Stephanie Mittman (28 page)

“Anything you tell me, Miss Abby, will be strictly between us, if that’s the way you want it.” He raised an eyebrow at her as if to ask if they could stop playing games.

She breathed deeply, maybe the first good breath she’d taken in days, and gestured with her chin toward the examining room.

He nodded, opened the door for her and followed her in, closing the door behind him.

“If it’s what I think,” the doctor began, but she interrupted him.

“I wish it was,” she said. They both knew that girls got in trouble all the time, and it was a good guess, she supposed. “I believe I’m dying.”

“And why is that?” he asked, not making fun of her, not shocked, not anything but interested. “What would make a beautiful young girl like you think a terrible thing like that?”

“I believe I have a brain tumor,” she said. Somehow it came out like a weather forecast.
I believe it’s going to rain
, or like an order at the Grand Hotel.
I believe I’ll have the roast venison
.

The doctor rubbed his beard as he studied her.

She told him about the headaches, about the nausea and vomiting and how hard it was to keep her balance. She told him about how she seemed to snap at people and finally she held up her fingers and showed him where it was that she could see her very own very shaky hand.

“If only you had an X-ray machine here in Eden’s Grove,” he said after a while.

“We don’t,” she said. “And no clinic for surgery.”

“And no surgeon,” he added.

“Then you do think that I do have a tumor,” she asked, aware of every breath she took in, every breath she let out.

“I’d need to do a thorough examination,” he said, but she could see that he was hedging. “There are tests that I can take, and other things I’d like to rule out, but—”

She looked deep into his sad eyes and wanted to
spare him, just as she wanted to spare Seth and Ansel and her mother. Without another word he put his thumbs against her forehead and pressed gently, making little clicks and tuts with his mouth as he did.

The outer door opened and closed, and Abby put her hand on the doctor’s arm. “Remember that you promised to keep this a secret,” she said.

“If you’re right, it won’t be a secret for very long,” he said, taking her chin in his hand and looking deeply, sympathetically into her eyes.

“Long enough to let Seth leave Eden’s Grove. That’s all I ask.”

“Dr. Bartlett? You here?” Seth called out.

“I’m giving an interview,” the doctor yelled back. He left the door closed. To Abby he said, “If I were that man, I’d hate me for this even longer than I’d hate you.”

It was still his office, Seth figured, and so while he offered a perfunctory knock, he didn’t wait for anyone’s okay to open the door to his examining room. Abby sat on the table, her legs hanging over the side, Ephraim Bartlett’s hand on her arm, apparently helping her down.

“Odd place for an interview for the newspaper,” he said, leaning against the doorframe while he waited for Abby to come up with one of her ridiculous excuses. Instead she all but ignored him, keeping her eyes on Ephraim.

“Thank you very much,” she said, and Seth thought she seemed very subdued.

“I’m sure you’ll want to continue this,” Ephraim
said. “I know there’s a good deal more to the story than I’ve already told you.”

“Don’t let me stop you,” Seth said, but apparently they weren’t, as neither took much notice of him.

“You don’t think I have enough?” Abby asked.

“Maybe we could continue this later this afternoon?” Ephraim suggested.

“Well, I wouldn’t want to be in Seth’s—that is, Dr. Hendon’s way,” she said—for the first time in her life.

And for the first time in his, he wished she’d be underfoot forever.

“Don’t be silly,” Seth said. “I’d like to hear Dr. Bartlett’s story, too. Why don’t we go out into the—”

“I’ve got to get back to the paper,” Abby said, as if the last thing she wanted to do was sit in the same room with him. “But I’d like to bring my sister-in-law over to meet you, Dr. Bartlett, or even better, perhaps you could visit her in her own home. I think she’d be more at ease there and she could get to know you so that when Dr. Hendon leaves you won’t be a stranger.”

She looked proud of herself for that one. If she was trying to make him feel bad for wanting a life of his own, for wanting to leave the small town where everyone needed a piece of him, she’d have to do better than Emily Merganser’s reticence to allow a doctor to do his job.

“I could do that,” Ephraim was agreeing. “I think the sooner the better in this case.”

“Emily Merganser isn’t expecting for another three months or so,” Seth said. “There’s plenty of time, and I have some other patients that—”

“My priorities are likely to be different from yours,”
Ephraim said, but there was clearly no malice intended. If anything he said it sadly, sympathetically. “Shall we?” he asked Abby, pointing for her to lead the way.

“Abidance, I need to talk to you,” Seth heard himself say, though when she turned to him with those incredible eyes and waited for what it was he needed, he was almost struck dumb. “Sarah’s things,” he finally said, ashamed to be using Sarrie as an excuse to keep Abby a moment longer.

“I’ll be back, Seth,” she said. “We’ll see each other again before you leave.”

“Well, I should hope so,” was all he could manage to say to her back as Ephraim Bartlett took his hat from the peg on the wall, put it on his head, and took Abby’s arm to escort her out the door.

Ansel felt sick. The dinner Emily had allowed him to eat before telling him about his sister threatened to climb right up his throat.

“He’s wrong,” he said, wishing his words could make it so.

“He seemed almost as sure as she is,” Emily told him, silent tears coursing down her cheeks. “I told him we could take her anywhere—Sioux City, Minneapolis—”

“Yes,” he said, though a piece of him had already accepted the fact that Abby would die. So simply, just like that, a piece of his heart and his gut seemed to know, as if they’d known all along that his life was too
good. “Even back East. The better doctors are back East.”

Emily shook her head. “Too big a trip, Dr. Bartlett says. He’s seen them do surgery for what she has, but he says that if she survived the trip it would take too much out of her to make her a ‘good candidate,’ he called it.”

“‘If she survived’?” Ansel echoed, but Emily only shrugged.

“And if she doesn’t go?” he asked.

“All she cares about, Ansel, is not letting Seth watch her die. She keeps saying how awful it was for him to watch Sarrie, and how she won’t let him see her fade away when there’s nothing he can do about it.”

“How noble,” Ansel said sarcastically. “What does she care how easy it is for him?”

“I think it is noble,” Emily said. “I think it’s a supreme act of love—quite like a woman who is dying forcing the man she loves into another woman’s arms so that she’ll know he’ll be safe after she’s gone.”

There was silence in the room because Ansel had no idea what to say to that. Was he supposed to claim that he had always loved Emily when it was clear that she knew the truth?

“Can you grant Abby less than you granted Sarah?” Emily asked.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Dr. Bartlett says that only seven out of a hundred patients survive the surgery under the best of circumstances. As we all know, these aren’t the best of circumstances. He says that she’ll just get tireder and tireder and—”

She choked, but recovered herself as if she owed Abby more than tears.

“If we could even find someone to do the surgery, which Dr. Bartlett says we can’t this side of the Mississippi, there is a good chance that—”

She put her knuckle into her mouth and bit on it, trying to control her breathing.

“She could lose her mind, Ansel. She could lie on a bed and be nothing for as long as she lives.”

He hadn’t realized he was pacing until he stopped and leaned his forehead against the doorframe.

“I promised her I wouldn’t tell you,” Emily said. “She wants to spare you all.”

He’d loved his little sister from the moment his mother had let him hold her and she’d smiled up at him. He would love her till the day she died.

“Oh, dear Lord,” he said, sinking against the wall until he was huddled on the floor in the doorway, Emily’s arms around him.

“You gave Sarrie peace,” she said. “And I helped you. You’ll do the same for Abidance.”

“I can’t,” he said, shaking his head furiously. He couldn’t watch his sister die. He couldn’t be strong like Seth, and go on living. Not again.

“I’ll help you,” Emily said. “Like the last time.”

He took several deep breaths and looked into Emily’s face. It hurt him to see the love there, love for him that he had never earned, didn’t deserve. “Just tell me what to do,” he said softly, and let her cradle him against her belly, where a new life was waiting.

S
ETH PUT THE LAST OF
S
ARRIE’S THINGS INTO ONE
of the cartons that Frank had given him, and gently piled it on top of the others that he was setting aside for Abby. Lord, but it was hard not to hate her. Almost as hard as it was not to love her.

He left Sarrie’s room, where Ephraim Bartlett had taken over one small dresser, and went back to his own, where he felt free to bang things about. His drawers lay open, his belongings strewn about, as he decided what to take with him when he left Eden’s Grove forever. He kicked a full wastebasket out of his way, tumbling it, and swore, which he thought might help him feel better.

It didn’t.

“Hendon? You all right?” Ephraim Bartlett called up the stairs.

“Never better,” Seth called back, looking down at the mess he’d made and ignoring the throbbing in his big toe.

It should have been easy, hating Abby. She’d tricked him into falling in love with her, and then when she
had him just where she wanted him, or where he thought she wanted him, she’d up and changed her mind.

Ephraim’s heavy footfalls warned him that the good doctor was coming up to see for himself. The truth was, Seth actually liked Ephraim. He was a good doctor and a good man, and would take good care of Eden’s Grove. Which meant that the minute Seth finished packing, he could head on out.

There was nothing to keep him there.

What had Sarrie always said about being careful what he wished for? That it just might come true. Right again, Sarrie. Right about so many things, like that Abby could light up the night with her smile.

He did not want to think about Abby at night. Not
that
night. Not
that
smile.

“I was figuring on the house being in one piece when you left it,” Ephraim said, standing in Seth’s doorway and surveying the damage a broken heart could do.

“Tripped,” Seth said, which hardly explained the cyclone that had ripped pictures from the walls, broken a lamp, and left books scattered across his floor, their spines strained, their pages rent.

“Must have been quite a fall,” Ephraim said. He didn’t know the half of it, standing there with his sympathetic smile as if he had any idea what a woman’s whim could do to a man’s soul.

“You ever really been in love?” Seth asked, leaning over to pick up a copy of Dickens’s
A Christmas Carol
. He flipped open the cover. There was Abby’s inscription from several years back, her handwriting still
childlike, her message—“See, it’s never too late. Love, Abidance Merganser”—mocking him. He held the book out to Ephraim. “Here. I won’t be needing this.”

“Yes. For as long as I was married, and then some,” Ephraim said, and opened the book to see what Seth had already read. “And I’ll hold on to this for you, in case you ever change your mind.”

“Your wife,” Seth asked. “What happened to her?”

The doctor smiled one of those sad smiles, as if for just a moment he were worlds away. “Died. In her sleep, spooned up against me the way she was for forty-six years. I press a pillow against my chest now, or I’d never sleep.”

“I’m sorry,” Seth said, his assessment of Bartlett changing yet again as he imagined him as a younger man, in love, in loss. “How did you get over it?”

“Over it? I don’t know that I’d put it quite that way. I’m a busy man—I work, I write to eight children, trying to be as wise as she would have been when they ask for advice and even when they don’t. And at night, I have my memories. I pull them out and savor them—Evelyn dancing in my arms, Evelyn struggling to give birth to our first child.

“Time has been kind to me and has left me with only the good memories,” he added, and cleared a spot on the bed to sit down.

“Evelyn. That’s a lovely name,” Seth said. But not as lovely as Abidance.

“Planning on leaving soon?” Ephraim asked him.

“That’s my plan,” he said. He didn’t bother saying that there was nothing to keep him there.

“I’d like to go over some case histories before you
go,” Ephraim said. “Patients with ongoing conditions, things like that.”

“Of course,” Seth agreed. He’d have to tell him about Johnnie Youtt’s appendix, and Martha Reynolds’s difficult pregnancies and a list as long as both his arms of symptoms and circumstances that he kept in his head.