Breathe: A Novel of Colorado (15 page)

"Wake up, jailbird," Moira said, tossing one glove on Dominic's
chest. She threw the second at his face. "It is almost noon."

"I might be a jailbird," he said, squinting one eye open to take in
his sister, already dressed and with hat perched on her head, "but you
had to be a songbird? You couldn't wait to show off your singing?"
He tossed her glove back at her.

Her lips clamped shut for a moment, caught. "The sheriff told
you, then?"

Dominic sighed and then sat up, letting his legs swing off the
edge of the bed. He rubbed his head and looked up at her. "He's got his eye on you. Knowing you sing like an angel just made it worse.
You know that, right?"

Moira walked to the window and stared outward. "He hasn't
been exactly secretive about his intentions."

"He made me promise to allow his courtship of you in exchange
for releasing me last night."

"What?"

"You heard me." He sighed again heavily. "I didn't see a way
out, Moira. He threatened to drive me out of town, and then where
would we be? Cut off from Odessa? No way to build Father's bookshop as planned."

"Maybe we ought to go somewhere else. Come and fetch Odessa
when she is better."

"No. This is the place to be. Colorado Springs is at the crossroads
of discovery and untold success. If the miners keep striking it rich,
there will be no end to it. Don't fret over the sheriff," he said, rising
and pausing behind her. She still stared out the window, giving him
his privacy in his semidressed state. "I said he could court you. I
didn't say you had to make it easy. And I didn't let him in on the fact
that Father demands a chaperone on any excursion outside of the
public eye."

She turned to him and grinned. "Well played, Brother," she said,
with surprise and admiration in her tone.

"You know me, always using my brain as well as my brawn," he
said.

She laughed. "Go and wash up, dress. I believe I've secured your
new storefront."

"Truthfully?"

"Truthfully. But first we must stop in to see Odessa. She'll want
to know that you're a free man again."

Bryce glanced over his shoulder at the departing servant and then
set down his brush, leaning closer to her boat. "Odessa, are you ...
well? Have you heard anything? Seen anything?" He glanced over his
shoulder again. "In regard to what we spoke of earlier?"

They hadn't had the opportunity to speak in private for two days.
She dragged her fingers through the cold water, snowmelt from the
mountains high above.

"Nothing more," she said with a shake of her head. "I keep running through the poem, wondering why he left it to me, someone
he'd just met. What he hoped I'd do, exactly."

"He loved this kind of thing. Once, he sent our pastor and his
wife on a hunt."

"A hunt?"

Bryce smiled at the memory. "He thought if they wanted his
tithe, and God deemed them worthy, they could work a little for it.
They had to visit eight homesteads and ranches to gather what they
needed."

"Did they do it?"

"Nah. Pastor at the time was too proud. Refused to do it. Sam
was just after a little fun. He tithed his money in time, but he made
that preacher sweat it out for a bit."

Odessa considered that. "Bored, was he? Living all alone?"

"He found ways to occupy himself. You know what I think?"

She waited.

"I think Sam had the will drawn up, penned that poem he left
you, months before he even came to the sanitorium."

"Why?"

"So he'd be ready. Just in case."

"In case?"

"The consumption proved too much to bear."

"But he didn't know me."

Bryce shrugged. "Probably figured he'd figure out who was to get
his `treasure' once he saw them."

"And yet you were surprised he left you the land."

Bryce let out a wheezy laugh. "Shouldn't have been. As I said,
Sam loved surprises." He looked to the Peak, and then back to her.

"I've heard that some here pledge their land to the sanatorium as
collateral against unpaid bills."

"That's true. I did the same when I signed the paperwork upon
entrance." His eyes narrowed and he shook his head. "I see where
you're going with that. But I checked with the administrator today,
and Sam owed only $23. They let me pay it on his behalf."

"That was generous."

"Least I could do if the old man was going to go and leave me his
land." They shared a smile.

She cast a line into the water, suddenly aghast at the quick camaraderie forming between them. Where was that servant? Flirting with
the cook?

And that was when the screaming began.

Bryce assisted Odessa out of the boat and they slowly made their way
up the hill to see about the commotion. A young woman, small and
wiry, but impressively strong for a consumptive, looked about with
wide, wild eyes.

A man, likely her husband, pried her fingers from the wagon and
carried her in the door, where he handed her to a guard, laid entry
documents upon the front desk, and then turned to her, ignoring the
gawking crowd. "Amille, this is the best thing for you. You can get
better here, sweetheart, better." With tears rolling down his cheeks,
he took her hands in his, kissed them, and then left her with the
guard as he walked away.

Amille writhed and wailed, her hysteria sending her into a coughing fit that made them all fear she might fail to take another breath.
But her husband continued to walk away, stiff-backed, as if making
himself place one foot in front of the other, down the hill. Only her
lack of breath kept her from continuing to scream, but steady tears
rolled down her cheeks as the doctor and nurse attempted to calm
her.

"John and Amille DeChant," Bryce said under his breath.

"You know them?" Odessa asked, struggling for a decent breath
herself after their climb up the hill.

"Neighbors of Sam O'Toole's," he whispered. "Amille's mind's been slipping for some time. Their little girl died in the creek out
back on their property, near Sam's, about a year ago. John found a
silver vein while searching for her body. But no amount of silver will
ever buy a mother's peace of mind."

The others gathered along the top floor balcony and staircase
indoors, watching the newcomer. She looked about madly, a lost
look in her eye. It was as if a person disappeared within their depths,
as if she swallowed one whole, chewing a person up in an attempt
to find an anchor-hold in the storm. But more than that, Odessa
sensed the woman's terrible desperation and sorrow. She had loved
her family, and now they were lost to her.

Doctor Morton and Nurse Packard saw Amille to a private
room, presumably to Sam's old one. Odessa shoved aside the unease
she felt at having the woman right next door, in a room that had
already claimed one life. Perhaps she would find health again here,
physically, and in physical gains, make mental gains as well.

"Please, God, let it be so," she whispered under her breath, wondering what it took to separate a woman so thoroughly from her mind.

"Odessa," Bryce said. "You're looking peaked. Come, sit."

She shakily took a seat beside Bryce on the porch. Gradually,
the others drifted back to their rooms or the far side of the building,
favoring the mountain views, or to the stables for their afternoon
ride, since the morning group had just arrived back. Again and again
her mind went to the young woman upstairs, and Odessa remembered her mother, so desperately sad after each of her sons died
of the consumption. She had been so hopeful, believed so clearly
that the new baby would somehow begin to level a drastically tilted
universe. And then she was gone.

"You are sad," Bryce said quietly.

Odessa tried to force a smile. "Oh. Forgive me. Amille's sorrow
simply reminded me of my mother and her own sorrow."

Bryce hesitated. "May I ask-what sorrow?"

"The family plague, this consumption. We've lost four boys, four
of my brothers."

"Odessa," he said. She dared to look at him and his eyes held
such grief for her! Never had she seen such empathy within a man.
"There are no words," he said, shaking his head.

She felt her own throat begin to swell, tears rise, but swallowed
hard. "There are words. Horror. Pain to the very marrow of one's
bones. Ache. Endless waves of agony. Battered and bruised heartspurple and barely functioning."

She rose, but Bryce caught her hand. "Your mother ... has she
recovered?"

"She died trying to deliver my sister a year past." It felt strangely
comforting to see that her words pained him, as if he were absorbing
some of her own grief, taking it in, holding it for her. But talking
about it made her feel irrationally angry, as if for the moment it was
somehow Bryce's fault, these past losses.

Bryce looked her in the eye as Doctor Morton and Nurse Packard
returned downstairs, Amille now eerily silent. Had they administered
a sedative? Laudanum? Odessa was glad for the diversion. Better to
think upon Amille's pain than her own. Did she now drift like a leaf
on the river, appearing serene, but underneath, spinning, lost, far
from home?

"It'll do her good, being here. You'll see," Bryce tried.

But Odessa did not believe his weak words. She slid her hand out from his. "They can heal her body, but not her mind. I've heard
of people like this. They don't come back."

"You do not know that, Odessa," he said, disappointment in his eyes.
Did he believe the best, hope for the best, in all things, in all people?

"No, I am no fortune-teller, no seer, but that woman is lost."

Bryce stared down the empty hall, at sunlight streaming through
the open doorway. "But all that are lost can be found, Odessa. Every
one. God calls us to life, to love, to healing. We merely have to find
our way home."

Find our way home. Where was that, exactly, when she had left
the only home she'd ever known and found she could never return?
Suddenly, Odessa was overwhelmingly weary. The morning, their
conversations, the arrival of Amille-all had taxed her. "I must go
and take my rest," she said, already walking away.

"Sleep well, Odessa."

She didn't look back.

A week later, a maid helped Odessa don a second pair of stockings, carefully layering them over the long underwear she wore
beneath her heavy woolen skirt and then stuffing her swaddled
feet into her boots. She was barely able to lace them up. Odessa
sat back in her chair and watched, already dreadfully weary from
the effort. And they expected her to ride out on a trail today? For
how long? Surely the other patients had felt better than she did at
this moment, before the doctor demanded they mount up.

"Odessa!" Moira cried from her bedroom door. Nic peeked
over their sister's shoulder.

Odessa turned and smiled at her siblings. "I'm so glad to see you
both!" she said.

"The cuts are healing nicely," Moira said, gently touching her
cheeks. "You should not bear many scars."