The Breath of Dawn

by Kristen Heitzmann

  Blinking tears from her eyes, she slipped into her chair. What did she have to feel testy about? This was wonderful.

  But the plates had barely begun passing when Liam shuffled into the room, coughing and flushed. Dismayed, Noelle lifted him into her arms, murmuring an apology as she stood. Rick made a move, but she waved him back. Given the matching flush on Noelle’s cheeks, Quinn doubted either would be back soon.

  They passed plates to Rick for crisp, succulent turkey, then heaped on potatoes, stuffing, cornbread pudding, and savory roasted vegetables. Rudy’s homemade cranberry chutney and the crusty dinner rolls from the professor rounded out the meal. She absorbed the compliments like a sponge in the desert.

  With a stirring in the eyes of someone who loves seeking and imparting knowledge, Dr. Jenkins turned to her. “Morgan tells me you’ve discovered the sanitarium remains.”

  She nodded. “He thought you might know what sort of place it was.”

  “As with anything, the stories are wide and varied. Vera might have told you some, but sadly, I hear she passed.”

  “Yes.” She took a bite so delicious she almost groaned. Not bad, if she did say so herself. She caught Morgan’s eye, and when he raised his own bite in a toast, she realized he’d plucked the thought right out of her head.

  Dr. Jenkins said, “I made you copies of the tales I’ve collected, bits and pieces of asylum lore.” He presented a brief history, mostly dates of operation and the like. “I won’t say more now, since some of it’s not for tender ears or dinnertime.”

  “Good,” Rick said. “I don’t want to lose my appetite for a feast like this.”

  The professor shifted glibly on. “I understand you shop estates. Have you come across other interesting pieces over the years?”

  She brightened. “The best was a cabinet of curiosities.”

  “Really.” His interest piqued. “Those were private precursors to museums, you know, though with dubious provenance.”

  “This one had a stuffed dodo on a perch. The doors were lined with silk and velvet and displayed small framed photos of circus performers. The shelves held a jar of mummy dust, a sample of Sasquatch fur, arrowheads and grizzly teeth, a fossilized snail, and a glassed insect collection.”

  “Perfect.” He smiled, delighted.

  Rudy asked her to describe the dodo and she did, laughing. “Mostly I find decorative or useful things. Some quite beautiful.”

  “Ah, beauty.”

  She loved the reverence Dr. Jenkins gave the word. Their discussion followed a natural flow, drawing Rick and Rudy in as well.

  About halfway through, Livie pointed her fork at the window. “It snowing, Daddy.”

  “Snowing hard,” he agreed, the first thing he’d said since the meal began.

  They all looked out.

  “Guess we’ll see what it does.” Rick pressed a napkin to his mouth. “The forecast is all over the place.”

  Rudy sliced his turkey with gusto. “This morning it smelled like the mother of all storms.”

  He smelled the weather?

  Rudy took a bite worthy of his frame. “This turkey’s stupendous.”

  She smiled. “Only a few thousand calories in peanut oil.”

  “Don’t you know it.”

  She laughed. When she had misunderstood Morgan’s motives, she’d resented Rudy. Now she was enjoying him and the professor—even if she hadn’t imagined Thanksgiving dinner with four men and a baby.

  CHAPTER

  9

  Somewhere between chopping potatoes and finishing his pumpkin pie, Morgan knew he was in trouble. Noelle hadn’t come back after taking Liam up to bed, but Quinn held her own with four guys, three of them engaging her with a conversant ease he couldn’t seem to manage, yet every time she opened her mouth, he had to hear what she would say. He’d interacted with Quinn in other situations. But sharing this meal, listening, watching, was like a black-and-white movie being colorized—skin tones warming, hues deepening, brightening.

  She reacted to something someone said, and her laugh had a throaty quality like the best actresses, not manly but feminine in a sexy way that kicked him. He wasn’t dead. He was virile. And for the first time since he’d walked away from a hole in the earth, he remembered that.

  A gust of wind slapped snow against the window like fat white hands pleading to come in. The storm had gained corporeal mass. He looked down the length of the table at Rick. Unless they wanted to give everyone the bum’s rush, they should offer them rooms. One thing this ranch had was shelter in a storm. But that meant a night. And a morning.

  Pulling his thoughts from Quinn, he focused on cleaning Livie up before she left her booster seat. Quinn stood too and started clearing plates.

  “I’ll get the dishes, please,” Rick said. “Make yourselves comfortable in the great room. Morgan, can you light the fire?”

  Rick had laid it earlier with thigh-sized logs in the gargantuan stone mouth, a fire that would burn for hours and set every face aglow.

  “Morgan?”

  “Yeah. Okay.” He moved with their guests to the great room. Leaving Livie at the toy box, he flicked the long-neck lighter and touched it to the kindling at regular intervals. Heat pushed against his face, but he did a thorough job before straightening. It would burn evenly and well.

  Rudy moved to the sideboard, where he’d set a bottle of Courvoisier on arrival. He poured a snifter and held it out. Morgan shook his head.

  “Well, I know it’s not the top shelf you’re used to, but it’s not rotgut either.”

  “It doesn’t agree with me.”

  Rudy eyed him. “Courvoisier?”

  “Alcohol. It no longer finds a home in my stomach.” Rudy had surely noticed he spent little time at the Boar since returning, but he’d have no reason to know it cut across the board.

  “How do you party?”

  Morgan looked at his little girl. “Well, sometimes we put on funny hats and pretend we’re animals.”

  Rudy guffawed, but he was still puzzling a change that profound. Quinn had followed the exchange, perhaps equally puzzled, but she hadn’t known him before.

  “I wouldn’t mind a taste on the porch with my pipe,” Dr. Jenkins put in.

  “Too nasty on the porch, Professor.” Morgan swung his hand. “Sit here on the hearth.”

  Eyeing the sizable aperture, Dr. Jenkins drew a burled pipe from his pocket. “I imagine there’s a pretty good draft.”

  As they traded places, Rudy held a glass out to Quinn.

  “No thanks. I have to drive.”

  The word pierced like a barb. Morgan said, “You’re not driving. Look outside.” He was near enough that the fire might explain sweat breaking out on his neck. Only it wasn’t that, based on the matching rush of his heart. “You won’t see what’s coming.”

  “I can drive in snow.”

  “Not like this.” His heart became a fist punching his ribs. Moms’ night out. Sundowner winds igniting parched hillsides like flaming locusts, billowing smoke and ash into a blinding shroud.

  He heard her voice through a tunnel. “ . . . probably should leave now.”

  “You can’t!”

  Rudy and the professor stared discreetly.

  “You guys either. We have cabins. You should stay.”

  Rudy shrugged. “It’s a storm, Morgan.” No snow would stop that mountain man. And if one went, they’d all go.

  He clenched his hands. His airway constricted. He’d sound like a fool begging.

  But Quinn looked out again and nodded. “Actually, a cabin sounds good.”

  He sensed her indulgence and didn’t care. Anything to keep her off the roads.

  “Daddy.” Livie ran over and hugged his leg. It was just what he needed—to crouch down low and recover. He buried his face against her head. Two attacks within weeks and both about Quinn. There was nothing confusing in that. He concentrated on pulling air into his lungs, visualized his heart rate slowing.

  When he came out
of it, the professor was talking. He’d been talking, the mellow tone of his voice interspersed by draws on his pipe. Rick responded from the other side of the room, where his fingers plucked a stream of praise on his guitar. Morgan sat back on the hearth and held Livie between his knees, warm and breathing. She turned and kissed his mouth, then replaced his kiss with her thumb.

  The sweat had dried, his racing pulse slowed. Quinn sipped from a cordial glass, proof she wouldn’t renege. Rudy sat on the edge of a chair, all brandy-warmed and smitten. Had anyone checked on Noelle?

  “I’ll be right back,” he told Livie’s ear and unfolded himself from around her.

  Rick’s gaze followed him up the stairs with generosity and trust. His brother had depths not everyone attained.

  Morgan put a knuckle to the door. “Noelle?”

  “Come in.” She sat reading in the wing chair, with a softly snoring Liam on her chest. Both were draped by a knitted throw. Mentholatum scented the air from a vaporizer in the corner, but over that lay the stale trace of illness.

  He left the door open behind him for more reasons than one. “How are you guys?”

  “Contagious.”

  When he sat down on the footstool, she slid the bookmark into her novel and set it down beside the hardly touched plate of food. “Is Quinn doing all right?”

  “She’s great. Rudy’s a goner. The professor’s entertaining everyone.”

  “I so wanted to see him.” Her eyes made a slow blink and stayed half-mast.

  “He’ll be here in the morning. They’re staying over.”

  “It’s that bad out?”

  He cleared his throat. “Seemed like it.”

  She caught his meaning. “Are you okay?”

  “What’s a little meltdown, right?”

  Liam shifted in her arms, then settled. It took an act of God to wake him at the best of times. This wasn’t one.

  Her brow furrowed. “I wonder why that’s started again.”

  “Damaged nerves refiring.”

  “Better than paralysis.”

  He stared at his hands, uncertain he agreed.

  “It’s not wrong to care, Morgan.”

  “It’s not smart.”

  She tipped her head. “Go look in my top right dresser drawer.”

  With exaggerated reluctance, he rose and obeyed. The drawer held a few silk scarves, gloves, and a box he recognized.

  “Open it.”

  He didn’t need to. It held the eggshell he’d once given her to symbolize the walls around her heart.

  “You helped me crack my shell, Morgan. Now you need to break out of your own.”

  His throat constricted. “I didn’t miss her tonight.” He looked over his shoulder. “It’s Thanksgiving, and I should have thought, If Jill were here . . .”

  “She’s not.” A shadow crossed her face. “But you and Livie are.”

  He closed the drawer and turned. “I thought my heart was steel.”

  She smiled softly. “I never believed that for a minute.”

  He flexed and clenched his hands. “I don’t know what God expects.”

  “He wants you to live.”

  That took so much more than drawing the next breath. It took a leap of faith he wasn’t sure he’d land. After a while he looked up. “Can I get you something?”

  “Hot cider would be fabulous.”

  “I can do fabulous.” He took the dinner plate away. Descending, he passed by the others in the great room, their conversation a circular eddy buoyed on the strains of guitar strings. In the kitchen, he ladled Noelle a mug of cider. He was about to take it upstairs when Quinn asked to do it.

  “She’s worried about contagion.”

  “I never get sick.”

  “That’s because you live alone. Here it’s a merry-go-round—on again off again up again down again.”

  She took the cup undeterred. “The professor has a question for you.”

  Looking into her face, he heard Noelle telling him to live. He hadn’t gone looking, but staring after Quinn, he wondered how painful a rebound might be.

  In the upstairs hall, Quinn watched Noelle back out of a bedroom with crayon drawings taped to the door. Liam’s room, she guessed.

  Seeing her, Noelle whispered, “He might finally stay down.”

  They went into a room less rustically furnished than the rest of the house, with cherrywood furniture. Noelle dropped into a wing chair and draped herself with a multicolor throw made of fabulous shaggy yarns and ribbons.

  “That’s awesome.”

  Noelle smiled. “Last summer’s art fair. Are you cold?”

  “No.” She set the cider on the Queen Anne table. “I hope you don’t mind that I took over from Morgan.”

  “I’m glad you did. I feel awful leaving you to the guys.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “There’s no shortage of testosterone.”

  Noelle laughed, then coughed torturously. “Excuse me.” She shook her head. “This stuff kicks my butt.”

  Coming so surprisingly from sophisticated Noelle, Quinn couldn’t stop her own laugh. “I’m sorry. I didn’t expect you to say that.”

  “I got it from Liam.”

  “Liam?”

  “I believe he got it from Morgan, but Morgan’s admitting nothing.”

  “Speaking of Morgan . . .” Quinn took the other wing chair and drew her feet up cross-legged. “I wasn’t going to ask, but is he sick?”

  Noelle sipped her cider and swallowed. “Not the way you mean.”

  “Twice now—”

  “I know. Panic attacks.” Noelle set down her cup and seemed to consider her words. “Morgan’s intensely private right now, but I think, if you give him the chance, he’ll explain.”

  He’d had the chance and passed, both times. “It’s just kind of scary.” Especially that first time in the cellar, though the ambience hadn’t helped.

  “I’m glad you agreed to stay.”

  “I got the feeling it mattered.”

  “It did.” Noelle studied her a moment. “Until now, he wouldn’t have cared enough to worry. You’ve made an impact.”

  Not what she’d intended, and yet . . . She tucked up a corner of the cushy afghan from the floor. “Would you like me to make a dinner plate for you?”

  “I got some from Rick, and it was wonderful.” Noelle sank back in the chair. “I’d kill for a slice of that pie though.”

  “Plain pumpkin or walnut streusel?”

  “Ordinarily I’d say streusel. But with this throat . . .”

  “One slice plain pumpkin coming up.” Quinn slipped out.

  In the kitchen she cut a slice, but Rick came in and relieved her as though they were a relay team passing the baton.

  He said, “I need to check in with her.”

  She could see the worry in his eyes. These Spencer men were long on protective genes.

  Morgan lay propped on his side near a wooden ark with little animals all around him. As he stayed perfectly still, Livie perched an elephant on his shoulder. It toppled, and she tried three times before it balanced. Laudable commitment to the goal. When he raised his eyes, Quinn met them with a smile. He didn’t look away.

  Instead of retaking her seat, she sat on the floor with Livie, who immediately laid a giraffe on her knee. Quinn stood it up and made it say hi. Livie’s face lit. Morgan crooked a brow. His animals were just sitting there. Hers talked.

  Livie handed her a bear, and the bear had quite a bit to say to the giraffe. The corners of Morgan’s mouth deepened. He slow-blinked when Livie took the elephant from his shoulder and stood it with the bear and giraffe. He mouthed Traitor.

  She ducked her chin, laughing silently as the elephant joined the conversation. It wasn’t her fault if he didn’t know how to play dolls.

  Across the room, Rudy looked from her to Morgan and back. His shoulders rounded. “Well, I guess I’ll take off.” He stood up. “Quinn, it was the best turkey I ever tasted.”

  “I’m glad you we
re here for it.” She meant that.

  Dr. Jenkins looked out the darkened window. “Sure you want to brave it?”

  “My Wagoneer’ll plow through anything.” Rudy pulled on his coat and wrapped a scarf over his face.

  Still propped on his side, Morgan pivoted toward Rudy. “I wish you’d stay. You’ll have better visibility in the morning.”

  Now that darkness had fallen, the drive through a blizzard on mountain roads would be treacherous.

  “Gertie needs her milk.”

  “Gertie?” Quinn craned up to see him at closer range.

  “His cat,” Morgan said. They all knew she’d survive a night without milk. But Rudy was determined.

  Morgan looked from the door closing behind his friend to her. Did he think she’d change her mind? She wouldn’t do that when it obviously mattered, but she rose when Dr. Jenkins nodded toward her, drawing a manila envelope from his briefcase.

  She sat down beside him on the hearth, biting a hangnail. “So truthfully, how tough is this material?”

  He considered a moment. “Some success stories, an interview with one of the directors many years after the fact, local legends, and as I mentioned, some horrors.”

  She nodded. “There’s an electrocution bed in the cellar.”

  The skin around his eyes creased deeply. “You mean electroshock.”

  “Right. That.”

  “And the term is now electroconvulsive therapy.”

  “Now?” She stared, distressed. “It’s still happening?”

  “Oh yes, abuses coupled with the development of antipsychotic and mood-stabilizing drugs curtailed its use, but recently it’s had a resurgence. A hundred to a hundred fifty thousand patients a year in the US alone—under rigidly controlled hospital administration.”

  “Why?”

  “Quite simply, it works. Electrically causing the brain to seize can be efficacious when drugs fail. Along the lines of defibrillation for the heart. A sort of kick start to reestablish normal rhythm.”