Stephanie Mittman (23 page)

“You check that column of Seth’s yet?” Ansel asked her, poking his head into her office.

“Yes,” she said, her voice nearly failing her.

“Something wrong with it?” Ansel asked, not even looking up at her, which she was grateful for.

“No, just typical Dr. Hendon,” she said, turning her back to him before he might raise his eyes. “Full of depressing news.”

“What else is new?” Ansel asked.

What else indeed
, Abby thought.
Well, your sister is going to die
.

“Well, if you want to see him about it, his buggy’s pulling up.”

Abby took the column with her, passing Ansel, passing the press and the counter and opening the door. She had no idea what she would say to Seth, she just knew that she needed to be held tightly to keep everything from falling apart.

She tripped on the steps up to his office and fumbled with the handle on his door. What once seemed insignificant now took on monumental import as she fought to control her hands and manage something as simple as a doorknob.

Seth was sitting behind his desk, his head in his hands. When he looked up at her, she could see the tears in his eyes. “I lost him,” he said, and his voice broke and his sob shook in her own chest. “All I had to do was keep him alive another couple of days and
maybe Bartlett would have known what to do. A matter of days, and I couldn’t do it.”

“Who?” she asked, watching him suffer from across the room, wondering if her own news would finish him off.

He looked up at her, surprised, as if he didn’t know she were there, or as if she should be able to read his mind.

“Dr. Ephraim Bartlett of Massachusetts General Hospital. The man who is coming to take over my practice.”

“Was it the new Denton baby who died, Seth? Is that who—”

“Just another in a string of failures,” he said. “Better luck to Bartlett.”

“Are you really serious about giving up medicine? Even when people need you so desperately?”

“Serious? I’d give my right arm not to have to see to one more patient.”

“Not one?” she asked, fingering the column that rested in her lap.
Not me?

“I shouldn’t have to tell you this, Abby. You know me better than anyone. You know what it takes out of me. I’ve little enough left for you. Bartlett can’t get here soon enough for me.”

“Well, if that’s the way you feel,” she said, knowing what she had to do, understanding so completely in the pit of her stomach just what he meant about giving his right arm not to have to do it. “I guess then you ought to do it.”

“So where would you like to live, Abby girl?” he
asked, obviously trying to put on a happy face for her. “By the ocean? In a big city? You name it and we—”

“We?” she said, pretending that she hadn’t promised him her heart and soul and hand.

“Well, of course
we
. You don’t think I’d seduce and abandon you, do you?”

“You mean last night?” she asked, trying to make it sound as if it had meant nothing to her.

“Abby? What is it? Why are you acting as if this is all news to you? You’ve known every step of the way that I was leaving. You knew I was in love with you before I knew it myself, and last night you agreed to marry me.

“So what is this now? Are you afraid to leave your family? Is that it? Are you afraid of leaving Eden’s Grove?”

“I’m not afraid of anything,” she said, wishing it were true. “I just feel as if you’re rushing me, that’s all.”

“Rushing you?” He looked at her with utter disbelief. “
I’m
rushing
you?
Did I miss something here? Did you not, just hours ago, ask me to go see your father?”

Abby took a deep shuddering breath.
Get on with it
, she told herself.
For Seth’s sake, get on with it
.

“I’m getting a really funny feeling here, Abidance. And I don’t need this on top of losing that baby today. Now, I asked you where you want to live, and I think that’s pretty damn fair of me, considering I’ll be the one having to make a living for us there.”

“I don’t need you to make a living for me, Seth Hen-don,” she said, wishing that the words were not quite so true. “I don’t need you taking that tone with me, and
I don’t think I very much like the true colors I’m seeing in front of my eyes.”

“What?” He looked at her as if she’d lost her mind.

Of course, that would come later, she thought to herself, screwing up courage that she’d never known she had.

“What? Are you having second thoughts now?” he demanded, pulling open his desk drawer and yanking out papers and forms and files, spreading them on his desk and letting bunches of them fall to the floor, not even bothering to look at her as he did.

“Yes.”

Now he looked at her. Now all his shuffling stopped, now the world stood still.

“What?”

“I am,” she agreed. “Second thoughts. I’m having them.”

“Now? After last night? Is that what all the hemming and hawing was about earlier? I thought you were afraid I wouldn’t marry you, not that I would, for heaven’s sake! I’m sorry, Abby girl, but you can’t have second thoughts after last night. You gave yourself to me—”

“I gave my innocence to you, Seth Hendon. Nothing more. You have no more claim on me today than you did yesterday. I don’t have to marry you.”

If she’d slapped him, if she’d taken out a rifle and shot him, if she’d lifted her skirts, pulled a dagger from her thigh and run it through him, he couldn’t have looked more surprised. Or more wounded.

“Don’t you want to marry me?” he asked after a
silence that seemed to go on forever. “You did last night. I thought you did just hours ago.”

“Well, things have changed,” she said, and wanted the words back the moment she’d said them.

“What’s changed? What in God’s name could have changed so much?”

“Everything’s changed,” she said, her left hand shaking so violently that she had to hide it behind her back. “I never thought you really meant to give up medicine. What would we live on? How would you support me?”

“I thought you said you didn’t need a man to support you,” he said angrily, now shoving papers back into his drawers as if what he was looking for wasn’t there.

“I said I didn’t need
you
to support me,” she said.

“And by that you mean? …”

“Armand has asked me to marry him.”

Seth’s jaw dropped open.

“The letter? Last night you brought me the letter?” she said, floundering now at the sight of him, the bewilderment on his face.

“Armand asked you to marry him?” Seth asked, his brows furrowed, his head shaking slightly.

“He did,” she said, stiffening her spine.

“And?” he asked, leaning over his desk toward her as if he was all ears. “So?”

“So you’re not the only fish in the sea, Dr. Hendon,” she said, now digging the nails of one hand into the palm of the other.

“I didn’t realize you were trolling,” he said softly.

“Neither did I,” she said, wishing the pain in her head would relent just long enough for her to get this over with. But then, if there were no pain in her head,
she’d be holding Seth tight, telling him how sorry she was about the Denton baby, and spinning him dreams of their future.

“You are considering his offer?” Seth asked, sitting back, more reserved, trying to save what was left of his pride, it seemed.

“Armand and I have been friends a long, long time,” she said. “I’ve known him practically since I was a child.”

“That has a familiar ring to it,” Seth said.

“Perhaps,” she agreed, “but it was very different. We actually thought we were in love almost from the start.”

“Yet he married someone else,” Seth supplied.

“I was hundreds of miles away. I was young. He had family obligations.” She rather liked the way that sounded so she continued with it. “He’d been all but promised to her from birth. A merging of two family fortunes rather than a marriage of love.”

“He sounds like a peach,” Seth said sarcastically.

“There was family honor involved,” she defended, almost forgetting that Armand was a figment of her imagination. “He had no choice but to marry her.”

“I see. And now that she is dead you are considering his proposal, despite last night,” Seth said, as if he needed to have it all spelled out for him to get it straight in his mind.

Forever and ever she’d wanted to see him jealous. It wasn’t a pretty picture, and yet she had to go on with it. “Last night was wonderful, Seth. I’ll never forget it. But we couldn’t live on love alone, and since I’d never make you continue your practice …”

“This is about money? About whether you’ll have enough to eat?” he asked, incredulous now.

“I have been poor my whole life. I’ve worn my sister’s dresses and Sarrie’s old shoes. I’ve left the table hungry and I’ve pined for things in Walker’s window with no hope of getting them.”

“Hence your fascination with Frank?” One of Seth’s eyebrows was raised in what looked to Abby like contempt.

“I’m going to tell Armand that I’ll marry him,” Abby said softly, going to the door and standing so that her body hid her trembling hands as they fought with the latch.

“Just a minute,” he said, his voice stopping her although he still sat behind his desk. “Last night changes things, Abby. It puts a bit of a monkey wrench in our plans. There could be lasting effects of last night. Beyond the explanation you’d have to give Armand.”

Lasting effects
. What a name to give a child that could have been conceived of their love. And what a terrible shame it would be if she was carrying his baby when she died. Then he would lose them both. “No,” she said with complete certainty. “There are no ‘lasting effects.’”

“You’re sure?” he asked, obviously surprised.

“Yes,” she lied, armed with knowledge from Emily. “It’s impossible. Luckily my monthly started today. So you see, I’m not having your baby. And, hate me if you want, Seth, but I’m not going to be your wife.”

The color drained from Seth’s face as if she were killing him with her words. And what could she do that
was softer, kinder, easier? Tell him she loved him and ask him to watch her die?

“Do you love him, at least?” he asked. “Or are you selling yourself to the highest bidder?”

“I’m sorry, Seth,” she said softly, not bothering to answer his question, unsure which answer would hurt him less.

“What do you think that Armand fellow will say when he takes you to his bed and finds out I’ve been there first?” He was shaking as he stood up behind the desk.

“I’m counting on the fact that he’ll love me no matter what,” she said, feigning a confidence that didn’t exist because Armand didn’t really exist, not in the way she was pretending. “No matter what I’ve done, no matter what I do. In sickness and in health,” she added, blinking back tears. “Until death do us part.”

Seth just stood there, staring at her. He looked a hundred years old.

“I guess if I’m going to get married I’d better get over to Walker’s and order a few things,” she said. “You’ll stop by the office to say good-bye before you leave Eden’s Grove?”

“Wait!” he shouted, and she turned to see him shaking his head at her. “I’m just trying to understand. You gave yourself to me yesterday, and today you’re engaged to someone else. Have I got that right?”

“Yes.”

“What if you’d read the letter from St. Louis before? …” he asked.

She shook her head.

“I see,” he said, the softness of his voice breaking her heart. “Well, I suppose I ought to say I’m sorry.”

“For what?” she asked, sure now of only one thing. She would never, never be sorry for last night.

“For taking what didn’t belong to me.”

“You didn’t take anything, Seth. I gave.”

“And for that, I’m sorry, too,” he said, and she could feel his eyes on her back even after she closed the door behind her.

After this, she thought, dying would be easy.

S
HE’D GONE BACK TO THE OFFICE ON
F
RIDAY AND
told Ansel that she was ill. Oh, she didn’t tell him she was dying, just that she had a sick headache and needed to go home. But she hadn’t gone home—not directly.

She’d gone to Sarrie’s grave and she’d poured out her heart and cried until she’d run out of tears. She wasn’t afraid of dying, she assured Sarrie.

Her mama was a great one for saying that if life were fair Abby’s father would be the bishop of Canterbury, and her mama would be the queen of Sheba. Jedediah always said it sounded like a chess game and said if life were fair, he’d be the white knight.

Clearly, Abby was a pawn.

Now Saturday morning bloomed like the first crocus of spring, bright and yellow and full of promise. She could hear the commotion downstairs and her father hurrying her mama with instructions for her to bring plenty of food and water to the new church site by ten o’clock, when the first shift of men would be ready for a break.

“Guess we better get stirring,” Patience said, stretching in the bed beside Abby’s, where she had slept since they were little girls. “Papa will be cross as two sticks if we’re not there to set a good example.”

“I’m coming,” Abby said as she tested how far she could see this morning. No window without turning her head. No door.