Butterfly Garden (22 page)

The doctor in him, the man who had failed once so badly, wanted very much to find the medical reason for her inability to speak. And if there were none, then, damn it, he wanted to hear her … say his name. Jordan swore and urged the horses faster. He’d found a haven in their hilly little Ohio town, where so many people needed him that he could forget he was lost too.

* * * * *

This visit, Sara enjoyed her time with her Mom and Pop and her brother, Noah. Rocking Noah, Sara told her parents how much she had missed them and how badly she wanted to stay.

But her Pop was wise, Sara realized later, because he asked her about her husband and children.

For her parents, Sara described Lizzie, her thirty-year-old five-year old, everyone’s little mother.

She told them about her middle child’s impish bent, how she had taken right off to dogging her Aunt Emma like a pup following the scent of a bone. Katie had even taken to speaking for Emma, turning her aunt’s looks into jokes and silly rhymes. Sara told her parents the way Emma’s eyes twinkled as she went along with the silliness Katie invented in her name. Like the day Katie told them at breakfast that she and Emma planned to build a bed for Sunnybunny.

Hadn’t Emma gone right out to the barn for wood and nails?  And hadn’t she bundled Katie up warm and taken her down to the summer kitchen to build the thing?  They’d even whitewashed it and topped it off with a mattress and quilt they’d stitched over several evenings.

Sara told her parents about Pris, the pretty one, who whined less these days, but had barely learned to smile. “Pris looks at you when you talk now, mostly. And her whine, when she uses it, lasts far less time than it used to. But still,” Sara said. “My Pris needs something more than she’s getting and I just don’t know what it is.”

Sara shook her head as she pulled Noah close—the brother she’d always missed. “Then there’s the baby. Hannah was a gift, given us with her mother’s last breath. She will have a special purpose in life, our Hannah.”

“Well,” her Pop said. “You can’t stay with us then, can you?  Learning what Pris needs, and Hannah’s purpose, and seeing they’re met, must be what you’re called by God to do right now.”

Mom nodded. “And your Adam, Sara. So big and bright in your heart he is, we do not need your words to know him. But he hides in a dark, cold place. And,
Liebchen
, he has been there so long, he does not know how to get out.”

Sara sighed. “I know, Mom. Lord, I know. But I cannot seem to—”

Her mother touched her hand, a peaceful touch. “No one else can bring him home. Only you. Else he will be lost forever.”

Sara wept then. She wept for Adam and for the knowledge that she must leave her parents to get back to him. “I have to go,” she said. “For Adam and for our girls.”

Her father and mother kissed her cheek and hugged her in turn, and when she kissed little Noah, she wept. “I cannot leave you again,” she told her mother. “I cannot.”

Her mother held and rocked her as if she were a little girl. “There are babies, my Sara, who will not see God’s great world if you do not go back for them.”

Sara sobbed, torn, because the people she loved existed on two different planes. And she wanted badly to help babies be born. “I do have to be a midwife,” she said clutching her mother tighter. “I have to help those babies.”

Her mother smiled. “One of them, a special one,” she whispered, for Sara’s ears alone. “Is with you now, growing beneath your heart.” She kissed her stunned daughter’s cheek.

It was warm and bright where her family stood waving her off and dark in the direction she headed, yet fear did not fill her, only hope, for her family waited.

Sara looked back one last time, the distance between her and her parents seeming to grow before her eyes, a greater span than she could bear. But before she could call out to them, or change her mind, their light dimmed and the dark world ahead beckoned.

The air grew thinner as her visit with her parents became no more than a wistful dream. Then Sara struggled for every breath as she searched for Adam and the girls. The thought of finding them brought a greater joy than finding her parents after so long.

A time for everything under God’s heaven, Mom had said.

Light tickled her eyelids, air filled her lungs, and Sara realized that the darkness would disappear if only she could open her eyes. She tried and tried, but her lids were too heavy.

Some time later, when she finally succeeded, she saw that the light here was brighter, more beautiful than the light surrounding her parents had been. She was in her own bed, hers and Adam’s, the sun slanting into the room as it often did of a noon. Heavens, so late abed.

She was not alone, though Adam was not beside her, the girls were—Lizzie and Katie on one side, Pris on her other, all of them sound asleep.

Sara tried to pull them close, but her arms were too heavy. Still, the world was good. Life was good. These were her babies.

A need to see baby Hannah, to hold her smallest in her arms filled Sara, and then she remembered what her mother had said. “One of them is with you now.” Joy surged within her. That night in the old shack, had they made a baby?  Adam’s fever had blazed, and though he spoke of what was happening at the time, she wasn’t certain he had been fully aware of it. She blushed now just thinking of the things he had said.

Then panic rushed her, tearing joy from her heart, bringing strength to her limbs. She coughed as she moved Pris so she could sit up. She had to find Adam.

“Adam,” she called, her scratchy throat and voice reminding her of that night. “Adam,” she tried again as she stood.

Then her room was filled with people, Jordan catching her in his arms. Had she fallen?  Lena clucking like a mother hen over the girls in her bed. “Not to bother Sara, did I not tell you?” Emma, herding them into the kitchen.

Sara looked beyond Jordan as he lay her back down. Where was Adam?  Why wasn’t he here?  “Adam?” she asked, in no more than a whisper, her heart setting up a new and terrible beat. “Adam,” she said again, hearing the panic in her voice as she pushed against Jordan’s restraining arms, but it was no use.

She had to rest a minute, but after she did, she hit Jordan as he tried to listen to her chest. “Where is Adam?” she shouted.

But Adam did not come and Jordan only shook his head as he sat beside her and took her hands, the way Adam should be doing. Sara choked back a sob as Jordan regarded her. “His fever is serious, Sara, though not as high as it was.”

Prickles of relief ran through her, strong enough to make her lose her breath and begin again to cough. It took a minute before she could speak. “I have to go to him,” she said, glad she’d found her voice, feeble as it sounded, but still annoyed that Jordan tried to keep her from rising. Weaker than she expected, she had no choice but to lay back down. “Where is he?”

“On the daybed in the kitchen. The fever made him wild for a while, delirious actually. You needed rest and quiet to heal and he needed constant care.”

“I need no rest. It is Adam who—”

“Pneumonia, sweetheart. Took a swim, did you?  In a blizzard?”

“Oh, that. How did you know?”

Jordan chuckled. “Leave it to you to toss pneumonia off. And I know because in his ranting, Adam has been furious with you for going to a birthing in a blizzard, for getting lost and falling in a pond. There are some things he very much liked about your time in that shack, however. Those rantings interested Emma very much and made Lena chase her and the girls from the room.”

Sara warmed and knew color stained her cheeks, but Jordan was too much a friend to mention it, thank God.

“You’ve been very sick.”

“For how long?”

“Four days.”

“Adam still has fever after four days?  That’s too long, isn’t it?”

“His leg is bad, Sara. I don’t know yet….” Jordan took a breath. “Don’t know if I can save it.”

Sara used the word Adam had when he’d fallen from her bed. Instead of looking shocked, Jordan nodded his head. “I know.”

“I need to take care of him.” Tears filled Sara’s eyes, because she had no strength to rise, never mind nurse her own husband.

“Lena and Emma are helping me do that. If you want to help, the best thing you can do for him is rest and get well.”

Sara looked toward the window then back at her friend, her worry near to bursting, for Adam, for.... “Jordan, is pneumonia bad for a baby?”

“You know it is; you’ve seen me treat lots of babies with—” He noticed her smoothing her flat stomach, soothing the child she wasn’t even certain existed.

“That’s not what I mean,” she said. “I mean, if the mother has pneumonia—”

Jordan was a smart man, a good man, Sara thought. His eyes softened in understanding. “Is there a baby, love?”

Sara nodded, knowing he’d think her mad if she admitted the child was conceived only four days before and that her dead mother had told her so. “I think,” she said. “I’m almost certain.”

Jordan smiled. “Only one of your lungs was filled with fluid. There was always enough oxygen for the little one. What does old Adam think?”

‘Old’ Adam would strike ‘The
English
’ for that remark, Sara thought, but fear replaced everything in her mind. “He cannot know. Don’t tell him, Jordan, please.”

The doctor rubbed his face with one hand and sighed. “I’m not going to ask why or how he can’t know, but don’t you think he’ll figure it out sooner or later?”

Sara sighed, too, and closed her eyes. When she opened them, worry remained with her. “Later would be better,” she said. “Keep my secret?”

Jordan rose and bent to kiss her brow. “Sleep, little mother. Your secret is safe with me.”

Little mother. Sara smiled as she drifted off.

Two days later, the first time she saw Adam after their night at the shack, the deep angles and planes chiseled into a face grown lean shocked her.

He looked at her, for all the world as if he did not know her; worse, as if he disliked her. And despite the fact that Jordan had reassured her that Adam was no longer delirious, Sara almost wished he were. Otherwise, Spinster Sara and Mad Adam Zuckerman were back to the relationship, or lack thereof, that they had shared on the night she arrived to deliver Hannah.

“Come to give me one of your blasted baths, Sara Zuckerman?” His words were a challenge, yes, but they were also heartening, despite the hard edge to his look.

“So you remember who I am, and that we’re married, do you?”

“Our mistakes live with us forever.”

Sara’s reaching hand stopped midway to his brow and began to shake with the pain from the knife-thrust of his words. She pulled back and turned away to hide a hurt bad enough to double her over, if she allowed it. When she looked back at her angry husband, she saw regret lining his features, though as usual he tried to mask it.

“You believe our marriage was a mistake?” she could not help asking.

He growled, that old harsh sound that used to frighten her, but now only confused her. “No,” he said, almost grudgingly. “The girls need you.”

Only the girls. Not him. His beautiful words in the shack played through her mind. She had been his hearth and home, his bright butterfly.

Sara summoned all her strength not to break down and weep. “You must be sorry, then, that we rushed into a wedding. Once your mother and Emma came, you would not have needed to marry me.”

Adam scoffed outright. “The Elders gave us no choice and you know it.”

“The Elders were not with us in the shack,” she said, tired of skirting the real issue. His true regret, Sara was certain, was that they had made love ... not that he would call it that.

Adam’s look turned to insult, pure unadulterated fury, anger so blazing Sara stepped back. “Know this, Sara Zuckerman,” he shouted, causing himself to lose his breath, though he recovered it and his ire fast enough. “Had I known for certain that saving you would cost me this foolish leg, I would have done it.” He looked down at the leg and then back at her, hurt taking ire’s place in his eyes. “I would have done it had my life been the cost.”

Confusion made Sara dizzy. She sat and gazed at the hands in her lap, identified them as her own, and realized how blessed and yet cursed was this love expanding her heart. When she looked at Adam, finally, he was watching her, a desperate need sitting so near the surface, she could weep.

They’d stepped so near to a communion of spirits that night, they had become one in the physical sense. Adam had been as near to revealing his hidden self, as he was even now, after thinking she’d lost faith in him. But his memory of their loving, of the most beautiful experience in her life—maybe even in his—seemed to have disappeared.

“I never doubted you, Adam. You misunderstood my question. I knew you would save me. Even when I was the most frightened, I knew you would do everything humanly possible to get to me. I was so sure of it, I allowed myself to sleep while I waited.”

Adam’s face paled. “Asleep, were you?  And there I was, thinking you’d—” He swallowed, shaking his head.

She had difficulty swallowing herself, until some unspoken tautness between them urged her forward. She rose from the chair and sat on the edge of the daybed to lay her head on his chest. After a minute, Adam covered it with his big, often-clumsy hand. But his touch was soft as a dove’s feather as he held her against his fast-beating heart.

Hope renewed Sara. He might have forgotten, or turned away the memory of their physical intimacy, yes. They had stepped back, yes, but not so far back that the care growing between them was lost. Not that far back, praise be.

They could begin again, pick up the pieces of their marriage and return to the way they’d been, almost friends, maybe more. Except that if Adam knew her body with his hands again, he would learn, with time and without doubt, about their night in the shack. The babe she could not help believe grew in her womb, would soon give away its secrets.

Perhaps she should try to discover where and why existed that dark place inside Adam that her mother spoke of. He worked so hard to keep himself from her in so many ways. If she only knew why, perhaps she could confront and challenge whatever caused his determination to remain an emotional mile away.