Twice Loved (copy2) (41 page)

But though she still hoped he’d deny it, Rye only suggested, “Why don’t you snuggle up beside Josh for a while? I think there’s room for one more.”

There was nowhere else in the house for her to lie. But though she didn’t want to sleep, neither did she want to think. And she certainly didn’t want to face the truth in Rye’s blue eyes. Thus, when he turned her toward the alcove and nudged the small of her back, she resisted only halfheartedly as she whispered, “But you’re tired, too.”

“I’ll wake y’t’ sit watch if I get drowsy,” he promised, and gave her a second nudge. She obediently crept to the bed, pulled back the covers, and slipped in, curling herself around Josh’s warm little body. At her feet the dog’s bulk pressed down on the quilts, but she pulled her knees up and faced the wall, scarcely caring or knowing how cramped the space was. She hugged Josh close and, behind her, heard Rye moving to take a chair into the linter room. She heard it thump lightly onto the floor, then a long, deep sigh.

She tried not to think about DeLaine Hussey proposing marriage and Rye talking to a stranger named Throckmorton. But behind her shuttered eyelids those images came and stayed and blended with that anomalous picture of Rye, propped on a chair at the bedside of Dan, whose life was now in Rye’s safekeeping.

Chapter 19

THE NIGHT WINDS HOWLED 
and 
the 
wrath 
of 
a bitter Atlantic beat against the weathered cottages of Nantucket. In the linter room on Crooked Record Lane, Rye Dalton sat in a Windsor chair with his feet propped up on the bed, alternately dozing and stretching. Dan remained asleep, scarcely moving except for an occasional spasmodic twitch of his fingers inside the mittens. Rye leaned forward and placed a palm on Dan’s forehead; it seemed hotter. Dan’s left hand jerked again, and Rye wondered how long it would be before he woke up. When he did, the pain would be horrendous for him. Would Dan call out? Would Josh hear? Would Laura have to witness Dan’s pain, too? Rye wished he could spare them.

He wrapped his left hand around his right, braced his elbows on his knees, and bent forward, resting his chin on cold knuckles and studying Dan. His breathing seemed to come with greater difficulty, and as Rye stared at the rise and fall of Dan’s chest beneath the covers, his own thoughts meandered in disconnected fragments ... my friend, I remember sharing your bunk when we were boys ... why can’t y’ control y’r drinking ... I love y’r wife ... y’ knew we were together that day Zachary died, didn’t y’? ... Jesus, man, look what y’ve done t’ yourself... I don’t really want t’ be sittin’ here, but my heart tells me I must ... I will leave this island, come spring ... there’s no other way ... easy, friend, don’t move y’r hands that way ... I wish dawn would come ... I must go down and tell Hilda what’s happened ... Laura read the truth in my face... it’ll kill part of me t’ leave her, but ... Josh had the best smell t’ him ... y’r breathin’ seems worse ... supposin’ y’ died, Dan ...

The dark thought straightened Rye’s spine, and he leaped from the chair, horrified at what had crossed his mind. He checked the time—five 
A.M. 
He’d been dozing, not fully responsible for the hazy wanderings of his mind. He stretched and made his way silently to the keeping room to add a log to the coals. When the wood caught and flared, he hunkered before it, elbows to knees, staring, thinking the awful thing again. Supposing Dan died ...

After several long minutes he straightened, sighed, ran a hand through his hair, then ambled across to the alcove bed while massaging the back of his neck.

The three slept soundly, but the only one he touched was Ship, who sensed her master’s presence and lifted a sleepy head, then stretched her feet straight out, quivered, and relaxed into sleep again. Rye’s gaze caressed the curve of Laura’s back, though she was covered by quilts to her chin. Her disheveled braid lay on the pillow and trailed over the quilt top, but as his hand gently slid from the dog’s head, Rye resisted the urge to touch her and turned back to his vigil in the linter room.

He folded his long frame into the hard hoop-backed chair once again, but the room had grown chilly as the fire waned, and he wrapped his arms tightly across his chest, lifting his crossed calves again to the edge of the bed. He watched the rise and fall of Dan’s chest and wondered if he imagined it had accelerated. But Rye’s eyelids soon drooped, and the added log lent a small measure of warmth that seeped around the doorway, and soon he slept soundly with his chin digging into his chest.

***

Laura awakened and glanced back over her shoulder. The fire still burned and the blizzard still blew. She glanced at the windows, but they were dark, and as she turned the coverlets back and crept from the bed, a strange sound seemed to whisper an accompaniment to the chitter of snow on shingles. Josh did not stir as she silently slipped to her feet and crossed to the bedroom doorway.

Dan lay as before, on his back, covered to his neck, but with the mittened hands on top of the feather ticks, while Rye slumped beside the bed with his head drooping and his elbows propped loosely on the arms of the chair. The strident sound, she suddenly realized, was that of Dan’s labored breathing. She inched nearer to the bed, gazing at his face, but it seemed to glow and fade in rhythm with the candle stub that guttered on the bedside table.

For nearly a full minute she stood utterly still, watching the quilt rise and fall, listening to the faint wheeze, trying to recall if his breathing had sounded like this before. She compared Dan’s breathing to Rye’s and found Rye’s much slower and lacking the strident sound.

“Rye?” She touched his shoulder. “Wake up, Rye.”

“What?” Disoriented, he opened his eyes and lifted his head. “Laura?” Still fuzzy from sleep, his head bobbed slightly before he jerked erect and ran his hands over his face. “Laura, what is it?”

“Listen to Dan’s breathing. Doesn’t it sound strange?” Immediately, Rye leaned forward and came to his feet, bending over Dan and placing his palm on the hot forehead. “He’s got a fever.”

“A fever,” she repeated inanely, watching Rye’s hand test the skin of Dan’s neck, then slip to his chest.

“He’s hot all over. Why don’t y’ fix a vinegar compress for his forehead?”

She left the room immediately to do as Rye suggested. When she returned and placed the cloth on Dan’s head, his breathing seemed no worse. The candle was nearly out, and she fetched a fresh bayberry one, lighted it, and placed it in the holder, giving the room a renewed brilliance.

“I’ll stay with him for a while. Why don’t you go get some sleep?”

But Rye was wide awake again. “It seems I did. And anyway, there’s noplace for me t’ lie, so I’ll stay, too.”

He went into the keeping room and got another chair, which he placed on the opposite side of the bed from his. As they settled down across from each other, they both studied the man between them. The constant rush of his breathing grew more labored as dawn crept nearer. Dan’s chest seemed to strain for each bit of air, and soon the sound of his inhalations became like that of a bellows with a piece of paper caught in its intake.

Laura lifted troubled eyes to Rye. He hunched forward with his lips pressed to his thumb knuckles, staring intensely at Dan’s chest. As if he sensed her watching him, he glanced up. But her eyes skittered down; she was unable to look at him.

A pale thread of gray seeped over the windowsill, and with it the breathing of the man on the bed became more labored, carrying a distinct wheeze now.

This time it was Rye who looked up first. Laura raised her eyes, too, as if compelled by his gaze. Her eyes appeared larger than life-size, unblinking.

“I think he has pneumonia.” The words fell from Rye’s lips in a coarse, scratchy whisper that scarcely reached the opposite side of the bed.

“I think so, too,” came her shaky reply.

Neither of them moved. Their eyes locked while between them the chest of the man lifted painfully, the new hissing sound whistling even more sibilantly with each breath that escaped his dry lips. Outside, a limb tapped the eaves, and in the other room their son rolled over and murmured in his sleep. On the walls of the linter room a bayberry candle cast two shadows while lifting its bittersweet and nostalgic fragrance above the bed they had once shared. For an instant they were transported back to a time when nothing stood between them. And somewhere in a place called Michigan, a new beginning waited for Laura and Rye Dalton. A place of high, green trees, where a cooper could make barrels for a hundred years and never run out of wood; a place where a boy could grow to manhood without reminders of the past; a place where not a soul knew their names or their histories; a place where a man and wife could build a log house and sleep in the same bed and shower each other with the love they were longing to share.

And in that moment of clarity, as Rye’s and Laura’s thoughts communed, as the pounding realization descended on them, their hearts hammered with the sheer magnitude of what they were considering. There was fear in their eyes as they understood with startling lucidity that this—all this!—could be theirs.

All they needed to do ... was ... 
nothing.

The solution to their problems. The obstacle removed. Fate taking over to give them back what it had robbed them of.

The cognizance struck them both at once. They saw comprehension settle, each in the other’s eyes, while poised for that reckless moment in time.

Nothing.
 All we need do is nothing, and who would there be to blame us? There was Ephraim Biddle to swear he’d stumbled on an unconscious drunk in the snow, and if nobody would take the word of a drunk like Eph, there was Hector Gorham to verify the condition of Dan when he’d been laid out like a plank in the Blue Anchor. Even the confrontation between Rye and Nathan McColl was proof that Rye cared immensely for the outcome of his friend. And wouldn’t the whole island know Doc Foulger was stranded somewhere on the far side of the island in this blizzard?

Like two wax mannequins, Rye and Laura stared at each other across Dan’s struggling body, the list of justifications parading through their minds, each aware that this profound moment would change every moment that followed for the rest of their lives.

I love you, Laura,
 the somber blue eyes seemed to say.

I love you, Rye,
 the troubled brown eyes answered.

The moment lasted but several seconds, the realization smiting them swiftly, alarmingly, as they strained toward each other from the seats of the hard, wooden chairs.

Then suddenly, as if some wicked sorcerer’s spell had at last been broken, they simultaneously flew to their feet, two blurs of motion.

“We have t’ move him nearer the fire.”

“I’ll help you.”

“No, y’ get Josh and bring him in here. We’ll switch beds. Y’ have extra sheets, don’t y’?”

“Yes.”

“And plenty o’ bayberries left t’ boil down into wax?”

“More than enough!”

“And onions t’ fry for a poultice?”

“Yes, and if that doesn’t work, there’s oil of eucalyptus and mint and mustard packs, and ... and ...”

Suddenly they halted, their eyes meeting with a new intense fire of dedication.

“He’ll live, by God,” Rye vowed. “He’ll live!”

“He’s got to.”

The two sleeping bodies were interchanged without mishap. Josh’s bed was ideal as a steam tent, with its hinged wooden doors. There they placed Dan, and while Laura rubbed eucalyptus oil on his chest, Rye built up the fire and unceremoniously dumped a basketful of berries into the iron kettle, then hung it on the crane. Laura made a thick poultice of fried onions and covered Dan’s chest with it, while Rye worked to construct a makeshift funnel of linen sheets through which to direct the steam from the boiling bayberries into the opening of the alcove bed. They warmed bricks, wrapped them in blankets, and slipped them beneath the covers to keep Dan warm.

The pain in Dan’s hands began infiltrating his semiconsciousness soon after the steam thickened above him. He moaned and tossed, and Laura drew her eyebrows together in concern. “How will he tolerate the pain?”

Scarcely looking up, Rye answered brusquely, “We’ll keep him drunk. For once it’ll do him more good than bad.”

And they did.

Thus yesterday’s bane became today’s blessing. The analgesic quality of the liquor numbed Dan, and the lengthy time required to render clear candles provided a steady billow of aromatic steam that worked to loosen the congestion on Dan’s chest. They forced him to drink brandy hourly, opening one of the hinged doors only briefly in an effort to keep the steam contained within. The combination of alcohol and the warm, steamy room was as effective as a narcotic in subduing Dan. He remained in a bleary stupor during the hours when the worst of his agony would otherwise have been sheer torture as his fingers burned and throbbed and his breathing turned to a thick rattle, followed by a racking cough that curled his shoulders and seemed to roll him into a tight ball as the expectorant did its work.

They waited for the first dread sign of dead skin on Dan’s fingers: the flaking away of thin layers of flesh. None appeared. His fingertips were swollen and red, and obviously circulating healthy blood. When their worst fears were put to rout, Rye told Laura, “I’ll have t’ go down t’ let Hilda know. And Josiah, too. He’ll be wonderin’.”

She took a moment to study him. Rye’s beard had grown overnight, shadowing his chin and upper lip. His hair was messed and his eyes red. “As soon as you’ve had something to eat. You look a little peaked yourself.”

“I can grab somethin’ at the cooperage.”

“Don’t be silly, Rye. The fire’s hot, and I’ve thawed some fish.”

She fried him bass dipped in cornmeal, the way he liked it best, but as he sat for the first time at his own mealtime table, it was not under the circumstances he’d earlier imagined. Josh sat across from him, assessing all the goings-on, but once again keeping his distance from Rye. Laura tended the fragrant black broth that gurgled away on the hob and could not be abandoned for long. And from the alcove bed came the repetitive hacking of Dan, interspersed with an occasional weak moan or mumbled utterance too obscure to be distinguishable.