Home by Morning (14 page)

He stepped inside and closed the door, bringing the smell of fresh food with him. Jessica’s mouth watered. “I stopped by the school first, but you’d already left.” He lifted one side of the lid and peeked into the basket. “Mrs. Stark put something together in here. Roast beef, I think. And if I know her, probably some other things, too. I hope it’s still hot.”

“I don’t care if it’s cold, it smells wonderful. I haven’t eaten since early this morning. Thank you, and please thank her for me, too. It’s been a very long, hard day. But probably for you as well?” She took off her coat, and he hurried to put down the hamper to help her, brushing the small of her back as he did so. He hung the wrap on the coat tree.

“I visited a couple of families. They’re frightened and grieving.”

She could understand that. She was frightened too, though she dared not show it to those counting upon her.

“I offered what comfort I could,” he said. “I tried hard to make them understand that when God takes our loved ones, there’s a good reason we mustn’t question.”

Yes, what consolation that must be, Jess thought tartly. It should make little Philip Warneke feel much better about being an orphan. Adam had brought her dinner, so she didn’t give voice to the observation. But she’d always resented the type of religion that Adam’s father had taught, which allowed no room for inquiry or exception to interpretation. Although Adam didn’t seem quite as inflexible as Ephraim Jacobsen, she detected pronounced similarities of thought.

She lifted the hamper lid and pulled out a napkin-covered dish of sliced roast beef. “Would you like to join me?”

“No, no, I brought this for you.”

She dug a little deeper and found plates, silver, and napkins. “Hmm. It would seem that Mrs. Stark had other ideas. There are two place settings in here, and a lot of food. Even peach crisp with a pitcher of fresh cream.”

Adam wore a sheepish expression. “I guess she remembered that I haven’t had dinner.”

She looked at him with raised brows. “Then I guess you should.”

It was such a transparent maneuver she could think of no other response.

He smiled and straightened his tie. “All right.”

Since it would be unthinkable to invite Adam upstairs to her kitchen table, they moved some waiting room furniture to the back office to create a little dining area on a small table between two chairs.

“We didn’t leave you with much, did we?” Adam commented.

This part of the place looked picked over and disorganized, as some of her equipment and one of her cabinets had been moved to the high school.

“I’ll probably be spending most of my time at the infirmary, anyway.”

Jess had to stop herself from falling upon the food and ripping at a piece of beef with her teeth. But she managed to devour the tender pieces she carefully cut up with her silver, ate a mound of Mrs. Stark’s wonderful mashed potatoes, and savored a buttermilk biscuit. At last, when her hunger began to wane, she relaxed and small talk sprang up between them. Eventually, conversation grew more specific.

“Did anyone else come to the infirmary after I left?” Adam asked, his napkin tucked into his shirt collar.

“Yes, several people, desperately ill. I felt guilty leaving them.”

“Who were they?”

She put down her fork, and again, Cole’s angry accusation swept through her mind, putting her on her guard unwillingly. “Adam, you know I can’t tell you that. It would violate physician-patient confidentiality.”

He finished a biscuit dripping with melted butter. Jess noted briefly that Adam hadn’t placed the same dietary restrictions on himself that the rest of the country was expected to endure.

Cream, butter, beef—many people were doing without these. “I didn’t realize it was a secret. I saw some of those people myself before I left.”

Strictly speaking, that was true. He
had
seen some of her patients and through his own work knew many of those who had succumbed. She nodded. “I know. But it’s part of my training and I can’t let it go. Just as you wouldn’t tell me if someone came to you and, say, admitted that he’d committed adultery.”

“No.” His gaze slid away from hers and he shifted in his chair. “No, of course not. Although I’m not sure the comparison is equal.”

“I suppose it isn’t. But it’s still sensitive information.”

“Tell me about your work,” he said, shifting the subject. “I know you’re planning to go to Seattle. I suppose after New York, Powell Springs must seem pretty tame and backward to you.” While Jess dished up the peach crisp, he poured coffee for them both from the Thermos bottle Mrs. Stark had included in the hamper.

She spread a napkin on her lap. “A lot of people seem to think that I’d feel that way, but I don’t. It’s not backward.” For a moment, her thoughts misted over and she remembered the beauty of the area. “New York was a lonely place. I missed the slower pace of life here, the sight of rolling farmland settling down for winter, or waking in the spring, the peace. In fact, under different circumstances, I’d rather be here than anywhere else.” The response popped out of her mouth before she had the chance to stifle it. She hadn’t even admitted it to herself, and yet she knew it was true. Nothing had brought that fact home to her more poignantly than the soft, quiet nights, even during her all-night vigils with patients.

Adam leaned forward eagerly, so close to her that Jess drew back in her chair. “Really. And what would it take to keep you here?”

She wasn’t about to reveal to him, of all people, the secrets in her heart. He seemed nice enough, but…“Nothing. I have a job. As soon as this flu epidemic is under control, or if Dr. Pearson gets here, I have to go. I’m expected and needed in Seattle.”

He covered her hand with his own where it rested on the arm of her chair. His palm was slightly damp. “You’re needed here, too.”

“I have been over this with several people, Adam. I’ve talked about it with Horace Cookson, too. I’m sure Dr. Pearson will do a fine job for Powell Springs. As for Granny Mae, she’s always had her followers, and they’re free to go to her if they want.”

He tightened his grip on her hand. “I’m not talking about doctoring.” He drew a deep breath and exhaled a stale smell of roast beef and coffee in her face. “I’m talking about a different life, with a husband and children. A woman’s life.”

Jessica felt her eyes widen. “Adam, what—”

At that moment, the front door swung open, ringing the overhead bell, and shut again. The sound of boot heels on the flooring suggested the presence of a man.

“Jessica?”

Oh, no…

Cole walked into the back room, bringing with him the clean scent of the night. With his appearance in the doorframe, the atmosphere in the room changed. Jess started, and Adam tightened his fingers on hers.

Cole carried a small wooden crate. “Jessica? I saw your light—” His eyes fell upon Adam and the cozy dinner scene, and his expression hardened. “Sorry. I didn’t realize you had a caller.”

“Adam was kind enough to bring dinner to me.” Realizing that Adam still held her hand, she snatched it from his grip with some difficulty, her spine as stiff as a celluloid collar.

Cole glared at him. The feeble overhead light shadowed his eyes. “Uh-huh. There seems to be no end to your good works, Adam. Susannah had the same idea. Well, sort of the same idea, since the only spooning she mentioned has to do with the bread pudding in here.”

“Don’t you knock before you barge into a room?” Adam demanded.

“I didn’t realize I was interrupting anything. I guess that’s your buggy parked halfway down the street, then, huh? Afraid someone might recognize it?”

Annoyed, Jess throttled her napkin, but Adam stood up. “What are you implying, Braddock?”

Cole’s grin was sardonic. “Why, not a damned thing. I came to deliver Susannah’s pork chops and pudding, and that’s all
I’m
doing. How about you?”

“Your mind has always been in the gutter, hasn’t it,” Adam snapped, his face splotched with color. “When we were boys, and even now, a grown man, you still—”

Although Cole was egging him on, Jess was surprised by Adam’s quick, rude anger. “That’s all, both of you! I’m not going to put up with your bickering. This day was hard enough.”

Adam sat again, plainly trying to recover his dignity. “I apologize, Jessica.”

Cole gave her an even look that asked the same question he’d posed earlier in the day.
What are you doing with him?
But he only put the box on the work table and said, “Susannah was worried about you.”

“I appreciate it. Please let her know.”

He tugged at the brim of his Stetson and turned to leave. “See you around.” He gave Adam a lingering glance but said nothing more. The sound of his steps retreating to the waiting room was followed by the opening and closing of the door.

“I’ve sometimes wondered how your sister got involved with a man like him, so earthy and lustful.” Their eyes met, and he seemed to remember that Jess, too, was once
involved
with Cole. The memory of the embarrassing summer day by the river so long ago hung between them like a photograph. That sweet, desperate summer day…

After an awkward moment of silence, Jessica began stacking their dishes. The moderately pleasant rapport between them had fizzled, and Jess wished for nothing more than to be rid of Adam so she could go upstairs. “I should wash these before you take them back to Mrs. Stark.”

“No, no,” Adam said, taking the plates from her and putting them back in the hamper. “I don’t expect you to do that. It wouldn’t be much of a treat if you have to work for it.”

“Thanks. I still have patient chart notes to make.”

“I’ll get out of your hair, then.” He picked up the hamper and she walked him to the door. Facing her in the doorway, he shifted the hamper from one hand to the other. “Jessica, about what I said earlier…about staying in Powell Springs…”

“Oh, Adam, I don’t think—”

Before she could finish the sentence, he pulled her to him with his free hand and planted a passionate beef-and-coffee-flavored kiss on her mouth. His tongue sought hers and Jessica made a muffled noise and managed to push herself away.

“
Adam
!”

“I’m sorry, but I—you—” He rushed on, as if he might lose his nerve or she might interrupt before he could have his say. In the faint light, his face was more animated than she’d ever seen it. “You don’t know how long I’ve thought of you, wished for you. Every time you came back to town, I thought—I hoped—but always, always there was Braddock. Now—” He put down the basket with a clatter of dishes. “Jessica, I’m not wealthy, ministers aren’t meant to be wealthy. But I would be a good husband and provider to you and our children. You would still be able to serve mankind and God, in a whole new way. As my wife.” He was slightly breathless after his declaration.

Jess stared at him, flummoxed. She supposed he’d been courting her, with the flowers and chocolate, but she hadn’t anticipated such an abrupt proposal. In fact, with everything else that had been happening, she hadn’t given it any thought at all. She wasn’t sure how to refuse without being downright rude. Marry Adam Jacobsen? “This is such a bad time,” she began.

He nodded. “I know this must seem sudden to you, and maybe not appropriate, given the present circumstances.”

That was an understatement.

“But, Jessica, lovely Jessica.” He brushed her hair with the back of his fingers. “This plague only makes the situation more urgent. What if…what if this is the end?”

A shiver ran down her back. “The end. Of what?”

“What if the world as we know it is finally breathing its last? We already have war and pestilence.”

The end. No, no, that would mean there’s no hope. That everything I’m doing here, everything I have ever done, is futile. That I can’t make any difference at all.
Her pulse began to pound in her temples, and images of sick, ragged human scarecrows, lodged in tiny, airless rooms—the same ghosts that haunted her dreams—filled her mind. She scarcely heard what Adam was saying.

“…famine, and I would want you with me. Even if it’s not the end, I don’t want you to leave Powell Springs. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. You don’t have to give me an answer now. But please, promise me that you’ll at least think about it.”

Dumbstruck and feeling dizzy by the grim pictures parading through her head, Jess could think of nothing to do but stare with her mouth open. He grinned and leaned forward to kiss her again, but she pulled back.

“All right, then. I’ll leave you for now. Tomorrow I’ll come by the infirmary to see you and to comfort the afflicted.”

Jess watched him walk away, terrified not by his horror story that the end of the world was coming, or even so much by his proposal. Terror ripped through her heart that this pestilence, as he called it, could steal more lives than anyone had imagined.

And perhaps her own sanity.

“Another whiskey, Cole?” Virgil Tilly asked, holding a square bottle of amber liquid.

“A short one.” Cole stood at the end of the bar, upwind of Winks Lamont. Next to Winks, Bert Bauer hunched over the counter, nursing a beer of his own. Shaw Braddock sat at a table next to the stove, dealing himself a game of solitaire and scowling at the cards. When he thought no one was watching, he peeked under the seven face-down stacks to see what they hid.

Winks gripped his glass between two hands. “You must have done some fast talking to keep Cookson from closing down this place, Virgil. ’Course over to Bridal Veil, that town went dry by choice.” He shuddered, as if the very idea was enough to give him the jimjams. “Just about everywhere else is shut up tight, except Bright’s and Main Street Drug.”

Virgil fiddled with a display of cheap cigars that sat on the bar near the beer tap, his ever-present bar towel slung over one shoulder. “Poor old Horace has been moving in a fog since his boy died. He hasn’t said anything about closing me, and I’m not going to mention it. Leave well enough alone, I figure. He just asked me not to serve food.” He went on to name several other people who had died in the past few days.

As critical as circumstances were, all of this was just background chatter to Cole, who stared into his glass and saw the image of Adam Jacobsen at that happy little picnic with Jess. They’d both frozen like two raccoons caught in the headlamps of his truck when he walked in on them. And, Jesus, but Jacobsen had been touchy and defensive, as if he’d been caught with another man’s wife.

Cole had gone straight to see Amy afterward, hoping to cool his indignation. But she was still struggling with the headache she’d had for two days, and that only gave him something else to think about. She’d been working too hard, and now she’d worn herself out. People caught influenza when they were worn out. Mrs. Donaldson had made her promise to see Jessica the next morning, and had her lying back in a parlor chair with a cold cloth on her forehead. The woman clucked and fussed over her, so he knew she was in good hands.

Worse, now, though, he felt more awkward around Amy than ever, and he sensed that she knew it. She’d peered at him, as if through her female intuition—that mysterious ability no man understood—she could read his thoughts.

He shouldn’t feel awkward. Everyone loved Amy. Everyone except—

“Cole, what’re you looking so hangdog about?” Pop piped up.

There was the eternal question. If only he could get rid of the feeling that he’d made a horrible mistake, a life-changing, Godawful blunder. How could the old man read him so well, yet seem to know so little about him? Cole retreated behind a good excuse, one that he even believed himself. “People we know are dying, Pop. People we’ve known for years, and anyone could be next. I’d say that’s pretty damned gloomy.”

For a change, Pop didn’t make some tactless remark. He nodded solemnly and went back to cheating at solitaire.

“You ought to go see your woman. That’ll make you feel better.” This advice came from Bauer, unsolicited and out of the blue. The man had been fairly quiet since he appeared in town, keeping to himself. There was something about him, though, that put Cole off. “Give us another couple of beers here, Tilly,” Bauer said.

Virgil pointed at the sign that warned he didn’t run tabs for anyone. “Can you pay for more than the nickel beer you already ordered?”

Bauer slapped a dollar on the bar.

Tilly cast a suspicious gaze at both him and Winks. “Where are you two getting your money? I haven’t heard about anyone hiring around here.”

“Well, I guess you don’t hear everything, then. Winks and me, we got jobs.”

“Yeah? Doing what?”

“Digging graves in that cemetery behind the school. Seventy-five cents each.” He wore a smug expression.

Everyone in the saloon stared at him, as if waiting to see if he was just making a bad joke. Even the stuffed elk heads appeared to look over the scene with their glass eyes.

Bauer’s brows rose, lifting the brim of his battered hat. “What? Fred Hustad hired me to help Winks. Those dying friends of yours need to be buried, and the undertaker’s got more business than he can handle. It’s damned hard work, I’ll tell you. Some of those stiffs smell worse than Winks, here, even through the coffins. At least the graveyard is convenient. We just move ’em outside from the infirmary. Hustad doesn’t have time to embalm all of them. He’s getting five, six a day.”

“Jesus Christ,” Cole muttered, disgusted. He hated to think that anyone he knew was put in the ground by Bauer. At least Winks had the good sense to keep his attention fixed on his beer, and added nothing to the conversation.

“Oh, regular nabobs, now, huh?” Virgil remarked with a hint of derision, and filled two glasses from the tap. “Lighting your cigars with ten-dollar bills, drinking champagne out of some woman’s satin shoe?”

The jab obviously went over Bauer’s head. “Speaking of women,” he went on expansively, “are there any around here who know how to show a man a good time?”

Virgil brought the foaming lagers to the bar. “Yeah, there’s one, way up on Butler Road. But you’d have trouble finding her place in the dark. You’d better go during the day.”

“Which way on Butler Road?”

Cole knew Em, and he didn’t think she deserved to be burdened with a creep like Bauer, with his mean, red-rimmed eyes and pointed, ratlike face. But he kept that to himself. While Virgil gave Bauer directions to Emmaline’s place, Cole drained his glass and turned to his father. In his mood, it wouldn’t take much more of Bauer’s yapping to make Cole punch him in the mouth. “Come on, Pop. Let’s get on home. It’s been a long day.”

The old man griped, “
Now,
damn it? I’m winning this hand!”

“Don’t worry, you can win at home too if you cheat like that.”

“Cheat!” Pop blustered some, but unbent his creaking joints and got to his feet without further argument.

Early the next morning, while a chill east wind drove raindrops against the walls of the building, Jessica stood in the back room of her office gathering some medicine bottles to put in her doctor’s bag. The bell rang over the front door, and she heard Amy’s voice.

“Jessica?”

Thank God, Jess thought, her sister was better. She needed her help, and Frederick Pearson was still only a name with no tangible presence. “Back here, Amy. I’m just about to leave for the infirmary. There’s some coffee in the pot on the hotplate.” But when Amy appeared in the doorway, Jess took one look at her and knew she wasn’t better. Not at all.

“You can’t work. You look terrible.” A woman who was always so careful about her appearance, today Amy wore her damp hair in a ragged tail tied with a piece of wrinkled ribbon at the back of her neck. She’d wrapped an old shawl over a dress that she saved for doing hard jobs like laundry and housecleaning, and her stockings both had runs in them. Dark smudges gave her eyes a sunken, bitter look. At odds with her shabby dress was a pair of expensive-looking cameo earrings.

Amy wilted into a straight-backed chair and stared at her shoes in a blank, fixed way. “I’m not here to work.”

Jessica frowned. Her sister’s appearance was downright alarming. She stepped over and took Amy’s wrist between her fingers to feel her pulse. “How do you feel?”

“I have a headache, but mostly I’m just so tired. I barely slept last night.”

Jess pulled a thermometer from her bag and poked it into Amy’s mouth. “I don’t wonder why. You’ve probably worn yourself to a nub,” she said. “You’ve been busy with your committees and helping me. I’m sure it’s just too much.”

Amy took the thermometer out again. “No. I could handle those things. It’s the worrying that has me undone and I’ve come to have my say.”

Baffled, Jess asked, “Your say—what are you worried about?”

Her sister slanted an odd look at her. “Cole. And you.”

She got an icy feeling in her stomach. “Why?”

“He came to see me last evening. He’s unhappy that Adam Jacobsen is courting you.”

“Oh, well,” Jess said, quietly relieved, “you know they never liked each other.”

“No, Jessica. It was more than that.”

She considered her sister and crossed her arms over her chest. “What then?”

“I know he’s jealous about Adam.”

The icy feeling was back. “Jealous! Oh, now Amy, I don’t think so. We—he—” She was irked with Cole for putting her in this position. “Cole made the decision to end our
understanding
. I didn’t.”

“I know, but I think he regrets that decision. And I
know
you do—I’ve seen the way you look at him. I’d hoped that it was over between you.” Her eyes, at the same time bright with fever and anger, narrowed into slits of rancor.

Astounded by the accusations and Amy’s dudgeon, Jess pressed her lips into a tight line. “It is over. He broke it off between us and began courting you. Your imagination is running away with you because you’re sick. Please put the thermometer back in your mouth.”

“You always got everything you wanted, didn’t you?” Amy went on, ignoring Jessica’s direction. The pitch of her voice climbed with her agitation. “You got all of Daddy’s time and attention. I was the boring daughter with more homey interests. I remember you two in his office, staring into a microscope for what seemed like hours at some disgusting blob on a slide. As far as he was concerned, I was just someone who lived under the same roof. When Mother died, I might as well have been part of the furniture. He was proud of
you
, he bragged about
you
until he died. But after you left, Cole got tired of waiting for you and he finally noticed me. He realized how much more I could offer him as a wife. At least I thought he did.” Vitriolic resentment poured out of Amy like the long-simmering infection from a lanced abscess. “I should have known you’d try to lure him away, even though I’ve loved him since I was twelve years old!”

Jessica’s heart thumped in her chest, giving her a sick, breathless feeling. Her mouth was dry with shock. This woman was not her sister. She had never heard Amy utter a harsh opinion about anything or anyone. “Maybe Cole shouldn’t marry at all,” she replied coolly, trying to maintain her composure. “Have you thought about that?”

“No! It’s not true. He should marry me. He gave me these earrings! I wish now you had never come back.”

“I’m sure you do. You probably didn’t spend any sleepless nights worrying about
my
feelings before you beat a path to Cole.” Jessica hadn’t meant to blurt that out, but she wasn’t going to let Amy use her as a whipping post.

Amy stood up and threw the thermometer on the floor. Shards of glass and gleaming beads of quicksilver skittered around their feet. “You didn’t deserve him. You went off and left him. I gave him a chance to understand how a real wife should behave, a doting, obedient, loving wife.”

“A real wife,” Jess repeated with no little asperity.

“I’m going home.” A sudden burst of coughing interrupted her tirade. When she recovered her breath, she added, “Mrs. Donaldson might not be a blood relative, but I’d rather have her take care of me than my own kin.”

Jessica reached out to stop her. “Amy, wait. I want to at least go back with you to—”

Amy threw off her hand. “Thank you, no. I will manage myself.” She rearranged her shawl like a queen adjusting her robes, though the ends hung limp and uneven. She walked out to the waiting room.

Jess followed her. “Amy, don’t be foolish. You could be ill, and I don’t want you walking home alone in this rain.”

A glassy-eyed, wild-haired stranger spun to face her. “I don’t answer to you, Jessica. I am my own person.”

Both distraught and insulted, Jess watched her sister open the door and walk down the street toward Mrs. Donaldson’s house.

Emmaline heard a knock on her door and caught a quick glance in her filmy mirror before she went to open it. As if her appearance mattered to
them
. They slapped their money on the bureau or the kitchen table and didn’t pay her much notice as a person. Truthfully, she didn’t notice them either, unless they were too awful to blank out. Or unless they were worth remembering, like Frank Meadows, or Cole Braddock, who hadn’t visited her since that brief spell when he was between sisters. But in a tiny corner of her heart, the part that remained untouched by everything that had happened to her, she still had her pride. She straightened the sash that held her worn dressing gown closed and lowered her eyelids in a practiced expression of sultry interest.