Seth got up from the bed and walked over to where Ella stood, rising from her skirts like the last shaft of wheat in a winter field. He bent over and picked up the skirts and petticoats, Ella stepping out of them so that he could. He gathered them into his arms and then pushed them at Ella, covering her chemise with the mass of fabric.
“I’m saying it,” he admitted.
He didn’t feel noble. He didn’t feel pure or morally superior. He felt hollow and empty and adrift.
And he knew damn well that until he got back on that train, took it to the end of the line, finished what he’d had a mind to do when he’d boarded it back in Eden’s Grove, he’d have no peace.
Not that he expected much peace once he’d done what he needed to do…. He just wanted to put a period to this chapter of his life, and lying around in a hotel room in Kansas City with Ella Welsh wasn’t going to do that.
He didn’t know if anything would.
Jed begged off on the picnic, complaining about how his broken fingers were hampering him and muttering about not having much time to get his flying machine in working order. Abby couldn’t help wishing him luck, despite Ansel’s look of disgust at their brother’s obvious foolishness.
The rest of the Mergansers headed out to gather up fixings for a picnic for six hungry grown-ups and three squealing-with-excitement children.
Abby offered to help Emily prepare her share, and headed off with her while her sisters and parents headed in the opposite direction with all three of the children in tow.
“I know that you know,” Abby said to Ansel when she and Emily and Ansel were alone.
Ansel tried to look uncertain about what she was saying, but finally he just shrugged and nodded.
“Did you know before Seth left?” she asked, wondering how hard it had been for him to keep her secret.
“Yes,” Ansel said. “And for that, you owe me.”
“Ansel!” Emily said with a gasp.
“Owe you what?” Abby asked, as surprised as Emily that her brother would ask anything of her.
“I want to take you to another doctor,” he said. “In Sioux City or in St. Louis, or wherever Bartlett thinks there might be someone who can help you.”
“All right,” she agreed, dreading the idea of a big trip, when just getting to church was exhausting. “After Easter, okay?”
Ansel seemed surprised that she would acquiesce. “Really?” he asked.
“I don’t want to die,” she said softly. It was the first time she’d uttered the words aloud. They choked her, and she had to stop walking and catch her breath while she fought against tears that she feared would never stop. “Oh, Ansel! I don’t want to die!”
“Shh,” she could hear him whispering over the top of her head as he cradled her against him and Emily somehow sandwiched up behind. “Shh, now. Crying can’t be good for you,” he added lamely.
“Maybe you all want to come on inside?” a voice asked, and Abby looked up into the kind dark eyes of Ephraim Bartlett, who stood in Seth’s doorway.
Flanking her on either side, Emily and Ansel led her into the doctor’s office where she had spent so many hours of her life.
“Why don’t you help her into the examining room,” Dr. Bartlett said. “Then it might be best if I see her alone.”
“They know,” Abby said.
“Tell me where I can take her,” Ansel demanded, as if poor Dr. Bartlett had a secret he refused to tell. “Anywhere. Anywhere at all.”
“There’s a clinic in Minnesota,” Dr. Bartlett said, but his tone was at odds with his words, a “but” hanging silently in the air.
“Minnesota,” Ansel agreed, as if it were all settled.
“Have you heard anything from Seth?” Abby asked, then chided herself for even asking.
“He said good-bye only this morning,” Dr. Bartlett said. “But I can tell you that he left with a heavy heart, my dear.”
“Not as heavy as if he’d stayed,” she answered, raising her chin proudly.
“He might have felt otherwise,” Dr. Bartlett said, as though the good doctor had been around to see Seth die a little more each day as Sarrie faded away. As if he’d never read the medical text he’d loaned her that spelled out in detail how she wouldn’t even know who Seth was in the end.
“He truly loved you,” Emily said, in the past tense as if she were already gone. “Loves you,” she corrected.
“When I hear from him, I can—” Dr. Bartlett began.
“No!” She’d made the right decision. Right for her, right for Seth. And it was her decision to make.
“Maybe this will change your mind,” Ansel said, fishing in his suit coat pocket and pulling out an envelope with more than a note inside. “He left this for you.”
“We have to get going or we’ll be late for the picnic,” Abby said. She made no move to take the letter.
“Aren’t you going to read it?” Emily asked.
“No, I don’t think so,” she said softly, staring at the envelope in Ansel’s hand with the small bulge in the corner. “Hold it a while longer, Ansel, won’t you?”
“Afraid you’ll change your mind?” Dr. Bartlett asked. Abby decided she didn’t like Ephraim Bartlett after all. From the moment she’d met him, he’d known too much about her.
“If you don’t open it, I will,” Emily said, stunning not only Abby but apparently Ansel and the doctor as well. “You aren’t the only one with rights here, Abidance. Seth Hendon trusted you with his heart and you owe him the courtesy of opening a letter from him, at least. Unless you’re so unsure of what you’re doing that you think it might change your mind?” she challenged.
“Nothing can change my mind,” Abby said, reaching for the letter and feeling the shape of what was inside, knowing that Ansel knew it too, so there was little point in waiting until she was alone to open it.
Carefully she lifted the sealed edge and let the ring slip into her waiting palm. In her shaking hand the golden band danced wildly, and the tears she’d fought so hard not to shed overwhelmed her, until her breath came in gasps and they led her to a chair and guided her into it.
“Read it,” she said, handing the envelope to Emily.
“I don’t—” Emily began.
“I can’t take much more,” Abby admitted. “I will burn the letter unread if I don’t hear it now.”
“Ansel?” Emily asked, but it was Dr. Bartlett’s voice that read her Seth’s parting words.
“This was my mother’s,” he started, without preamble, so like Seth not to even say “Dear Abidence.” “She told me to give it to the woman I would one day love.”
“Go on,” she said, staring at the sunlight glinting off the ring in her palm.
“That’s it,” Dr. Bartlett said.
“That’s it?” Ansel asked, reaching for the note as if he didn’t believe Dr. Bartlett. But Abby knew that Seth had written enough. What more was there to say?
With a great deal of difficulty, one hand shaking more than the other, she managed to slip the ring on her finger and smiled through her tears at Emily. “Leave it on when they bury me,” she said.
“For God’s sake!” Ansel shouted at her. “You are not going to die!”
“It really is too soon to give up all hope,” Dr. Bartlett agreed, but Abby’s eyes were on Emily, waiting. Finally Emily nodded.
“Now,” Abby said, brushing away her tears with the palms of her hands. “It’s time to go on a picnic. Wanna join us, Doc?”
IT HAD BEEN AGOOD WEEK FOR ABBY, ALL THINGS considered. Oh, she’d had a bit of a time explaining the ring on her finger, but she’d claimed that Armand had foolishly sent it to her from France to be sure of the sizing and that since he wasn’t at home yet, she dared not send it back down to St. Louis until he returned.
The same gullibility that allowed her mother to believe that cookies just disappeared from counters, and allowed her father to believe that the Lord had made Joseph Panner a gambler so that in the end Eden’s Grove could
have their church, allowed them both to accept her ridiculous story about a ring that clearly wasn’t new. Maybe they were too busy to notice, or maybe they were minding their own business. It didn’t matter to Abby, as long as they didn’t know the truth.
Despite his fingers, Jed was still hellbent on flying over the church on Easter morning, and questioned nothing that wasn’t related to speed versus wind drag or some such thing. And Abby’s sisters, while they both looked skeptical, kept their doubts to themselves in a show of filial solidarity.
They’d spent the early part of the week baking crosses, acting as if Jed’s plans would actually succeed, knowing that if they didn’t, the crosses would be just as lovely given out by hand. And while they’d baked and cooled the cookies, her father had overseen the installation of the biggest windows Eden’s Grove had ever seen, had organized men to finish plastering, to paint, to hang the twelve chandeliers that would light up the church against even the darkest forces of evil.
The palms had already been brought to the church, the children had rehearsed well for their songs, and the women had already met to begin organizing the flowers with which to decorate the new church come Easter Sunday.
There would, of course, be lilies, Abby thought as she made her way up the grange hall steps for services. She especially liked lilies, though at the moment she couldn’t remember exactly what they looked like. And it was getting harder and harder to pretend that she was all right when she forgot simple things she’d known all her life that now only danced at the fringes of her mind.
Well, after Easter services in the new church, she’d tell her family that she was sick, that Dr. Bartlett had recommended that she go to Minnesota for treatment, and she’d put herself into Ansel’s hands.
She tripped on the top step, knocking into Mrs. Denton, and blamed it on her new dress being too long. Easter, Abby thought, after a profuse apology, couldn’t come soon enough.
Ansel took her arm and led her down the aisle. She hated it, the coddling, the caring, and chided herself for begrudging her brother this small thing that he could do.
“Mrs. Youtt!” she said, and stopped beside the woman’s chair. “How are you? I heard that Johnnie will be lighting the candles for today’s service.”
Mrs. Youtt stood and kissed her cheek, nodding. “And just wait until next week’s service! Have you seen the new church? Well, I suppose you have! I stopped in on my way here—just peeked in the windows, of course. I’ve never seen anything so magnificent in my life.”
“I know,” Abby agreed, trying to put aside her resentment at Mrs. Youtt’s stance against the clinic Seth had wanted. What did it matter now, anyway? “It is a wonder!”
When Ansel again took her hand, she could feel the ring Seth had left for her hugging her finger inside the glove. She could tell, from the way in which Ansel held her, that he too, could feel it and their eyes met, his full of sympathy, hers, she hoped, serene.
As they filed into her family’s pew, Abby stumbled yet again.
“Are you all right?” Ansel asked, his strong arms safely easing her into her seat.
She was so very tired of that question that all she could do was snap at him. “I’m clumsy. You haven’t noticed that before?” And then she was sorry, looking at his kind face and knowing that he was thinking that she wasn’t responsible for her own outbursts, which then made her madder, until her head throbbed and she looked away.
“We all know the stations of the cross,” her father started, but she hardly heard him because her hands had begun to jump wildly in her lap. Emily, sitting beside her, took Abby’s left hand and held it within her own. Ansel took hold of her right.
“All rise,” her father said, and both Ansel and Emily tried to help her up as though she were some doddering old woman.
She pulled her hands from them and stood, sticking her chin out proudly, the same way she’d stood beside her brother in church from the day she was so small that she had to stand on the pew beside him.
It was a sad song, “Let Us Plead for Faith Alone,” as all the songs were on Palm Sunday. And she sang it with all the sadness that was in her heart, sang it loud and clear.
“In Christ our—” the words went, and then it was as if the words were gone, all the words, and all she could mutter was a strangled “Oh” as she grabbed at the back of the bench in front of her and tried to stop the undertow.
“Oh, my Lord,” someone behind her said, and she knew it would only be the beginning of all the prayers to come.
Seth had to tell himself over and over, as he sat in the railroad car that was slowly heading north, that there was nothing faster than the railroad, and even if he rented a horse—even if he remembered how to ride—this was the fastest way to get back to Eden’s Grove, to Abidance, who needed him more than he had ever guessed.
What an idiot he was! If the whole thing hadn’t been so deadly serious, it would have been funny, him standing at the door in St. Louis, demanding to see Armand Whitiny.
“You mean Armand Whiting,” the lovely young woman corrected. “He’s out right now taking care of wedding plans.”
“I see. Is this his usual residence?” he asked casually. The little row house whose doorstep he stood on could fit in the hallway of the mansion Abby had described.
“May I ask who’s inquiring?” the young woman asked, obviously affronted on Armand’s behalf.
He removed his hat, chagrined that he hadn’t had the presence of mind to do that as soon as she’d answered the door. Lose your heart, lose your manners, he supposed. “Pardon me. Dr. Seth Hendon,” he said, extending his hand.
“Oh, my Lord, no!” the woman said, going white and leaning against the doorframe. “Please don’t say she’s dead. Please don’t!”
“Who?” he asked like some idiot owl. “Who’s dead?”
“Your ticket, sir?” the conductor asked, standing beside his seat and rocking with the motion of the train.
“How much longer to Eden’s Grove?” he asked, taking the ticket from his vest pocket and holding it out for the conductor to punch while Armand dug around in his own pocket for his and Anna Lisa’s tickets.
“Gotta change at Kansas City,” the conductor said. “Good two-hour layover there. Change again at Cedar Rapids. I’d say all told a good fifteen hours.”
There was nothing good about it. He sat back in his seat and stared beyond the empty seat beside him at the landscape which seemed to fly by and get him nowhere.
Across from him, Anna Lisa—who it was hard to believe was the hellion that Abby had described over the years—looked at him sympathetically. It was a far cry from the look she’d given him when he’d demanded to see Armand Whitiny. Of course now that he knew the whole story, now that he knew that Armand Whitiny didn’t even exist, it was surely no wonder she’d been so confused.
What kind of doctor was he? What kind of man, that he could be so inattentive to someone who mattered so much to him?
“So you think that if we took her to Boston,” Anna Lisa started, and Seth watched as Armand took her hand within his and patted it.
“Boston would be the best place,” Seth said, but now that all the pieces were fitting together he had to wonder if there would be time. At least Bartlett had connections there, he’d be able to cut through any red tape, grease any palms that needed greasing, find a bed for her, a doctor…. Did Bartlett know? Was he just imagining that he’d seen strange looks passing between Bartlett and Abby now that Anna Lisa had told him the truth?
He was ashamed to ask, to admit to being privy to so little, but his need to know was stronger than his pride, and so he said, “Does anyone else know? Her parents? Ansel?”
Before Armand said her name, Seth knew that Abby had told Emily, Emily who had all but begged him to tell her where he was going, how he could be reached.
It wasn’t just some cliché, that pride goeth before a fall. The thought that Abby preferred someone over him had cut him so deeply that the only way to staunch the
wound was to cut off the affected part. Of course, he couldn’t live without his heart, but he had tried.
“She said that every time she looked at the pain in Emily’s eyes she was convinced she had done the right thing in keeping it to herself. Dr. Hendon, I begged her to tell you,” Anna Lisa said, and Armand handed her his hankie so she could dab at the tears in her eyes. “I told her that even if you couldn’t help her—”
“She didn’t want you to watch her deteriorate,” Armand said, and it was clear that Anna Lisa wasn’t the only one whose heart was breaking along with Seth’s. “She has this notion that in the end … Well, I’m sure she’s wrong, just as I’m sure she’s wrong about the tumor and about dying,” he said as if that could make it so. “No matter what that Dr. Bartlett might have said.”
“Are you all right?” Anna Lisa asked him, reaching over and putting a hand on his knee.
“Fine,” he said, as if he could be, would be, ever again. Had Bartlett told Abby what the end would bring? How she’d lose her balance? Hell, she was already past that if that fall off the stool when she’d tried on her wedding gown was any indication. When he thought about it, she’d been tripping for months, up the stoop in front of his office, off his back stairs….
Then how she’d lose her vision as it narrowed—
He swallowed and looked out the window memorizing every detail as if he could save it for her, give it to her.
And how in the end she wouldn’t know him. How, unaware, she would finally slip mercifully from their midst and they would have to be happy that she was at peace.
“No!” He hadn’t meant to shout the word aloud, hadn’t meant to come to his feet and need Armand and Anna Lisa to shush him and tug at him to sit calmly with them once again, checking his watch, wondering what was waiting for him back in Eden’s Grove.
Abby was beating in the last bit of egg whites for the crosses when she heard Ansel’s voice behind her. “What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded. “You ought to be in—”
She turned as fast as she could and spoke loudly over her brother’s words as her mother came in from the back porch. “Isn’t it just a glorious day out?”
Stephanie Mittman Page 24
