“About Armand,” she started, but he put a finger over her lips and she had all she could do not to kiss it.
“I know,” he said softly. “You mean a lot to him. It’s not surprising. So let him down easy, Abby girl. Just so that you let him down.”
“Doc? You here? I got that bicycle out of the window, and the pick you wanted from the cellar!”
“I’m back here,” Seth called out to Frank while Abby looked frantically for a place to hide. Just a couple of days ago she was kissing Frank. Now here she was in Seth’s kitchen, her shirtwaist only half tucked in, her lips no doubt red from kissing.
She opened the back door and took a quick step out onto the porch and then a second one.
And then somehow she was on the ground, her elbow smarting, and before she could get up, there were Seth and Frank, both staring down at her, concern etched on both their faces.
“Jesus, Miss Abby!” Frank said. “Are you all right?”
She arched her back and felt a few other places hurt. She started to get up, cradling her elbow, but before she could even come to a full sitting position, Seth was crouching down beside her, feeling her arms, her legs, examining the scraped palms of her hands. “Anything hurt especially? Besides your elbow? That’s probably just your ulnar nerve.”
“Her ulnar nerve?” Frank asked, leaning over her as though he too had some proprietary interest.
“Her funny bone,” Seth said with obvious superiority before turning his attention back to her. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” she said, pressing the heel of her hand against her head to stop the pain there. “I just didn’t see the steps, I guess.”
“You didn’t have your glasses on.” Seth shook his head at her and grimaced. “How many times do I have to tell you about those damn glasses? You could have broken something.”
He went on yelling at her while she looked around. The truth was, unless she turned her head, she couldn’t see him squatting next to her. Unless she tilted her head, she couldn’t see Frank standing above her. She stared at her fingers and moved her hand closer to her body until the fingers disappeared well before they touched her chest.
“Stop yelling at her,” Frank demanded. “Can’t you see you’re upsetting her?” A handkerchief appeared in front of her. She tipped her head way back and saw that it was Frank holding it out to her. Everyone has to tip their head to see above them, she told herself. God put man’s head on a neck so that he could turn it side to side and raise it up and down.
She touched her temple, but couldn’t see her hand.
“And you’ve got a headache, again, don’t you? If I prescribed medicine, you’d take it, right? So why, when an eye specialist prescribes glasses, don’t you wear them? Does that ridiculous ‘Dear Winnie’ advise against ladies wearing spectacles?”
“Frank’s right. You’re yelling at me,” Abby said, fishing around in her pocket for her glasses and pulling out their brown leather case. She snapped it open in silence.
“I’m sorry,” he said finally when her glasses were on her nose. Again she tested her vision. There was nothing beyond the rims of her glasses, unlike when she’d first gotten them and she could see their edges clearly and what lay beyond was much less clear.
“You should be,” Frank said, gingerly helping Abby up by her good elbow.
“You better come inside and let me clean your hands,” Seth said. He looked two shades paler than he had while preparing lunch.
“I’m all right, Dr. Hendon,” she said softly, trying to take the terror from his eyes. He had that same look he’d get whenever Sarrie took a turn for the worse. He’s angry that he can’t stop the clock, Sarrie would tell her. He’s angry that he can’t change the results. He’s angry that he can’t kiss my forehead and make me all better. But he’s not angry with me.
How can you tell? she’d asked Sarrie.
His eyebrows, his eyes, the set of his mouth.
Now she knew.
He loved her.
SETH MADE HIS DAILY TREK TO THE POST OFFICE just after three. On his way, he walked past the site of the new church and saw another fresh load of supplies lying in wait for Saturday, when the plans would arrive and the building would start in earnest. Two men were covering the bundles with tarps, and when he looked up, he saw the sky had darkened with heavy clouds.
Over the last few days, several farmers had cleared all the debris from the building site, evened it out, made it ready for the framing to start. It had taken him a while to realize it, but it wasn’t Joseph Panner’s money that had really gotten the church going. It was the fervent wishes of the townsfolk. His father used to tell him, when he was a small boy, that if he wanted something badly enough, if he wanted it long enough and hard enough, he could make it come to pass.
A part of him had believed it long after his father was gone, when he’d sat beside Sarrie’s bed, grateful that she’d been given another day, and he’d wished and wanted and prayed with all his might that she would be spared.
He decided to make a short detour and turned toward where the old church had stood, the cemetery on the rise behind its ashes. It was past time to visit Sarrie, and today he felt he could do it.
“Oh, Sarrie! You should have seen the look on Abby’s face when she saw that pick and shovel,” he told his sister, standing over her grave with a half smile on his face. “And the tandem bicycle. Well, I don’t know what I thought when I saw it, except that it seemed youthful and fun and all the things that Abby is, and so I bought it.
“I took it out back and tried to ride the crazy contraption for the better part of an hour.” He raised his pant leg and looked at the ugly black-and-blue mark on his shin. “Seems I have a lot to learn about being young that I missed the first time around.
“You were right about Abby, Sarrie. She is life itself. I only hope …” He wanted to say that he hoped he wouldn’t destroy that, but the words wouldn’t pass his lips. Some things were better left unsaid, he supposed, and he took a pebble from the ground and put it on the lower edge of Sarrie’s headstone to show that someone had been there, someone had cared.
And then he headed for the post office. He’d heard precious little in the way of interest from the doctors he’d written to, and he wondered if he had been just a little too honest in his portrayal of Eden’s Grove, and a little too stringent about the requirements for the doctor to whom he would entrust the care of all the people who depended upon him. So many babies he’d brought into the world, so many bones he’d set, gashes he’d sewn—he had such a stake in so many people’s lives that it would be hard to turn his back on them without being sure that they were in the best of hands, hands better than his own.
Seth had barely crossed the threshold of the post office when Mr. Norman, leafing through the stack on his counter, looked up at him, and said, “Got a letter for you from Massachusetts General Hospital. You giving those guys over there more of your good advice?”
“Gotta keep reminding them to take out all the sponges before they sew those patients closed,” Seth told him.
“I like that new column of yours in the Herald,” Mr. Norman said, continuing to go through the stack. “Bicarb did the trick for me after Sunday dinner, just like you said. Good idea, that one.”
“Actually, it was Abidance Merganser’s idea,” he said, giving credit where it was due, and liking the sound of Abby’s name on his lips.
“Missy Smiles did that? Well, so she’s got a brain in that pretty head, does she?” He pulled out two letters and set them aside. “Doesn’t surprise me at all.”
“‘Missy Smiles’?”
“Watch anyone as that girl passes, Doc,” Mr. Norman said with a wink. “Young, old, even the crotchety ones. You’d need a pretty big basket to hold all the smiles that girl gets in return for one of hers.”
Seth nodded, but said nothing. It would be damn hard sharing Abby with the whole town, once she was his. Of course, that was if they stayed in Eden’s Grove. He
looked down at the envelope in his hand and wondered what he hoped it contained.
“Mind taking these in to the Herald, it being right next door? Save Miss Abidance the trip over later,” Mr. Norman asked, holding out two letters to Seth. “She’ll be happy to get that one from St. Louis, I’ll betcha. ‘Course she’s always happy, that girl.”
Seth took the letters and shoved them into his coat pocket.
“Something wrong, Doc?” the postmaster asked.
“Nothing at all,” Seth said, noticing that the clouds had let loose and heavy drops were beginning to pelt the window. He put up his collar and opened the door to a rain-soaked gust. “Great day,” he grumbled, not happy at all to be carrying a letter from A. Whitiny in St. Louis to the woman they both loved. “Just an all-around great day.”
Inside the offices of The Weekly Herald, with the rain running down the windows and trying to put a damper on her mood, Abby was hunched over the type cases looking for the fancy letters they stocked for advertisements. If she were to order some fine paper, like the salesman had left samples of, they could print all sorts of elegant things they’d never considered printing before. All right, maybe she hadn’t mentioned to Ansel that she had wedding invitations in mind, maybe she’d just said that she wanted to try making a gift of personalized notes for Anna Lisa and Armand….
She had pulled out most of the letters that she needed to print the newlyweds’ names when the little bell over the door rang and she saw Seth standing in the open door looking like a drowned rat.
“Oh, my heavens!” she said, her hands flying to her cheeks. “What a mess you are!”
“I got your mail,” he said testily. He fished in his pocket and pulled out several soggy envelopes.
“Take off your coat. Come by the stove and dry out,” she said, wiping her hands on her apron and pulling off her glasses.
“Abidance,” he said, drawing out her name until she reluctantly put the glasses back on.
“Happy now?” she asked him.
“Should I be?” he asked, tossing a letter onto the counter.
She looked down at the dripping ink and recognized the sender. The name matched the one she had nearly finished spelling out on her worktable in plain sight, with “Mr. and Mrs.” preceding it. Awkwardly she leaned an arm over her writing and the type that corresponded to it, fumbled with her apron strings and managed to casually throw the apron over her work, forgetting about the letter entirely.
“Aren’t you going to read it?” he asked.
“Sure I will,” she agreed. “Later. Right now I want to hear about you. How was your day?”
“Don’t you want to see how your beau took the news?” It seemed more a dare than a question.
“I’d rather read it when I’m alone,” she said, afraid he’d insist that she read it aloud, or worse, look over her shoulder. She could just imagine what it said. For heaven’s sake, Abidance! Go see a doctor about those headaches. And tell that Seth Hendon he’s a fool if he doesn’t scoop you up before Frank Walker turns your head.
“As you wish,” he said, but he was oh so clearly annoyed. He tossed two more envelopes onto the counter. “There’s something for Ansel, too. Where is he?”
“Long gone,” she said. “It’s late. I should be getting on home myself.”
She looked at the envelopes on the table and her breath caught in her throat. She picked up one of them and handed it to Seth. “It’s from Massachusetts General Hospital.”
He nodded and took it from her, stuffing it back into his pocket.
“Aren’t you going to read it?” she asked. He’d been hoping for weeks to hear from the doctor there, and now the man’s answer sat drowning in his pocket.
“Sure I will,” he said. “Later. Now I’d like to hear about your day.”
For a second she didn’t get it. Then she realized he was merely parroting her words. He could tease the nap off wool, if he had a mind to. But she’d be darned if she’d play the game by his rules. “Well, I had a very nice day, actually. Things here have been very quiet and Ansel left early and I was just playing with some of our fancy lettering and daydreaming.”
“That’s nice,” he said, but his fingers were playing with the edge of his pocket. “Massachusetts General Hospital. Hmmm.”
“Go ahead and read it, Seth,” she said. “No reason to be stubborn on my account.”
“I’ll just take it back to my office,” he said, eyeing her counter and moving her apron just a tad so that “Mr. and Mrs.” was now in full view.
“Why don’t you do that?” she said, leaning against the table so that he couldn’t move the apron another inch. “I’ll clean up here and stop by to say good night before I head for home.”
“Don’t go walking in this rain,” he said, touching the tip of her nose. “I’ll take you home in the buggy.”
“I love buggies in the rain,” she admitted, licking her lips seductively—she hoped—before remembering how he’d told her she ought to use pomade.
“Then I’ll have to take the long way,” he said, apparently in no hurry to get going. “So Ansel’s not here, huh?”
She shook her head.
“How are those hands of yours? Those scrapes healing all right?”
“They’re fine,” she said, holding them out to him. In an instant the apron was gone from the counter and he was staring at “Mr. and Mrs. Armand Whiting” as type flew around them.
“That’s quite a daydream you were having,” he said.
“It’s not what you think,” she said weakly. “It was never the way I said it was. I mean—”
“Tell me this, and tell me the God’s honest truth. Did you tell him that it’s over between the two of you?”
“No. But that’s because there never really was anything between us.”
Seth raised one eyebrow the way he always did when she tried to tell him anything. “Does the man still think that you’re going to marry him, Abidance?”
“No. I swear on my nieces and nephews and the family cat. Armand never even asked me to marry him, Seth.”
“And this?” he asked, gesturing to the words on the paper-covered counter.
“Nothing,” she said. “It has nothing to do with me, with us.”
“What if,” Seth asked, tapping the envelope with his finger, “in this letter, this Armand fellow asks you to marry him? What will you say then?”
“I know what I’d like to say, Seth.”
“And what’s that, Abby girl?” He was kissing her hand now, kissing her third finger where it met her hand, where a ring should go. Funny how one minute she could be Abidance and the next she was Abby girl, and all because she was throwing over a beau who didn’t even exist.
“I’d like to tell him he’s too late.” There, she’d said it. Brazen hussy that she was, she’d all but asked Seth to marry her.
“He is,” Seth said, reaching over for the brayer and rubbing out Armand’s name with residue ink before coming around the counter and opening the door to the back room and motioning her to follow him.
Well, a brazen hussy once, it was hard to draw the line now. Especially when all she wanted was to be in Seth’s arms anyway. And so she followed him into the back office, let him shut the door, let him take off his soggy coat with their future sitting in his pocket, let him take her face in his hands and kiss her cheeks and her nose and her chin and throat before coming back to settle on her lips.
“Is that how Armand kissed you?” he demanded.
“Never,” she said, tipping back her head so that he could fumble with the top button on her shirtwaist. “He was a gentleman.”
“And I’m not?” Seth asked, so hungry for her that he had backed her against the wall and pressed himself against her while he continued to work at her blouse.
“No,” she admitted softly, loving the difference between all she’d ever imagined and what was the truth of it all. “You’re simply a man.”
“A man in love,” he said, kissing
her collarbone as he worked her shirt over her shoulder.
“Do you love me?” she asked, pushing him away slightly just to hear the answer, not to lose it in the passion, but to let the moment stand by itself.
He seemed to understand her need, and he stepped back, caught his breath, ran his fingers through his hair to straighten it. “I keep pawing at you in back rooms and compromising you in one way or another when I should be honoring you. When I don’t see you, I have all these high ideas—things I’ll say to you, things I’ll do, like presenting you with a rose and kissing the back of your hand and asking if you’ll do me the honor of dining with me.
“And then I see you, and all I can think is how much I want to hold you in my arms and taste your sweet lips and—”
“The question was do you love me,” she pressed, feeling his hands wander over her hips.
“Without doubt or reservation,” he said, letting her go and standing with his arms at his side, waiting for her to welcome him back to where they both knew he belonged.
“Will you marry me, Seth?” she asked as she slid into his arms and fought the buttons on his shirt until she could touch his skin.
“Leave it to you to have no respect for the proprieties. I’m supposed to do the asking,” Seth said.
“So ask,” she ordered him, allowing him to slip her blouse down over her arms, toss it behind her somewhere, and untie the pink silk ribbon that held her camisole closed.
He pushed the camisole off her shoulders too, so that it hung limply around her elbows and she rose from it the way the pistil of a flower rises within the petals. It was cold in the room, and silent as she waited for him to say the words she needed to hear.
He unbuttoned her waistband and pushed her skirt to the floor. He muttered something about ridiculous bustles, untied it, and flung it only the Lord knew where. “My God, you’re beautiful,” he said, which, while it was nice to hear, was not what she was waiting for.
She crossed her arms, returned the camisole straps to her shoulders and rubbed at her upper arms, trying to keep away the cold, the fear. And when he sat in the big leather chair and pulled her onto his lap, she tried to pretend he’d said more than he had.
Stephanie Mittman Page 15
