Ansel looked at their mother, and then he turned his attention back to Abby as if the woman who had brought them into the world wasn’t even there. “Look, Abidance, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. You can go upstairs and lie down of your own volition or I can pick you up and carry you there and—”
“I’m just fine,” Abby said, glaring at him. It was hard enough with Emily knowing, with Ansel knowing. Having her family know, watch her every move, wait for signs … well, she knew she’d never be able to bear it. “I’m sure it was just something I ate. Dr. Bartlett says—”
“He says rest is vital, Ab,” Ansel said. “And you know it as well as I do.”
Abby’s mother sat down heavily in one of the kitchen chairs and stared hard at Abby. “Abby, darling, what is this about? Are you sick?”
“No,” Abby said adamantly. “There is absolutely nothing wrong with me. Is there, Ansel?”
“It’s just that you are looking a bit—” he began, trying to put the cat back in the bag now that he’d let it out.
“She looks more than a bit done in, Ansel. She looks like she’s knocking at death’s door. And here the two of you have seen Dr. Bartlett and kept me in the dark. Just like with this beau from St. Louis. I don’t like this at all, Abidance. It’s not like you!”
“Mother, I’m a grown woman now. That’s all it is. I don’t come running to you when I’ve a stomachache and am perfectly capable of taking myself to the doctor, who says I am just fine.”
“Abidance,” her mother said, shaking her head. “Don’t you think I know you’re throwing up every meal you manage to swallow? That you’re falling asleep every time you sit down?”
“Well, making all these crosses is exhausting,” she said defensively. “And this whole wedding business is, well, haven’t you ever been tired?”
“The last time I was as tired as you seem, and looked as ill, I was carrying you,” her mother said, and a look of pure terror came over her face. “Oh, my Lord! Abby, you’re not—I mean, Mr. Whitiny isn’t even in the country! How could you—”
“Mother!”
“Compromising you! And your father’s shotgun barely cool from Prudence’s mistake! Where did I go wrong with you girls? Where did I—”
“For heaven’s sake, Mother, there is no Mr. Whitiny!” Abby shouted at her mother’s stunned face. “And there is no wedding, and there is no groom. In fact, there is no vineyard or perfumery or whatever else I told you.” She turned and glared at Ansel. “Are you happy now?”
“Abby, calm down. This can’t be good for you. Mother, would you excuse us for a few minutes?” he asked, trying to take Abby’s arm.
“No, I will not! I want to know what everyone around here but me seems to know already,” her mother said. “And I want to know now!”
“No, Mother, you don’t,” Abby said.
“Abby, could you be pregnant, too?” Ansel asked.
“What?” Abby demanded, not believing that Ansel would ask such a thing. And in front of their mother!
“Too?” her mother asked, seizing on Ansel’s words. “What does he mean, ‘too’?”
“Like Emily,” Abby said quickly. “What else could he mean? And no, I am not having a baby. Not now, not ever! Are you happy? Would having a baby be the worst thing that could happen to me? Worse than dying?”
The room got oddly silent and Abby felt Ansel’s arm come around her and hold her while she swayed, feeling almost as if she were being buffeted by a breeze.
“I mean a fate worse than death,” she said, but it was too late. There was a hollowness in her mother’s eyes, an emptiness.
“Goddamn you, Ansel Merganser,” Abby shouted at him, pummeling her fists against his chest. “Look at her. And then ask me why I don’t want anyone to know.”
Ansel drew her against himself and patted her back rhythmically. “She has a right to know,” he said softly. “They all do,” he added, and Abby lifted her face to see Patience and Prudence standing in the doorway. She wasn’t sure when they’d come in, but it was clear they’d been there long enough to get the gist of the conversation.
They had a right… “And my rights?” she demanded. “What of them? Or did you think I was simply being noble? Did it never occur to you that I wanted my last days on my terms? That I wanted to come and go as I pleased and—”
“Abby, maybe you should let us help you up to bed,” Prudence said, coming and taking Abby’s arm. “And then, maybe after you’ve had a little rest …”
“I’m perfectly fine,” she said, fighting tears and swells of emotion that would drown her as she pulled her arm away from her sister and headed for the back door. “The egg whites are done anyway. I’m going to see how Jed is doing on his air carriage or whatever he’s calling it today!”
She could hear her mother calling after her, but she stalked off all the same, leaving Ansel to answer their questions. Let him take their pain for a while.
She had more than enough of her own.
ABBY LAY ON HER BED LISTENING TO THE SOUNDS of a somber household. Maundy Thursday was never a happy day, but never was it more solemn than this year. There was no arguing in her sisters’ room about who was wearing whose favorite shirtwaist. There was no yelling up from the kitchen that no one was helping their mother with the preparations for Communion that night. Jed had made himself even scarcer and Pru’s children were quieter than usual.
“All right if I come in?”
Abby propped herself up on her elbows and smiled at her father, wondering when he’d gotten so old. “Of course,” she said, surprised by the tininess of her voice. And when had she gotten so meek? She cleared her throat. “I’ll be getting up in a few minutes,” she said in what she thought sounded like a much stronger voice.
“I could do Communion for you here if you aren’t feeling up to it,” he said before sitting on the edge of her bed and running a warm hand up and down her arm. “Or if you don’t want to face them all.”
Old, and wise. Who was this man who sat beside her watching her with steady eyes that seemed to see into her soul? “Does everyone know?” she asked, reaching for the medicine that Dr. Bartlett had brought by just hours ago for the relentless pain in her head.
“I thought we could use all the prayers we could get,” her father said gently.
“I don’t think that’ll do it in my case,” she said, but because she needed to comfort him more than herself, she added, “I’m not scared.” It was a bald-faced lie, but he accepted it, patting her hand and saying nothing for a good while.
“There is nothing to be afraid of,” he said finally. It wasn’t clear to her whether he was trying to deny that she would die, or that death was nothing to fear, but she didn’t ask him because she didn’t want to know.
“Do you expect the church to be ready by Sunday?” she asked instead.
“If only we’d built a hospital—” her father started, and she could see guilt cloud his eyes.
“Looks like I’ll have better use for the church, personally,” she said, surprised that she could still manage a chuckle.
“You were right to keep it a secret,” he said finally. “It hurt me, but I can see that everyone’s knowing is making it harder for you, and I would give the world to make it easier for you.”
“Oh, Papa! And I would give the world to make it easier for you.”
“The Lord sends tests, Abidance—”
“I don’t think there’s any passing this particular test, Papa.”
“Maybe this test isn’t yours, honey. Maybe it’s mine, or your mother’s. Or maybe it’s Dr. Hendon’s,” he said, looking at her for answers she didn’t have.
“He’s had so many tests, Papa. I had to spare him this last one.”
“You really did love him then, I take it,” he said, not so much a question as a statement of fact.
She nodded, too choked by the thought of Seth to utter his name.
“And that Armand Whitiny was just a fabrication so that
you could send him away? That was very brave of you,” he said, his eyes shining brightly despite the grimace on his lips.
“You always used to tell Jed there was a fine line between bravery and foolishness,” she reminded him, wishing she had more to comfort her than her nobility.
“Have you crossed it?” he asked.
“No,” she said, though Dr. Bartlett’s words kept coming back to her about how Seth would hate them for keeping the truth from him. Maybe she’d just been a coward, unable to stand to see pity in his eyes. “And it doesn’t matter now, does it?”
There’d been no one at the Mergansers when Seth had gotten there, out of breath, almost as winded as his horse, who’d pulled the buggy as quickly as its old bolts would allow. Now he and Anna Lisa and Armand stood on the steps of the grange hall listening to the voices raised in song to the Lord.
When the hymn was over, they slipped quietly into the last row in the hall and Seth searched the crowd with his eyes for the back of Abby’s head. He finally found her, waiting between her sisters to take Communion, and his heart stopped beating. She was thinner, and she took Prudence’s arm to mount the steps to her father’s waiting hand.
And then, having received Communion, she turned toward the back of the church and he moved out into the aisle and opened his arms for her. He saw Patience whisper to her and watched her nod as if to say that she knew he was there. But she continued back to her seat and sat as if the whole world wasn’t spinning out of control.
Only it was, and he’d be damned if he would just sit down and watch it do a death spiral out of his reach. He looked at Anna Lisa and Armand as they stared at him expectantly. He nodded at them, as if to say that they could count on him, for all that that was worth.
Marching up the aisle he was well aware of everyone’s eyes on him. He could hear the whispers about Abby, someone hoping she wouldn’t faint again, someone wondering why he had come back, someone wondering how he hadn’t known. It seemed to take forever for him to reach the row in which she sat, but when he got there, he pushed his way to her side, where he stood with his hand out.
“I didn’t think you attended church,” she said attempting a haughtiness she couldn’t pull off.
“I don’t want to waste another minute,” he answered her back. “Do you?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” she started, but his look stopped her. He didn’t have to say I know.
“Do you want to waste this time?” he asked again.
She shook her head and he watched the tears glistening in her eyes. He put out his hand and she took it and rose.
“Take your shawl,” her father reminded her from the makeshift pulpit. “It’s cool out there.”
Seth wrapped the creamy woolen shawl around her and led her down the aisle toward the back of the hall, wishing he could change their direction, change fate.
“We’ll stop at my office and get Bartlett moving,” he said, knowing that they didn’t have the luxury of time for a reunion. Or for recriminations. “It’ll help if he comes with us to Boston.”
She stepped outside of the grange hall with him and stood on the top step. “Seth, there won’t be any Boston,” she said, and allowed him to help her down the steps—the girl who had bristled when he’d held a door for her, who had dashed from pillar to post. “I can’t go.”
“Of course you can. You and me, and Bartlett and Anna Lisa and Armand, too. As soon as I get Bartlett started on the details, we’ll come back here and have your father marry us and—”
Slowly, cautiously, she came down the steps beside him. When she reached the bottom and could let go of the railing, she gently touched his face, a feather against his cheek, a wish against his soul. “Don’t do this,” she said softly. “Get on your train and go before I lose my … resolve.”
“And let you die some noble death? Is that your plan? Well, there’s nothing noble in dying, Abby, nothing at all. But in fighting tooth and nail? Well, that I could admire for—”
She sighed as if he didn’t understand what it was costing her to be so brave. How could she not know how gladly he would pay the price for her, give his own life, if only he could.
“Can you give in to me just this once?” he asked.
She smiled at him, the radiance still there, and laughed. “And you’ll never ask me for anything again?” she asked, arching one eyebrow at him.
“That’s my girl,” he said, taking off toward his office as if he had a bottle of miracles waiting there. She lagged behind, not dawdling, he realized, and he slowed his pace so that she could keep up with him, she who had always danced ahead.
The light was on in the bedroom upstairs, his bedroom, and Seth opened the office door for Abby, followed her in, helped her to a seat, and then called up the stairs at the top of his lungs. “Ephraim? Get down here before I come up and get you and break all your old bones!”
He glanced at Abby, saw her smile, and continued his tirade purely for her amusement. Hell, he’d stand on his head to make her smile. And he’d give his life to see her well.
Bartlett came down the stairs, buttoning his vest as he came, assessing the situation with just a glance. “Didn’t I tell you he’d be madder at me?” he asked Abby, confirming what Seth had supposed when he’d put all the puzzle pieces together on the train from St. Louis.
“You bet your old ass I am,” Seth said. “Now get your sorry self over to Walker’s Mercantile and have him get Mrs. Waitte so she can put you through to Mass General on the telephone. Tell them we’re bringing Abby on the next train and—”
Bartlett sat down in the chair behind Seth’s desk, reached into the bottom drawer, and pulled out a bottle of scotch that hadn’t been there when the desk had belonged to Seth. “They won’t operate,” he said, taking two shot glasses out and splashing the liquor into them. “How’s the pain, honey?” he asked Abby, affection clear in his voice and his eyes.
“The new medicine lets me sleep,” she said, shrugging off her shawl as if they had all the time in the world to sit around and discuss the weather or something equally unimportant.
“They will operate,” Seth said. “You’ve got connections there. Pull some strings—”
“Sit down,” Bartlett said. It was an order, not an invitation. “And drink this. Do you think no one thought of taking her to Mass. General until you showed up? Do you think Ansel didn’t storm in here demanding just what you are? Do you think that Reverend Merganser—”
“My father came to see you?” Abby asked, her hand shaking in her lap.
“Honey, there is no one in all of Eden’s Grove who hasn’t come to demand I do something for you. I feel as if I should follow up Seth’s column in The Weekly Herald with one of my own.” He shrugged and looked at Seth as if the whole thing was his fault, as if the article on brain tumors had caused Abby’s.
“So why didn’t you take her to Boston?” Seth demanded. “Why did you let a minute pass?”
“Because too many minutes had passed already.”
Seth lifted the glass of scotch and downed it in one gulp. He had failed her, pure and simple. He hadn’t seen the signs and now …
“My fault,” Seth said, rubbing Abby’s hand and feeling the tremors in it.
“Yours? Listen, son, there would have been only the smallest chance even months ago. Even if she’d been diagnosed early, even if she’d been in Boston. We only operated on sure bets. And even then our success rate was minimal. Mostly we got our patients from insane asylums, where they wouldn’t be any worse off if I—”
“I? We?” Seth stared at Ephraim Bartlett. “You are a brain surgeon?”
“I was a surgeon,” Bartlett admitted reluctantly. “And yes, my specialty was the head.”
“Fine. Then you’ll operate,” Seth said, as if that settled it. “Abby and I are going to get married tonight and then tomorrow—”
Abby was looking at Bartlett, and Seth followed her line of vision straight to Ephraim’s hands, which he held out. Tremors
shook his hands so that the man would have been hard-pressed to hold a pen, never mind a scalpel.
“I’m going to take Abby home to get ready to marry me. Her family ought to be there by now. You and I can work out what we do next when I come back.”
Abby pulled her shawl up around her shoulders. “No,” she said more firmly than he’d have liked.
“No what?” he asked.
“No, I don’t want to marry you. I won’t marry you. Are you in a rush to become a widower?”
Could he say aloud the words that crashed in his head? That he wanted her headstone to say that she was his beloved wife, and belonged to him in that way forever?
“It wasn’t a very moving proposal,” Ephraim agreed. “None of that flowery stuff or words of love.”
“Of course I love her,” Seth said. “Why else would I want to marry her, attach myself to that crazy family of hers, and spend my days here in Eden’s Grove with her?”
“You don’t need to marry me, Seth. Not now.”
“Do you think I’m marrying you because I think you’re going to die? That I’m doing it for you?” he asked. She should know better, surely she should.
“Well, you didn’t want to marry me before I was dying, did you? I mean, you left, didn’t you?”
“Of course I did. You tricked me into leaving. You know I wanted to marry you. Even after that ridiculous story about Armand Whitiny—which I will tan your bottom over just as soon as we are alone, by the way—I still wanted you.”
Her look said that she didn’t believe him.
“What about the ring?” he asked. Didn’t that prove it?
Ephraim Bartlett leaned forward with great interest, as if he had any right to be privy to their conversation. “There was that,” he reminded Abby. “And remember that you were the one who sent him away, girl.”
“You can have it back,” she said, pulling it from her finger where it belonged.
“I’ll take it for now,” he said, holding out his hand and letting her place the ring in it, curling his fingers around her hand as she did. “But I’ll be putting it back on that finger later, with God—and God help me—your father, watching.”
Stephanie Mittman Page 25
