The Doctor's Wife Page 8

  “Hayden and Soapy are eating with the family,” she said, and then realized she was showing her ignorance again.

  “Ranch foremen always eat in the big house. Soapy just kind of fell into it because he never leaves Hayden’s side.”

  Ellie observed the conspiratorial look between Caleb and Lucy. The child took a bite of her buttery roll, her blue eyes twinkling. “My yam’s gone, Mama,” she said. “Now I get ice cream.”

  “That’s a good girl, Lucy,” Patricia replied.

  Ellie covered her amused grin with her napkin.

  Somehow she made it through the meal without spilling or making a spectacle. And she actually enjoyed the savory dishes the women had prepared so attractively. She wasn’t allowed to help with the cleanup, so she washed Nate and gave him a bottle.

  “We’ll let our meal settle,” Mrs. Chaney said a few minutes later, leading the way through the house.

  Ellie glimpsed the elegantly furnished rooms they passed and wished she could peek into each one. The women all gathered on the wide front porch while Mildred cleared the table and washed dishes. Ellie was used to waiting tables at the hotel and she felt guilty for not helping, but the Chaney women were obviously comfortable with this arrangement.

  “Thank you for inviting me, Mrs. Chaney,” Ellie said. She sat and adjusted Nate on her lap.

  “Do call me Laura,” the woman replied. “And I’m pleased you could come. I haven’t seen you at our church. Which one do you attend?”

  “I haven’t been to church since I’ve come to Newton.” It was the truth. She’d never been to church before she’d moved to Newton either, but she wasn’t going to admit that. These women assumed everyone attended church. “Are you an Episcopal lady?” she asked.

  “Oh, no, dear. Our family has always been Presbyterian.”

  “Oh.”

  She turned to discover Patricia studying her. Had she said something dreadful?

  “I suppose you’re the answer to Caleb’s problems,” Patricia said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve been pestering him to let me take Nate.” She studied the boy with obvious affection and tears welled in her luminous eyes. She blinked them away. “As my own, I mean. I thought it would have been best for him to come live with us, where he would have two parents. Especially a mother to care for him.”

  “Caleb loves his son very much,” Ellie said.

  “Yes, I know. Part of the pressure I placed on him came from selfishness on my part.”

  Her honesty surprised Ellie. She obviously wanted this baby very much. Ellie glanced at Lucy, who sat on the stairs playing with the prettiest doll Ellie had ever seen. Patricia’s child was five years old and she hadn’t had another. Even Ellie knew that was unusual for a young married woman.

  She glanced across the yard at Caleb. Tall and broad shouldered, he stood beside his father, his weight on one leg and his hand on his hip while he listened to something the older man said. She also knew how difficult it was to give up a child, and she was glad Caleb had the resources to keep his son. She was grateful that for now she was able to help him do that.

  But what about after her arm healed? What would happen after she went back to her job at the hotel?

  Against her breast, full and content, Nate slept soundly. What if she didn’t go back to the hotel? What if she could keep this job? Oh, she shouldn’t even let herself imagine that.

  Ellie chastised herself. She thought of Mildred in the kitchen doing all the dishes while the Chaney women sat on the shaded porch. That was Mildred’s job. And caring for Nate was Ellie’s job.

  But somehow, right now, it didn’t seem like enough.

  Besides, she had to have a place of her own where she could bring Benjamin and Flynn once she’d made enough money.

  Ellie glanced around, studied the rich green land and the fat grazing cattle as far as she could see, and couldn’t even fathom how much money it took to buy or maintain a place like this.

  Right now her dream seemed an impossibility. She hadn’t saved even enough to pay for the food she’d seen consumed today. How would she ever pay for a place of her own and provide food and clothing for her brothers?

  The hopelessness of her situation made her eyes smart and her mouth dry. Maybe it was never meant to be. Maybe she was only fooling herself to think she could get her brothers away from the Heaths’ farm and give them the life they deserved.

  If that were the truth, she didn’t know how she could go on.

  What was she doing? Here she was letting herself fall for another child whom she would have to let go.

  Her heart had already been broken and stomped on. Another kick and it would stop beating. She would have to toughen her hide and resist falling for Nate. Either that or find a way to make this situation permanent.

  Chapter Six

  When Nate woke, Laura asked to hold him, so Ellie used the opportunity to stretch her legs. Lucy followed her, picking clover, asking a myriad of questions.

  She and Ellie sat beneath the shade of a maple and Ellie tied the clover stems into a chain for Lucy to wear around her neck. Loose tendrils of hair had fallen from her neat braids and lay in curls against her ivory cheek. She had a sprinkling of freckles across her nose and sweet smooth rosy lips that puckered when she thought.

  Ellie’s heart swelled with an aching kinship and the pain of loss. She’d had a child like this one. Her little girl probably had dark hair like hers…but it had been hard to tell that night. Ellie had been so young, so afraid, so alone…her only thought had been to save the baby from a life like hers, from a life like her brothers’, where hunger and hurt and want were all they’d ever known.

  So she’d used her last ounce of strength to creep through the night and leave the baby with a young couple who had recently lost their own child to illness.

  Ellie had never been sorry. She’d done the right thing.

  But she’d never stopped hurting or wondering. She was a master at burying pain. But seeing this enchanting child brought it all out again, as fresh and as agonizing as when it had first happened.

  Her child would be a year or so older than this one. All those years…all the times she’d never allowed herself to go see—to discover if she’d done the right thing. She had to believe she had.

  The welling thickness in her chest made every breath burn like fire. Lucy smiled up at her and tears smarted behind Ellie’s eyes.

  “Are you sad, Ellie?” the child asked, her expression turning to concern, her exquisite pale brows drawing together.

  “No. The sun is just bright is all.”

  Lucy squinted up at the sunlight filtering down through the leaves. She had a smudge of dirt on her chin that her mother would want to wipe away, but Ellie thought it was endearing. “I wonder where the sun goes at night.”

  “I guess you’ll learn that at school.”

  “I’ll be smart then, won’t I?”

  Ellie agreed with a smile.

  “This rock looks like a wolf tooth, doesn’t it?”

  Ellie inspected the chip of stone, wondering if she’d ever had a youthful imagination. They made another chain before Patricia called them to come watch the ice cream being made.

  Caleb and Soapy took turns turning the crank on the wooden bucket. Caleb’s father added salt and cream, and before long the mixture turned white and smooth.

  Every once in a while Soapy whispered something to Hayden, and his brother would convey the message.

  “Doesn’t Soapy talk?” she wondered aloud.

  “Never have heard the man talk and he’s worked the ranch for seven years,” Laura said with a shrug. “Maybe he speaks when there are no women present, I don’t know.”

  Ellie observed the gathering with interest, her attention moving time and again to Caleb’s stern-looking father, Matthew, interacting with his family. Though he and Caleb apparently held opposing views on Caleb’s career, Matthew treated his son kindly. He held Nate gingerly, but engulfed
the child’s head in his enormous hand and touched his nose to the baby’s hair more than once. He obviously doted on his granddaughter, too, pulling her into his lap so she could reach the plank table to eat.

  Ellie accepted a bowl of ice cream from Patricia and tasted the creamy vanilla flavor. The surprising cold almost hurt her tongue and made her teeth ache, but she swallowed and let another spoonful melt in her mouth.

  “Like it?” Caleb asked.

  “It’s wonderful! I didn’t know it would taste so cold.”

  “Well, it’s ice cream.”

  She blushed. “I know.”

  “Haven’t you ever tasted ice cream before?”

  She shook her head.

  “Next time I’ll have Mildred bake you an apple pie to go under it. Now that’s a treat!”

  Next time. Ellie gave him a hesitant smile. Could she ever again expose herself to the empty ache that being near Lucy carved in her heart? Could she watch Matthew and Laura with their children and grandchildren and hurt once again for what had never been hers?

  Yes, she could. If he asked her, she would gladly come. It must be a sickness, this need to torture herself with the reminder of her sorely lacking life.

  But she felt alive here—more alive than ever before. More accepted. More like the people whose lives she’d only observed and imagined. And if it hurt to feel this alive…then she would bear it.

  But in the back of her mind, in her subconscious, she experienced a twinge of guilt. Should she be here eating ice cream while Benjamin and Flynn were being worked like slaves?

  Ellie corrected her thinking. She was doing everything she possibly could toward the day when she would be able to save her brothers from that life. She was making more money working for Caleb than she’d been earning at the hotel, so she was doing something important.

  Yes, she had moments of doubt that it would never be enough, but she couldn’t give in to that weakness.

  Caleb’s hand rested on her arm, snagging her thoughts back to the moment. Her heart jumped and she looked at his long, hair-dusted fingers against her white sleeve, resisting the impulse to pull away.

  “I’ll take your bowl,” he said, and she knew from his inflection that he’d offered before.

  “Oh, sorry.”

  “Are you tired, or shall we stay awhile longer? Reverend Beecher usually reads something aloud when he’s here. He has a way of reading a story that keeps us hanging on every word. Sometime Patty plays the piano.”

  “I’d like to stay.”

  “Is your arm hurting?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, come on.”

  She followed him in through the kitchen, and he led the way to a room filled with overstuffed chairs and sofas, potted ferns and a piano.

  Ellie took in all the furnishings and studied the framed daguerreotypes. “Who are these people?”

  “That’s my father with his family. This is Patty and me when we were babies. And this,” he said, picking up one of the frames, “is my parents’ wedding portrait.”

  “Oh.” Ellie leaned closer to study his parents’ youthful faces and serene expressions. They’d married long ago and had lived all these years as a pair, raising children and running a ranch. Thinking of them being together for so long, imagining the solidarity of such a life, made Ellie’s own shaky upbringing all the more wretched in comparison. “How amazing to see them so long ago.”

  She straightened and looked at the likeness of Caleb and his sister. “And Nate will know what you looked like as a baby. You looked a lot like he does.”

  “You don’t have any family portraits?”

  Immediately, Ellie realized her mistake and backed away to take a seat on a sofa. “No.”

  Caleb didn’t ask any further questions.

  How nice that you know who your father is, she intoned silently, the scorn in the thought meant for herself.

  The reverend read from a story by Charles Dickens, one Ellie had read only a few weeks before. She enjoyed the story much more with the man’s inflections and interpretation, and the added pleasure of watching the others’ faces.

  Ellie’s reactions fascinated Caleb. The smallest thing was like something grand and new to her, and he wondered how anyone could be so obviously naive about so many things. She attempted to keep her curiosity and her awe hidden, but he’d been around her for weeks now, and had seen through her act on many occasions.

  The look on her face as she listened to Reverend Beecher read matched Lucy’s youthful fascination. Ellie studied the faces of the others as they listened, too, and a wistful expression softened her delicate features as her gaze touched each one.

  Her eyes met his, and Caleb smiled. She gave a shy smile in return and lowered her gaze, embarrassment tingeing her cheeks with a rosy hue Caleb found becoming.

  Nate fussed in Laura’s lap, and Ellie quickly went to take him. She located the small flannel blanket he seemed to prefer, tucked it into his chubby hands and, sitting back down on the sofa beside Lucy, snuggled him close to her breast.

  Comforted, the infant quieted immediately; his eyelids grew heavy. He reached a tiny hand upward and Ellie took his fingers and kissed them, all the while gently rocking.

  An ache blossomed in Caleb’s chest at the stirring sight. He tried to picture his wife in Ellie’s place, cuddling and comforting their child, but the image wouldn’t come. Leila had been miserable throughout her entire pregnancy, appalled at her misshapen body and disgusted over the unfashionable clothing she was forced to wear to accommodate her growth. She had cried to move to the coast where she’d made friends while visiting Caleb at the university.

  Leila had loved the parties and the theater and the whole social whirl. She’d pleaded with him to go into practice with one of the surgeons who’d offered him a position out East. But Caleb had missed his family, missed the serenity and familiarity of the stark, windy land where he’d been raised. The hardworking farmers and ranchers and their families were the ones he desired to help. There were plenty of doctors in the big cities. His skill was precious out here in Kansas, and he planned to make the citizens recognize that. He’d never made Leila understand.

  Her displeasure with their Kansas home and her inconvenient pregnancy had disappointed him. He’d married a beautiful, happy young woman and he’d loved her. He’d had such hopes for their future. Perhaps if he’d given in and taken a position in Massachusetts or Pennsylvania it would have prevented her misery and ultimately her death.

  Guilt tore at his insides, just as it did with every memory of his dead wife. The fact that he was happy here in Newton seemed wrong. He should have more regrets about moving here. He should resent this place that took his wife. But he didn’t.

  Reverend Beecher finished the story. Laura and Patricia served coffee and cookies, and Lucy skipped off to play.

  Denzil and Matthew set up a checkerboard and launched a game.

  Caleb took the seat Lucy had vacated beside Ellie and offered his lap for the sleeping baby so she could rest her arm.

  She lowered Nate and the back of her hand rubbed along his arm where he’d rolled up his sleeve. She drew her hand away and sat back stiffly. Her skittishness puzzled him. Was she overly aware of him as a man—perhaps attracted to him?

  It was an appealing concept. Caleb nibbled the oatmeal cookies he’d snatched off the tray on his way over. “Do you know how to make oatmeal cookies?”

  “I could do it if I had the recipe.”

  “Ever made ’em?”

  “No.”

  “Ever had curried lamb before today?”

  “I’ve served it at the Arcade.”

  “But you’d never eaten it?”

  “No.” She glanced over at him and away. “I guess the meals I fixed you weren’t what you were used to, were they?”

  “I enjoy the meals you prepare, Ellie. You don’t have to cook for me, but you do. I appreciate that after a long day.”

  “You’re used to having things fancie
r, though.”

  “Just because something’s fancy doesn’t mean it’s better,” he said. “I think your cooking is excellent.”

  “You do?” It sounded like the excited way Lucy would have responded.

  He nodded and smiled.

  Patricia took a seat at the piano and began to play. Laura seated herself and nodded in time to the music. The reverend listened with his eyes closed.

  Caleb threaded his fingers through Nate’s silky blond hair, caressing the strands as the notes eased his earlier unpleasant thoughts.

  A few songs later, he glanced over to see Ellie watching his fingers stroke Nate’s hair. His hand stilled.

  Her gaze moved up to his and their eyes met briefly.

  Ellie blushed and looked away.

  What had she been thinking that had brought on that becoming rosiness? Caleb studied his innocent son, glanced at his own hands, one in Nate’s hair, the other on his gently rising and falling tummy.

  Ellie was overly sensitive regarding him. Was there something there? A magnetic attraction between them?

  Everything about Ellie appealed to him. Her gentleness, her delicate beauty, her quiet strength, her obvious pride. Seeing her with Nate touched him deeply. She was a loving and tender caregiver for his son. She fit into his family.

  A stab of unease rose in his chest. What was he thinking?

  He glanced at her arm in the cast he’d molded. She was young and healthy and had obediently followed his instructions; her arm would be perfectly healed in a few more weeks.

  She would want to go back to her job at the hotel.

  Suddenly, with ethereal music filling the room and his family seated comfortably nearby, he knew he couldn’t let that happen. Ellie was the best thing that had come into his life in a long time.

  He could offer her a permanent position as Nate’s nursemaid.

  Caleb thought of Mildred, whom he’d grown to love over the years but who was still regarded as an employee. That wasn’t the family he envisioned for Nate—or for himself.