A Touch of Flame

by Jo Goodman

  Ben set his jaw. If his spoon had been in his mouth, he would have bitten it off. “When did you do that?”

  “I’m not sure. Weeks and weeks ago. Not long after you released him, if I recall.”

  So much for his clever web of spies, Ben thought. Someone should have reported to him that she had been within twenty yards of Jeremiah Salt. If she requested that he make the trivet for her, then she likely visited him again to pick it up. He knew about neither time. He shook his head. He was firing them, beginning with Hank Ketchum, who surely should have been a witness to one exchange.

  “Tell me about your understanding,” said Ben.

  “He won’t touch his wife again except in the most loving way, and I won’t have cause to end his miserable life.”

  “You said that to him?”

  “Words to that effect. It’s an understanding, not a contract.”

  “Dr. Woodhouse.”

  “Ridley. You can call me Ridley.”

  “I wish you hadn’t done that.”

  “I needed a trivet.”

  Ben gave her a sour look. She was as impervious to that as she was to every other admonishment. He changed the subject. “Did Dave Saunders come by to see you? Maybe a week or ten days ago?”

  “The ingrown toenail. Yes. Did you refer him?”

  “I did. He was hobbling over to my office twice a day when things were slow and couldn’t seem to talk about anything else. He wouldn’t let his wife touch it after she threatened to cut it off.”

  “That’s Dotty, right? Ed is the one married to Abigail.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And Abigail is the one who is expecting.”

  He nodded.

  “I heard that from your mother. I hoped she would come to see me. Abigail, that is. Not your mother. I believe Abigail will be using a midwife to deliver this child, but I understand that Doc attended her before.”

  “I’m not sure I can explain her reasoning other than familiarity.”

  “That occurred to me as well. When you mentioned that you were going around this afternoon to check on folks, see they had what they needed, it got me thinking that I could do the same. The initial introductions were helpful, but I need to do more. People are wary of me, especially the women. I think I need to make myself familiar, just as you said.”

  Ben didn’t think he had said that exactly, but he was not going to quibble. “That makes sense. Did you accept Amanda Springer’s invitation to join the Ladies Giving Circle?”

  “I accepted her invitation to a meeting, but I was not invited to join. I’m sure you could have had that same information from your deputy if you’d asked.”

  “I did ask. Hitchcock is largely deaf to his mother’s voice. He didn’t know anything about it.”

  Ridley set down her spoon. “Do you keep an eye on me?”

  “What?”

  She shrugged lightly. “It’s something I’ve been wondering for a while now. Do you look out for me? I know you refer patients, and sometimes I wonder if it might not be at the point of a gun, but of late I’ve had the sense that perhaps you know more about my comings and goings than is warranted by your position.”

  “Now, what would give you that sense?”

  “Little things. The way Mr. Winegarten often steps out of the Songbird when he sees me passing. He’s always interested in where I’m going, what I’ve been doing.”

  “He’s friendly,” said Ben. And not very subtle, he thought. “He’s grateful for your attention to his foot.”

  “Hmm. I wonder.”

  “That’s slim evidence.”

  “There’s more. Mrs. Mangold is peculiarly interested in my activities when I visit the apothecary. She blends my teas for me and has as many questions as there are leaves in one of her little wooden boxes.”

  “Dolly has a curious nature, I suppose. I wouldn’t make too much of it.”

  “That’s what your mother said, too.”

  “Well, there you have it. My mother and Dolly are peas in a pod.”

  “Perhaps, but your mother seems genuinely interested. Dolly’s questions are more perfunctory and at the same time more pointed. It’s odd, is all. It’s as if she’s working hard to speak to me.”

  “That does seem odd.”

  Ridley nodded, looked at Ben’s empty bowl. “More soup or shall I bring the sandwiches?”

  “Sandwiches.”

  She rose, removed their bowls, and went to the kitchen.

  While she was gone, Ben lifted the warm tureen and examined the trivet. Jeremiah’s work was good, although the piece was hardly as exacting in detail as some of the things he made. He was not hampered by the exact dimensions of a wheel or the breadth of a horse’s hoof. He wondered at Jeremiah’s reaction when the doctor had come around. The man had plenty to say about her when he was released, and none of it was fit for repeating, especially not to E. Ridley Woodhouse. Jeremiah stopped short of threatening her but skirted the edge with more delicacy than Ben could ever have expected.

  Jeremiah swore he had no memory of raising his fists against Lily, and Ben was inclined to believe him. Jeremiah had stared at his hands as if they could give evidence to his innocence, when in fact, his knuckles still had blood in the creases where he pounded the door until Lily let him in the bedroom. Lily bore the only evidence that he had pounded on her. Ben had explained that to Jeremiah. He did not mention the loss of a child, only that Lily’s injuries required a doctor. That did not bother Jeremiah until he remembered that Doc was not the physician who attended his wife. That lighted Jeremiah’s short fuse because sobriety did not make him a less jealous man. Ben disabused him of the notion that a young male physician had attended Lily, but upon hearing that the new doctor was a woman, the fuse sparked again.

  Ben didn’t understand it, but it was not something that he could ignore.

  The collection of bottles that Ben showed Jeremiah had almost no impact. The news that Ben had a conversation with Buzz about not serving Jeremiah more than a couple of beers was greeted with silence, but not the kind that communicated agreement. Once again, Jeremiah placed the blame on the doctor.

  Ridley returned with two plates and a ham sandwich cut on the diagonal on each. She sat and encouraged him to eat. “You haven’t really answered my question.”

  “You asked ‘more soup or sandwiches.’ I said sandwiches.”

  “Ah, there is the Ben Madison who endears himself to the people of Frost Falls.”

  He grinned. “I do, don’t I?”

  “And makes your mother want to cuff you.”

  His grin grew more profound. “That’s true, too.”

  She cast her eyes at the ceiling and shook her head. “Are you keeping an eye on me?”

  Ben sighed. “More or less.”

  “Which is it? More or less?”

  “More. I have help.” He picked up half of his sandwich. “I still get to eat this, right?”

  “I think my brain must have been iced over when I invited you to lunch.”

  “Probably, but what accounts for you letting me in?”

  “The apple pie.”

  He chuckled and took a bite of his sandwich. “What do you hear from Doc?”

  “Nothing. He doesn’t return my letters.”

  “How many have you written?”

  She held up three fingers. “What about you?”

  “One letter. No reply. You don’t suppose he’s—”

  “Dead? No. At least not when I received my father’s last letter a few days ago. Doc is teaching and appears to be enjoying himself. Perhaps he doesn’t want to think about us.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I asked him about Jeremiah Salt. Really about Lily. I’d hoped for some advice, something I could do to move her.”

  “I thought you were resigne
d.”

  “I don’t know that I’ll ever be resigned. I understand it. It’s not quite the same thing. I suppose I still want it to be different. I worry a little more every day that goes by and he doesn’t hit her.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It will happen again. He’ll hit her. Nothing we did—taking his alcohol, promising that he’ll go back to jail, threatening to end his miserable life—none of that will matter because I don’t know if he can help himself. I don’t think he wants to. The pressure will build and he’ll have a drink. One. Two. A dozen. And he’ll imagine some slight that will justify his actions and then Clay will send for you and you will send for me and it will begin again. I’ve always imagined a balloon in my mind. It’s being slowly blown up, so slowly that you almost don’t realize it’s happening, and then it’s big enough to alert you to its presence but not alert you to how much pressure it can bear. You know it will burst. It has to. And of course, it does. That’s when the relief comes. Immediately afterward and it lasts only a short time. Another balloon is already starting to rise. There is always another balloon.”

  Ben said nothing, studied her face. She had not spoken passionately, but rather matter-of-factly. There was nothing in her expression to hint of personal knowledge, and yet he could not shake the sense that her words came from her own experience, not the experience of others.

  Ridley said, “Lily and the children live with the knowledge that it will happen again. It would not be out of the question for one of them to provoke him simply for the temporary relief it brings.”

  “Control the explosion,” Ben said quietly.

  “Yes, something like that.”

  “You seem to know a lot about it.” Ridley shrugged and Ben watched her cast her eyes to her plate. She had eaten only a few bites of her sandwich. He suspected that her appetite had fled. She was silent for so long that he did not think she meant to say anything, but he had learned how to be silent longer, and his patience was rewarded in the end.

  A slim crooked smile lifted her lips briefly. She did not look at him. “I don’t suppose I shared any of those thoughts without the knowledge that you might ask for more. I’m still wondering if I’m prepared to tell you.”

  He almost said then that she didn’t have to, which was true, but not what he wanted. She was a private person. It was the thing most remarked upon by other people. She struck them as mannerly but not quite friendly, willing to listen, not willing to share. It was not that she was disliked, only that she was unknown. As well as the introductions had gone when he escorted her around town, she had not made connections on her own or followed up on the ones she made with him. He was encouraged by her invitation to lunch and her thinking that she should get around to see people whether or not they had need of her.

  It was a good beginning, he thought, a better one than she had when she stepped off the train. This was something she came to on her own, and the first real sign that she did not want to be as insular as she appeared.

  Ridley pushed her plate away and lifted her eyes. She did not look directly at Ben but at a point just past his shoulder. “I think it’s better if I don’t leave you to your imaginings. I don’t know what they are precisely, but I doubt that you’ve hit the nail on the head.” She took a shallow breath, sipping the air as though from a soupspoon. “The balloon in my family is my mother.”

  Ben felt the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. He wondered if he gave away his surprise. She was correct that he had not hit the nail on the head. He had been about as far from the nail as one could get and still make it a family affair. He expected to hear it of her father, a brother—although he didn’t know if she had any—a male cousin, perhaps an uncle. He remained quiet, waiting to see if she would add more.

  She said, “It’s all right if you don’t know what to say. I’m not sure that there is any one response more appropriate than another.” Ridley finally looked Ben in the eye. Her gaze was candid. “Besides the help, who never spoke out under the threat of losing their positions, I can only think of two people outside the family who know what went on for years inside it. One is my mother’s physician. The other is my godfather.”

  “That is a small circle.”

  “Indeed. The Salt family is an open secret. It was very much closed in my family. One is not better than the other. Neither prompts change.”

  Ben nodded and kept his focus on her. She deserved that.

  “My mother can kindly be described as unpredictable. At times she is a dervish, spinning from activity to activity, full of grand notions without the ability to see even one to completion. That energy doesn’t wind down. It ends abruptly, in a bout of despair so deep that she cannot rise from her bed. You might think that the melancholia would be welcome by her children because she remained in her room, but she would summon us, ask us to bring her a tray, and then throw the teapot at our heads or try to stab us with a knife because something wasn’t the way it should be. Anger was the thread that ran through all her moods. We ducked. We cowered. We circled her as though she were a wild animal, and in some ways she was exactly that.”

  “Who is ‘us’?” asked Ben.

  “I have an older brother and a younger sister. Henry Austin and Grace Elizabeth.”

  “Your father? He didn’t take measures to protect you?”

  “My father was frequently the target of her rages when he was home, so I suppose that was protection of a kind. He had an office in the house, but my mother’s temper was not restrained simply because there were patients present. He eventually worked only out of the hospital. The servants watched out for us, intervened when they could. Father eventually hired a companion for her, a nurse who acted as a lady’s maid and a watchdog. It was mostly a satisfactory arrangement. Father arranged for Henry’s escape by sending him to boarding school. Gracie and I fended for ourselves. Like Clay and Hannah, there are but two years between us. I’m afraid I was not the protector to Gracie as Clay is to his sister.”

  “Jeremiah doesn’t go after the children.”

  Ridley shook her head. “Don’t be so sure. Maybe he doesn’t, but I would not make that statement so confidently. It is difficult for an outsider to understand how confused and complicated the feelings are toward one’s tormentor. It was not unusual for any of us to protect Mother, perhaps more than we looked out for one another or ourselves. Father would threaten to send her away. It terrified her, but it did not change her. She couldn’t change, and Father’s threats were empty because he knew the sentence he would be imposing if she went to an asylum.”

  Ben imagined that keeping the family secret was also a factor, but he said nothing. It was something she knew whether or not she could say so.

  “When I boarded the train in Boston,” said Ridley, “Mother accompanied Father to the station to see me off. It still shames me that when she went to throw her arms around me, I flinched. I cannot say that she noticed. I hope she didn’t. My father, though, did, and he turned away rather than acknowledge what had happened.” She fell silent for a moment, and when she spoke, she was no longer looking at Ben. Her voice was hardly more than a whisper, as what she said was meant for her ears alone. “I don’t think I’ve ever despised my mother the way I despised Father just then.”

  Ben let her words lie there. She had no need of a response.

  Ridley’s cheeks puffed as she blew out a soft breath. Her brief smile was apologetic and self-effacing. “Well, that was rather more than I thought I was prepared to say. I’m sorry.”

  He shook his head. “I’m not.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Ridley. It’s all right.”

  “I understand why you say that, but for me it’s as if I’ve broken a sacred vow.” She laughed a bit unevenly. “It isn’t out of the question that I will be excommunicated from the family.”

  “They’d have to learn about it first, and they won’t hea
r it from me.”

  She hesitated. “I’m sorry, but I have to ask. You won’t write anything about it to Doc?”

  Ben was also sorry that she had to ask, and he was reminded that whatever trust there was between them, it was a fragile thing. “No,” he said. “I won’t.”

  She nodded slowly as though absorbing the promise. “Then I suppose we should have pie.”

  “I suppose we should.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Ridley began her rounds the following morning, bracing for the cold and the wind and the occasional chilly reception. As it happened, there was only one cool welcome, and it came from Amanda Springer. In spite of Mrs. Springer’s involvement in promoting temperance, her strong advocacy five years earlier for a Colorado woman’s right to vote, her leadership on the library board, the school board, and three other charitable causes, she was not a champion of professional workingwomen. She made her opinion clear at the Ladies Giving Circle, and she was supported by her loyal followers, who may or may not have given the matter any thought before it came at them front and center.

  Ridley had confronted this resistance before. Her mother, and her mother’s circle of friends, embraced similar opinions. It was the hospital work that elicited her mother’s most fervent objections. That was the purview of men, she announced, men who had a taste for the stink and the blood and the disease. Men who could tolerate wretched poverty, she pointed out, because where else could the poor apply for help? Ridley’s interest in medicine did not trouble her mother as much as Ridley’s intention to use it. It was this that was incomprehensible to Henrietta Ridley Woodhouse.

  Amanda Springer was not so different, although she had never been inside a hospital in her life and had no concept of what might be encountered there. Mrs. Springer simply did not trust that a woman could be as learned as a man. She would have thought the same if Ridley were a lawyer, an accountant, a minister, or an engineer. Ridley knew better than to argue her qualifications. If Amanda Springer’s mind was going to be changed, it would be because Amanda Springer changed it. Ridley simply let her be, shared the small cakes she had brought, and encouraged Amanda to talk about her son. Hitchcock was a subject that warmed Mrs. Springer to glowing.