The Mountain Midwife

by Laurie Alice Eakes

  “Do you need proof?” Ashley flicked on her headlights and then the windshield wipers for good measure.

  Hunter sighed. “You’re right. I have no right to be so sanctimonious. I wish I did. I don’t like the idea that Dad cheated on Mom and lied to me about my birth. It’s so sordid. How could she stay with him?”

  “She might not know. Or maybe she forgave him long ago.” So did that mean Ian could eventually forgive Heather?

  “Or staying together was more lucrative.” Hunter sounded sad, bitter.

  “I think maybe you shouldn’t draw conclusions until you have all the facts.” Like she shouldn’t draw conclusions about his brother and sister. Except how many more facts did she need?

  Hunter shrugged and began sliding his thumbs over the screen of his phone again. While Ashley negotiated the mountain roads, growing wet and potentially slippery with each passing mile, he began to make phone calls to nursing care centers, to doctors, even to a hospice facility. Mostly, he left his name and number for calls back. Throughout his calls, his voice remained low and calm, that modulated boarding school voice she had noticed on the TV news station. His last call made, he turned his face toward the side window, turned his shoulder so he had his back half toward Ashley, and said nothing.

  Maybe when they reached his SUV in the diner’s parking lot he would talk. Then again, he might just want to go to the store and his motel, then head back to Sheila Brooks’s house.

  Ashley wanted to go with him, but she had to talk to Jase. She had to see her patients in the morning, with Stephanie and Mary Kate on the schedule, especially. She could maybe postpone them until Monday, along with the two new patients, but she couldn’t abandon them like that. They needed her to be reliable. She had attended nurse-midwifery school instead of med school because her mother didn’t want to let down the local women who had come to depend on Tolliver women for their care. She wouldn’t start bailing on them now, not even for a man she cared about far too much for her own good and his mother.

  And for med school?

  That was different now. She had time to find someone to take over.

  She didn’t have time to waste on worrying about her own situation. They needed to find the Davises.

  They dropped over the Ridge to find clear skies and dry roads. She increased her speed to the maximum she knew she could get away with. Hunter didn’t say anything. Nor did he grip his knees with white-knuckled hands. He still faced the window, too quiet, too isolated. He would talk when he wanted to, or never speak to her again for being the granddaughter of Deborah Tolliver, who had helped perpetrate a lie until her granddaughter passed it on to him and delayed him getting to his mother and the brother and sister who needed the kind of help a brother like Hunter McDermott could give.

  As they merged onto I-81, Hunter turned to her at last. “We’ve got to find my brother and sister.”

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  “But Racey Jean’s boyfriend is probably looking for them as well.”

  Ashley’s heart lurched.

  “So if we find them,” Hunter continued, “and if they are in danger from this guy, we could make things worse.”

  CHAPTER 24

  ASHLEY PONDERED THAT for several miles before saying anything, then she chose her words with care. “We can let the police find them.”

  “Because they’ve done such a good job so far?” Hunter clipped out the words with an edge verging on anger.

  “They have more to go on now.” Ashley kept her voice low and calm.

  “True.” He drew one hand down the side of his face, tugging off his glasses as he did so. “Maybe I could hire a detective.”

  “I’ll make a copy of this information if you decide to do that. Meanwhile, I feel obligated to tell Jase what we know now.”

  “Of course you do.” He gave her a half smile.

  Ashley turned into the parking lot where they had left his SUV a lifetime ago. The sun was setting, no time for Hunter to be driving into unfamiliar mountains with snow falling on the other side.

  She ought to stop him, yet she couldn’t. Stopping him from helping his mother would be wrong of her.

  “I hate to let you go alone.” She reached her driveway and stopped the Tahoe.

  He took her hand in his and gave it a brief squeeze before releasing it. “I’ll be all right. I’ll take that state road, even if it’s longer.”

  “Good. It should be treated by now or shortly, and you have a good vehicle for bad weather. I wish I could help. Maybe do the shopping for you? Maybe—”

  “Ashley.” Hunter’s interruption was gentle, quiet. “You can’t manage everything.”

  “I know, but—”

  He brushed his forefinger across her lips. “This is my responsibility. I know where to ask for help if I need it.”

  Her? She suddenly wondered if she would ever see him again, and the impulse to grasp his arms and draw him close, keep him there with her, surged through her in such a strong wave she clasped her hands together atop the steering wheel. “I’ll worry.”

  “Aren’t we supposed to leave things up to God?” His smile was warm and sweet in the ambient glow of light inside the SUV.

  Ashley opened her mouth to argue, then shut it again. He sounded like Daddy. She had heard that all her life—leave things up to God. Too rarely she heeded such advice. Experiencing anxiety powerful enough to be messing with her breathing right then, she realized this was the best time of all to start.

  “I’ll try.” She blinked against a burning in her eyes.

  “So will I.” Hunter leaned over and kissed her forehead, then he was out of the Tahoe and striding across the intervening space to the Mercedes.

  That kiss, those words, felt like good-bye. What was it in French?

  Adieu rather than au revoir. With God instead of the re-seeing, to be literal. Farewell, not see you around.

  He had come to the Ridge to find his mother. Now he had found her. The only purpose Ashley now held in Hunter’s family was to give Jason Fox information that might help find Racey Jean Davis, and maybe even Jeremiah Davis. Both were likely to be in legal trouble, Jeremiah’s serious. And the boyfriend wanted them both for something serious enough to him that he was willing to assault Ashley to learn their whereabouts.

  Hunter pulled out of the parking lot and turned toward town and the grocery store.

  Ashley proceeded home. In the house the cats greeted her with yowls of complaint and purrs of joy. She fed them, pulled another package of soup out of the freezer, and called Jase.

  He took about ten minutes to reach her house. “I hope this is as important as you said it is. I need to get to the other side of the Ridge. They’re getting lots of snow over there, and the sheriff’s office has called ours for help.”

  “I know about the snow. I was over there today.” She handed him a cup of coffee. “I know who my midnight visitors were.”

  Jason’s face lit up. “Hey, that’s great. Who?”

  Ashley shared hot coffee and hotter soup with him and gave him all the information she had gathered that day, with the exception of Sheila Brooks faking her own death. They talked until Jase got a call requesting he go to the scene of an accident on the Ridge road. They both stood and he squeezed her shoulder. “Thanks for all this. I’ll put out a call. We’ll probably know where they are by morning.”

  “You’ll let me know?”

  “As soon as I can.” Then he was gone.

  Alone, all too conscious of every hiss of wind in the trees and creak of the old house, thinking maybe she should go to Heather’s again, Ashley turned on the TV for company, cleaned up the dishes, and texted her parents. NEED TO TALK. NOW!!!

  An agonizing ten minutes passed before Momma responded, R U OK?

  SAFE BUT UPSET. LEARNED SOMETHING ABOUT GRAMMA.

  Ten more minutes crawled by. She paced. She tried to pray. She turned up the heat because she couldn’t remember what being warm felt like.

  Finally the
ping of an incoming text rang, making her jump. SKYPE IN 15.

  She flew to the office to set up her laptop for the Internet video connection. To pass the time, she read news headlines. She read her e-mail. She read through the files of her patients scheduled the next day. Finally the call came through, and her parents’ dear faces showed in the external monitor she connected to her laptop to make the faces of her loved ones larger.

  “You look tense,” Momma said.

  She looked great, tanned and rested and glowing with her special brand of happiness.

  Daddy was the same. So serene.

  Ashley gripped the edge of the desk, trying to achieve calm, if nothing else. “It’s kind of a long story. Do you have time?”

  “For you, of course we do.” Daddy leaned back in his chair.

  Momma leaned closer to the screen. “Is this about a patient?”

  “Not one of mine.”

  Ashley told them about Hunter, about Sheila Brooks, about Gramma falsifying her records. Throughout the recital, her parents sat listening silently for the most part, asking her to repeat something now and again. Behind them, the occasional yell of a child penetrated the mic pickup. Once someone knocked on the door and Daddy left the screen to answer it. Other than that, Ashley spoke nonstop for nearly an hour. She was sobbing by the time she finished.

  “She lied. She broke the law,” Ashley concluded. “And I gave up going to medical school for her.”

  “Whoa there, Ash.” Daddy returned from the door in time to lean into the camera, his face intense, his voice a sonorous rumble that came across so well in the pulpit and anytime he wanted to sound authoritative. “Did you give up med school for your grandmother, or for the women needing care?”

  “I—” Ashley’s mind flew over the women Gramma had been working with at the time she fell too ill to work.

  Susie Mae Grassick was so scared of doctors from a childhood trauma that she had given birth to her first child on her own rather than get help from an obstetrician. Regan Lee had fled corporate life to live off the land and simply wanted the more natural birth processes practiced by midwives. Dozens of women since had wanted the attention, the warmth, the personalization of another woman attending their pregnancies. Then, of course, scores of other women of all ages attended Ashley’s clinics promoting good health for women. Twice, Ashley’s tests—tests the women never would have gone to a doctor to receive—had caught cervical cancer early enough for the women to gain treatment and live.

  “The women come first, of course. But I’m failing.” She laid her head on her desk for a moment and then sobbed out all her shortcomings with Mary Kate and Heather and Racey Jean.

  Momma and Daddy sat thousands of miles away, able to see at least part of her breakdown, breaking in when they couldn’t understand her. Other than that, they didn’t interrupt.

  “I feel so helpless,” she concluded, wiping her face with a wad of tissues.

  “That’s a good place to be.” Daddy’s brown eyes, so like her own, glowed with warmth. “That’s when we get willing to let the Lord take over. Not,” he added with a grin, “that he hasn’t had control all along. This is more like we surrender to what he is trying to teach us.”

  “That I should go serve at the diner?” She smiled to show them she was joking.

  Or go off to medical school?

  A surge of joy leaped inside her. If she got into Georgetown or George Washington University, she would be close to Hunter. Maybe they could see each other.

  “What about my recalcitrant patient and the missing girl and Heather?” Ashley persisted.

  And Hunter? What did she do about her feelings for him?

  “You can only be there for them,” Momma said. “You know that. You can’t control everyone’s actions, even if that would make your life easier.”

  “Since it’s not about your life,” Daddy added.

  “Of course not. I never thought—” She stopped her effusive denial. Too-effusive denial, the lady protesting too much.

  She worried about Racey Jean because it might affect her chances at med school if her work was investigated. She worried about Mary Kate because that might be a poor reflection on her midwifery skills. She was upset with Heather because her pregnancy meant she couldn’t take over the practice so that Ashley could go off to med school without any guilt toward the women of Brooks Ridge who depended on her services.

  “How did parents like you two end up with such a self-centered daughter?”

  “We have a totally beautiful inside and out daughter,” Daddy said. “You just want to be in control a little more than you should be. But you are only God’s instrument, not God himself. It’s only your job to do what he leads you to do, not take over and say where you’re supposed to be led.”

  “I gotta think about that a wee bit.” Ashley smiled and spread her arms. “I can’t wait to hug both of you. When will you be home?”

  “Two weeks.” Momma glanced at something off camera. “Do you have someplace to spend Thanksgiving? Your brothers say they haven’t heard from you.”

  “I have too many ladies close to delivery to go out of town. So I’ll probably spend it with Heather. We’ll get dinner from the diner or something.”

  She thought of Mary Kate scooping out pumpkins. “Lucy Belle makes the best pumpkin pie on the Ridge anyway.”

  “Order me a couple for Christmas.” Daddy patted his almost flat stomach. “Right now I need to get to bed and you should too. You look tired.”

  “I feel tired, and I have patients in the morning.”

  They said good night, prayed together over the cyber connection, and signed off.

  Ashley wanted to think more about what they said to her and the implications for her future, but she was too worn out. Barely able to put one foot in front of the other, she made sure all the doors and windows were locked, then climbed the steps to her room. Two cats had already taken up residency on her bed. After changing into warm pajamas, she shoved the felines over and climbed into the sheets they had warmed. Two more cats joined her. She said good night to each of them and fell asleep wondering if this was her future—climbing into bed with forty pounds of cats and saying good night to them. If she wasn’t careful, she would start reading them stories before bed instead of reading stories to real children. She simply was not on a track for having children, just catching those of others.

  When she went to med school, she wouldn’t be catching any babies except when she reached the obstetrics rotation.

  She went to sleep on that idea and woke with a sense of urgency and concern that she had slept for eight hours straight through. Even the cats had abandoned her.

  She grabbed for her phone, felt like crying when the screen showed nothing but the usual status menu of time, Wi-Fi connection, cell service, and so on. Of course Hunter wouldn’t have contacted her. He didn’t have any service in the holler where his momma lived.

  Could she maybe drive over there after she saw her patients?

  No, no, no. If he wanted her help, he would have asked. She had no right to barge in uninvited.

  She showered, dressed in her usual jeans, sweatshirt, and ballet flats, then went downstairs to make coffee and feed the cats. Not until she stood at the kitchen window did she realize that snow had come over the Ridge. Not much of it. A mere dusting of white layered the grass and shrubbery and clung to tree branches. With sunshine peeking between gaps in the mountains, the snow would be gone within the hour. For now, though, it looked clean and pure and fresh, like an empty page ready to write a new day.

  “Write on my heart, Lord, what you want from me.”

  She poured herself a cup of coffee and set about preparing for her day.

  The two new patients came first. They were sisters expecting, as best they could calculate, within a couple of weeks of one another. One was a stay-at-home mom with three kids already. The other managed a women’s clothing store in Bristol.

  “This is our busiest time of year,” she
confided, “and I am sooo tired. What can I do about it?”

  “Sleep as much as you can manage. Drink lots of water, and eat right.” Ashley eyed the young woman’s twenty or thirty excess pounds. “Lots of fruit and vegetables and lean protein.”

  “But not fish,” her sister said. “Fish is bad ’cause of the mercury.”

  “That’s always been the understanding,” Ashley affirmed. “Some studies now say the benefits of fish outweigh the risks of mercury, but the choice is up to you.”

  “I only like fish fried.” The sisters made the proclamation practically in unison.

  “Then let’s skip fish.” Ashley gave the women brochures on nutrition she and Momma had made up years earlier, gave them bottles of vitamins, and told them to come back in two weeks. “And feel free to e-mail or call anytime you have questions or concerns.”

  Clutching their information, the sisters departed, talking and laughing and looking joyous in the shimmering sunlight. One’s husband was a long-haul trucker, and the other one wasn’t married. Motherhood couldn’t be easy for either of them, yet anticipation of new life made them both happy.

  And Ashley was jealous, just plain, embarrassingly jealous.

  Ashamed of such a reaction to two new patients, Ashley greeted Stephanie with a hug and overenthusiastic expressions of how great she looked.

  “I can’t believe you can still walk around in heels and look so fashionable in maternity clothes.”

  Stephanie sank onto the exam bed. “I feel like I’m carrying around Shamu.” She patted her belly. “Every step feels like I’m running a marathon. And my shoes only fit because I bought some a half size up.”

  Stephanie’s face lit up. “But we have the nursery all ready, thanks to my adorable husband, and I can stop working as of next Wednesday.”

  “None too soon.”

  Ashley examined Stephanie, checking the baby’s position, listening to the baby’s heartbeat. Stephanie’s pulse and blood pressure were perfect. She hadn’t gained an ounce more than she should have. Her ankles weren’t even swollen.