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Authors: Mona Hodgson

Tags: #Fiction, #Christian, #Historical, #Romance

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BOOK: Too Rich for a Bride
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Otis glanced at the two workhorses pulling the wagon. “Titan and Trojan is the only horses, Mr. Tucker. And this is the only wagon.”

“And the icehouse?”

Otis shook his head. “He had big plans, but …” His voice drifted off, as did his gaze. He lifted his floppy canvas hat and dabbed at the beads of sweat on his high forehead with a red bandanna. “That’s why me and Abraham was late. We pick up a load of ice from the depot three or four days a week. Then we deliver it. Sometimes we leave some in the wagon overnight for impatient folks who want their ice first thing in the morning.” He stopped the horses in front of a clapboard house. “This here’s the Sisters of Mercy’s hospital till they get that new one open come spring.”

Tucker jumped to the ground. Before he could reach for his bag, Abraham hoisted it off the top of the wagon and handed it down to him.

“Thank you.” Tucker hung his bag from his shoulder.

“Mr. Tucker, you know what the block of ice—”

“Not now, son,” Otis said.

“Yes sir.” Abraham turned his attention back to Tucker. “I’ll save that joke for next time.”

“And I might even come up with one of my own.”

As far as Tucker was concerned, the boy’s wide smile was worth more than a hillside full of gold.

“You’ll find your pa in the hallway to the left,” Otis said. “His ward’s at the end. He’s in the last bed.”

“Thanks, Otis.” Tucker touched the brim of his hat and nodded at the man who looked daunting but was proving to be the opposite. “You too, Abraham. Thanks for the work you’re both doing.”

“Proud to do it, Mr. Tucker.” Otis poised the reins. “I’ll bring the wagon back soon as it’s empty so you can drive your people home.”

Tucker nodded and waved. As Otis drove the wagon around the corner, Tucker took slow steps up to the door.

His people
. Remorse stabbed Tucker in the chest. The best part of his people wasn’t here. He’d left her in Stockton.

Honour thy father and thy mother
.

That was why he’d come to Colorado. As he walked into the hospital toward an uncertain future, he prayed his resolve to honor his parents would be strong enough to sustain him. At the first corner, he turned left. A nurse in a uniform pushed a wheelchair past him. A white-haired nun in full habit huddled against a wall with a wailing young woman who held a child in her arms.

A disharmony of coughs drew Tucker to the end of the hallway and to the last door on the right. Breathing another prayer, he stepped through the open door. Worn privacy panels the color of dusty roads separated the beds. Groans and muffled conversation filled the ward. Listening for a familiar voice, he quieted his steps as he approached the back of the room. He stopped at the foot of the last bed on the left.

His father lay still, a light blanket tucked at his sides, outlining his shrunken frame. His mother sat in a chair beside the bed, her body bent forward and her knitting needles clicking through a ball of orange yarn.

Suddenly, her hands stilled and she straightened, her gaze taking Tucker in, from his dusty boots to his face, settling on the preacher’s hat he held in his hand. Tears flooded her eyes as she stood and dropped her knitting on the chair.

His father’s eyes popped open. A glare hardened his sallow features, his face ashen and his eyes sunken. “What are
you
doin’ here?”

Tucker lifted his shoulders and let them drop.

“I asked him to come.” Tucker had never before witnessed the strength in his mother’s voice and the set of her jaw.

“I told you no.”

“I need my son.” She rushed to embrace Tucker, snagging the curtain and nearly ripping it from its frame. Tucker caught her as she stumbled, and she wrapped her arms around his neck.

“Well, I don’t need him here. I don’t want him here.” His father’s voice escalated. A series of deep, gurgling coughs rent the stale air and resonated in Tucker’s core.

Something had to be done to stop the spasms. Tucker released his mother and rushed to the bedside, reaching for his father, but he was met with a flailing hand, slapping his arm away even in the throes of a coughing fit.

God, help us
. His father did need him here, even if he would never admit it.

The nun he’d seen in the hallway scuttled in. “Mr. Raines, it sounds as though you could use another steam treatment before we send you home this afternoon.” She tucked a stray feather of white hair under her headpiece, and looked at Tucker over the top of her wire-rimmed spectacles. “This might be a good time for you and Mrs. Raines to help yourself to a cup of coffee in the kitchen.”

Tucker nodded, comforted by the warm sensitivity he heard in the nun’s soft brogue. He took his mother’s elbow and guided her out of the room.

The long table in the sisters’ dining room sat empty. Tucker set two full coffee cups at one end and pulled out a chair for his mother. The strength he’d seen in her moments earlier seemed to have evaporated.

He knew the feeling. He sat beside her. Thirsty, he lifted the cup of hot brew to his lips. Never mind that the coffee was bitter, as long as the liquid coated his insides with warmth.

“I’m sorry.” His mother sniffled. Her shoulders hunched more than he remembered. “I shouldn’t have asked you to come, but I didn’t know what else to do.”

He set down his cup and squeezed her hand. “You did the right thing, Mother.” He hoped he was right, but the fact that his mere presence had stirred his father into a coughing fit didn’t bode well.

“He can’t help himself. He just hasn’t been right since …” Her face twisted into a frown and she wrapped her hands around the steaming cup in front of her. “How is Willow?”

Tucker glanced up at the crucifix that hung on the wall at the other end of the long plank table and breathed in the reminder. What Christ did on the cross was enough, regardless of how he felt. “She was about the same when I saw her last Wednesday.”

Her elbows on the table, his mother put her face in her hands and began to weep.

Tucker pulled a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and handed it to her. “I asked them to send the reports to me here.”

Shuddering, she blotted her face. “You’ll stay?”

“For as long as I’m needed.”

Footsteps drew their attention to the doorway and the man who approached them. Tucker stood.

His mother wiped her eyes and straightened. “Tucker, this is Dr. Morgan Cutshaw. He’s tending to your father.”

“Doctor.” Tucker shook hands with him, noting the doctor was a couple of inches shorter than he was. Like Sam. “I’m Tucker Raines.”

Dr. Cutshaw pulled out a chair and sat on the other side of Tucker’s mother.

“Can we take him home?” The strength had returned to his mother’s voice.

“Yes. Sister Coleman is seeing to the paperwork now.” He looked at Tucker, then at Mrs. Raines. “The results of my consults came back.”

“It’s tuberculosis, isn’t it?” she asked.

“Yes ma’am. Active tuberculosis disease.” Dr. Cutshaw’s voice was tender, full of compassion. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Raines, but there’s really nothing more we can do for him here.”

Tucker enfolded his mother’s quaking hand in his. “Did you tell my father?”

The doctor nodded. “I just spoke with him.”

“How did he take it?”

His mother wiped a tear from her cheek. “He likely took the news like a man who thought he was invincible.”

Another nod from the doctor.

“Thank you.” Tucker tightened his grip on his mother’s hand. “There has to be something we can do.”

“I’ve telephoned the Glockner Sanitorium down in Colorado Springs. The doctors there specialize in caring for tuberculosis patients.”

Caring for
. Tucker didn’t know if his mother had detected the specific wording, but he had. Tuberculosis at this stage had no cure, no proven treatment. If his father stayed here, he would only worsen and his mother would grow all the more frail watching him diminish and suffer.

Tucker didn’t wish that on either of them. They’d been through enough. He couldn’t stand by and do nothing. At the sanitorium his father would receive the care he needed and his mother would be close enough to see him, but also have her sister, Aunt Rosemary, who lived in Colorado Springs, for support.

Dr. Cutshaw shifted his attention to Tucker’s mother. “They can have a room ready for him in about a week—next Monday.”

“Will he be up to traveling by then?” She slipped her hands around her coffee cup again.

“If he has good rest in the meantime, he should be able to tolerate the train ride.”

“What do you think, Tucker?”

Was that why she’d summoned him, to make the decisions? He looked at Dr. Cutshaw.

“We’ve drained the fluid off his lungs. The bleeding has stopped for now. But I can’t say for how long.”

Tucker met his mother’s fragile gaze. “We need to do what’s best for Father. And for you. I believe that’s the sanitorium.”

She nodded.

Dr. Cutshaw stood. “I’ll call them back and reserve a space for him.”

As Tucker watched the doctor leave, he wondered how he would pay for his father’s care. He’d taken a sabbatical from preaching to come here, and his father had only one ice wagon for deliveries. How was that even enough to put food on their table, let alone pay Otis and cover the cost of Willow’s care?

Three hours later, Tucker carried a tea tray into his father’s sparsely furnished bedroom in his parents’ cabin. Lemons would be hard-pressed to match the sourness in his father’s expression. He sat propped up in bed on a nest of pillows, his eyes narrowed.

“You can stay,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Thank you.” Tucker set the tray over his father’s lap and spooned honey into the cup.

“For your mother’s sake.”

Tucker nodded. “The doctor said peppermint tea with honey will help keep your throat calm.”

“You’ll sleep in the barn.”

Tucker clanged the spoon against the edge of the cup.

Honour thy father
.

Apparently, his father believed he should pay penance, even though no amount of atonement would bring Sam back.

Or Willow.

Swallowing his frustration with a bitter bite of regret, Tucker turned and walked out of the room.

THREE

Colorado Springs, Colorado

28 September 1896

he shrill call of the train’s whistle sent a fresh pulse of adrenaline into Ida’s aching legs. Tightening her grip on her reticule and satchel, she rushed out the depot door of the Midland Terminal Railroad and across the platform to board the train in Colorado Springs.

“Last call.” The conductor hung from the grab bar of the rear passenger car. “All aboard!”

The engineer released the brakes, adding a deafening whooshing sound to her pounding heartbeat. Steam belched from beneath the car, blowing her duster and dampening her dress.

Ida grabbed the railing and propelled herself up the steps as the train began moving. Inside the car, the conductor motioned her toward the back of the train and a seat at the window—the only one available in the car. Holding her bags out in front of her with one hand, Ida reached with her other to grasp the back of each seat as she passed to brace herself against the rocking motion of the train.

BOOK: Too Rich for a Bride
12.86Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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