He returned the vial to his bag and then headed over to McGinty’s to fetch his tenting sheets and some string. When he got back he was pleased to see that Dixie had already brought in two large basins of hot water and set them on the floor near the head of Rose’s bed. Steam wisped throughout the little room. She’d also brought in several more pillows and Rose now reclined with her head elevated to a satisfactory level.
He gave Dixie a nod of thanks and set to tying off the strings of the tent.
All these months…married. Tension was giving him a headache. His jaw ached, and he purposely stretched his neck from side to side to relax the muscles.
“I have two more basins heating downstairs.” Her voice was so soft he barely heard her.
“Good thinking.” The words emerged clipped and gruff.
He gritted his teeth. He shouldn’t be so hard on her. It wasn’t like she’d ever invited any of his attentions. In fact, quite to the contrary, she’d rebuffed his every advance. Why, just a couple months ago he’d bid for the pleasure of enjoying her company at the town’s boxed supper which had been organized to raise funds for building a schoolhouse and church. Instead of thanking him, she’d taken him aside and told him she would be happy to share her basket dinner with him but that he must never again press his suit. Then she’d promptly invited Sheriff Callahan and Miss Brindle to join them for the meal. He’d been puzzled by her resistance. Because there had been times when he’d felt that Miss Pottinger—Mrs., he silently corrected himself—had feelings for him as well.
With a quick glance in her direction, he forced his thoughts back to the present. “If you could help me by tying this string to the foot of the bed?” He held out one end of the string to her like a white flag of surrender. After all, it was good that he now knew where he stood with her. At least they might be friends.
She took the string hesitantly, her large brown eyes searching his.
He gave her a nod of reassurance, accompanied by a gentle smile that he hoped offered a guarantee of his friendship. “Stretch it nice and tight.”
Was her sigh one of relief, or regret? He couldn’t quite tell. Nevertheless, she did as he’d asked, and it was only a moment before he had the sheets draped over the string frame and the steaming basins of water tucked beneath the hems that hung all the way to the floor.
He stepped back and assessed. They’d done all that they could do. Now the waiting would begin.
It would be up to the good Lord, and to Rose, whether she lived or not.
When Dr. Griffin turned to the door, Dixie called his name softly. “I know I’ve hurt you by withholding my story from you. I’d like to explain a little, if you have the time?”
He eyed the door as though he might regret not having made his escape, but then settled into his heels and nodded for her to continue.
Now that she was on the verge of telling him her story—a story she’d almost spilled to him more times than she could remember—she felt anxious to get it over with. Still, she had to make sure he was ready to hear it. “This might take a while. Are you sure you have time?”
He nodded. “I’ve no other patients pressing for my attention at the moment.”
“Very well.” She swept a gesture into the sitting room toward the settee. “Please, let’s sit.”
He took the settee and she took the chair. She ran a trembling hand over her skirt, searching for the best footing to begin on. Finally, she lifted her gaze to his. “I believe you know I was from South Carolina originally?”
Flynn shifted. “I knew you were from the east, somewhere.”
“Yes. Well…I left home at the age of seventeen”—Flynn’s brow furrowed, but he held his silence, so she pressed on—“and moved to the town of Birch Run, South Carolina. I was young and naïve the first time I met Steven Pottinger, my husband, at a city fundraiser. Rose was—is—Steven’s mother.” She tipped her head toward the bedroom where Ma lay resting and waited for his certain reaction. It wasn’t long in coming.
He jolted forward. “Wait. Rose isn’t even your own mother?”
Dixie shook her head. “I think all will be clear when I’m done with the telling.”
He leaned back into the seat and folded his arms, giving a stiff nod for her to continue.
She winced, recognizing that she had hurt him more than she first realized with her deceptions. But there was nothing for it but to press ahead now. “Rose had asked me to help run the auction portion of the night. The benefit was to raise funds for a new clinic in town. Steven, the newly-elected town mayor, was handsome and charming. For several months he wooed me with flowers, and dinners, and gifts, and then he asked me to marry him. I had just fled from a father who was more often drunk than sober since the death of my mother two years before. I didn’t see myself ever going back to a man who resented the work of providing for me, so I agreed to Steven’s proposal.”
Flynn’s fists clenched until they were white around the knuckles.
Dixie pressed on, determined to get the telling over with. “It wasn’t until after we returned from our wedding trip that things took a turn for the worse. Rose, who had been widowed years earlier, lived in her own apartment at the back of Steven’s house. As you know, she is a quiet woman, and I found it difficult to connect with her. Those first days at home alone with Rose while Steven went to his office resonated with awkward silences and stilted conversations. But slowly Rose and I built a tentative connection. Rose appreciated having me in the house during the long lonely days, and I was thankful for a mother-in-law who seemed to want to be a friend more than a competitor.”
Flynn’s gaze bored steadily into her own, one of his fists pressed to his lips.
Dixie’s hands trembled fiercely now, for this was to be the difficult part. She laced her fingers together tightly in her lap. “I noticed the scar on Rose’s forearm as we did the lunch dishes one day. Rose had rolled up her sleeves, and it was when she had pulled her hands out of the soapy water that I saw a ghastly round mark. I reached for the wound, asking if she was injured and what had happened. But Rose quickly pulled back and brushed away my concern. She said it was nothing. That she’d bumped it on the stove.”
Flynn snorted. “I hear similar stories so often.”
Dixie nodded. He’d shared his concerns over women from the logging camps with her on several occasions. “Anyhow, I didn’t press her. I’d never seen a stove-burn quite in that shape before but figured perhaps there was something inside the door that might have caused it. Rose seemed fine, so I set aside my concern. It was two days later that I experienced Steven’s carefully hidden anger for the first time.”
Flynn’s eyes dropped closed, and he shifted on the settee.
Dixie pressed ahead. “We had attended a town council meeting. The council members wanted to raise funds to bring Birch Run its own doctor. Steven disagreed. He said the traveling doctor who came through once every three weeks was sufficient. When I spoke up on the side of the council, I saw that I’d upset him. But I had no idea what was coming…”
As though he could no longer be bound to stillness, Flynn lurched to his feet and paced to the window that overlooked the street below.
Dixie alternately smoothed and disturbed one of the lace tiers in her skirt. “Steven maintained his calm demeanor until we walked into our home. The moment the door closed, he…he…knocked me to the ground.”
Hands clasped behind his back, Flynn tensed. His gaze remained fastened out the window.
“I tried to fight him. But I was so shocked. And then…” Her fingers trembled to the point of uselessness as she fought the buttons at her cuff.
Flynn turned to look at her, and there was so much pain in his gaze that Dixie couldn’t meet his eyes.
She tugged her sleeve up and held out her arm, revealing her shame to another for the first time.
Flynn ground out a sound that fell somewhere between a grunt of shock and a groan of despair.
The marks on her arm were of course
healed over now, but she would never be able to forget the anticipation in Steven’s eyes as he’d pinned her arm to the floor and very deliberately pulled a cigar from the inner pocket of his suit jacket.
“He lit a cigar and…I again tried to fight him, but…he planted his boot into my chest and pinned me to the ground. Each of his movements were slow and purposeful, calculated to elicit the most terror possible, I’m certain. All the while, he never took his eyes off of me.” Dixie’s throat felt so tight she thought her voice might fail her, but she forced herself to continue. “With his foot still pressed against me, he folded his arms over his knee and inhaled slowly on his cigar and then blew the smoke into my face. ‘Don’t. You. Ever. Disagree like that. With me. In public. Again.’ He gritted every word between clenched teeth. I was unable to respond for lack of air.”
Flynn dropped to one knee before her and gently tugged her sleeve down to cover the scars. Carefully and ever so gently, he smoothed the material and then fastened the buttons at her wrist. He curled both hands around hers and met her gaze. Moisture shimmered in his eyes, but his voice was steady when he urged, “Go on. Tell me everything.”
Enveloped by Flynn’s tenderness, Dixie fought her own tears. If only she’d met Flynn years ago. “That first time, he kept me pinned to the floor, easing up his foot just enough to allow me to snatch a quick breath every once in a while. Periodically, he tapped the hot ashes off above my face. When the cigar was down to a nub, he straddled me and pinned my arm to the ground. And…and…” Unable to meet Flynn’s sorrowful gaze for a moment longer she looked away.
“Shhhh. I understand. I’m so sorry.” Flynn pressed a kiss against the back of each of her hands.
“I lived every moment in terror after that day. I never knew what was going to set him off. It was on the day that he took a baseball bat to me that Rose shot him.”
Flynn released her hands but remained on one knee before her. He rubbed his fingers across his forehead, and Dixie could tell that it was taking him a moment to process the fact that Rose had shot her own son. Or perhaps it was anger at the base of his agitated movements, for his jaw bunched repeatedly.
The bone-deep weariness that Dixie seemed to have carried with her for years had sapped so much of her strength she could only be glad she was already seated. But the telling was almost finished now. “One moment he had me pinned to the wall and was ramming the end of the bat into my stomach, and the next a shot rang out and he slumped to the floor. I remember that smoke still spiraled from Rose’s gun when I looked over. Rose wanted to go immediately to the sheriff and turn herself in. But I had personal experience with the attitude of Birch Run’s sheriff. I’d gone to him many times. Showed him my scars and burns and tried to get him to help me, but he always scoffed and said I must be concocting stories—one time he actually accused me of injuring myself. Because of that, I talked Rose into running. We left Steven bleeding where he lay, and ran with only the clothes on our backs. So you see, that’s why I don’t know if I’m a widow, or not. Because, Lord forgive me, I left him there. And…I can only hope that he did indeed die.” She sighed. “But I’m so tired, Flynn. So tired of constantly thinking about a man I wish I could never think about again. But every day there’s so much hate inside me. And now I’ve hurt you. I couldn’t bear it if—”
With a quick tug, Flynn brought one of her hands close, curled his thumb around hers, and dropped a fervent kiss on her knuckles. He didn’t offer any words, but when he met her gaze there was a world of forgiveness shining in his eyes.
A sigh of relief slipped from her. The terrible task of telling all was done. And Flynn would still be her friend. For now, that was all that she could ask for.
CHAPTER THREE
Charlotte Brindle sat at her desk and studied the children spread out at the various tables around Dixie’s dining-room-cum-schoolhouse. All of them were studiously writing the essay she had assigned about what Christmas meant to them.
All of them except Washington Nolan and Kincaid Davis. Washington was staring across the room at Zoe Kastain. And nothing she’d tried since the school year began seemed to keep Kincaid engaged for more than fifteen minutes. The boy was probably the smartest one in the room.
Charlotte cleared her throat softly.
Washington jolted a little and looked at her.
She pinched her lips together and arched a disapproving brow.
His face flushed till it nearly matched the berries on the clusters of holly they’d strung about the room just yesterday, and he returned his focus to his lessons.
When she narrowed her gaze on Kincaid, he only held up two sheets of paper for her to see that he was already done. The boy was too smart for his own good. They’d discussed this in the past, however. Even if he finished early, she expected him to search the paper over and neatly erase and make any corrections he felt might improve the clarity of his words. After a moment more of her meeting him, challenging gaze for challenging gaze, he finally picked up his pencil and turned his focus to the paper on his desk.
Satisfied that he was, at least for the moment, back to his lessons, Charlotte turned her attention to the clock. Only two minutes closer to half past three than it had been the last time she checked. She groaned mentally and then suppressed a chuckle. In all honesty, she could hardly keep her lips from spilling her secret to the children. She had forced herself to wait till the end of today’s lessons, but the clock seemed to be ticking slower with each passing second.
Just another week and then school would let out for the Christmas season. Several weeks back, she had wired her father and mother asking them if they would be willing to collect some donations of toys for the children of Wyldhaven and ship them out on the train from Boston. And just today when she’d stepped over to the post office on her lunch break to see if she had any letters, Mr. Ben King had handed her a telegram from Father. A thrill of anticipation had zipped through her when she read that he would be shipping the toys on next week’s train. That meant the toys would arrive well in time for Christmas.
She nearly clapped her hands in glee even now as she thought about it. Perhaps she shouldn’t tell the children though? What if something happened to the shipment and it didn’t arrive in time? But no… She really couldn’t help herself, and this was almost the twentieth century. Nothing was going to happen to the train. In all the months she’d been here the train had arrived in Snohomish on its regular schedule like clockwork. The Wyldhaven coach then took on any supplies destined for Wyldhaven and arrived promptly each Saturday—a recent change from Thursdays, which used to be the day it arrived. Dixie’s food order for the boardinghouse came on it, and had never been a day late. So…
Washington’s focus had wandered to Zoe again.
Charlotte cleared her throat. This time he didn’t look up at her, but merely jerked his attention back to his desk. His ears did turn pink, however.
Charlotte returned her gaze to the papers she should be grading at her desk, but she was having a hard time concentrating. She picked up the other letter she’d received when she went to the post office and fiddled with one corner of the envelope. She didn’t need to read it again. The contents had been indelibly seared on her memory the first time.
The truth was, she felt a little put out with the species known as men in general, lately. It had been more than two months since Sheriff Callahan had kissed her at her shooting lesson, yet the man had hardly said two words to her since then. She saw him about town, and at his mother’s place where she boarded, of course. But whenever she appeared, he seemed to have sudden urgent business that called him to another part of town. She could read unspoken messages as well as anyone. And the message the sheriff was sending was that their kiss had been a mistake of the gravest proportions. A mistake that he did not wish to repeat.
Thus the second letter she’d received from Mr. Zebulon Heath, Wyldhaven’s founder, really ought to be a relief. Yet somehow she hadn’t been able to talk her way around to seeing it
that way. Sheriff Callahan, on the other hand, would likely be elated.
So stop thinking about him, then, and move on with life.
Finally, the minute hand pointed at half past three. She gave the little bell on her desk a ring. “Class, you may put away your papers and pencils. We’ll work on your essays again tomorrow. For now, I have a surprise to share with you.”
Murmurs of anticipation traversed the room as the students stored their supplies and then turned their focus on her.
Realizing she still held Mr. Heath’s letter, Charlotte set it down and folded her hands on the desk. “As you all know, Christmas is just a few weeks away.”
A chorus of excited yelps and “hoorays” greeted her.
“After this Friday, I’m going to give you three weeks off to enjoy the Christmas season, and we’ll resume school again after the first of the year.” The tail end of her sentence had to be practically shouted overtop the choruses of cheers that were resonating through the room. She held up her hands for silence. “And I just wanted you all to know that I need each of you to finish out these last few days of school with hard work and good attitudes.”
This sentiment was greeted with a round of subtle grumbles.
“Because… I’m going to have a surprise for each of you. And it’s all the way from Boston!”
“Oh my lands! Something direct from Boston!” Zoe Kastain leapt out of her chair, raised her newly cast-free arm above her head and spun in a quick circle. Several others jumped up and down or danced little jigs by their desks. Washington Nolan wore a slight smile, but he and his brothers were much more stoic than the rest of their younger classmates. And at the back of the room, Belle Kastain, Zoe’s sister, had a gleam of satisfaction in her eyes, if not a smile on her face. Kincaid Davis watched her with curiosity in his eyes, but Charlotte suddenly realized she couldn’t recall ever seeing the young man smile.
On Eagles' Wings (Wyldhaven Book 2) Page 2
