The Prairie Doctor's Bride

by Kathryn Albright

  He checked the row of windows in the first car, and then the second. Finally, he saw her, in the center of the second passenger car. The windows were dirty and dusty, and her image blurred. She wore a large-brimmed black hat, decorated with a gigantic black bow. Instead of looking eagerly out of the windows like the other passengers, she looked down to her lap. With the dirty windows, he couldn’t see far enough into the train to see his father. If her note had given him a queasy premonition, her attitude now increased it a hundredfold.

  When the last of the disembarking passengers had passed by, she stood, glanced out the window at him without any expression on her face and moved to the front of the car. A second later, she appeared on the steps.

  In black. She was entirely in black—not just her hat.

  He did not see his father.

  A weight, the size of Kansas, formed in his gut.

  “Hello, Mother.” He moved forward and offered his hand, helping her descend the last and largest step to the platform. He swallowed. Then through the netting of her hat, he gave her an awkward kiss on one cheek.

  There was nothing he could say. The ground had just dropped out from under him. His father was dead. He should feel something, yet his insides felt numb. There would be no chance to find out what had gone wrong between them and no chance to fix it. No chance to make amends. Ever.

  “Hello...Nelson.”

  She was thinner than when he’d last seen her, with a few more lines on her face. Yet even with the sadness that overshadowed her, she was as beautiful as ever.

  “I’ll get your things.” He escorted her to the area where they unloaded the trunks.

  “I brought only one bag,” she said. “I—I wasn’t sure how you would take the news I have for you. One bag seemed sufficient.”

  “Which one is it?”

  She pointed. “There. By the gray trunk.”

  He picked it up, took her arm again and led her down the steps to the road.

  Walking past the livery and the blacksmith shop, the sound of iron striking iron suddenly stopped. He caught Brett Blackwell’s questioning glance. Nelson shook his head. Now wasn’t the time for introductions. After he and his mother passed by, the noise started up again.

  “This is it,” he said a few moments later as they walked up to his front steps.

  She paused and gazed up at the fairly new two-story house. Without a change in her expression, she then continued up to the front door.

  He remembered his first thoughts on getting her letter and how he’d hoped for more of a reaction at seeing his first home, his first office. Circumstances had changed drastically since that day.

  Inside, she removed her hat pin and hat, then searched for a place to set them. He took them from her and set them on her bag, which he’d left by the door.

  She stared at the entry and at the row of four chairs against the wall. “You use your parlor as a waiting room?”

  “Yes. And the dining room is where I do my exams. The light is better in there.” He indicated the adjoining room. He didn’t want to talk about his office. Not now. He wanted to know more about his father and what had happened. “Tell me about Father.”

  “He passed peacefully in his sleep,” she said in a controlled voice. “The funeral was well attended. A few cousins came on the Graham side.”

  “When?” he asked.

  “Three weeks ago.”

  He counted back. She had known when she sent the letter and yet hadn’t mentioned it!

  “I wanted—no—I needed to tell you in person.” Her lower lip trembled.

  He strode to her and helped her to a chair.

  He was crushed. Even with his father’s funeral, he’d been excluded. His cousins—people he’d seen only four or five times over his entire life—had attended, yet he’d not had that moment to say goodbye to his own father.

  He crouched at her knee and looked up at her face. “I could have come, Mother. I could have helped. Why didn’t you send for me?”

  She loosened the drawstring on her satchel and withdrew a lace handkerchief. She dabbed at her eyes. “I know you would have come. I—I wanted you to be there too, but it wasn’t possible.”

  “Why not? A telegram, Mother! A simple telegram and I would have come!” Frustration at her, at the situation, at his father, speared through him. He’d never understand his family! Never! He stood and stormed across the room. He raked his fingers through his hair and stared out the window, trying to control the rage that engulfed him.

  There had been other times in his life when they had disregarded his feelings. He’d tried at first to limit his expectations, thinking he wanted too much. With that, however, he had learned that hope couldn’t be snuffed out so easily. Over the years, he’d struggled to manage his anger at being forgotten and ignored, to tamp it down and control it. This, however, was the worst. He felt betrayed. His own mother could have sent for him—wanted him there according to her own words just now—and yet hadn’t. There had to be a reason.

  He turned back to her. “Tell me why.”

  Her shoulders heaved with a soft sob. “Please—”

  So, there was a reason. “Please what? I don’t understand any of this! You treat your cat with more deference than you do me.”

  She fretted with her handkerchief, balling it up and then stretching it back out.

  “You might as well answer me. I won’t let this go, Mother.”

  “Because...you are not a member of the Graham family.”

  He froze. He hadn’t heard correctly. He was sure of it. He turned to look at her. Sitting there in the chair, she looked smaller somehow—frail—when he knew she wasn’t frail at all. “What did you say?”

  “It was my husband’s wish at the end, that you not attend the funeral. It was his last mean wish.”

  Her husband—not his father.

  “Ellison made many demands throughout our marriage that affected you. The first, however, affected you the most. He would marry me and give you a name, as long as I never told you or anyone else about the circumstances surrounding your birth.” She sniffled. “When he fell ill, he reminded me, once again, of the promise that I had made. I begged him to reconsider, but he was adamant and would not lift it. Finally, a month before he passed away, he relented and said that once he was gone, I would be free of my promise. In return, he did not want you at his funeral.”

  Memories shifted as he remembered them not from his once childish point of view, but from that of an adult. Birthdays forgotten, holidays ignored, trips made with only his mother. “That answers many questions I’ve had, Mother. You were a dutiful wife.”

  “I’ve tried to be a good mother too. As much as Ellison would allow.”

  The walls were closing in on him. He had to get out—out of the house and out of the town. He had to think, had to adjust to what she had said.

  “I’ll show you to your room.”

  “Are you sure you want me to stay here?”

  “You thought I would throw you out? Have you stay at the hotel?” he said irritably. “Of course you will stay here. I don’t hate you, Mother. I simply find that I don’t know you.”

  He ignored the hurt he saw in her eyes. He carried her traveling bag upstairs to the north room. She followed more slowly.

  “Make yourself comfortable. Fix some tea if you would like. I don’t have a maid, so you will have to do it yourself.” He knew he was being inhospitable. He didn’t care. She had hurt him deeply and he wanted to strike back. Before he said anything more harmful, he had to distance himself from her. “I’m going for a walk.”

  And with that he spun on his heel and left.

  He strode south behind the row of buildings, crossed the train tracks at the station and continued across the field. He tried to purge any thinking, any memories from his mind. All he wanted was to move, to work his mu
scles to their limit and by doing that to stoke the sudden confusion and anger that boiled inside him like a cauldron ready to explode. Let it explode. Let it.

  He ran. He followed the trail, familiar now, along the riverbank toward the ferry landing. He ran until his muscles screamed for him to stop, his arms pumping, his face layered with sweat. Yet the thoughts still came. Thoughts of birthdays, Christmases, holidays—all spent in the dormitory, while the other boys returned to their own homes. The loneliness that he had endured. The wondering why his parents never wanted him to come home. He thought about his grandparents, and the similar traits that had carried down to him—all from his mother’s side. No wonder. He also thought long and hard about his responsibility to carry on the Graham name. It was something he had always assumed he was supposed to do. Father—Ellison—had never spoken to him of it. Now he knew why.

  He came to the landing and stopped, bending over at his waist, his hands on his knees, to drag in great gulps of air. How did this new information change things? He snorted. He had to be in shock, and yet here he was thinking like a doctor, already trying to analyze himself. He’d told his patients that sometimes life was just messy. How ironic. He hadn’t thought he was talking about his own tangled life.

  He stared across to the ferry landing on the opposite shore. Beyond the young cottonwoods, only a short half mile, was Sylvia’s home. He couldn’t see it from where he stood, but in his mind’s eye he visualized the times he’d spent there. He’d been content and happy in that hovel of a house, but never in his own while young. Sylvia gave Tommy what Nelson had never had—unconditional love.

  Swiftly on that thought came another. Were Sylvia and his mother the same except for the paths they’d chosen? Realizing she was with child, Sylvia could have married Carl but had chosen to raise her son on her own. Why had Mother married Ellison and did the man know that she was with child at the time? Or did that bit of information come later?

  Mother’s choice should have been infinitely better. Ellison had money. He wasn’t physically mean, but he’d withheld his love and forced Mother to avoid her own son, in his own way punishing them both. Neither woman had had great choices upon discovering their conditions, but between Tommy and himself, he wondered, given the choice, if he would have chosen Tommy’s lot over his.

  Other sons might worry, at a time like this, about their inheritance. He didn’t want any. He didn’t expect any either. A man who couldn’t give love, even to the woman he married, was not a man who would give his fortune to a son who was not his.

  He had so many questions. He wondered about his father—his real father. Who was he? Did he know he had a son? Was he alive now? What did he do? Did Nelson have half brothers or sisters somewhere?

  He turned around and stared across the tall prairie grass toward town. The cross on the church steeple was the only thing visible from this distance. Oak Grove had been his new beginning when he settled here. It was proving to be a good decision. Now he knew that he’d never go back to Boston. He’d never return to the mansion that wasn’t ever a home to him.

  He started back to town, his thoughts slowly becoming cohesive again. He and his mother had a lot to talk about, but things wouldn’t all be answered in one conversation. He was glad now, that she had come to tell him in person. The truth answered so many questions and generated even more. He could handle the truth. For the first time, he understood what he was dealing with.

  Twenty minutes later he walked through the front door of his house. Mother was in the kitchen, the teakettle whistling. She ignored it when she heard the door close and came to stand in the hallway, her hands clasped in front of her.

  He took off his hat, slipped it over the peg and walked to her. In a move that was at once awkward and at once necessary, he enveloped her in a hug and held on.

  At first her shoulders were stiff, but then slowly she circled her arms around him. And then finally, finally, she gave in and gripped him too. Her body shook with quiet sobs.

  Still he held on.

  And the teakettle whistled.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sylvia glanced back at her son in the wagon bed. Tommy was having a hard time of it. The road to the DuBois farm had many ruts and every jolt of the wagon jarred his injured ankle and his head. Although he didn’t cry out or complain, his face was white and strained. She couldn’t take him to town with her. He’d never be able to handle a longer ride.

  She reined Berta down the dip to the small creek and then back up the other side.

  When Sylvia stopped the wagon in front of the house, Adele walked out her door. Sylvia explained her situation and Tommy’s injury and asked if he could stay there until she got back from town. Then she hiked Tommy onto her hip and carried him into the house.

  Once back in the wagon seat, she handed down a crock of buttermilk. “That’s likely the last of it. Miss Penny is drying up. Is there anything I can bring back for you from town?”

  “Two large spools of strong white thread for my loom.”

  “I’ll see if the mercantile has it,” she said as she unwound the reins from the brake lever and made to leave. “You all right, Adele? What are you rubbing your knee for? Need some liniment?”

  The woman straightened. “Achy is all. Rain’s coming.”

  Sylvia couldn’t see a cloud in the sky, but she trusted Adele’s rheumatism. The woman always seemed to know things before they happened. “I won’t be long.”

  Sylvia wondered briefly if Doc Graham had liniment that would work better than her homemade kind. Seemed they both had different ways of doing things. She gave a nod to Adele and reined Berta toward the river.

  * * *

  Forty-five minutes later, she maneuvered her wagon over the train tracks at the crossing and into town. She couldn’t keep herself from glancing down the side road to Doc Graham’s house when she drove past. Wonder what he was up to today. Tommy asked about him almost daily since the doc had made his visit and, truth be told, she wondered about him too. Daily.

  She’d like to think that it was the things he’d said about being a good nurse. His words had filled her with pride—way too much pride most likely as it would come to naught in the end. But still, she’d felt a little stronger, walked a little taller in remembering it.

  But mostly she thought about the way his green eyes twinkled when something amused him and how tender he’d been about the bruise on her arm. And his big strong shoulders. She thought about that a lot more than she should.

  At the hotel, she slowed to make a wide turn and stop the wagon right in front of the mercantile. Halfway through the turn, a couple stepped off the boardwalk without looking. She pulled back on the reins. “Whoa! Berta!”

  Doc Graham stopped suddenly and grasped the arm of the finely dressed woman to hold her back. He tipped his hat. “Miss Marks.”

  “Doc Graham,” she answered. Seemed strange when no one else ever bothered to greet her on the road. Good thing he hadn’t called her by her given name like he had on Sunday. That would have surely had eyes turning.

  From her high seat, she waited as they crossed the road and then stopped on the hotel’s boardwalk. That couldn’t be one of the brides that he’d told her about, could it? Envy over the woman’s pretty dress and bonnet slammed into her. She had never owned anything so fine. Dark green piping and stitchwork fancied up the front of her silk shirtwaist and showed off her trim waist. Then her green-and-white-striped skirt flared out in a perfect circle. Sylvia thought of her own clothes. She had two dresses to be exact. The brown one for workdays and the blue one for coming into town. When she plowed her small field in back of the house with sorghum and winter wheat, she even wore Thomas’s old overalls and his boots stuffed with rags so they would stay on her feet.

  The more she looked at the woman’s dress, the more the acid of envy ate at her gut. She would never have such a dress. She squeezed her eyes
shut tight. No point in looking any longer. When she opened them, the woman was gone and so was Doc Graham.

  She circled Berta around to the front of the mercantile and climbed down from the wagon, searching the road once more for any sign of the doc. She was anxious to tell him how well Tommy was doing on practicing his steps.

  When she didn’t see him, she gathered her basket of eggs and jars of sorghum molasses from the back of the wagon and carried them into the mercantile. Last, she brought in a crock of Penny’s milk. It took three trips with Mable Gallagher watching her closely each time she entered and left the store. The woman didn’t lift a finger to help her. Not once.

  “Last batch of eggs were cracked and no good,” the woman said.

  “All of them?” That Carl Caulder had been at fault, swinging the basket the way he had.

  “All but one. I will take a dozen of these in replacement to make your account tally properly. And if that’s your goat’s milk in that last crock, you can march it right on back to your wagon. We get our milk and butter from the Gibsons’ dairy farm now.”

  She tried not to take Mable’s caustic ways to heart. The woman preferred money for her goods, not bartered items, and treated customers accordingly. A few years back, Mable had delivered a scathing lecture on that very subject out on the boardwalk. Seemed like everybody stopped to listen. Since then, Sylvia had learned it was better to keep her mouth shut.

  “Go ahead, then,” she said. “And take six more eggs for the inconvenience it caused you. I’ll see if Mr. Austin will want the goat’s milk.”

  “Oh, he gets his milk from the dairy now too. His wife, Sadie, prefers that for cooking.”

  Mable was just full of cheery news today. Sylvia walked across the room to the area that held material and sewing things. First off, she wanted to see if she could find the thread that Adele had asked for. She searched the bins, dismayed at first to find several skeins of black thread but no white. Then, as luck would have it, she found the last white skein. Adele wanted two, but this would have to do for now.