Smoke River Family

He dropped his head into a loose-necked nod.

“Missy?”

Winifred stared at the man across the table from her. It was obvious he was only half-awake.

“Missy, you like eggs?”

“What? Oh, yes, thank you.” She turned toward the Chinese man for an instant, then swung her gaze back to the doctor. His head was tipped back against the high ladder-back chair, his eyes closed, his breathing slow and even. Good Lord, the man was sound asleep!

“Up all night,” Sam murmured. “Babies come slow.” He moved the coffee cup away from the doctor’s hand and tiptoed into the kitchen.

Winifred stared at Nathaniel Dougherty. She could not tell him what she had come all the way from St. Louis to say. Not while he was this tired.

In a few moments, Sam slid a plate of scrambled eggs in front of her, motioned for her to eat, then laid one long finger across his lips to signal silence. She nodded, picked up her fork and quietly devoured the perfectly cooked eggs.

She studied the plate of toast at her elbow and lifted a slice to her mouth but could not bring herself to take a single bite. The crunching sound might wake him.

He slept on, his breathing guttural, his chest rising and falling. Winifred drank her coffee in silence and watched him. Her throat felt tight each time she swallowed.

A faint wail floated from the floor above and suddenly the doctor jerked awake and bolted for the stairway.

Sam shot into the dining room and shook his head at the empty chair. “I feed baby. Doctor must sleep.” On silent black slippers he padded up the stairs after the doctor.

Winifred couldn’t help smiling at the houseboy’s retreating back. Sam was obviously devoted to Dr. Dougherty. Perhaps he had also been devoted to Cissy. As for the doctor...

Well, she had to admit she had been prepared not to like Nathaniel Dougherty. But since breakfast, a tiny niggle of doubt had lodged in her brain.

“Missy like read book?”

Sam’s voice brought her bolt upright, and her coffee cup clanked onto the saucer.

The houseboy’s black eyes snapped with delight. “Baby sleep. Doctor sleep. Maybe you read book? We have library.”

“Why, yes.” She needed something to do with herself until she could speak with Rosemarie’s father. A book was just the answer.

“You come see book room,” Sam invited. “Fine books. You come. Bring coffee.”

Winifred followed him through the wide entry hall and past a set of sliding pocket doors into a large parlor lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Sam swept one arm in an expansive circle. “Here many fine books. You choose.”

But she had spied the dark cherrywood grand piano in the corner and her breath stopped. Cissy’s piano! She had forgotten how beautiful the instrument was, the wood polished to a gleaming burgundy color, the upholstered bench carved to match the ornate piano legs. It looked untouched, as if Cissy had just finished playing and left the room only a moment before. Her eyes filled with tears.

“Doctor’s favorite books here, lady’s books there.” Sam pointed to the shelf behind the piano.

Cissy’s music books. Mostly familiar worn volumes—Brahms. Mozart. Beethoven. The corners of some pages were turned down. The ache in her heart flared into rage. How could she? How had she dared?

Winifred set the cup and saucer on a side table and began to thumb through the Brahms as Sam glided away. Yes, the waltzes, the intermezzos they both loved, all arranged for four hands.

Abruptly she slapped the volume shut. Oh, Cissy. Cissy.

She couldn’t look at the music any longer. Instead she moved to the doctor’s book collection and ran her hand over the leather-bound volumes. She selected a volume of Wordsworth. Next to it, Milton’s Paradise Lost caught her eye. “How prophetic,” she murmured. A stab of bitterness knifed through her.

We had it all, Cissy, everything we had dreamed of. And you threw it away for this man. Why?

She fled into the hallway. “Sam?” she called. “I am going out for a walk.”

She heard no answer, but it didn’t matter. She opened the front door and the heat hit her like a fist. Just as she was about to give up the idea, Sam appeared with a wide-brimmed straw hat in one hand. Cissy’s hat. A wide pink ribbon banded the crown, and her heart caught. Winifred never wore pink. The Chinese man offered it without a word.

She tied it beneath her chin and stepped out onto the porch, then resolutely marched down the front steps, past the hospital and on down the tree-lined street toward town.

It wasn’t much of a main street. A single mercantile with bushel baskets of apples and squash out in front; the Smoke River sheriff’s office; a scruffy-looking barber shop; Uncle Charlie’s bakery, with a large, many-paned window through which she glimpsed a glass case of cakes and cookies.

Next door to the bakery hung a sign with large block letters printed in royal blue: Verena Forester, Dressmaker. A handsome challis morning dress was displayed in the window, and she hesitated. But no. She did not plan to be here long enough to warrant adding to her wardrobe.

By the time she reached the Smoke River Hotel, she was wilting and dizzy from the heat. A young man with a silver badge on his plaid shirt glanced at her as she passed, then doubled back and fell into step beside her.

“You all right, ma’am? Look kinda, well, peaked. I thought maybe you’d—”

“I am quite all right. Just a bit... Is it always this hot here in the summer?”

“Usually much worse. Oh, ’scuse me, ma’am.” He tipped his hat. “I’m Sandy Boggs, the deputy sheriff. Sheriff’s at the hospital with his wife. Had twins this morning. Kin I escort you some place?”

She nodded. “A place with cold lemonade, perhaps?”

“That’d be right here, ma’am. Restaurant’s next to the hotel.” He tipped his hat again and strode off down the street.

Inside the restaurant Winifred sank down at a table and fanned herself with Cissy’s hat. Without even asking, the waitress brought a large glass of cold water and plunked it at her elbow.

“Must be from somewheres else, I’d guess,” the plump woman said. “Otherwise you’d be used to it. The heat, I mean.”

“St. Louis,” Winifred volunteered. “Would you have any lemonade?”

“Got gallons of it, ma’am. ’Spect we’ll need to make another batch or two before noon. Never been this hot in August.” The woman whipped a pad and pencil from her checked apron pocket. “You want anything else?”

Oh, yes. She wanted a great deal. “No, thank you. Wait! Where is the cemetery?”

“The graveyard, ya mean? Top of the hill.” She gestured a thick arm in the opposite direction from the doctor’s house.

Winifred drank two glasses of excellent cold lemonade, then donned her hat and started up the other hill. Thank goodness she hadn’t laced her corset tight this morning. She didn’t fancy fainting twice in Dr. Dougherty’s entrance hall.

At the top of the rise she spied a neatly fenced area with leafy green trees and chiseled headstones. A spreading oak shaded the area, and she sank down on the thick grass beneath it to catch her breath.

At the sight of the mound of fresh dirt indicating a recent burial, she closed her eyes tight and began to cry. She thought she would be over these bouts of weeping she’d fought this past month; perhaps she would never get over Cissy’s death.

Maybe not, but now there was Rosemarie. And, she acknowledged, swiping tears off her cheeks, Rosemarie was the reason she had come.

Chapter Three (#ulink_a5511247-e228-5329-846b-8435d3ebfade)

A handful of yellow roses lay on top of Cissy’s grave. Winifred’s heart squeezed at the sight. Dr. Dougherty must have paid an early morning visit after delivering the sheriff’s twins. She swallowed a hiccupped sob. Even in death, her sister was fortunate.