Home by Morning

by Alexis Harrington

  “Uh-huh.”

  While Roscoe bounded around the brush, Amy pointed here and there, her lavender skirts brushing through the yellow grass, picking up seed tops along the way. Her honey hair was caught in a loose knot on top of her head and gleamed like a thoroughbred’s. Now and then, a breeze kicked up to snag a few strands that had escaped their pins. The sun, which had hidden behind a gray veil of clouds all day, had emerged for the last hour of daylight, casting lambent gold over the west-facing sage-and-cream-painted house, and over her. Amy was a very pretty young woman, with a heart to match.

  Not for the first time, Cole pondered the fact that he’d never really noticed her when Jessica had lived in Powell Springs. Amy had always been there, a shy girl who had stayed close to her mother. Then when Lenore Layton died, she’d clung to the Layton housekeeper. He didn’t remember much about her except that she had played with her dolls, hated getting dirty, and had turned beet-red whenever he’d looked at her. Jess, on the other hand, had liked poking around under rocks to see what lived beneath them, or collecting bugs and pond water to bring home to her father’s microscope. For all that she was smart and learned, Jessica had never been a stuffy bluestocking. She’d been protective of Amy, but it wasn’t until Jess left that Amy had seemed to bloom.

  Once her sister was gone and her father had died, she had made friends with Susannah, and it hadn’t been unusual for him to come in after a long work day and find Amy Layton as a guest at the Braddock dinner table. She had plied him with questions about the horses and the farm, and hung on his every word. He’d had to admit to himself that he was flattered by her attention.

  Everyone loved Amy.

  How could he not?

  She walked back to his side, her face radiant with joy. “Cole, this is such a beautiful house. It’s a shame to let it stand empty now that it’s almost finished.”

  He had chosen a good place to build the two-story home. It backed up to a tree-covered hill, where it would be sheltered from sharp winter winds and get the summer sun for a garden. Its wide, wraparound porch would be a comfortable place to sit on mild evenings and watch the sunset. He tried to forget that he had once pictured Jessica sitting on the porch with him.

  Slinging an arm over Amy’s narrow shoulders, he smiled down at her. “You’ve done a great job of putting it all together. I’m just an old cowboy at heart. If it was up to me, I’d probably bed down on a cot next to the stove in the kitchen.”

  “Goodness, I’m sure it will never have to be like that!” she said, laughing. “You’ll need decently cooked meals, and someone,” she added archly, “to sew your shirts and keep the house cleaner than our housekeeper did. You know, poor Jessica was never good at any of those things. Oh, did I mention Mrs. Donaldson let it slip that she’s making a brand-new quilt for me as a gift for my hope chest?”

  “Speaking of gifts,” he said, “I picked up a little something for you in town today.” He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a tiny box.

  “What is it?” she asked, as delighted as a little girl.

  “Open it and find out.”

  She took the box from him and opened it to reveal a pair of small cameo earrings. He’d seen them in the jeweler’s window after he’d left Jessica and was heading for the post office to pick up the ranch’s mail.

  “Aren’t they beautiful,” she said, her tone oddly flat as she stared at the carved profiles lying on the black velvet of the box. “But—but why?”

  He realized she’d seen the small box and expected a ring.

  He shrugged, a surge of disquiet rolling through him. “No reason. I saw them and thought you’d like them.”

  She smiled up at him. “Oh, I do like them. I’m so lucky. What woman could ask for more?”

  He hugged her to him and inhaled the vanilla fragrance of her. She was so delicately made, she felt almost like a child in his arms. Maybe if they’d been married already, this heavy, unnamable emptiness wouldn’t be sitting in his chest like a rock. Again. Still.

  She drew back and looked into his eyes. “Life hasn’t seemed normal since America entered the war. I know you have a big job to do with Riley gone. But nothing and no one stands in our way now.”

  Her meaning was so obvious, he almost expected her to propose. Why couldn’t he just do what was expected of him?

  He swallowed, trying to dislodge that knot in his chest. “Sounds good to me.” He kissed her then, a sweet and tender touch of lips. Beyond hand-holding, it was the only intimacy they had ever shared. More than this would seem somehow, well, a defilement of Amy. Her aura of simple virtue stopped him from going any further. He couldn’t even imagine it. “I guess we should go. Susannah has dinner waiting for us. Besides, after rolling bandages and organizing a parade, you’re probably done in for the day.”

  He took her arm and steered her back toward the ranch house, a quarter-mile to the west across the flat, green expanse of pasture. Split-rail fences rimmed the area, where sleek, healthy horses bowed their necks to nip the grass. The dog trotted ahead of them. It was a peaceful scene—the pale, hushed twilight, the soft nickering in the herd, the house in the distance.

  Amy was right—nothing stood between them now.

  Not one thing. Not even the secret hand on his heart.

  CHAPTER NINE

  By the time everyone was assembled at the table, Cole was starving. It was a fair-size group Susannah had to cook for. She had Cole, his father, their foreman, Tanner Grenfell, Tanner’s two young nephews, Wade and Joshua, and tonight, Amy. Before the war began, when the crew was bigger, they’d had their own cook in the bunkhouse. Now there was more work than ever and fewer people to do it.

  Somehow Susannah managed. She had the same steel-cored resilience that Jessica had. No one asked how she did it all. She simply did what had to be done. But even Cole had to admit, the strain was beginning to show. Some mornings she appeared at the breakfast table with purple shadows beneath her eyes, or her long black curls tied back hastily with a strip of leather. Cole often heard her pacing the hallway long after everyone was in bed, or puttering in the kitchen. He didn’t believe she’d slept an entire night through since Riley left. One day he’d passed her bedroom and it caught his eye that she’d moved their silver-framed wedding photograph from the dresser to her nightstand, as if she might bring him closer.

  They were well into a savory meal of fried chicken when Pop blared across the dinner table, “Well, Mrs. Braddock, what does our war hero have to say for himself in that letter?” With the mail that Cole had brought home was a letter from Riley to Susannah.

  Susannah sat at her place, scanning Riley’s hasty scribbles written on water-stained paper. “He says it’s been raining for days on end…his clothes are never dry and in the trenches they stand ankle-deep in water and—and worse…they’re sleeping in the wet. Lord above, he keeps saying they’re eating monkey meat. That can’t be right.”

  “If a man’s hungry enough, he ain’t too picky about where the meat came from. I remember one time I et a rattlesnake because we didn’t have anything else on the trail. Shot it myself and—”

  Cole interrupted. “I’ve heard about that meat. It’s not really monkey. The troops just call it that. It’s some kind of lousy-tasting canned French stuff they bring in from Madagascar.”

  “He’s a sergeant now. He’s been promoted.”

  “Hah!” Pop said, thumping the table. “I knew he’d do it!”

  Susannah’s brows drew together slightly as she paused to read part of the letter to herself. Then she continued, her voice trembling slightly. “H-he’d like me to send him some clean socks and soap. The Germans are attacking them with poison gas, and lots of men have been blinded or killed. Ohh…he s-says the man next to him was hit by a shell and—” She broke off and refolded the letter to put it in her apron pocket.

  Cole saw her swallow hard, and her brown eyes were bright with tears. Obviously there was more in Riley’s words that she either could not or didn�
��t want to share.

  “Damn it, never mind that boo-hoo girlie stuff. What about the battles? What’s he doing? Is he giving it to the Huns? If I was over there, I’d teach them to par-lee-vooz, by God,” the old man declared.

  “Pop, leave her alone,” Cole warned, irked by his father’s tactlessness.

  “Well, the boys at Tilly’s count on me to bring ’em full reports.”

  Susannah handed a bowl of mashed potatoes to Amy, who looked even more distressed than her future sister-in-law. Discord bothered Amy.

  Pop went on, oblivious to the tension around him. “Sleeping in the wet—hell, that’s nothing. I herded cattle through gully washers and Montana blizzards that blew so hard the cows froze stiff on the hoof. By God, one time the snow was flying so thick the dumb beasts was about to walk right off a cliff. And I’ve slept out in weather that wasn’t fit for the herd or me, with nothing more to keep warm than one blanket and a bottle of whiskey. Cow camp ain’t for sissies.” He took a big bite out of a drumstick and continued talking around the food. “But I didn’t whine, I just kept—”

  Susannah put down her fork and glared at him. “I don’t suppose that while you were on a cattle drive you had to worry about being blown to the hereafter by a howitzer or stabbed with a bayonet?”

  Pop paused with his jaws in mid-chew. “Well, I never knew when I might come acrossed a wolf or an angry mountain lion—”

  She folded her hands on the table, so tightly that her knuckles were white and her fingertips red. “And if one came along, did it have poison gas that it fired at you?”

  “Gas—”

  “Did you miss your family while you were out there, not knowing if you would see them again?”

  “Naw, that was years ago. I didn’t have no family back then, but—”

  “I hardly see any comparison, then, Shaw. I’m sorry I can’t give you something better to tell those fools at Tilly’s. Maybe your stories about cattle drives will interest them. Excuse me.” She backed her chair from the table and left the room. Tanner watched her go, then turned a sour look on the old man. They heard her run up the stairs and through the upper hall. In a moment, a door slammed overhead.

  “What the hell was that all about?” Pop groused, plainly amazed.

  “Are you happy now?” Cole snapped. Susannah had coddled Pop for a long time—spoiled him, as far as Cole was concerned—but obviously she’d reached her breaking point. There was so much work to be done on the ranch, and he knew she worried about Riley, despite the brave face she put on, and Shaw Braddock was as ornery an old crank as a body was likely to find.

  Amy sat with her hands in her lap, looking at her plate, her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. Tanner tried to appear busy with his dinner, but all he really did was push the food around on his dish. Wade and Josh stared wide-eyed at the adults until Tanner elbowed them and nodded at their own plates.

  “What did I do?” Pop asked. “I just want to know how the fighting’s going and what Riley is up to in France. I didn’t expect her to have the fantods like that.” He sopped up some gravy with a biscuit, but his own face was red to the ears, and he wouldn’t look anyone in the eye. “Bah, that’s the trouble with women—they get all stirred up.”

  “Yeah, there’s something about having a husband at war in a foreign country that bothers them,” Cole replied with a knife-edge in his voice. “That’s why I should have enlisted instead of Riley. He has everything to lose. I didn’t have a thing.”

  Beside him, Amy uttered a horror-stricken noise, jumped up from the table, and flew to the kitchen. Her muffled weeping could be heard in the dining room.

  “Shit!” Cole muttered, and threw down his napkin. He jabbed a finger in the old man’s direction. “If you weren’t my father, I’d make you bed down in the stables tonight!” He stood and walked out of the dining room as well, leaving just Pop and the hired hands at the table.

  It took some doing, but Cole was finally able to calm Amy and convince her of what he’d meant by his remark at dinner. That he’d had nothing to lose by enlisting before he began courting her.

  They rode in Cole’s truck, not speaking. Only the sound of bouncing springs and creaking metal joints broke the silence as they bumped over the rutted road toward town. It was easier than driving a wagon at night. The vehicle’s headlamps lighted the road ahead.

  Finally Cole said, “Pop is a mean-spirited old bast—son of a gun. Sometimes I think my mother died just to get away from him.”

  Amy tightened her jacket around her. Evenings had taken on a definite chill now that summer was leaving them. “Maybe he’s the way he is because she died. She’s been gone for a long time, hasn’t she?”

  “Yeah, I was eight years old. Your father said something was wrong with her heart, probably from the day she was born. It just quit one day while she was standing in the yard hanging the wash.”

  “Oh, then she was young.”

  “Yeah, younger than I am now. She was twenty-seven.”

  “And Mr. Braddock never remarried. He’s probably pining for her, and it’s made him bitter and less sensitive to the feelings of others. Maybe he envies us, and Riley and Susannah, for our closeness.”

  Cole didn’t believe her theory, but Amy was always justifying the actions of others and looking for the good in people. If it wasn’t there, she manufactured it. “Maybe. Anyway, I’m sorry about that ruckus at dinner.”

  She touched his elbow briefly. “So am I. It was so silly of me to—how did your father put it?—have the fantods. I felt terrible for Susannah, and then when I imagined you in harm’s way with nothing to lose, well…” She turned away to look out at the field zipping past in the purple dusk. “I know it’s not patriotic to say this, but I’m glad you didn’t enlist. I’m glad you stayed in Powell Springs, where you’re safe.”

  Cole didn’t answer. That word popped into his head again and repeated itself all the way into town.

  Slacker.

  Horace Cookson’s prediction that Jessica wouldn’t be busy with patients turned out to be a poor one.

  Word of her presence and location spread quickly, and those who didn’t trust Granny Mae, or weren’t satisfied with her doctoring, began appearing at Jessica’s office door on Sunday morning after church.

  She treated a variety of ailments, most of them minor. That was a good thing, too, because she’d had no time to really get acquainted with the space and was working primarily from her doctor’s bag. It was also fortunate that Horace had been so desperate to find a physician that he’d sweetened the invitation by outfitting the office with a telephone, decent equipment, and a few supplies. Some, she noticed, were from her father’s own practice. Along with checking on Eddie Cookson, whose mother seemed capable enough of providing most of the nursing care he required, Jessica strapped a sprained ankle, lanced a boil, and diagnosed a pregnancy, all by two o’clock in the afternoon.

  It was almost ten o’clock when she stood in her nightgown breathing in the scent of the soft, clean air. Between Eddie’s harsh bouts of coughing, the night was hushed and clean-scented, and a light breeze wafted the lace curtains, bringing in the smells of the season’s last hay, mown from the fields beyond the edge of town. It was much quieter in Powell Springs than it had been in New York. There were no noises in the street, no racket of clanging fire engines or wagons and trucks rolling by at all hours.

  After she brushed her hair the required one hundred strokes, the gently stirring curtains called her to the upholstered chair by the window. She switched off the overhead electric light and let the moon cast shadows across the floor. As she braided her hair, she looked out at quiet Main Street. The shop windows were dark and if she listened hard enough, the occasional shift of the wind would carry the sound of slow-moving water in Powell Creek. Putting her elbows on the windowsill, she rested her chin in her hands and drew in a deep breath to smell the freshness.

  It was nighttime in a small town. Her town.

  Even more peaceful than
she had remembered at moments of longing for home, it tugged at her heart. This was a very nice apartment, she thought, looking around at the dimly lit shapes. It was certainly nicer than she’d expected. Pearson should be very comfortable here. She knew she would be for the short time of her stay.

  She’d had a long, busy day, and fatigue weighed down her limbs. But at least it wasn’t the utterly consumed feeling she had grown accustomed to. In New York, she’d known nights when she could barely drag herself up the stairs to her third-floor room.

  Despite her exhaustion, though, there had been sleepless hours when she ached inside for the world’s broken heart, and would vow to work harder the next day to mend it. But no matter what she did, the world still wept.

  Yawning, she crossed the room and climbed into the comfortable, welcoming bed. Sleep approached to enclose her in a soft embrace.

  Here, the only broken heart was her own.

  CHAPTER TEN

  As Cole predicted, it didn’t take long for news of Eddie Cookson’s influenza to make its way around Powell Springs. By Tuesday afternoon, people had left flowers and notes for him on Jessica’s front stoop and in her waiting room.

  Then the patients began trickling in, complaining of sudden sore throat, fever, cough, and headache. None was yet so ill that she’d had to put anyone in the other bed upstairs, but she worried that it was only a matter of time. Nearly everyone got the same instructions: go home, get into bed, and stay there. She had the druggist compound more influenza pills for her to dispense and recommended the application of Vicks VapoRub for chest congestion.