“Where are your glasses?” he asked.
“Oh! Did you want to dictate a column?”
He hadn’t thought her eyes could get brighter.
“It’s not that your idea doesn’t have some merit,” he admitted, thinking that, indeed, there were lots of simple things people could do without medical training. And he could save himself an awful lot of time if patients could at the very least differentiate between what really required his services and what didn’t.
“We could run it weekly, in every issue. We could key it to the seasons—frostbite in the winter, sunburn in the summer. We could tie it in with holidays—stomachaches from too much holiday celebrating, that sort of thing. And what to do in case of an accident. And how to stop bleeding. How to—”
“I spent years in medical college learning the answers to those questions,” he began.
“Well, would it hurt you to share what you learned?” she asked, finding a pad and a pencil and tidying up the piles they were hidden under. She sat poised, ready to take down his words for all of Eden’s Grove to read.
“It’s not that simple,” he started.
“Well, start with what is simple,” she said. “Like using cold water to prevent frostbite. That’s vital information that people here need, don’t you think?”
He did think so. He just didn’t think that he wanted to sit in his office with Abidance Merganser’s dazzling smile just across the desk from him.
“Your father get himself dry and warm?” he asked, spreading his papers back out across his desk the way he liked them.
“You could add that in about how if there is no frostbite then the patient can be—”
“I’ll drop a column by the office later in the week,” he said, not admitting that it was a darn good idea. “It certainly couldn’t hurt,” he said grudgingly.
She put the pad and paper down on the desk and leaned forward toward him. “Why do I make you nervous?” she asked.
He humphed, sounding like the old man he thought he was. “It’ll be a fine day in Hades when a girl like you—”
“If I’m just some girl, Seth, then why can’t you seem to breathe when—”
“Doctor Hendon! And you’re imagining things because you’ve, well, to be frank, Abidance, you’ve got a schoolgirl crush on me. And while I do admit that it’s flattering, it is wholly inappropriate and—”
“I suppose you’re right,” she said as dreamily as she could. “After all, I am nearly promised to another and you’d probably want someone …”
She tried to look as casual as she could, blinking at him innocently, as she continued. “You’d no doubt want someone with less experience than I.”
She really did think he’d have the common decency not to laugh out loud.
“Abby, any less experience and you’d still be sucking your thumb and playing with dolls.”
Well, that wasn’t the kind of remark she could just let pass, was it? She smiled at him as mysteriously as she could, her mind racing wildly for proof of what wasn’t.
“I’ll give Ansel an article before you go to press on Friday,” he said, rising as if the conversation between them was over, and adding, quite patronizingly, “How’s that?”
“It’s a start,” she said.
“Now go on home, Abidance, where you’ll be safe under your mother’s wing and your father’s eye. Be a good girl, huh?”
“Seth Hendon, I am not a good girl,” she said, feeling herself blush at the implication and backtracking rapidly. “I mean, I’m not the innocent you suppose.”
She’d have stopped there, but he raised his eyebrows with such amusement, such condescending doubt that she couldn’t stop herself.
“I have been kissed, you know.”
A smirk! “So little Frankie Walker finally worked up the nerve to peck you on your cheek, huh?”
“Frank Walker! A peck on the cheek! I’m talking about thoroughly kissed. Not like a brother or uncle.” She knew nothing about kissing, except the innuendos of some of the girls she’d gone to school with, but they’d always hushed at the sight of the Reverend Merganser’s daughter. One, though … She ran her tongue very slowly over her bottom lip. “Well kissed,” she said, mimicking Callie Jean Evans, and watching Seth’s eyes widen. Maybe Callie Jean, who already had two little babies and another on the way, wasn’t all talk, after all.
“I don’t believe it,” Seth said, his smirk returning to his face, though at his side, where he thought she couldn’t see, his thumb rubbed fast and hard against his fingers. “Who?”
Abby ran her tongue over her lip again. Seth opened and closed his fist several times. “You don’t know him,” she said, rising and reaching for her bonnet.
Seth took her coat from the peg, but held it to his chest, rather than helping her into it. She wasn’t even sure he was aware of what he was doing. “I know everyone you know,” he said gruffly. “I probably delivered half of them.”
“Not this one,” she said coyly. “He’s not from around here.” She could just hear her mother warning of tangled webs, but words of love and wedding bells rang a good deal louder in her head, drowning out any warnings.
“Abidance,” he warned, as if now was the time for her to come clean and admit that she was … well … fabricating. After all, a reverend’s daughter never lied.
“St. Louis,” she said, the words coming out in a rush of relief. She went to St. Louis every summer. Surely she could have met someone there—a handsome, charming, insistent gentleman who was so taken with her that—
Seth seemed to be considering whether or not this was a real possibility. Abby sensed the vital importance of this moment to the rest of her life.
Well, her mother always did say she had a flare for the dramatic.
“What’s his name?” Seth demanded, that darned eyebrow of his raised in his usual disbelief.
She said the first name that came to mind. “Armand,” and then added, “I’ve probably mentioned him before.”
“It sounds familiar,” Seth admitted. Fortunately he’d apparently paid little attention to her prattling all these years.
“Yes, well,” she said, taking her coat from his hands and putting one arm through the sleeve. “Oh, and maybe you could do an article on the dangers of social diseases.”
Turning to smile at him, she caught sight of the blood draining from Seth’s face. “I mean, women might need to know—”
“Not here in Eden’s Grove, they don’t,” Seth said as if his words could make it so. He was no doubt right, but she’d surely captured his attention, and she wasn’t about to let go.
“As I pointed out, women do travel, Seth. Why, I wouldn’t miss my yearly trip to St. Louis”—she paused to concentrate on buttoning her coat—“for anything.”
“And are you trying to tell me that you do wild and woolly things there?” he asked her, pushing her hands away as she fumbled with her top button and fastening it himself.
Clearly she had aged years in his eyes. She ran her tongue over her top lip this time and watched Seth’s eyes follow the movement intently.
“Better put some pomade on those lips,” he said.
“They’re plenty soft,” she said, offering them up to him.
“Then why is it you need to keep licking them?” he asked, the smirk back in place.
“You are just so full of yourself, Dr. Hendon,” she said, opening the door to the early March winds and not bothering to close it behind her before she started storming down the sidewalk.
“And you, Miss Merganser, are full of hogwash!” he shouted after her.
She’d have been sure the whole episode was a total failure if she hadn’t stolen a glimpse back as she turned the corner.
Seth Hendon was standing outside his office door in the dead of winter in his shirtsleeves, watching her go.
SETH COULDN’T IMAGINE WHAT POSSESSED HIM TO accept Clarice Merganser’s invitation to have dinner with the “loons” after church, except that to say
no would have been rude, and he was not a rude man. Except maybe around Abby, who seemed to bring out his sarcastic, impatient side.
Ansel, taking pity on him, had offered to stop by on his way so that Seth could at least arrive in the company of sanity, even if it was a soon-to-be-vanquished illusion. Ansel’s wife, Emily, walked ahead with their daughter, Suellen, shepherding her along on the sidewalk, while Ansel and Seth dragged behind because each of them was more reluctant than the other to get to their destination.
“Abby seems to be taking Sarah’s death pretty hard,” Ansel said as he put up the collar to his coat against the same damn wind that had been at Seth’s back for months, urging him forward, urging him to move on already before it was too late.
“Really? I thought she was bouncing back rather well,” Seth said truthfully. It seemed to him that she was as cheerful as ever, as full of life and plans as she had always been.
“That smile of hers could fool the devil himself,” Ansel said. “But it’s phonier than invisible ink, and fades as fast when no one is looking.”
Seth felt Ansel’s gaze, but didn’t meet it. It wasn’t his job to make Abidance Merganser happy, was it? Just because she imagined herself fond of him didn’t make it incumbent upon him to be the willing object of her affections, did it? Why, if everyone was obliged to return all feelings, what would women like Lily Lang-tree do? Split themselves in a million pieces for everyone who thought they were in love—that was the key word—they thought they were in love.
After all, what could Abby know of love? She was just a baby, an innocent. Social diseases! She probably thought shyness was a social disease. Ineptitude. Gracelessness. Surely she had no more idea what a social disease was than she had of what she was implying with that tongue of hers tracing that soft, luscious lip. At least he didn’t think so.
“You ever go with her to St. Louis?” he asked casually, “To see that cousin of hers?”
“Not since we were kids,” Ansel said.
“You mean since you were a kid. As far as I can see, Abby still is.”
Ansel stopped walking and waited for Seth to look at him.
“What?” Seth asked him.
“I don’t know where you’re looking, but Abby’s no kid. She’s a lovely young woman, and if you aren’t careful, someone else will come along and snatch her out from under your nose.”
“From your mouth to God’s ear,” he said irreverently.
“Far be it from me to tell anyone what to do about their love life, but I’ll tell you this, Seth Hendon, and I hope you’ll give me more than the half an ear you usually do. True love doesn’t—”
“Save it, Ansel,” Seth said. “When I want your advice on love, I’ll—”
“—disappear. That’s all I want to warn you about, Dr. Hendon. True love doesn’t disappear. No matter how hard you try, no matter how you go on with your life. No matter even if she dies. The love goes on.”
Seth was quiet out of respect. Ansel had never admitted aloud that he loved Sarrie. At least not to him. Not ten feet ahead of them, Ansel’s wife and child waddled up the street like a mother hen and her chick. From the looks of it, Seth supposed that Emily might be carrying once again.
“You look to me to be a well-fulfilled man,” Seth said softly. There was a piece of him that resented the path that Ansel had taken, the easy path that gave him a wife and a family and washed his hands of Sarah’s problems.
“I am,” he said, so vehemently that Seth had to wonder who he thought needed convincing.
Suellen dropped back to wind herself around Ansel’s legs. “Papa, can you carry me?” she begged with the same big eyes that belonged to Ansel and Abby and most of the Mergansers. She had that little bow mouth that Abby had, but had Emily’s sharp nose and pale brown hair.
He imagined the children that Abby would have someday and the breath caught in his throat.
“Does she tell you much about her trips to St. Louis?” Seth asked. “I mean, she always seems to come back so full of excitement. She has a good time?”
“I suppose,” Ansel said, busy with trying to keep Suellen on his shoulders and still see while her hands covered his eyes and pushed down on his hat. She was laughing in his ear when Seth asked Ansel whether Abby ever mentioned anyone in particular, and when Ansel asked him what he’d said, Seth thought it best to just drop the subject.
What difference did it make if Abby Merganser had ever been kissed well? What earthly difference could it make to him if there was a man who had pressed his lips to hers and felt that little pink tongue tentatively—
“Watch it there! Careful!” Ansel warned as Seth tripped off the end of the wooden sidewalk.
He’d nearly twisted his ankle.
And he had the bad, bad feeling that Ansel’s warning had come too late.
She’d warned her whole family to behave themselves, with threats of dire consequences. Not that she expected it to do a lick of good, but she was just one of those people who couldn’t help but hope for the best. Ansel teased her unmercifully, asking if she so often neglected to wear her spectacles because she already had on rose-colored ones that made her see things as better than they were, better than they would ever be.
“They’re here,” Prudence sang, making an opera out of the announcement. “Now I can ask him about my throat. It’s been sore as long as I can remember,” she screeched at the top of her lungs, leaving no doubt in anyone’s mind about the cause of her pain. Abby figured that next Jed would complain about the ringing in his ears whenever Patience was singing.
Abby splayed herself against the door, ready to do battle with anyone who tried to open it. If it wasn’t Seth on the other side of the door, the throbbing in her head would have made her go running for her bed. But it was Seth, and no headache was going to stop her from keeping her family in check and making sure that this night went perfectly. Well, if not perfectly, then nicely. Or merely adequately. Oh, all right! She was positively determined that it would at least not be a disaster.
“We will not ask the doctor about our ailments,” she ordered. “We will not sing, dance, stand on our heads”—she looked pointedly at Jed—“or do anything else that every other family in Eden’s Grove doesn’t do.”
“Will we eat?” Michael asked, eyes big and round and fearful.
“Of course we will eat,” Abby assured him. “That’s why the doctor’s coming.”
“Oh, is that why?” Patience asked, nudging Jed with her elbow. “So the doctor can eat.”
Abby ignored her.
“May we talk?” Gwendolyn asked.
Abby raised an eyebrow at Prudence, as if to ask whether she could be trusted, and then nodded, albeit reluctantly.
And then Seth knocked on the door, and with a million misgivings, she opened it.
Naturally, all hell broke lose.
Did her father say Please come in. How nice to see you? No. Instead he asked, “You think you ought to check my toes?” at the same time her mother was reaching for Seth’s coat and saying that she hoped that Seth liked stew, which was interrupted by Prudence, asking, “Has anyone seen the cat today?” which sounded like she suspected that her mother had used Disciple for the stew, which made Seth blanch, but not for long, because Prudence, never liking to be told what to do, or maybe never remembering what she was told, was busy angling her head near Seth’s chest and opening her mouth wide and pointing at her throat while she made whimpering noises.
“Prudence?” Seth managed to choke out.
“I’m not supposed to tell you that my throat hurts.” She glared at Abby while Michael tugged on Seth’s sleeve.
“Wanna see what’s in my potty?”
Abby rubbed at her temple. The headache was getting hard to ignore.
“I cut my finger with the butter knife this morning,” Jedediah said, thrusting it in Seth’s face. “You wouldn’t think that was possible, would you? I needed something to help me stretch an old rubber gasket around this wire wheel—for the
model for my sky cycle,” he added as Ansel and Emily wedged their way in, Suellen in Ansel’s arms.
“It must be so wonderful to be a doctor,” Abby’s mother said. “And be able to help everyone.”
Seth looked at Abby as if he were going under for the third time and she were holding the life preserver out of his reach.
“Say hello to Dr. Hendon,” Prudence directed Gwendolyn. “He’s the man who helped bring you into this world, sweetie.”
“It has its moments,” Seth admitted to Abby’s mother, ruffling Gwendolyn’s blond curls and letting his hand linger on her head.
“Heard you won’t be delivering any more kids to Frannie Wallis unless Bill—” Jed started, then stopped himself when he realized that Bill Wallis’s problem wasn’t a fit topic of conversation in front of his mama, though he’d told Abby that all Bill’s drinking had taken the “manliness” out of him. “Heard he came to see you, Doc, and—”
“Well, he came to see me, poor man,” Abby’s father said as he sat down and began removing his shoes. “All a mess like what was happening wasn’t his own fault. And I told him I’d been to the bottom of that well myself, and—”
“I’m sure whatever you told him was in confidence,” Seth said, looking around the room with what Abby supposed was escape in mind. “It’s the same with doctors as it is with men of God, and lawyers too, I’ve heard. What patients tell us is in confidence. It’s meant for no one else’s ears.”
“You mean that if I went to you and I told you something, you’d have to keep it a secret?” Emily asked. Ansel looked shocked at the question and more than a little annoyed when Seth agreed that he would keep her confidence.
“But surely not from a woman’s own husband, or a child’s mother, or …” Ansel pressed as Seth bent over and took her father’s foot into his hand.
“Not a young child,” Seth agreed, turning the foot this way and that and spreading her father’s toes, “but the doctor-patient relationship is a sacred one. A patient has to feel safe that he can tell the doctor the truth so that the doctor can best treat him. If he—or she—was afraid that a secret might come out, he—or she—might hold something back that could jeopardize her life.”
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