The Doctor's Undoing (18 page)

Chapter Nineteen

M
rs. Parker poured tea into two lovely china cups Tuesday morning, setting one in front of Ida. “Thank you for coming.”

“I'm delighted you'd like to make another pair of socks,” Ida said, feeling something off in the woman's expression. She didn't really think today's visit was about wanting to knit more socks.

She'd been nervous about meeting with Daniel's mother this morning, not having a chance to ask Daniel if he knew of the invitation or why it had been offered. She hadn't found much more than ten minutes alone with Daniel since two nights ago at the bathhouse, and the distant-yet-closer atmosphere surrounding them both had thrown Ida off-kilter. “Surely more girls will be coming in and we'll want some more socks set aside to welcome them with their own pair.”

“I must admit I find the project most unusual,” Mrs. Parker said as she added sugar to her cup and offered some to Ida.
Unusual
wasn't usually a word Ida associated with compliments or endorsements. Still, the woman's tone was congenial enough—for now.

Ida declined the sugar but picked up the cup. The tea smelled wonderful, exotic and floral. “But you saw how happy it made the children. They love the socks.”

“They do. Daniel tells me he finds it a good program, and I trust my son's judgment.”

Ida felt a twinge at her beloved socks being called a “program,” but that would be a word Daniel would use. “I'm glad he is pleased with how it turned out.”

Mrs. Parker sipped her own tea. “May I call you Ida, dear?”

That seemed a bit out of character for the formal Mrs. Parker, but Ida chose to see it as a step in the right direction. “Why, certainly. I'd be pleased if you would.”

“Ida, I didn't really ask you here to discuss socks. Of course, I'll be agreeable to continue knitting for the orphans—I expect Isabelle would be on me in a minute if I didn't—but I have another matter I wish to discuss.”

Ida felt the nervous buzzing in her stomach deepen into a rattle of suspicion. “Yes?”

“I'm very protective of my family, Ida. I take a great deal of pride in the Parker name. We've come through the war with some difficulty—as everyone has—and I consider the family future to be of vital importance.”

Ida began to see where this might be heading, and why Amelia Parker chose to have this particular conversation in the privacy of her living room rather than calling on her at the Home. The rattle in her gut grew louder.

“More precisely, my son's future is of the utmost importance to me. He carries a great deal on his shoulders.”

Ida put down her cup, any thirst or appetite dissipating in the glare of Mrs. Parker's eyes. Her eyes were dark and intense like Daniel's, but right now they held none of the warm glow she was so fond of in her son's gaze. The cool, polite tone of the meeting had turned decidedly cold. Ida didn't offer a response.

“I'm sure you can see my position. Daniel has sizable obligations to uphold, both to his family and to the Home. While my son has mastered the professional side of his role—” she placed her teacup down in so precise a manner that Ida felt the
clink
run like ice down her spine “—I fear he lacks a certain social sensibility at the moment.”

I may be from the backwoods of West Virginia, but I'm no fool. I know what you're getting at, and I'm going to make you speak it plain to my face.
Ida smiled as sweetly as she could, given the growing tension in the room. “Whatever do you mean?”

“Come now, Ida, let's do each other the courtesy of directness, shall we?” Mrs. Parker took a napkin and touched it to her lips. Her fingers glinted with a collection of fine rings. “Surely you don't think I'm blind to how you feel about my son.”

“I admire your son and his work very much.”

“His important work is precisely why we need to have this conversation.” The older woman took up the teapot and began refreshing both cups even though they were still rather full. “I've always had some difficulty getting Daniel to understand the power of a suitable match. Up until now he simply couldn't be bothered with such things.” She put the teapot down with the same cold precision as she had the cup. “I feel I may have done him a disservice by not insisting on it before it was too late.”

Too late? “Your son is a grown man capable of making his own choices, isn't he?”

“Daniel is a fine doctor and a gifted administrator, like his father before him. But he is a man, and I find men to be...shall we say...easily
distracted
in certain matters.”

“Distracted?” Ida did not bother to keep the edge from her voice.

“I know you are an unpolished girl, but I believe you to be clever. Clever enough, at least, to understand the consequences of whatever hopes you might harbor regarding my son.”

Ida straightened in her chair. “Mrs. Parker—” and how telling was it that while she had asked to call her Ida, she had not invited Ida to call her Amelia? “—just what ‘hopes' do you think I have?”

The woman's eyes took on an expression that said,
You are going to make me spell this out for you, poor child, aren't you?
Ida hoped the look she gave Mrs. Parker in reply spoke
Yes, I am
as loud as it could.

“If you were any other woman, I would say you're hoping I'll endorse my son's affections for you. That Daniel's momentary fascination with you could turn into something permanent.”

Despite disliking being termed a “momentary fascination,” Ida found Mrs. Parker's statement rather cryptic. “But you are saying I'm not any other woman?”

Mrs. Parker steepled her hands, a gesture Ida had seen Daniel do a thousand times. “I believe you care a great deal about the Home. I think you have genuine feelings for my son, and that you are not simply vying to raise your social standing.”

“I'm glad to hear that, Mrs. Parker.” Ida still felt as if the woman was speaking in circles. “It's all true.”

“Then it would also be true that your affection for my son and for the children would lead you to want what's best for him and for the Home. You strike me as someone who can see the bigger picture. You've wits enough about you to catch that what you want might not be what's best in either case.”

It wasn't until that moment that Ida truly understood the nature of her visit to Amelia Parker's front parlor. The cold truth washed through her so strongly, she almost shivered. “You want me to leave.”

There was a long pause before Mrs. Parker said, “I want what's best for my son, and for the Parker family name. And I don't dislike you. I'm offering to help you find a better post so that Daniel will not be hurt.”

Ida didn't hear the words so much as she felt them hit her. She drew up in her chair, the famous Landway stubborn nature roaring up inside her chest. “May I be perfectly frank, Mrs. Parker?”

“I think it's best.”

“I think you have no right to make me the offer you just did. I think you must not love your son very much, because where I
come from
—” she emphasized the words “—love doesn't act that way. You're right, I do care a great deal about your son. Enough to let him run his own life and the Home as he sees fit.” Ida stood up. “Enough to never tell him you even stooped to have this conversation with me.”

Ida went to leave, but Mrs. Parker's voice stopped her halfway to the door. “Don't let your current success go to your head, Ida. I admit, you've charmed Isabelle Hooper, but even she won't be enough to keep the Home running if you make an enemy of me. Daniel thinks he can fund the Home on good deeds, but without my support, the patrons will dry up. Daniel needs his social standing to keep those donors. You know I am right. Are you selfish enough to doom those children's chances for something you know cannot last?”

Ida chose not to answer that last question even as it dug into her heart. She pushed through the parlor entrance, waved the maid off and let herself out the door to stand gulping air and near tears on the front steps.

Amelia Parker was wrong. Amelia Parker was right. Amelia Parker was an awful, loathsome mother. But was what Mrs. Parker had just done so much different from what Daniel had done in pressing Donna and Matthew to wait to marry? Hadn't she and Daniel urged the young couple to let long-term sense override their current passions?

Could she and Daniel last? Ida knew enough of how the world worked to know Daniel would indeed face social consequences if it was publicly known that he was courting her. There'd be talk, and talk could be the enemy of the charitable donations the Home so desperately needed. She'd be seen as a social climber no matter how genuine her feelings for Daniel. And no matter how many Isabelles Ida charmed, she'd still never equal the funds a wife of social standing could bring to the Home. Take Chelsea Hampton, the youngest of the Aunties. She was clearly taken with Daniel and the perfect age to be his bride. Ida knew Miss Hampton had already brought many sizable donations to the Home along with her knit socks.

“Love can't pay the bills.” Hadn't she said that very thing to Donna?

Ida walked to the small public garden beside Daniel's family home, dropping herself onto a bench and fighting back tears. She hated that Mrs. Parker was right about her hopes for approval—she'd had the very thought when the invitation came for tea this afternoon. She'd foolishly thought Daniel had spoken of his feelings for her to his mother, and that something wonderful might be in the works.
That proves it
, she told herself sourly.
I don't know how this world works. I've let myself believe the fairy tale.

He cares for me.
Ida knew that to be true. The way she felt in Daniel's arms made her ready to change the world, to face any obstacle. But Donna had said much the same thing about Matty, and even Ida could see that waiting was best for the young couple. Love was wonderful, but love had to live in the real world.

If she told Daniel what his mother had just done, he'd be furious. He'd reject his mother's meddling, and they'd fight. Amelia would threaten to withdraw her donations and most likely talk others into doing the same. She was a mother who believed her son was in danger—she'd do anything it took to save Daniel from what she saw as harm.

Daniel, in turn, would defy his mother and let her pull her funding rather than submit to such manipulations. While that was the honorable course, the Home would suffer—Ida didn't need to be an administrator to see that consequence coming.

Oh, Lord
, Ida cried in prayer as she sat paralyzed on the bench even though she was due back at the Home.
It's all gone wrong. What am I to do?

* * *

“Ida?” Daniel poked his head into Ida's rooms after knocking. She wasn't in the infirmary even though she was scheduled to be there an hour ago. She wasn't anywhere on the grounds that he could see. He was worried she might be ill—MacNeil had seen her leave earlier in the day, but that was all he knew.

Her rooms were just like her—colorful and a bit cluttered. Books sat open on various chairs and tables, and at least two different knitting projects lay in different stages of completion on each end table of her small settee. He ought to leave, seeing that she clearly was not here, but he couldn't stop himself from standing in the room and gazing at the evidence of her spirit that spilled all over the rooms.

Dozens of sketches were tacked onto every wall. Some were small, quickly done studies of flowers or buildings in charcoal or pencil. Others were larger, color-filled watercolors of scenes—the beehive, a corner of the bathhouse where some sort of flowering bush had been blooming, a particularly charming painting of Grimshaw reading on a bench in the yard. It was powerful to see the Home through her eyes.

Another wall held pencil studies of many of the children. She was especially gifted at this; he could see each child's personality so clearly in the sketches. The way Gwendolyn pursed her lips in her Gitch doubt, the set of Donna's eyes as she stared at Matthew, even an amusing sketch of Mrs. Smiley with her hand parked angrily on one ample hip. Ida had captured each of them with a talented eye for detail. He could tell, just by looking at the drawings, what charmed her about each child. Some of the sketches were black-and-white, but all of them had some burst of color added specific to the subject—as if she simply couldn't leave them without it. They were charming, every one of them. He'd proudly have hung any of them in his office.

The personal nature of her drawings made him feel guilty, a voyeur, for lingering in the room.
I ought not to be here
, he said to himself, and forced his feet to turn toward the door. What he saw on the far wall, tucked away behind the door—safe from entering eyes on purpose, perhaps?—stopped him cold.

There, tacked to the wall, were sketches of him. A pencil drawing of him at his desk, his forehead in one hand as he studied papers. Another of him standing in the yard, watching the children play, as he often did while drinking his coffee each afternoon. One that was just the detail of his eyes and hair, another of his face in laughter. Each one with the same emotional power as her drawings of the children. The detail and tone sank deep into his chest, swelling in a warmth behind his ribs that made it hard to breathe.

The two at the center nearly stopped his heart. One was a full-color painting of him as he lay sleeping on his couch, his head still in bandages. She must have done that one while she sat with him those first days home from the hospital. He felt studied, known, but not in a dark way. The drawing showed how much Ida knew him, how much she understood him. He reached out and touched the edge, somehow thinking he could feel her in the paper—her presence was that potent in the art.

The second drawing was a charcoal sketch of two hands. He knew instantly the moment she'd captured—that night at the bathhouse when he'd opened his hand for hers and she'd slipped her fingers against his. That moment had played over and over in his mind, and surely from this drawing the same had been true for her. Ida had managed to show all the feeling in those two hands—they could not have belonged to any two other people in all the world. He knew her hands, could see the things that made them Ida's in her drawing. Daniel had the urge to take it from the wall and fold it into his pocket, keeping it close.