Choices of the Heart (35 page)

“She’s . . . oh, of course.” Head ducked, Griff lifted Bethann in his arms and left the barn.

The children gathered around, and Mrs. Tolliver headed their way.

“What’s wrong?” the latter asked.

Esther met her and took her arm. “He’s taking her to my room. I want to examine her. I’m thinking she perhaps started to terminate, the pain grew intense, and she took too much laudanum.” She kept her tone neutral, professional, despite her racing heart, the fear slamming through her middle. “I’m going to examine her if you’d like to join me.”

Face pale, Mrs. Tolliver accompanied Esther to her room. Griff laid Bethann on the bed, then slipped into the schoolroom.

Esther closed the door, washed her hands as Momma had taught her according to a code good midwives had followed for hundreds of years, and set about examining Bethann, palpating her belly, looking for more intimate details. She diagnosed nothing wrong except an expectant mother who was far too thin for good health. Certainly not an expectant mother who should have been in pain enough to need something as strong as laudanum to ease it. At least not a physical pain.

Holding herself tense so she didn’t show her anxiety, Esther washed her hands again and remained facing the tiny square of mirror above the washstand as she delivered her report. “The baby seems just fine. Perhaps six months along. So now we need to work on waking her up.”

“How do we do that?” Mrs. Tolliver asked. “Brenna said she shook her and slapped her, and nothing happened.”

“No, I don’t suppose it would.” Esther gripped the edge of the nightstand.

Calm. Always be
calm
, Momma had said again and again.
At least pretend
that you are.

“All I know to give her is strong coffee. Lots of it. And get her moving. Griff can help with that.” Esther opened the door. “Griff, I have work for you.”

“I’ll make the coffee.” Face working, Mrs. Tolliver sped from the schoolhouse like she was running away.

Perhaps she was. She was an intelligent woman. Like as not she was thinking what Esther considered far too likely.

“What’s wrong?” Griff asked.

Esther made herself meet his gaze. “I think—please understand that I’m only guessing here because of the circumstances, but I think Bethann may have tried to kill herself.”

“Naw. Never. She—we—” Griff closed his eyes, and his face twisted. “Why?”

“I don’t know if it’s even true.”

But Bethann wasn’t stupid. She could read the label and know better than to drink down three times as much laudanum as the label instructed.

“I could be mistaken,” Esther tried again.

The pain on Griff’s face sliced through her heart. Her arms ached to reach out and hold him, stroke his hair to soothe him, reassure him everything would be all right. The truth was, however, she didn’t think everything would be all right if she didn’t do something.

“We need to get her up,” Esther said briskly. “We need to get her walking.”

“She’s unconscious.”

“We’ll do it for her at first. The coffee may—will—help. Coffee and—and—”

Momma’s medical books had mentioned something else to do. Blisters on the arms and legs. No, logic said that wouldn’t work. Too slow and painful. Swallow something to make her bring up the poison. But if she wasn’t moving at that time, she could choke to death, and the poison seemed too deeply engrained in her system. But something . . . something . . .

Esther grabbed for her satchel and began to plow through its contents, scattering packets of herbs, vials of oil, and a paper of needles until her fingers closed over a flat, green bottle. It was too little too late, but worth a try.

She sprinted for the bed and uncorked the bottle. The stench of ammonia flooded the small, hot room. Esther coughed as she held the vinaigrette under Bethann’s nose. “Breathe. Breathe.” She cupped the back of Bethann’s head and lifted it from the pillow. “Breathe.”

Bethann’s eyelids twitched. Her head remained as heavy as a rock, the neck muscles not supporting it.

“Breathe, you ungrateful wretch. Your family loves you. You have no right to do this to them. Breathe.” She practically stuck the neck of the bottle up Bethann’s nostril.

Griff removed it from her hand and set it on the table. “I’ll help her up. You go help Momma with the coffee.”

“I won’t let her die. I won’t. I can’t. I—” Esther pressed her shaking hands against her face and made herself breathe.

Calm. Calm. Calm.

She puffed out her breath. “I’ll help you.”

Together they dragged Bethann to her feet. She was as tall as Esther but weighed considerably less. With Griff taking most of her weight, she was no heavier than a child to hold upright and move. They walked her like she was a doll with sawdust filling her limbs instead of flesh and bone. Her legs buckled beneath her. Her head lolled.

Not wanting the children to see, they walked Bethann to the cabin door and back into the bedroom, back and forth, Griff holding her upright, Esther trying to get Bethann’s legs to move. Spreading the poison more deeply into her body, or helping her system get rid of it? She didn’t know. She had only heard tales of people taking too much of an opiate or hemlock. Most of them died, but not all. They didn’t all die.

When they had finished a third circuit and set Bethann on one of the school benches so they could all rest, Mrs. Tolliver arrived with a pot of steaming coffee. “How do we get it down her?”

“We open her mouth and pour in a little at a time.” Esther took the pot and cup and poured a bit from one to the other. “I’ve had a great deal of practice at this lately.”

“I noticed.” Griff’s tone was dry.

Esther frowned at him. “An unconscious patient will die without nourishment.” She sounded prim.

He gave her a half smile and tightened his hold on his sister, alternately patting and shaking her shoulder.

Esther began to administer the coffee. One drop, two. A trickle of the heavy, dark liquid. Not enough to choke her. Esther rubbed Bethann’s throat, murmuring for her to swallow.

Coffee ran out of the corner of her mouth.

Mrs. Tolliver wiped it away with the corner of her apron, then dabbed at her eyes. “Don’t she know we love her no matter what? I never condemned her for it. Her pa will if he finds out, but I’ll see to it he don’t. Even last time, he loved that baby when it came. We’d have loved this one too.”

Esther let Mrs. Tolliver go on and kept working at dribbling in coffee. “Swallow. Swallow.” She rubbed the long, fragile throat. “Swall—”

Bethann swallowed.

Esther and Griff let out a shout of victory.

“Good girl. More. More,” Esther urged and poured in more coffee.

Bethann swallowed, choked, and was sick.

“Very good.” Esther hugged the older woman. “Get that poison out of you. Let’s get her up and moving.”

They got her up, stumbling and swaying, but not as much of a dead weight. They gave her more coffee. She swallowed without prompting.

In what must have been hours, Bethann opened her eyes, looked Esther in the face, and said something rather rude.

Mrs. Tolliver gasped. Griff compressed his lips and looked away.

Esther laughed. “I’ve been called worse when a woman’s in the throes of travail. It doesn’t kill me.”

“I might,” Bethann mumbled. “Want . . . to sleep . . . forever.”

“That’s not your decision to make,” Griff said.

“Is that why you drank my laudanum?” Esther held up another cup of the now cold coffee. “Because you knew it could kill you?”

“It said—” Bethann swallowed. “Relief from pain.”

“Oh, Bethann.” Esther blinked several times, then held the coffee to Bethann’s lips. “Drink.”

When she refused, Esther poured it in until Bethann needed to swallow or choke. She swallowed, then fixed a blurry green gaze on her brother. “Why?”

“Why what?” Griff held her upright. “Or more like why did you do it? I was going to let you go. I was going to help you.”

“Couldn’t waste your money.” Bethann’s head lolled against his shoulder, and her shoulders heaved with silent sobs.

Esther left Bethann to her brother and mother and went for a walk up the mountain. The boys joined her, and she welcomed their zest for life, their enthusiasm about everything they saw, from a fish visible in the clear waters of their favorite fishing stream to an ugly fungus growing on the side of a fallen log. She drank in their chatter about all they’d been doing while she was at the other side of the ridge, and breathed deeply of the sharp, sweet scents of the forest.

When they wandered off in search of something whose tracks they noticed on the path, she chose a sun-warmed rock beside a stream and stared into the sparkling spill of water, shallow now in the dryness of summer. A swim would refresh her. A swim would cool her. A swim would cleanse her. The waterfall pool called her.

She rose and returned to her patient.

Griff still held Bethann upright on one of the benches. A bowl of soup sat on another bench, half empty. Bethann’s face held a hint of color. Griff’s carried too many shadows beneath his eyes. Even the bruise and wound on his face, mostly healed now, paled next to the circles of fatigue emphasizing the blue of his eyes.

Esther touched his shoulder. “I’ll sit with her for a while so you can rest.”

“I have chores.”

“Your cousins have done them.” Esther settled on Bethann’s other side and slipped her arm around the older woman. “Go ahead and get some rest and food and air. I can manage her.”

“Like I’m a naughty child,” Bethann grumbled.

“You acted like a naughty child.” Esther’s tone held no sympathy. “That was a stupid thing to do.”

“Esther, do you think—” Griff began.

“I should talk to her that way? Someone needs to be honest with her.” Esther turned and glared at her. “Your brother just rode a hundred and fifty miles to help you. And you throw that help in his face like it was worthless. Your mother has kept you close and loved you even though your behavior is appalling. And you thank them by shaming them, by interfering with God’s plan for your life, by—”

“Esther.” Griff rose and gently closed his hands over her shoulders. “It’s all right.”

“No, it’s not.” Tremors ran through Esther, and tears burned her eyes. “It was a cowardly action that didn’t take anyone else into consideration.”

“Kinda like you coming out here,” Griff said.

“I’m still alive.”

“Your family doesn’t know that.”

Esther clenched her teeth against a bubble rising in her throat, which she feared might emerge as a howl or a shriek like a mountain lion.

And Bethann laughed—high-pitched and a little hysterical, but a laugh. “You think you’re so smart coming here to teach us ignorant mountain folk how to talk and tossin’ around your cures like you’re some kind of saint. But you never had nobody hurt you so much that dying seemed better’n livin’.”

Esther drew in her breath. She glanced at the orange and gold sunset visible through the open door. She glanced at the patch of gray-blue sky lighting the window. She stared at a stain of spilled coffee on the dirt floor. Then she finally managed to look Bethann in the eye. “You’re right. I have never tried to end my life. But I have wondered if continuing to live was worth the effort when I woke up in the morning. I made a mistake that caused someone to die and ruined me so completely I tried hiding amongst you good people.”

31

Esther’s icy calm sent a chill racing through Griff. No female should be so steady, so unfeeling, after saying what she just had. But there she sat like a statue of a female, drawing him to her to offer comfort, yet repelling him with a chill that said no man could ever reach her heart, and if he stayed, she would wound him too.

He couldn’t move, couldn’t lift his hands from her shoulders. He tensed, expecting more from her, an explanation, a command to leave her alone.

“You ain’t never had a man want someone else more than you,” Bethann challenged, “’cause you’re not pretty enough or smart enough, nor got anything to offer.”

“No, I haven’t.” Esther remained straight-backed, her head up, her eyes avoiding Griff’s. “I was the one who found them wanting—too old, too fat, smelling too much like fish. Tabitha and Dominick Cherrett’s daughter could afford to be choosy.” She emitted a laugh a little too high-pitched, too sharp-edged. “Or so I thought until someone decided I needed a lesson in humility.”

Griff saw himself on his horse and heading east to Seabourne to learn the identity of the man who had hurt her and teach him a lesson. And for the first time in ten years, he understood Pa’s reaction to the man who had ruined Bethann. Love and loyalty could make a man fierce in his heart. He’d never felt this way for Bethann’s sake—he’d been quick to find a way to have her gone in the hope of peace.

Guilt punched him in the gut. If he honestly cared about his sister, wouldn’t he have wanted to keep her close, ensure she was safe and taking care of herself? No, for the sake of peace, he had been willing to buy her off. For the sake of peace, he’d been willing to simply let Zach court Esther without even considering he might care for her himself. He hadn’t fought for her honor; he had robbed her of it, as if he or Zach had ever had a chance with her. Even without her wounded spirit, they weren’t the sort of men a female like her chose.