Stephanie Mittman (14 page)

As Ansel, Seth, and Frank discussed how her hand was healing, Abby studied each of them, one after the other. In fact, she couldn’t seem to get more than one of them in her line of vision. There was no question she was going to need new glasses, she thought, and quickly took them off to look, if not see, her best.

“Put your glasses back on,” Seth said with a shake of his head, as if she were a foolish child.

“Abby, you need them,” Ansel said. “You look just fine in them.”

After she complied, Frank dipped his head back some and studied her in her awful wire rims. “They make your eyes look even bigger, Miss Abby. A body could get lost in eyes that big.” And then, because with her glasses back on she could see it quite clearly, she watched Frank Walker blush.

And she didn’t miss, either, Seth’s obvious discomfort as he went digging in his overcoat pockets and then finally found what he was looking for in his inner pocket.

“Next week’s column,” he said. “‘Household Emergencies.’”

He held it out to her, but Ansel reached over and took it. “I’ll have to set it, with Abby’s hand still not healed.”

“It certainly is taking a long time,” Frank Walker said, looking accusingly at Seth. “Didn’t you sew it good?”

Abby had to cover her mouth with her good hand not to laugh at the indignant look Seth gave Frank.

“Well,” she said, deciding that having three men concerned about her welfare was a lot more enjoyable than she would have suspected, “if you gentlemen will excuse me, I’ve got to bring an ad over to Emmet Sommers and make sure I’ve got the wording right.”

She took her coat, but only threw it over her arm. The looks she got from the three men in the newspaper office would surely keep her warm halfway to Emmet Sommers’s farm.

Seth hated mollycoddling his patients. Not the truly sick ones, of course. Those he would stay up with all night, if necessary.

“There is simply nothing wrong with your chest,” Seth said to Ella Welsh. “Not as far as I can see.”

Ella’s laugh was throaty and inviting. “Well, it ain’t flowery, but I’ll still take it as a compliment.”

“I meant medically,” Seth said.

“Then why do I feel such a pain over here?” she asked, toying with her left breast and looking at him with big round eyes that he supposed were meant to look innocent. “Is it just heartache?”

He nodded. “I suppose that’s it,” he agreed, turning away from her and writing something in her file to signify that the examination was over. “You can close up your buttons now.”

“What would you suggest I do for my heartache?” she asked, and the muscles in his neck tightened and he rolled his shoulders to ease the cramp.

“I’d suggest that you go on home and give yourself a few more days to get over Mr. Panner’s death. Treat yourself to a nice warm bath. Sleep late. Let yourself grieve a bit. It’s hard, and it takes a long time to get over someone’s death.”

“You still missing that sweet little sister of yours?” Ella asked.

“I’m over my grieving,” he said.

“Sure you are,” she said, sounding unconvinced. “But if you ever need to grieve with someone else, Doc, come on out to the house.”

Hold your breath till I get there
, he thought unkindly. But all he said was that he thought he heard
someone out in the waiting room. He opened the door just in time to see the flash of skirt exiting his outer door. He had no time or need to wonder who she’d been—there, on his desk, were a pair of snow shoes and a rifle rustier than an old gate.

“Something funny, Doc?” Ella asked, and Seth realized that he had laughed out loud.

“Not at all,” he said, shaking his head.

He’d have to be careful what he said to Abidance Merganser. First the gold-panning supplies, and now the trapper’s goods. Apparently she was making a habit of taking him at his word.

A
NSEL HAD HIS ARM AROUND
E
MILY’S WAIST AS
he escorted her into the grange hall. A pang of jealousy hit Abby right in the pit of her stomach. Maybe she was wrong to pursue a relationship with Seth Hendon. Maybe she was wrong about the importance of love. After all, Ansel wasn’t in love, yet he had a mate for life, a partner, someone to share the good things and the bad with, someone to grow old with, someone to dote on.

Frank Walker was willing. Emmet Sommers was willing. Well, Emmet Sommers was willing to be someone’s partner all right, but it looked like it was Patience who might be parking her slippers next to Emmet’s one day, if the way they were sitting beside each other on the back bench was any indication. And that was just fine with Abby.

Still, life was passing her by. “Mind if I sit here?” Frank Walker asked. She looked up at him and tried to smile, gathering her skirt closer so that he could fill the seat beside her.

“Would you mind moving down there, Frank?” a familiar voice asked.

No, life wasn’t passing her by—it was whirling around her, out of control, as Frank eased his way beyond her knees and sat to her left and Seth took the seat to her right.

“You didn’t show up to have your bandage changed today,” he said. Not
Hello
. Not
How are you, Abby?
No, strictly doctor/patient.

“It looks clean to me,” she said, holding out the hand her mother had rebandaged.

“I was going to take the stitches out today,” he said. “But you never came by.”

“I’ll stop by tomorrow morning,” Abby said. “If that’s all right.”

“Of course it’s all right,” Seth said. “I can write another letter for you, if you like.” He looked past her at Frank.

“Once you take the stitches out, I should be able to write myself, don’t you think?”

He sat back in his seat, stretching his arms over his head and then leaving one on the back of her chair. Then Frank asked if she was cold, and adjusted her shawl, trying to pull it out from beneath Seth’s arm. When Seth finally lifted his, Frank quickly replaced it with his own.

“I’d like to call this meeting to order,” Horace Parks, the mayor of Eden’s Grove, said. He’d been strangely silent on the question of whether the money should be spent on a church or a hospital, and Abby figured that he was probably waiting to see which way the wind was blowing before taking a position firmly on the fence.

“I figure that the fairest way to do this is to let Reverend Merganser speak first, then Dr. Hendon, and then let anyone speak their piece who’s got a mind to.”

“People without minds should remain silent,” Seth whispered to her. She smiled politely, but refused to laugh. He could be her doctor or he could be her intended, but she wasn’t going to settle for anything in between.

“As to the question of the ladies voting—” the mayor said, stopping to blink several times at the clamor. “I can’t for the life of me figure out how to take a vote on that. Do the ladies vote on the ladies voting?” he asked Mr. Youtt, who was seated in one of the chairs at the front that faced the audience. Her father was seated in another. The fourth was empty and she ordered her toes to uncurl. So Seth Hendon was sitting next to her instead of up at the front. He probably just didn’t want to be such a clear target for tomatoes.

“Women have always voted in Eden’s Grove,” Mr. Youtt said. “There were times when the town was so small that they were needed for a quorum. Women in this town have fought fires beside their men. There probably isn’t a barn in Eden’s Grove, or all of Iowa, for that matter, that’d be standing but for some woman’s help. Miss Rachel Kearney has taught a good half of us how to read. Miss Abidance Merganser writes a fine column in our paper. Mrs. Walter Waitte mans our only phone. Or should I say
ladies
it?” he asked to a good deal of laughter.

“To now turn and say, ‘Thanks for everything, but we’ll take it from here on out,’ seems ungrateful and
unwise. I know that I want to hear anything these ladies have to say. I know that my wife’s opinion differs from my own and is no less valid than mine.”

“Well,” the mayor said, “anyone brave enough after that to oppose the ladies voting?”

Abidance watched her father squirm in his chair.

“Reverend Merganser?” the mayor asked.

“Me? I got nothing to say,” her father replied. “And I’m only gonna say it once. Eleven months a year the ladies in this town are busy with their husbands and families and making sure that they all come to church to say their prayers. And the other two months they’re busier than ever what with Easter and Christmas. So since it’s not any of those, and even if it was, I don’t see why they can’t vote if they don’t want to not do that.”

Abby covered her mouth with her hand. Snickering at the reverend, especially when the reverend was her father, was just not acceptable.

“Then that’s settled, isn’t it?” the mayor asked Mr. Youtt.

“I suppose,” Mr. Youtt said, shaking his head at Abby’s father. “He did say they ought to vote, didn’t he?”

Several women in the audience yelled that indeed that was what her father said, or at least what he meant.

“Anyone object to the ladies voting?” the mayor began, but then before anyone had a chance to, he added, “‘Cause you’re in the minority here and I wouldn’t expect a decent meal till kingdom come if you do!”

Seth shifted in his seat, claiming he was having difficulty seeing, and pressed up against Abby’s side.

“You hear anything from that friend of yours you had me write to in St. Louis?” he whispered, an eyebrow raised as if he thought she’d just dreamed him up out of thin air.

“I will,” she said confidently. And if Ansel had told Seth that Armand was not really her beau, she was going to chop him in little pieces and feed his heart to Disciple, the cat.

“Why bother with St. Louis?” he whispered, raising his eyes to Frank.

With a less than gentle shove she pushed him away from her, then pretended that her boot needed tying. When Seth, too, lowered his head, she said, with a sweet smile that never wavered though her insides were mush with his breath on her cheek, “I’m not looking for a husband. I’m looking for love.”

And then she directed her attention to her father, who had just been given the floor after the mayor had thanked each and every person nearly by name for coming, for bringing pies, for seeing to the coffee and tea, and so on and so forth.

“Well, I always like to wait until I see the final vote before I anticipate what this town is likely to do, but the days ahead lie ahead of us just as they always have and they always will, and so it seems to me that we need to say God bless the Lord and show Him that we mean it each and every day that is still ahead of us.

“That’s really all I have to say, except that I also want to say that while the Lord does work in mysterious ways, that’s what He was doing when He sent me by Ridder’s Pond the first time Joseph Panner drowned, so that God could tell him that He cared, and even
though the second time was different, God still cared about Joseph Panner and we should care about God.

“And show we care with the biggest cathedral that Iowa ever saw. And then people would come to Eden’s Grove and they could live here and worship the way they pleased at our church.”

The worst part of her father’s speech was that there wasn’t a person in Eden’s Grove who didn’t know just what her father meant, and that it came from his heart and not his head. She looked over at Seth, figuring it was now his turn to speak.

Sitting beside Abby, Seth allowed himself to take a deep breath before rising. “Wish me luck,” he whispered as he came to his feet. With the loony Reverend Merganser done giving the town the last piece of his mind, it was his turn to speak.

“I have nothing against churches,” he said, figuring that he didn’t want people thinking they were voting against God if they wanted a clinic in Eden’s Grove. “I thank God every morning when I get up that He’s seen me through another night. I pray for His help a hundred times a day, when I see a sick child, when I stitch together an open wound. And when—like the other day when a new little Hartley came slipping into my hands—He lets me share His miracles, I thank Him again.

“But I thank Him wherever I am. I pray to Him wherever I am. It doesn’t take a church and a congregation for the Lord to do His work, but it takes a great deal of equipment for me to do mine.”