, I understand.” Too well. I reached out and touched his rugged cheek. “Goodbye, Gabe.”

  Those indents on his cheeks creased under my fingers as he smiled. “There’s no such thing as goodbye between us.”

  I took his hands in mine, cherishing the feel of them. Their strength. “Gabe?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Will you write?” It was a window cracked open, a door left ajar.

  He flung it wide open with a glorious smile. “Count on it, Doc.”

  thirty-two

  In marriage, there is a great deal of power in saying no—to yourself.

  ~A scientist’s observations on love

  I felt the old cynicism toward romance creeping over me as I rode back to the house, the settling awareness that it never truly seemed to last, but also a bittersweet gratitude for the authentic love, in whatever form, from Gabe. I paused at the stables and looked up to the ruins, knowing what must come next. Leaving my horse with the groom, I climbed that path once more to speak with God, but even before I reached the top, the truth settled solidly upon my soul. God had given me this position as the answer to my heart’s desire. This huge step, this unknown position, was God’s blessing.

  So was the man who had brought it to me.

  My heart broke as I knelt at the ruins. Why did you draw me toward the truth of my feelings for Gabe, then take him away? Love had broken us all, and led to so many dead ends. I thought over all the fractured love stories—Ce
leste, Tillman, Essie, the Greshams, Grayson and Rose, Burke and Clara, even Father. Was it fair to add myself and Gabe to that list? I knelt atop that hill and turned to look across to the iron fence on another hill, where the Greshams of the past lay—including Aunt Maisie. Even she had died alone and unwed, still longing for love. Forgive me if I cast off your advice, beautiful woman, but not everyone is meant to fulfill that hunger for love. I cannot keep searching for what I wasn’t meant to find.

  My love story was about dreams pursued, with the happy ending being the day I finally reached them. I bowed and thanked my Father for bestowing on me a most glittering and fitting future—the culmination of all I’d asked for—and the love of a dear friend besides.

  I slipped inside to find Mrs. Gresham in the music room, perched at the piano. She looked up as I entered. “So, you are still at Crestwicke after all. I was beginning to think you’d left us.”

  “No, my lady.”

  “Good, because your father is here to collect you.”

  I froze. “Here?”

  “He’s made some rounds since his visit and returned for you. He believes it best that you return home, after your . . .” She waved vaguely toward my head. “He’s been posted near the front door, awaiting your return.”

  My skin chilled. The contract. No. No, it couldn’t end this way. My selfish heart longed to chase Gabe down and . . . what, make him marry me to keep Tillman away? Take away his dreams? I sank to the ottoman, trembling hands bracing my head. I hadn’t even failed, had I? Well, I hadn’t succeeded either.

  “Are you unwell, Miss Duvall?”

  “No, it’s just . . .” Puffing out a quick breath, I sat up and told her of my contract with Father.

  “Tillman? Oh heavens no, you cannot marry Tillman.”

  “I must keep my word.”

  She closed the lid over the piano keys and stood, one hand on the polished wood. “What you were required to do, if I understand, is successfully complete one nursing job, no?”

  “This nursing job.”

  “Which, if you remember, was created because of my fear of passing from this world alone. And in my estimation, though I’m yet alive, that job is now complete.”

  I smiled, taking her hand in mine. “Does this mean you’re not afraid anymore?”

  She raised her eyebrows and smiled that feline smile, eyes sparkling. She looked past me to her husband who was standing in the open window to watch the horses, hands clasped behind his back. “No. But I’m not alone.”

  My heart swelled. I leaned forward and kissed her brow, which seemed to please her immensely. The letter had done more than I could have ever imagined—it had brought the couple together, helped them recognize their end of the rainbow in each other.

  “Now, I hope you have a man in mind you’d rather marry.”

  I flinched and worked hard to push Gabe from my thoughts. “Not at the moment.” What would she say if I gave her the name currently on my heart? “However, a medical position in America has come up.”

  “One you would like?”

  “One I believe is a heaven-sent gift from God.”

  “Then by all means, do take it.”

  I dropped my gaze to her gold ring with the pink stone. “Father will never agree with your assessment, though. I did not cure you. He’ll hold me to that contract the moment I near your front door.”

  She offered a pert smile, hands folded neatly in her lap. “Then I suggest you use the back door. Oh and Miss Duvall.” She studied me as if memorizing my face. “Let us both heed Aunt Maisie’s advice—don’t stop searching for love until you’ve tasted it, yes? The Almighty won’t create a hole he doesn’t intend to fill.”

  It was the first time I’d defied Father outright. The Greshams’ carriage crunched up the drive with me and my luggage the following morning, leaving Crestwicke and all its broken love stories behind—as well as my very angry father. I’d told him of my decision, of my fulfillment of the contract, and new veins appeared along his scalp and neck as his anger boiled that I’d never seen before. I reasoned and pleaded, but in the end Golda’s advice won out—I took the back door.

  I wept every night for a week over Father and wrote him two letters, which received no response. I’d never envisioned a future without him, for a girl never outgrows her father, but my heavenly Father had carved out this path for me, and now that I’d tasted such connection with him, I dared not go anywhere without him.

  As painful as my departure was, my arrival in America resulted in a fresh batch of insecurity as I was met with shock and disdain—by all except the physician who had sent for me. He merely blinked his blue eyes behind thick spectacles, stumbled over a few words in his delicate accent, then invited me to outline my ideas. Once I had unleashed the knowledge built up through years of study, his keen face relaxed and his posture became remarkably welcoming.

  Boston was alive every minute, with steam engines and crowded streets, vendors on street corners and crowds of people going about their lives in one concentrated space. The hospital astonished me at every turn, including the man who ran it. The charity run by Franciscan-order nuns had almost no money to stretch over its one-hundred-twenty-bed wards, for it served the poor and the immigrants, and it couldn’t compare to the well-constructed hospitals the man was used to in his home country of Sweden. He was a consummate professional, a healer of the highest quality, and he hadn’t any idea how to repair the mess of a hospital America had constructed for its poor.

  The soft-spoken Dr. Sjöberg was a smart, energetic leader no older than two and forty years who came to be a dear friend and only sometimes a partner in verbal sparring. We had ideas as different as our accents, but that seemed to amuse him more than anything, and we got on well.

  Journal after journal of my research blossomed into the open, turning into reality as all my ideas for Father’s clinic took shape on a grander scale around us. Ventilation changed the entire atmosphere of the structure that had once induced claustrophobia at the front door, opening it up into a refreshing place of healing. Dr. Sjöberg latched onto all my notions regarding sanitation, as he was nothing if not precise. Cleanliness suited his sensibilities.

  I came alive with the opportunities and sheer amount of work begging to be done. I even began an unofficial clinic for those turned away from the hospital for moral reasons, serving a reluctant community of thieves and prostitutes who needed even more help than those admitted to the main hospital. Rough seamen and young pickpockets regularly walked in my doors, and I treated them all. I saved as many lives as I could and sobbed heartily over those I could not.

  I requested supplies as part compensation for my efforts, and Dr. Sjöberg ensured that the hospital complied. Life was hard, but the good sort of hard. It reminded me of pushing a carriage out of the mud and watching it move, inch by inch. Victory came as I toiled alongside God, meeting often with him in the haven of my heart, and words—the right words—appeared in my quiver whenever I had need of them.

  We were invited to speak to various hospital boards, and I always brought along my sketches and notes. When they were accompanied by my impassioned explanations, lights began to flicker in those stale old faces and the wheel of change groaned into motion. The first to accept our ideas, outside of the Boston hospital, was the Dulmuth Hospital in New York—which had rejected me for a training program years ago.

  After more than two years of toiling in America, I passed the clinic on to new hands, and we returned to “my island,” as he called the UK, and set to work on a hospital in Scotland run by his protégé, a Dr. Johannson, who was far less receptive to working with a woman. I visited Father by train for whole weekends at a time, and he met me reluctantly in the parlor before escaping into his office. News of my work seemed to dishearten him, as if he were watching me progress on a track that he wasn’t guiding. He’d aged, but he still worked long hours for his patients and had a foundation laid for his clinic.

  Life flew by in blinding, vivid color u
ntil I received a letter from Crestwicke—by then it had been three years since I’d left. I hurried through the narrow streets of Glasgow with grates that puffed steam, dodging bicycles and pedestrians, settling into the stoop of my rooming house to tear the thing open. The vellum smelled of seaside air, or perhaps that was my imagination, but I devoured the news from that old manor, my chest constricting.

  Golda Gresham has departed this life. The Gresham family invites you to Crestwicke Manor on August the sixth at two in the afternoon for remembrances.

  With kind regard,

  Peter Gresham

  I glanced up from the page to situate myself back into my new reality, dragging myself out of the one I’d left behind. Yet it pulled at my heart. Three years she’d lived—three years the lovers in that letter had spent together. I inhaled and released a long, shuddering sigh.

  In the morning, I marched right into Dr. Sjöberg’s office and told him I would have to miss the final meeting with the hospital board in Edinburgh. “It’s a matter of great importance.”

  He blinked through his spectacles in that endearing way. “It cannot be put off?”

  I pictured Crestwicke, and instantly my soul settled, my memory recalling the crash of waves and scent of the fresh air. I remembered Golda, poised yet fragile. “I’m afraid not. I’ll leave you copies of all my drawings and research.”

  “And your keen mind?” His soft voice calmed me. “May I have a copy of that too?”

  I smiled. “It’s a pleasure to have it in demand. I’ll be in contact as soon as I’ve seen to a few personal matters.”

  At last I was returning to Crestwicke—not only for the dead, but for the living. It seemed Aunt Maisie’s dearest wish for me would come true. My longing for real, authentic love had only swelled since being gone, but there was no one in America or Scotland to fill it. No one outside of Crestwicke, actually.