Stephanie Mittman (25 page)

T
HE FUNERAL FOR POOR
J
AMES
D
ENTON
, J
R., WAS
nearly as brief as the child’s life. Abby had considered not going because she didn’t want to see Seth there, see him hurting and know that some of that hurt was her fault. But in the end, she went, hung back from the crowd, and hurried home as quickly as she could.

She’d only seen Seth’s back.

And that had been enough to rob her of breath.

At least no one else was home, and she could cry her heart out and be sick in the bathroom and all but feel her way down the stairs so that when they returned from the Dentons’ place she’d have had time to pull herself together and be sitting in the living room as if all was right with the world.

Her mother would be so proud, if only she knew what a great actress her daughter had managed to become.

“You missed a nice spread,” her mother said. “Did you work on your wedding list?”

“I meant to,” she said, stretching as if she’d been
doing nothing at all. “But I fell asleep in this chair and got nothing done.”

“Dr. Hendon was there,” her mother said. “Poor man. He seemed to be taking the boy’s death real hard.”

“Yes,” Patience agreed, looking at Abby suspiciously. “Something was really bothering him.”

“The cross cookies are cool,” Gwendolyn announced, coming from the kitchen with one in each hand. “Can I throw them out the window to see how it’ll work from Uncle Jed’s flying machine?”

“Go on up,” Abby said. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Prudence and Michael stayed at the Dentons,” her mother said, handing her the basket to carry up the stairs.

Abby nodded and trudged up the steps, one hand on the banister, hoping that her mother wasn’t watching, ready to feign sleepiness still, if she was.

When she finally got to the attic, Gwendolyn was struggling to open the small window under the eaves, and Abby gave the child a hand.

“Will you hurry up and throw them?” Patience yelled up. “I’ve better things to do with my day than get hit by crosses, you know.”

Abby examined the basketful of various kinds of candies and cookies shaped like crosses and wondered if prayers would do her any good now. Of course they would, she chastised herself. She would pray for Seth, who would go on to have a wonderful life.

“Please let him be happy,” she said, kissing a taffy cross and tossing it out the window to Patience.

“Ow!”

No taffy.

“He’s known such misery,” she said to the shortbread cross as she let it go. “Let him find some peace.”

“Ouch! And it broke in a million pieces,” Patience called up.

“I think I’ve got it,” her mother said, coming into the room, her hair dusted with flour, her skirt being held on to by Gwendolyn. “Try this.”

Abby took the cross. It was small, fitting in the palm of her hand. It appeared to be meringue.

“We glued it to some paper,” her mother said. “That way it won’t crumble when it hits the ground.”

“Here comes another one,” Abby said, letting it go from the window. “Why are we bothering to do this when there is no chance that Jed’s flying machine is going to work?”

“Got it!” Patience yelled. “It kinda floated and I caught it. Send down another and I’ll let it hit the ground.”

“Faith can move mountains, Abby dear,” her mother said, handing her a second meringue cross. “Trust me. I’ve lived through miracles.”

It was worth a shot, and so Abby silently prayed for the best and sent the cross out the window.

“Come on, hurry up,” Patience said. “It’s not so warm out here, you know.”

“I threw it,” Abby said.

“It must have landed in the bushes,” Patience said, while Abby’s mother looked at her knowingly as if they’d just witnessed some sort of miracle beyond Abby’s bad aim. “Throw another.”

“You throw it, Gwendolyn,” Abby said, getting up and stretching out her back. She’d hardly done anything all day and she was so tired that all she wanted to do was crawl into her bed.

“Perfect!” Patience called. “All in one piece.”

“Isn’t that wonderful?” Abby’s mother asked, as if the world was all peachy now.

“It sure is, Mom,” Abby said. “Now all we need is a flying machine and we’re all set.”

“Well, then we’re halfway there,” her mother said, dusting off her hands and taking a bite of one of the crosses still in the basket, as if candy and cookie crosses and flying machines were equally difficult to invent.

“Can I throw more?” Gwendolyn asked, and reached for several crosses, tossing them out the window before her grandmother could stop her.

“Hey! Ow! Stop it!” Patience howled.

“Too much of a good thing,” Abby said, patting her mother’s shoulder and heading off to her room to lie down for a few moments before someone came looking for her.

“Why, dear, there’s no such thing,” her mother called after her.

But Abby figured her mother was wrong. She knew how much she loved Seth, and how much he loved her, and it was much too much of a good thing.

Seth had to give Abby credit for managing to avoid him for the better part of a week. He ran into her at Walker’s Mercantile on the Friday that his article on headaches appeared in the
Herald
. It seemed to him
that there was something fitting about that. It was just one more thing she’d roped him into and left in his lap—a column, a broken heart. To her it was all the same.

“It’s one of the finest we have, Miss Abby,” Frank was saying, the table linens he was showing her spread out over the length of the counter. “Twelve matching napkins come with it, of course.”

“Lovely,” Seth said, coming up behind her and standing just a little too close. He reached over her to touch the tablecloth as if he had even the slightest interest in it, brushing her arm as he did. “For your new home?”

She stiffened at his touch for just a second, then melted against his arms. For a fleeting moment he thought that just his voice, his touch, had changed her mind, and that she was nestling into the haven his arms ached to give her. But the body caught between the counter and his own was limp, and he caught hold of her as she collapsed against him.

He meant to pick her up and carry her over to his office, but he couldn’t seem to order his body to be strong. Instead he eased her to the floor, cradling her against him, and ordered Frank to go over to his office and bring him his medical bag.

“What is it, Abby?” he asked, pushing the hair off her face, checking her pulse, feeling for fever, unbuttoning the top two buttons of her shirtwaist so that she could get more air. He did all the necessary things as if by rote, while his brain raced to places he couldn’t bear to go. “What’s happening to you?”

She blinked up at him, those huge eyes of hers unfocused at first, confused. She turned her head to check out her surroundings, and then brought her gaze back to him. “Did I faint?” she asked, rubbing at her forehead. “Already?”

“I’ll take you over to my office,” he said, trying to keep the gruffness from his voice.
Already?

“I’m all right,” she said, fighting his efforts to help her up. “I don’t need to be examined, if that’s what you have in mind.”

She said it as if he’d suggested something improper, as if he were using it as an excuse to get his hands on her, to touch her again. “We can just talk,” he said. “We
need
to talk.”

“I’ve made my decision, Seth,” she said as Frank came in and handed Seth his bag, hanging over him to stare at Abidance Merganser sprawled on his floor. Seth pulled the hem of her skirts down so that they covered her boots instead of showing the bit of flesh above her ankle. She was slow to slap his hand away, and she still hadn’t even sat up.

“Why don’t you help her up, Frank,” he said, backing away from her to assure her that he had no ulterior motives. “Then we’ll get her over to my office.”

“You’d think a woman never fainted before,” Abby said, but she wasn’t convincing, especially when she didn’t grasp the hand Frank offered her.

“You getting up or would you rather one of us carried you?” he asked. “I could—”

“I’m getting up,” she snapped at him, letting Frank put an arm around her back and help her get to her
feet. “I’m perfectly fine. I’ve really got to get back to the
Herald
.”

“I’ll walk you there,” Seth said, taking her arm and steering her out of the store. “Just as soon as I’m done examining you.”

He maneuvered her into his office and even got her into his examination room. She let him take her pulse, but she refused to let him do anything else, insisting she was fine.

“Do you really have your monthly?” he asked her directly, putting his stethoscope around his neck. “Honestly now, Abidance.”

“I told you I did.”

“You told me a lot of things, Abby. That you loved me, that you’d marry me. Now you go passing out in my arms and you say ‘Already?’ like you’re expecting to faint. As your doctor I need to know, and as the man who shared your bed, I have a right to know. Could you be with child, Abidance?”

“No.” There was regret in her voice, but he pretended not to hear it. And he strove to keep it out of his own.

“You still having headaches?” he asked, putting the stethoscope into his ears.

“No,” she said again, color flooding her cheeks as he insinuated his hand within her blouse and pressed the cold metal disk to her breast. “I’m fine, Seth,” she insisted, squirming beneath his touch.

“Hold still and just breathe normally,” he said, listening to her heart race and wondering if it was any faster than his own.

“I skipped breakfast,” she said as he checked the sounds of her lungs.

“That was stupid,” he said, moving the stethoscope and trying to be professional about touching her this one last time. “Deep breaths now.”

“I was trying to improve my figure some before the wedding,” she said, then took a deep breath for him and continued. “The gown I’m making has the tiniest waist.”

“Your waist is just right, Abby,” he said, extricating his hand from her shirtwaist. “You seem awfully nervous.”

“Well, I’m excited, if that’s what you mean,” she said. And then, just to make sure he didn’t for a minute think she could be happy to see him, she added, “I mean about the wedding and Armand and all. And I haven’t been eating all that well.”

“And saying ‘Already?’ “he asked. What had she meant by that?

“Well, the diet and …” She looked around his office, tilting her head this way and that, as if things had been moved since the last time she’d been there. “I slept in my corset. There, go ahead and yell at me. I thought I could do it for a few nights before I’d … well, I’m sure that’s why I fainted.”

“I’m sure it is, too,” he said, thoroughly disgusted. “Doesn’t this Armand fellow like you the way you are? It’s not as if you’ve an inch of fat on you. If the man loves you, I’d think he’d want more of you to love, not less.”

“You think I’m too thin? Well, isn’t it lucky for you that you don’t have to marry me then.”

“No more sleeping in that corset, Abidance. It has obviously cut off circulation to your brain. You are talking utter nonsense.”

Damn it all! Now the little jezebel had tears in her eyes. He supposed if he wanted proof that she was having her monthly, here it was—she was emotional, irrational, and driving him crazy.

“That’s a terrible thing to say,” she sniffed.

“Abby, do you remember how skinny Sarrie was before she died? How she was skin and bones and big eyes and a smile?”

Abby closed her eyes, as if that would stop her from seeing Sarrie at the end, but she nodded and sniffed back still more tears.

“Was that attractive?” he asked, as if the question needed asking.

“No,” she said grudgingly.

“Then no more diet,” he warned her. “No more sleeping in your corset and no more passing on dessert.”

She nodded.

“I’m sorry if I embarrassed you,” he said, taking the stethoscope off his neck.

“Convinced I’m fine now?” she asked, coming down off his table and adjusting her clothing.

“Fit as a fiddle,” he said. And oh, how he still wanted to tuck her under his chin, pluck her strings, and make beautiful music.

“It was awful,” she told Emily later in the day. “Making up all kinds of excuses and—”

“How could you not tell him?” Emily demanded. “Is fainting one of the symptoms? Not that I think you have what you think you have.”

“It’s called a tumor, Em. And not saying the word won’t change anything. And you know as well as I do that I’ve got one and that I’m going to die. I can’t eat anymore—nothing has any taste. My head aches so bad sometimes that I can’t even get out of bed, and now I’m going around town fainting.”

“And you still expect me to keep my promise?” Emily demanded.

“If you want to see me again,” Abby reminded her.

“Well, I think you’re just lovesick,” Emily said. “And scared and making yourself sicker. When I thought I didn’t have a chance with Ansel, when he was still so in love with Sarrie that—”

“You knew he was in love with Sarrie?” Abby asked. “Ansel told you?”

Emily laughed. “Don’t be silly. To this day he doesn’t mention her name. But I knew, and I loved him all the more for his tender heart and his kind ways. Not every man could love so unselfishly. But my Ansel can.”

“Unselfishly?”

“What do you suppose he got from his relationship with Sarah Hendon? Only pain, heartache. Not that she wasn’t wonderful company, not that she didn’t make him laugh and such. But he knew that loving her had no future, and still he loved her.”

“But he married you. Weren’t you … aren’t you jealous?”

“Maybe at first. He’d go to see her, you know, behind my back. At least he thought it was behind my back. I’d tell him that I was spending the evening with my mother so that he could see her without having to lie to me. I never asked him how he spent those nights, and he never said.”

“Why? I mean why did you share him with her? You could have married practically any man in Eden’s Grove. Why choose one who was in love with someone else?”

“Abidance! How long did you love Seth before he noticed you were alive? And how many times did he tell you he could never love you? We don’t choose love, it chooses us.” Emily sighed and stretched out her back, then let her hands rest on her rounding belly.