Home by Morning (28 page)

“Everyone sit down and be quiet or I will clear the room right now!” he thundered. At last the noisy outrage dulled to a sibilant buzz. Remaining on his feet, the mayor said, “Now we’re in a worse fix than before. We have no doctor and no other on the way. Jessica Layton told me up front that she has a job waiting for her in Seattle. She delayed her move to help us during this influenza crisis.”

If ever fate had handed Cole a moment to act, he knew this was it. He stood. “Horace, Jessica might be persuaded to trade working in Seattle for staying in Powell Springs—” He stared pointedly at Adam Jacobsen. “Providing the people who have made it their business to insult her and ruin her reputation stop hounding her and call off their petition drive.”

Adam stood. “Mayor Cookson, if I may speak.”

Horace sat and waved his assent with no particular enthusiasm. “Go ahead, Adam.”

The minister cleared his throat. “Well, this certainly isn’t how I expected this meeting to go. It leaves us with the same problem we had before.” This time he sought out Cole and glared at him before continuing. “Most of Powell Springs knows by now that Dr. Jessica Layton was recently caught in a morally compromising situation with Cole Braddock. I might remind everyone that Braddock has been almost engaged to Amy Layton, the doctor’s sister. A woman of such loose morals does not deserve to be entrusted with the care of our citizens.”

Everyone began talking, many of them agreeing with Adam.

While Horace thumped his gavel again, Granny Mae Rumsteadt, skinny and gray-haired, rose like a Fury from her chair several rows behind Cole. “You, Adam Jacobsen, are acting like a witch hunter, not a man of God.” She turned and looked at many of the faces around her. “I’m disappointed by every one of you who signed that man’s filthy petition. When you were sick in the infirmary, wasn’t Dr. Jessica there, tending you, almost every time you opened your eyes? Powell Springs thinks it’s too high and mighty for Jess Layton? Well, you saw for yourselves that Dr. Fancy-Britches thinks Powell Springs is too lowly for
him
. Not only that, Amy Layton and Cole Braddock are not engaged.”

“Granny, you’re out of order!” Adam snapped.

Birdeen struggled to keep up with the flying dialogue.

“Goat turds,
Reverend
Jacobsen!”

Pop and Cole burst out laughing, and so did some others. Several of the ladies present gasped, but Granny Mae wasn’t a woman to mince words when she felt she was right. And that was most of the time.

“What proof do you have that any of what you’ve said about Cole and Jessica is true?” she demanded. “This town has gone to hell in a handbasket, and I’m thinking that people like you, Adam Jacobsen, and you, James Leonard”—she turned to point at the man who’d led the rabble to Jessica’s office—“blazed the trail down there.”

Adam, his face red with frustration, turned to Horace. “Mayor Cookson, are you just going to sit there and let this meeting turn into a free-for-all?”

The mayor rubbed his forehead. “For God’s sake, Adam, Granny, everyone. This isn’t a quilting bee where we came to trade gossip. It’s a town meeting. We’re trying to get serious business accomplished.”

“Yes, we are. I will not vote to approve offering this job to Jessica Layton. I saw Cole Braddock coming out of her office at five-thirty in the morning. What do you suppose they were doing there at that hour?”

“What were
you
doing out there at that hour, Jacobsen?” Cole asked. “You looked like you’d spent the night in a hayrick, yourself.”

“I was on my way to the infirmary, where I’ve been comforting the sick.” He returned his comments to the assembled group. “I heard them talking—some rather suggestive conversation it was, too. And I saw them kiss.”

“Oh, yeah? And I saw your bare ass this afternoon on my wife’s bed, Jacobsen, humping away on her. That’s lots worse than just talking and kissing on a front porch.”

All heads swiveled to see who had made such a crude, monstrous accusation. Bert Bauer stood at back of the room, his shoulder against the doorjamb, and his arms across his chest. Judging by his slurred words, he was liquored up—and mad.

A silence so profound and complete fell over the meeting that Cole thought he heard a horse nickering outside. Jaws hung open and slack, people seemed frozen in place.

Then chaos erupted.

Everyone spoke at once. People jumped to their feet.

“That no-good bastard,” Tanner ground out, and Cole wasn’t sure which bastard he was referring to.

Adam grabbed the gavel from Horace Cookson’s hand and began beating it on the table, his eyes about to pop out of his head and his face gleaming with sweat. “Have that profane, corrupt liar ejected! Throw him out!” he shouted.

A couple of men near Bauer made a grab for him and started to drag him away until he shouted, “It ain’t a lie! And it ain’t just my say-so, neither. I had a witness with me—Sheriff Gannon! He saw this snot with Emmaline.”

Adam, nearing a fit of frenzy, kept pounding the gavel until the handle broke and its wooden head flew across the room.

Whit Gannon, who stood along the far wall, obviously was caught by surprise and looked as if he wished he could be anywhere else but here.

“Is it true?”

“Sheriff, did you see Jacobsen with Emmaline?”

“Who is Emmaline?” This question was asked by several women.

Cole could not believe the drama unfolding before him. He stood to get a good look at Bauer and then turned back to Jacobsen.

“Emmaline is married? To
Bauer
?”

“By God!” Pop exclaimed.

“
Who is Emmaline?
” a woman nearby demanded again.

Mayor Cookson caught Whit Gannon’s eye and signaled him to the front. With long, loose strides, the sheriff walked to the council table. Adam eyed him and seemed to shrink in his clothes.

“Whit,” Horace said, “is Bert Bauer telling the truth? Did you find Reverend Jacobsen in a compromising situation with Em—that is, Mrs. Bauer?”

“Yes.”

Birdeen had taken to scribbling.

“There was no mistake—they weren’t just…talking?”

Whit dropped his chin and a corner of his mouth turned down. “Well, no, I didn’t hear any talking coming from them.” He faced Adam. “Speaking as a witness, I’d say Bauer’s description is pretty accurate. Crude, but accurate.”

The petition sheets that Adam held fluttered from his hand as he dropped to his chair, chalk-white and perspiring freely.

As soon as the meeting concluded, Cole ran directly to Jessica’s office. “Now, aren’t you sorry you weren’t there?”

They sat in the parlor upstairs, surrounded by her trunks and cases, and she stared at him. “No—well, yes, I guess I am.” She had to laugh. “I’ll bet Powell Springs has never seen a town meeting like that one before.”

“Probably won’t again, either, with two scandals in one night. Plus Whit Gannon took Bauer into custody on a charge of drunk and disorderly conduct, and suspicion of theft over that jewelry he probably stole.” Cole leaned forward on the settee. “Anyway, Horace and Roland Bright decided that they will formally ask you to stay in town, permanently, since Pearson thinks he’s too good for a bunch of uncultured hicks like us. I suggested that the good doctor might even be interested in taking your spot in Seattle.”

“But
I’m
going to Seattle. That’s my position, and they’re expecting me. I got another telegram from them today.” She stood and turned to the box she’d been packing to fold a shawl.

He stood, too, and guided her back to the settee. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a worn black velvet box. “Jess, we have to make things right. We were meant to be, you and I. I knew you were supposed to be my wife from the time we were kids. Rough things have happened in the last few years, but we don’t have to drag them around with us for the rest of our lives. I made bad decisions, I’ve lost Riley—I almost lost you. I don’t want any more regrets than I already have.”

Regrets…regrets…Iris Delaney had mentioned them, Jess herself had thought of them, and now Cole was talking about the same thing. But—

“Cole, things have changed. A lot. What with Amy, and now the lynch mob that has it in for us, what can we do to fix any of that? That won’t go away just because Horace Cookson wants it to. He can’t order people into my waiting room. Even two boys on the street yesterday called me a whore.”

He winced but said, “Jess, you asked me to fight this battle. I did, and we won. The fuss will die down eventually. Besides, those people following Jacobsen and Leonard don’t represent the whole town.”

She dropped the shawl in a soft heap on her lap. “I guess you might feel differently if you were the one who’d been called names and had your moral character attacked. You know that women, and most especially physicians, are judged by their actions, perceived or otherwise. I…I feel crushed by the disapproval. I won’t have any patients here. They’ll end up going to Granny Mae before they’ll forgive me.”

“Well, maybe you could open an office in Twelve Mile. The ranch is about halfway between the two towns.”

Her brows rose. “What?”

“I’d even teach you to drive so you could get around more easily.”

He dropped to one knee in front of her and held out the black velvet box. “Jessica, I want you to marry me. Right away. No more waiting.” He pushed the spring catch on the box and its top flew up.

Astounded, she saw a ring. The setting was of an older style, and the diamond was cut in a manner that made her think of an antique.

He searched her face and gazed into her eyes with a look that shattered her heart. “It was my mother’s.”

“Oh, Cole…”

“You’re right—a lot has happened, good and bad. The only thing I know for certain in this world is that I love you. I always have. I want you for my wife, the way it was always supposed to be.”

She put her hand on his arm. “I love you just as much. But the hospital in Washington wants me.” Then an idea struck her, a flash of brilliance that she wished she’d thought of sooner. “I know—you could come with me! Seattle is a growing city, you could start a new business up there.”

He sat back on his heels and frowned at her as if she’d suggested they drive an oxcart to the moon. “How can I leave my family? Especially now that my brother is gone?”

“But all my education and hard work to get my degree and credentials—with no patients here, I won’t be able to use them. And I certainly can’t do research. At least I’m needed at that hospital.” She gazed unseeing at the pattern in the braided rug under her feet. “Everyone in Powell Springs abandoned me, including my own sister.”

“Jessica, you’re needed here. I need you here. If you go to Seattle, you’ll be running away again, just like you ran from New York.”

She pulled her hand away as if he’d slapped it. “That’s a terrible thing to say!”

He rose from the floor and sat in another chair, away from her. “I can’t turn my back on Pop and Susannah. They’re my home, my roots. They’re yours, too. So is this town, for good or bad. You and I—together we can face anything.”

She put out her hands in a gesture of appeal. “Cole, we can start all over again where no one knows us. I won’t have to see Amy every day or those hateful people who’ve been so cruel, when all I wanted to do was help them get well. Please, come with me.”

“So, you’d have to see them. I will too. I’m not ashamed of anything we did. Are you?”

“No, but—”

“And when we’re married, there won’t be much for any of them to talk about. It’ll be pretty dull stuff, especially now that Jacobsen has thrown the mob a new pork chop to chew on.”

“Will you at least think about coming with me?”

His gaze was cold and fixed, and she felt him pull back from her. It reminded her of that first day back in town when he’d gone into the café with Eddie. “No.”

Her hands closed into two tight fists in her lap and her voice shook with disappointment and anger. “Just once—
once
, I’d like to hear someone who claims to love me say, ‘I’d do anything for you, Jessica.’ But people keep expecting me to see their side of things and make exceptions for them.

“‘I thought you broke off with me so I started courting your sister.’ ‘I decided you didn’t deserve Cole, so I told him you weren’t coming back.’ ‘Whore.’ ‘
Female
physician.’ ‘You’re running away again.’ Everyone has an excuse for what they’ve done to me, said to me. When is someone going to take my side?” she demanded.

He got up and put the ring box on the kitchen table. “Jess, you promised a long time ago that you would come back to Powell Springs and marry me. You promised you would take care of this town and carry on for your father when he died. Not everyone here believes Adam Jacobsen. Even Granny Mae has stuck up for you, twice, against those few. And yeah, there are some crackpots here, just like there are everywhere. You’ll find them in Seattle, too, if you go. People who don’t think women should be doctors, people who will talk about you. A few who’ll disappoint you. But you’ll be alone there. No place is perfect.”