The Inn at Hidden Run

by Olivia Newport

  “I’ll clean up,” Nolan said. “The three of you could use a breather.”

  “No thanks.” Meri increased the strength of stream coming from the faucet.

  Nolan reached around her, stopped the water, and gently guided her shoulders toward the table. “Coffee coming right up. Any extra pastries?”

  “On the counter.” Nia tilted her head toward a stoneware platter covered in plastic wrap.

  “Mugs still in this cupboard?” Nolan asked.

  “I can get them,” Leo said.

  “Sit.” Nolan filled three mugs, looked around until his eyes settled on the sugar and creamer, and pulled the plastic wrap off the pastries. He delivered everything to the table. “A royal feast for Canyon Mines’ royal family.”

  Nia crossed her eyes. “Puleeze.”

  Nolan had dishes to clear up and counters to wipe down. He couldn’t make Nia and Meri speak amicably to each other, or even eat turnovers, but sitting across the table might make them less likely to speak irritably for a few minutes. Even silence would be healing space, and when the temperature in the room came down a few degrees he would put on his mediator’s hat. Nia was staring at her laptop even as she sipped coffee and nibbled around the edges of a pastry. Leo picked up the Denver newspaper. Meri pulled her phone from a pocket. At least she had taken his advice not to cut herself off from her family completely by refusing to look at her phone.

  “These bookings don’t look right,” Nia said.

  Nolan glanced over his shoulder. “I’m sure you can straighten it out after you’ve had a break. Just enjoy your coffee and turnover for now.”

  Nia pushed her pastry away. “Meri, you did these bookings last night, didn’t you?”

  Meri’s dull eyes went darker. “Yes.”

  “They’re incomplete. And the information we have is conflicting. They don’t make the least bit of sense.” Nia turned the laptop for Meri to see for herself.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Now I don’t know how to prepare for guests for the weekend after next. When they’re coming, how many, payment method.”

  “It’s two weeks away,” Nolan said. “Plenty of time to sort things out.”

  “I’ll call everyone and confirm the information,” Meri said. “I’ll make it right this afternoon.”

  “It’s not that hard to get right in the first place. It’s all basic to the job.”

  “Nia!” Leo’s intonation took on a spiked contour.

  She pressed her lips together.

  Meri stood up. “Nolan, I’ll finish cleaning up.”

  “I’ve got it in hand. Just the casserole dishes left.”

  “Which are burned,” Meri said. “I’m the one who let them burn. I’ll clean them.”

  “I don’t mind at all.”

  “I want to do it.” Meri picked up the pastry platter, which still held three options, determined in her penance.

  Nolan surrendered and glanced around for a dish towel to dry his hands. He didn’t see the platter slide out of Meri’s hands, but the clangor of it shattering on the geometric black and gray floor tiles spun him around in time to see Meri drop to her knees.

  In tears.

  Full-on wrenching sobs.

  In the range of emotions Nolan had seen in Meri over the last ten days, occasionally he’d seen glimpses of the lifetime of tears welled up in her. But she hadn’t cried like this.

  He met her on the floor and took her in his arms. Around them, Leo quietly swept up the remains of the shattered platter. Gradually Meri’s shaking stilled.

  “Thank you, Meri,” Nia said.

  The unexpected calm in Nia’s voice drew everyone’s eyes.

  “I never much liked that platter. I’ve always regretted buying it in a secondhand shop. I only used it because I paid too much for it not to, and the colors suited the dining room. The truth is I thought it was ugly, and I’ve resented it for years.”

  Nolan burst out laughing, and Meri raised a hand to swipe at her tears.

  “I’m so sorry.” Still on the floor, Meri shifted her weight to her heels. “I’m a nervous wreck. I haven’t had a straight thought since last night. I should have told you all.”

  Nolan helped Meri to her feet. “Told us what?”

  “I’ve been tracking my family’s locations by following where their phones are. We have that family app where you can do that. That’s how they know where I am. And they’re getting close.”

  “Close to Canyon Mines?” Nia tried to stand. Leo pulled her down again.

  Meri nodded. “They’ll be here today. In a few hours.”

  “Five percent,” Nolan said.

  “Five percent of what?” Nia said.

  “Meri knows.”

  Meri nodded. “It may be more like three percent. Or two and a half. This is not going to be pretty.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Memphis, September 25, 1878

  Will the Howards let us keep the new nurses, do you think?” Sister Hughetta was upright at the dining table, lingering over her tea.

  Eliza looked up from the never-ending lists she had spread on the table. “I do hope so. It was like pulling teeth to get them.”

  “I am ready for calls.” Sister Hughetta pushed her empty teacup away.

  Eliza eyed her. “Just yesterday the doctor advised at least one more day of rest.”

  “I disagree. I have seen enough of yellow jack to know that it has run its course in my case.”

  “One more day, Sister Hughetta.” Eliza shuffled her lists. She would have to manage somehow.

  Miss Beeson rushed into the room and threw herself into a chair across from Eliza.

  “What is it?” Eliza stood. This was not good news.

  “Miss Newell. Her landlady found her this morning on the floor of her room. She’d probably been there all night in her own vomit. Quite ill. I’ve just come from there.”

  “Heavens.” Eliza sank back into her seat. “Will she be cared for there?”

  Miss Beeson shook her head. “The landlady will have none of it. She insists she is not running an infirmary. I was able to make arrangements to move Miss Newell to Market Street.”

  Eliza nodded and recorded the information. She would pray the young nurse had been found before this ruinous disease would take her.

  Miss Murdock slipped into the room with a stack of papers.

  “More calls?” Eliza said.

  Miss Murdock nodded and left.

  Eliza flipped through the slips of paper. Names and addresses, or sometimes just brief descriptions of where the houses were and who might be in them. Children. Young mothers. Elderly people with no one to look after them. Scribbles about who had already passed in the household.

  For the moment, Eliza set the new names aside and picked up a list she had already prepared and handed it to Miss Beeson.

  “Without Miss Newell I will have to think again about the plan for the morning, but we can begin here.”

  Miss Beeson nodded and took the list. “Will Father Dalzell be making calls?”

  “I believe so.”

  “And the doctor?”

  “In the afternoon. Make sure you bring back word of the most serious cases.”

  The other nurses filed through the room in the next few minutes, and Eliza disbursed assignments. Each time she considered adding at least one of the new names, but the lists already were unreasonably long.

  “I will be taking some calls today,” Eliza said to Sister Hughetta.

  “What about the correspondence?”

  “I will do it this evening. That is what Sister Constance did.”

  “Sister Constance also said that you were to be caring for the poor and not the sick.”

  Eliza pushed back her chair. “It is true that I am not a trained nurse, but many people who make calls are not trained nurses. I have watched the nurses caring for those in our infirmary and the children at the orphanage, even if I was not allowed across the threshold. I can make sure pe
ople have water, broth, and tea. I can make sure there is food. I can make sure there are no corpses in the house, and that the sick are not alone. I can see who are the sickest and need the doctor most. I can judge who requires a nurse to remain with them and who can manage if a nurse checks in every day.”

  Sister Hughetta’s eyebrows went up. “You have been thinking about this for some time, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, I have. And the moment has come.”

  “Can I at least help you put some things in a cart?” Sister Hughetta said. “I can carry jars of tea from the kitchen, and you’ll want some clean linens and tins of meat.”

  To this Eliza was agreeable. The old horse who had served St. Mary’s well for so long stood by as they loaded a small cart. When they tried to hitch the cart to the horse, however, he resisted.

  “He’s lame,” Sister Hughetta said.

  “Lame?”

  “Look at how he’s walking.” Sister Hughetta leaned into the side of the horse and lifted one of his legs. “His shoes are completely worn. It would be cruel to take him out on the streets.”

  The fortitude that had buoyed Eliza escaped like hissing steam. “There is no blacksmith left in the entirety of Memphis. I have heard of others who inquired and found no one.”

  “We can fit you out with one of our large bags and you can carry what you are able,” Sister Hughetta said. “You’ll just have to come back and forth. Many of the nurses work that way. We don’t always have a cart to use.”

  “I know this to be true,” Eliza said, “but I am going to do something I should have done long ago.”

  “What is that?”

  “Find another horse. Two horses. And a carriage.” It would be something else to explain to her parents later. But she was a grown woman of nearly forty, not a twelve-year-old. Was there nothing of the family’s belongings she might control? “Father Dalzell has been using the deanery rig. Help me find him—if you are not finding this too tiring.”

  “Quite the opposite.” Sister Hughetta’s cheeks pinked up, and she strutted toward the deanery. Eliza reconsidered defying the doctor’s order that Sister Hughetta needed one more day before resuming full duties.

  They found Father Dalzell three blocks away. Eliza offered thanks to God that it was not three miles and explained her plan. She knew the livery where her father had boarded the family horses when he left for Wisconsin. The epidemic meant that her parents’ stay was extended, but she was prepared to talk the livery owner into releasing the horses to her even in the absence of her father’s permission. She required Father Dalzell for his cart to drive her but also for the authority his clerical garb would lend.

  Eliza wound herself up for full bluster at the livery.

  The head groomsman waved her off. “The owner died two weeks ago. His wife wants to stay open, but a groom and the exercise boy are gone as well. You’ll do me a favor if you take your horses for now.”

  Father Dalzell tied the two brown mares to the back of his own cart and gently led them through the streets to Eliza’s family home, where they hitched one to the family carriage.

  “I learned to drive at St. Mary’s,” Eliza assured him. Almost a whole month ago. She left out the fact that she’d driven a horse and cart fewer than a dozen times since. “If you wouldn’t mind leading the other horse to the Sisters House, I would deeply appreciate it. Someone can use it with the spare cart there.”

  She’d lost most of the morning fetching the two horses and the carriage, but she ought to have done it days ago. Weeks ago. At least she was doing it now. She had the rest of the day to think about where the two horses could board now and who might look after them. Perhaps the Heard boys would like to do it. Getting the feel of the reins, she sat in the familiar carriage, with her mother’s scent embedded in the upholstery, and guided it back to the Sisters House to load with supplies.

  Day one. She would put herself on the list every day now, just as Sister Constance had done.

  In the first home, a mother and child were both down with the fever, but an aunt was there to care for them. What they lacked was clean bedding and dressing gowns—and food. The tins lying open around the small rooms were scraped clean, not a morsel left behind, but the open shelves above the stove had nothing left on them. Eliza helped to change the beds, and she left two jars of soup and a loaf of bread, along with a bag of rice, dried peas, and canned tomatoes.

  “Keep them covered,” Eliza said to the aunt. “They must sweat out the fever. Sponge baths are important. Small sips of tea throughout the day. I will have you on the list for someone to check in tomorrow, but if things get worse, you must send word to the Sisters House.”

  Eliza moved on to her next call. The note she’d received that morning said the nurse had not come for two days. Inside the second house, no one was upright but a twelve-year-old boy who ought not to be responsible for a house full of sick family members. This yellow fever outbreak brought enough ought nots to make the head spin. It seemed to Eliza that delirium had overtaken the boy’s mother, who thrashed against her tangled sweat-drenched bedding, mumbling nonsense.

  “How long has she been like this?”

  “Since yesterday,” he said. “That’s why I ran down with a note this morning.”

  “I will put her on the list for the doctor’s rounds.” Eliza took a folded sheet of stationery from her bag. “In the meantime, let’s sponge her off and see if we can bring the fever down. We must try to get her to lie quietly. And we’ll try to get a bit of tea or broth into everyone else. Does the stove work?”

  He nodded and showed her where the matches were. She found pots, and while they waited for tea and broth to warm, she broke off chunks of ice into a bowl of water and bathed the mother, speaking in soothing tones all the while and hoping this would calm her enough to encourage her to lie still. The results were mixed. The sponge bath was complete, and Eliza tucked a fresh top sheet around the woman, but she still spoke in sentences that made no sense.

  “You will have to keep trying to cool her,” Eliza said, “while I do my best to find a nurse who can properly sit with her and the doctor can get here.”

  The boy nodded his blanched face once again and took a big, brave breath.

  In the third house everyone—all adults, as far as she could see—were stricken, but in her judgment, compared with what she had seen in the infirmary and at the Church Home orphanage, they had weathered the worst. What they required now was nourishment. Broths and rice, primarily. Perhaps they would be the rare household in which everyone survived.

  It would be impossible to have too many infirmaries in Memphis. Eliza’s family home, with all its space, was shuttered and useless at the moment. It could well serve as an infirmary. But it would need beds and staff and supplies and food and medicine, and Eliza had no assurance she would be able to organize these necessities.

  Yet yellow fever knew no limits, neither race nor income nor vocation nor neighborhood.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  So she’s going to keep you updated?” Jillian poured steamed, frothy milk on top of a base of Brazilian coffee and a hint of hazelnut syrup. The mug was a simple, classic white, with an almost squarish shape at the base but rounded just enough at the top to keep from dumping hot liquid down her shirt. But something about it was still not quite right.

  “It didn’t seem right to suggest Meri leave the Inn,” Nolan said, “when Leo wants to keep Nia off her feet and Meri’s family is going to descend.”

  Jillian sipped coffee and grinned at her father over the foaming mug. “I’d like to be a fly on the wall if they show up at the Inn to face Nia without Meri, especially after the mood you described this morning.”

  “Be that as it may in the world of fine entertainment,” Nolan said, “our job is to support Meri, not take over. Besides, Nia backed off once she realized why Meri was rattled beyond the point of functioning. Now what about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “When you planned you
r day, we didn’t know the Davieses were coming. We need answers only you can give us.”

  Jillian gulped too much hot coffee in one mouthful and struggled to swallow it before inhaling air to cool her mouth.

  “Dad, I’m not a magician.”

  “Just a minute. Incoming text.” Nolan glanced at his phone. “Pru has verified that she’s not coming. It’s only the parents and the brother.”

  “What does Meri think is going to happen?”

  “Three against one, Jilly. What does it sound like to you?”

  “They’re not coming just to see if she’s all right.”

  Nolan shook his head. “She’s going to need us.”

  “I thought we weren’t taking over.”

  “Just to level the playing field. My guess is they need to understand their own family just as much as Meri does.”

  “It’s been a crunch of a week, Dad. I haven’t gotten all that far with the family tree.”

  “You have the Canfield piece.”

  “Which I haven’t tied to the Davies family.” Not by a long shot.

  “Then I guess you have your marching orders.”

  Jillian buzzed her lips. Raúl’s formal report was going to be late, but at least she’d already passed on everything he needed to know to close out legal matters with Annabel Rosario’s life-changing news.

  “I’d better get on it, then,” Jillian said.

  “I’ll bring you lunch in a while.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You know, there’s another mug just like mine around here somewhere.”

  Jillian made a face. “Next you’ll be trying to get me to drink black coffee.”

  Jillian withdrew to her office, where she stacked and cross-stacked papers from the active projects she’d hoped to wind up today and moved the pile to the corner of the desk. A clear desktop and a fresh yellow legal pad gave her a clean start on the question in front of her as she minimized the open windows on her computer and opened the notes she’d begun on the genealogy of Meriwether Eliza Davies. Both of her parents were well known in their fields with biographical information attached to publications. It didn’t take long to gather enough information on them to push back another generation, particularly on the Davies side.