A Father for Philip (15 page)

“I can’t leave you like this, Eleanor.
Look in the mirror…” David shoved his shaving mirror in front of her until she
was forced to see her reflection.

“No…” She groaned. “Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes. Oh, yes indeed. Now back to
bed with you and when I close the drapes you leave them that way.” He steered
her into the bedroom, put her in bed and tucked the blanket securely around
her. “Shame on you, Eleanor, not getting the measles vaccine for yourself when
you had Philip immunized. I’ve already talked Dr. Grimes and he’ll be by in a
little while.”

“How… How did you speak to him?” she
asked weekly, feeling the tears still straggling down her cheeks, but powerless
to stop them. “Send him an email?”

“I used Bill’s phone. Philip told me
that’s what you did,” David explained patiently. “Why in the world don’t you
have a phone here? We didn’t when we were first married, but a lot has changed
since then.”

“It was just one more ex—” She lifted
her chin. “I didn’t want one. I doesn’t kill me to go up to the farmhouse for
the few calls I have to make.”

“Just one more expense?”

As if he hadn’t asked, she said, “You’ve
met Bill? What…?”

“Did I tell them about myself? Only that
I’ve bought the Anderson place, made friends with Philip and that when you got
sick and he wasn’t home, Phil came to me. He’s gone now to the city to be with
his wife and babies. He says he won’t tell Kathy about your measles, because
she’d only worry. Okay?”

Eleanor had no answer.

~ * ~

The doctor came, went, and Eleanor
slept. For the next few days she spent more time that way than she did awake,
but she was aware now and then of David coming in and out of the room, giving
her cold drinks, bits of food, feeding her aspirins and once, only once,
bathing her again in the night when the fever spiked.

She would call him, and he was there.
She vaguely wondered where he was sleeping; it must be in the living room, for
he did not share her bed. It did not occur to her he was only snatching the odd
catnap in the big chair beside her bed, until she awoke one night and found him
there and told him to go home, or at least, lie down. He merely shook his head
and returned to his post in the chair by her bed.

He changed her bedding and nightclothes
when she perspired so much they became soaked, but the one time she became
chilled again and pleaded with him for warmth, he only wrapped her in a
scratchy wool blanket and put hot water bottles beside her. She cried to him to
come to her, to make her warm, but he said sadly, “No, darling. You’re ill, and
if I had known how ill, that first day, what happened wouldn’t have. Sleep now,
and we’ll talk about it again when you’re better.”

A week after her spots it first
appeared, Eleanor was able to sit up in bed without breaking a sweat from
weakness. The red rash was beginning to fade now, and her eyes felt so much
better that David left the drapes open a few inches, letting a golden stream of
sunlight fall across her green carpet. She heard steps in the yard, and rapping
at the kitchen door.

David’s heavy footsteps went slowly,
haltingly across the hall and into the kitchen. He sounds so weary, she thought
with contrition as she heard the screen door squeak open. David said to the
caller, “Good morning. I’ll have to oil that door. Squeaks something awful,
doesn’t it?”

And Grant…
Grant!
answered, “Who the hell are you? Where’s Mrs. Jefferson?”

“Oh, she’s still in bed,” replied David
easily, a chuckle in his voice, an indulgent, tender little chuckle. “I’ve been
keeping her there is much as possible.”

“You’ve what? Who are you?” Grant
demanded.

“Oh, yes… Of course, you don’t know, do
you?” asked David in an apologetic manner Eleanor held her breath and let out a
long sigh of… Relief…? Disappointment…? When he went on. “I’m Jeff Davidson, a
friend of young Philip. He came to me for help when his mother got sick. She
has the measles,” he added with casual cruelty. But how could it be cruelty?
Eleanor wondered. He doesn’t know about how Grant fears illness. Unless…
Philip, or she herself in her delirium, had told him.

If he hadn’t known, if the casual
cruelty had been lucky accident, he would have known in the next instant,
Eleanor decided, for Grant’s voice rose a full octave as he said, “Measles?”
with such horror that she wondered how he would have reacted to smallpox,
should such a disease still exist.

David replied with pleasure, it sounded.
“Yes, measles. Red measles. The bad kind. What did you say your name was?” He
knows very well, Eleanor thought indignantly. He saw us together.

“I didn’t. I’m Mrs. Jefferson’s fiancé,
Grant Appleton.”

“Oh, I didn’t know she was engaged. No
ring that I noticed, except a cheap gold wedding band I guess Philip’s dad must
have given her. It’s a good thing you’re here. She’s been very ill, you know,
been calling out in her delirium for some man, begging her ‘darling’ to come to
bed and help her get warm.” He laughed. “I wouldn’t have minded, but it seemed
wrong, somehow, under the circumstances.

“But you’re here at last. She will be
pleased. Come right in. Let me show you to her bedroom,” David offered
effusively.

“I know where it is,” Grant snapped.
“But I don’t think I should—”

“Nonsense,” David said heartily. Too
heartily, his wife snarled mentally. “She’ll be longing to see you and she’s so
much better she must be getting bored with my constant company, day and night.
Go right on in. Don’t mind me, all I am is temporary baby-sitter, housemaid,
nurse, chief cook and bottle-washer. I’ll make coffee for the two of you.”

He ushered Grant through the open
doorway of the bedroom and stood behind him, blocking off all exit.

“Look who’s here, Mrs. Jefferson,” David
said with only the slightest emphasis on her name. And her title. “Your very
own fiancé. I’m sure he’ll be delighted to keep you warm. Go on, man, slide in
there beside her and wrap her up tight in your arms.”

“Hi, uh, Ellie.” Grant’s uneasy greeting
sounded false. “I understand from the kid’s friend you have measles. How did
that happen?”

Before Eleanor could answer, David’s
big, flat palm clapped Grant right between the shoulder blades, sending him
staggering into the room where he caught the footboard of the bed and nearly
fell over it, headlong onto the bed. He just escaped that ignominy by
scrambling back with difficulty. He tried to retreat to the doorway, but David
stood there, blocking him in. “I… uh, look, Ellie,” Grant stammered. “I’m sure
you’ll forgive me if I don’t, uh, get too close. I might catch them… The hotel
you know… The guests…”

He looked so miserable standing there
afraid to approach too near her, and unable to edge farther away, because David
might push him back again, that Eleanor had to take pity on him. She smiled. “I
understand, Grant.”

“Well I don’t,” David said, an evil
gleam in his eye. “What’s more important, the woman you want to marry, or a
bunch of hotel guests who probably had the disease as children or at least had
the sense to get themselves immunized?”

“Well,” Grant blustered, puffing his
cheeks out. “Just who do you think you are, anyway?”

“No one,” replied Dave, “except the
person who has nursed this woman through a very serious illness. I feel every
consideration should be given her. If she wants you to hold her and make her warm,
then I think it’s your duty as her fiancé to do so.”

Grant and drew himself up to his not
very great full height and glared at David. “If Mrs. Jefferson understands the
importance of the safety of my hotel guests, I’d think you, a relative
stranger, could keep out of it.”

“That’s me,” David shot a nasty little
grin at Eleanor. “A
relative
-stranger,
wouldn’t you say, Mrs. Jefferson? Though, after what we weathered together, I
think I could almost be considered next-of-kin. Her doctor had no trouble allowing
me that status,” he informed Grant.

She glared at him, speechless, and Grant
filled the gap in the conversation. “I’ll see to it that you’re well paid for
your troubles, and if you’d make that coffee now, I’m sure Mrs. Jefferson would
appreciate it. I always use that large blue mug in the cupboard above the
stove. I like lots of coffee, and I like it strong. Two spoons of sugar.”

“The blue mug? Would that be the one
Philip’s been using to measure the dog kibble, Mrs. Jefferson?” Eleanor was
hard put to lie still and not run screaming from the room—screaming with
laughter—at the expression on Grant’s face. Without waiting for a reply David
almost bowed and tugged his forelock before he ducked out of the room.

When David had been and gone, serving
the coffee with a deference at which Eleanor had great difficulty keeping a
straight face, Grant leaned back in the chair. He had pulled it as far as
possible from her bed before he’d sat. He asked complacently, as if expecting a
positive answer, “How did you fare, seeing about regaining your freedom?”

“I’ve been sick, Grant,” she said to
avoid a direct reply. “I’ve hardly been out of this bed for days. I wasn’t
expecting you back yet anyway.”

“I managed to finish up sooner than
expected,” he replied, and reached for his coffee. He set it down quickly
again, without having sipped, and shuddered. So David’s little dart about the
dog food, untrue as Eleanor knew it to be, had struck home.

“Did you sort out the problems with that
property you wanted along the North Thompson?” she asked, lacing her fingers
together over the knee she had pulled up under the covers.

He ignored the question. “I’m glad to
see you aren’t wearing your wedding ring anymore, Eleanor. It makes me hope you
really mean business this time and—”

“Grant,” she interrupted him, “there’s
something I need to tell y—”

“Mrs. Jefferson, will Mr. Applebaum be
staying for lunch?” David’s eyes danced with unholy glee as he bounded into the
room, not pausing to knock on the door which he had left jar after serving the
coffee. Damn him! He looked just like Philip when he was up to no good. Eleanor
knew he’d been lurking out there in the hall, eavesdropping.

“No!” Grant said, his tone too sharp.
“That is… I… The dishes… I can’t take that much…” He broke off lamely.

“Risk?” David supplied politely. “The
dishes might have germs on them?” He glanced at Grant’s still full coffee mug.
“Oh, Mr. Appleby, was the coffee not to your liking?”

“No,” Grant said. “And the name is
Appleton.” He turned to Eleanor. “Ellie,” he pleaded with her for
understanding, “this man’s not a properly trained nurse. He can’t know about
sterilizing and… All that… That’s it, Ellie!” He brightened perceptibly. “I’ll
send a nurse out this afternoon.”

“No thanks, Appleton.” David’s voice was
hard, all traces of mockery gone from it. “I’ve gone on this far looking after
Mrs. Jefferson and Philip, and I will continue to do so until she tells me my…
services… are no longer required.” The deliberate hesitation over the word
“services’, was accompanied by that nasty, dirty little smirk of David’s and
Eleanor wanted to throw something at him. Something hard. Something heavy.

“Surely,” Grant said stiffly, “it’s up
to me to decide what’s best for my fiancée, and to her, of course,” he added
with a quick glance at Eleanor.

 “Certainly,” agreed David
pleasantly. “Mrs. Jefferson?”

There was no hesitation in her answer.
“I’d rather not have a nurse, thank you, Grant. Philip is used to having things
the way they are, and after all, he went out all alone at night, and rode a
horse, frightened as he is—was—of horses, to get help for me. To change things
now would only make him think I don’t appreciate what he did.”

“Always the kid,” Grant said. “What
about showing me a little of that appreciation?” He shrugged petulantly and got
to his feet. “Oh, well, at least you took off that damned wedding ring. I guess
I can’t expect to wean you away from all parts of your past at once.”

“Did you ever expect to wean me away
from my son?” Eleanor asked, dangerously quiet and with raised brows.

“No, no. Of course not.” Grant hastened
to assure her, “but I am glad to see that ring gone.”

“I took the ring off her when she was
ill.” David spoke quietly from just inside the doorway. “It seemed to be an
irritation to her.” Grant glanced over his shoulder at him, as if surprised to
see the other man still there.

David approached the far side of bed,
dropped to one knee in front of Eleanor and, holding her gaze with his own, he
slowly unbuttoned his shirt pocket and extracted the ring. He held it out in
front of her on the palm of his hand. It glittered in the sunlight. “Would you
like it back, Mrs. Jefferson?” he asked quietly.

Eleanor wrenched her gaze from his and
stared down at the bright circlet of gold on the broad, work-roughened hand.
That band was so fragile, so delicate, like the bond between them, and she
ached with all her heart and soul to be able to ask him to replace it on her
finger. But…

“Not… just yet,” she whispered. “Thank
you… Jeff.”

“All right,” he replied softly, looking
deep into her pain-filled eyes with complete understanding and love. “All
right.” Then, standing, he tucked the ring back into his pocket, buttoned flap
and said briskly, “I think Mrs. Jefferson is tired now, so I’ll leave you to
make your tender farewells.” He spun on his heel and marched out, banging the
door solidly behind him.