by Anita Mills
“It was a pretty clean cut,” he admitted. “But I ought to be good at it—God knows, I’ve had enough practice.”
“It’s more than practice. Whether you want to admit it or not, it’s a gift.”
“That’s what you wrote in your journal.”
“Well, it is.”
“Michelangelo, huh?”
“Well, he was the first painter who came to my mind. I could just as easily have said da Vinci.”
“Now that would have been the ultimate compliment,” he murmured.
“If my words impressed you so much, what are you going to do about them?”
“I don’t know—maybe read your mother’s journals. I’d like to know where you come up with some of the things you say. I figure maybe there’s something in them that’ll tell me.”
“I don’t think like her, Spence—Mama was more practical than I am.”
“Now that’s impossible. You don’t have a foolish notion in that steel-trap mind of yours.”
“But you’re going to think it over, aren’t you? You know I wrote the truth.”
“I’m going to think it over, but I can’t promise anything. All I know is I’m glad I knew what to do. I looked at him, and I thought he could’ve been Josh.”
“They’re both four.”
“If I didn’t think I’d be biting off a lot of trouble, I’d take them, you know.”
“Who?”
“Nate and Jimmy.”
“Then who’d take care of Frankie?”
“Laura, I’m not opening an orphanage. You know, you’re just like Bingham—every stray dog that came to Willowood wound up staying.”
“Well, maybe if Abby had some money, she’d do better.”
“Maybe. If I’ve got anything left by the time we get to Sacramento, I’m giving it to her,” he decided. “God, I’m tired.”
“I’m not—not since you woke me up.” Turning to face him, she ran a fingertip along the dark shadow on his jaw. “There’s something real masculine about a man right before he shaves,” she murmured.
“The baby’s going to wake up.”
Her fingertip moved to tickle his ear. “Mrs. Wilson couldn’t get her settled down, so I just finished feeding her less than an hour ago, and she took a lot of milk. But—I guess if you’re tired, I might as well get up.”
“Not on your life—you know where all that teasing leads, don’t you?” he whispered, rolling her onto her back. “I don’t like teases who don’t pay up, Mrs. Hardin.”
Her arms reached for his neck. “Well, you don’t have to worry,” she assured him softly. “I’m a woman who likes to settle things right.”
San Francisco: July 10, 1866
“Well, it’s really something, isn’t it? I think the water’s even prettier out here than at home,” Laura observed.
Standing on the observation hill, Spence followed her gaze, taking in the wide expanse of the bay, then the city below. “It’s about as pretty a place as I’ve seen,” he agreed. As he hoisted Jessie to sit on his shoulders, she grabbed his hair and chortled. “What do you think from up there, Jess? Do you want to settle in for a while?”
“She wants to be anywhere up high. But I thought you’d want to go back to Georgia.”
“I don’t know as I’d want to spend another day in a damned wagon, let alone cross the country again. But if you’ve got your heart set on someplace else, I’m willing to listen.”
“We just got here,” she pointed out. “We don’t know anything about San Francisco except that it’s big and the bay’s beautiful. What are you going to do if Josh isn’t here?”
“I don’t know,” he answered, sobering. “Keep looking, I guess. If he’s not here, I’m at a dead end, unless I want to hire Pinkerton again.” Looking out over the water to where the azure sky met the bay, he felt almost at peace. All he needed to complete his life was his son. “Come on,” he said, putting an arm around Laura’s shoulders. “We’ve got to find a place to stay for the night. When we get up tomorrow, we’ll start looking for Ross.”
“All right.”
“You know, you’re looking a little peaked these days,” he noted. “I don’t think living in that wagon suited you.”
She realized he’d given her the opportunity if she wanted to take it. Drawing a deep breath, she let it go. “It’s not the wagon—it’s the baby.”
“She’ll get over teething soon enough, and then—” He stopped. “That’s not what you meant, is it?”
“No.”
“How long have you known?”
“You could sound happier about it, you know,” she murmured wryly.
“That’s not what I asked.”
“About a month. I guess you just didn’t notice I haven’t come around twice now.”
He sucked in his breath and held it for a moment. Looking up at the bright blue sky, he sighed heavily. “I’d be a lot happier if I weren’t afraid, Laura. I don’t think I could stand losing you.”
“I’ll be all right.”
“That’s your answer to everything,” he said almost angrily. “Ever since I met you, you’ve been telling me you’ll be all right.”
“Well, I have been. Being a doctor, you ought to have expected this, anyway. It’s not like we haven’t been enjoying ourselves every night.”
“I just didn’t think it’d be this soon, that’s all. It’s not been that long since Jessie’s birth.” He frowned, then sighed. “You’re happy about it, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Then I guess I am, too.”
“There’s not much we can do about it now, Spence. You know, I didn’t exactly expect this quite so soon either. Dr. Burton told me after what happened that first time, it’d take some work for me to conceive again. And I kind of believed him, because Jesse was home four months before it happened again.”
“God, Laura … I just wish—”
“I’m a lot healthier now—I’ve been taking care of myself, mostly because you’re taking anything that looks like work away from me. Look at these hands,” she said, holding them out to him. “There’s hardly a callus on them anymore. Pretty soon, you’ll have ‘em looking like they belong to a rich lady instead of a North Carolina country girl.”
“Maybe they will, but—”
“Now don’t you go sounding like Jesse. I wouldn’t know what to do if I had a lot of time to waste. And if you’ve got any notion of working yourself to death for me, Spencer Hardin, I’ll throw you a fit that’d put the likes of Lydia to shame. But I just wish you were wanting this baby, she told him, returning to the matter at hand. “It’s not right not to.”
She said it so wistfully that he realized he wasn’t being fair to her. She obviously wanted him to be pleased, but it had just hit him like a bucket of cold water. “I want it very much, Laura—I’m just worried about you.”
“I’m not about to leave you and Jessie alone. You’re my life, Spence.”
He couldn’t talk about it anymore. Shoving his hands in his coat pockets, he stared at the tiny whitecaps on the water. “The thing with Jimmy Daniels keeps coming back to me, Laura. I’m thinking about practicing medicine again, but if I do, we’ll have to throw down roots somewhere. I’ll have to affiliate with a hospital.”
She stood very still. “I want that very much, but I want you to be sure you’re doing it for you and not me. It’s a calling like preaching—you’ve got to have your heart in it.”
“I’m giving it a lot of thought. The war taught me I can’t fix everything, and it was a hard lesson. But now that it’s over, I won’t have to be picking shrapnel out of shredded guts, and I won’t have to be cutting off limbs I know I can save. I’m a man with a lot of pride, Laura. I felt like a hog butcher could’ve done what I was doing those last two years, and he could’ve probably done it easier, because he got to kill the hogs first. After every battle, I had to have three men holding down boys, a lot of them no
older than Danny, and almost every one of them was screaming for me to stop while my saw was cutting through their bones.”
“I couldn’t have done it—I’d have cried myself to sleep every night,” she said quietly.
“I felt helpless. It wasn’t what I’d hoped to do, but I couldn’t leave. It’s hard to lose your belief in what you do.”
“You didn’t lose it in what you could do, Spence. You lost in what you had to do.”
“Between the war and Lydia, I thought I was pretty much a failure. I want you to know I don’t feel that way anymore. I wasn’t a bad husband to her—I wasn’t a husband at all. It took you to show me I’d never loved her, that she hadn’t fallen out of love with me. As silly and sentimental as it is to say it, I had to find you to know what it was supposed to be like on both sides. You’ve taught me a lot about love and what it means to give of yourself.”
“Oh, Spence,” she whispered, swallowing hard.
“Please don’t cry—I haven’t quite learned to deal with that yet. I just wanted to tell you I’ve got my pride back. I didn’t want to cut that little boy’s leg off—hell, I didn’t even want to look at it, and I probably would’ve turned my back on him if it hadn’t been for you.”
“Never. Once you saw it, you’d have done exactly what you did.”
“I wouldn’t have gone to that wagon. But when you started asking that woman questions, I didn’t like her answers. And when I did see the leg, I knew Jimmy Daniels couldn’t keep it and live. I still didn’t want to do it. That’s why I had to come to help. I figured if you saw what it was I do best, you’d be about as sick of it as I was.”
“Spence, I nearly threw up my supper.”
“But that didn’t stop you from doing what you could. That’s what counts, Laura. Seeing that kid on crutches, hopping around with that one leg, made me pretty proud of what I’d done. He was alive, and if that woman will just take care of him the rest of the way, he’s going to grow up.”
“I can’t help it, Spence—I’m going to cry again.” Sniffing hard, she tried to control the flow of tears. Finally, she was able to look up at him through her brimming eyes. “I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to get used to it, because that’s just the way I am. Whenever my heart’s full, I’m going to cry. Whether I’m happy, sad, or mad, I’m going to cry.”
Before he could say anything, Jessie started to bounce on his shoulders, kicking him and waving her chubby arms, while she chattered excitedly. “Chee—chee—Da—che!”
“Ouch, Jess! Watch it, or you’ll fall off!” Reaching up, he caught both her legs. Instead of stopping, she grabbed his hair, then his eyes. “Jess, if you don’t stop that, you’ll have to come down, and I’ll be handing you to Mama.”
“It’s the birds, Spence—one just flew past her. Here—let me take her before she kicks you to death,”
“No, she’s all right now.” Adjusting the hand over his eye, he tried to look up at the blond, pink-faced baby. “You like the seabirds, huh? Well, the next time we’re up here, we’ll do some serious watching. We’ll bring some bread, and maybe they’ll get close enough to feed. But I’m not a horse, Jess—little girls aren’t suppose to kick their daddy.”
“You’re going to be blind as well as black and blue,” Laura said, reaching up to take her. Lifting her down, she nuzzled her daughter’s face. “You’re a little dickens—you know that, don’t you? But Mama loves you, anyway,” she added, settling the baby on her hip. “Actually, you’re as good as gold,” she conceded. “All you do is sleep and eat and play.”
“She doesn’t get a chance to do much else. She’s spoiled rotten. All she’s got to do is open her mouth, and you’re ready to feed her.”
“And who is it who’s always walking around with her on his shoulders? Who’s always tossing her up into the air, making her giggle? And whose lap does she go to sleep on at night?” Laura asked archly. “Last night, I was reading, and when I looked over to see why it was so quiet, you were lying down with her on your chest, and both of you were asleep. If there’s any spoiling done, you’re as much to blame as I am.”
“It’s hard not to,” he admitted. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a prettier baby.”
“Neither have I, but I expect it’s because she’s ours.” Shifting Jessie to the other hip, she murmured, “You go on and watch the birds all you want. Daddy and I’ll just stand here and talk. Now, where were we, Spence.”
“Talking about Jimmy Daniels, I think, and you were getting ready to blubber some more.”
“Oh. I was going to say I was glad you’ve changed your mind,” she recalled. “I’ve been telling my journal I wanted you to.”
“I know. The entry I read probably helped tip the scale. And seeing the city from up here made me think about those roots. But it doesn’t have to be here if you don’t want it to be. Once we get Josh, we can go anywhere.”
“I know of a little cabin in Nebraska,” she said, teasing him.
“No, it’s got to be somewhere where there’s a good doctor to deliver the baby.”
“You did all right—Jessie and I are both alive and kicking.”
“Childbirth’s too bloody to suit me.”
“What a thing for a surgeon to say.”
“Listen, when I’m cutting something, I know what I’m doing—I know what to tie off to stop the bleeding. That was one of the things that appeals to me about a big city like this, not to mention the fact it’d be fairly easy to establish a practice here.”
“I don’t have my heart set on anywhere else. I’ve already told you I’m not going back to North Carolina, unless I’m going back to flaunt my money, and so far I don’t have any to flaunt.”
“That reminds me of something else. I want you to consult with a publisher about your mother’s journals.”
“What?”
“There’s a quality to them that transcends the writing, Laura. It may be a voice from the grave, but it’s good advice for any woman. I don’t think you’d have any trouble finding enough in them to make a damned good book. If you made any money, it’d be yours to use for anything you’d want. If you wanted to fill a library in the house, you could.”
“Mama never thought about anything like that, you know,” she said slowly. “I just cherished them because she wrote them to me. I could hear her voice when I read her words.”
“I know. So could I. I just thought she deserved to be heard by a lot of women. She managed to raise a daughter with good values with it, and she wasn’t even there. You could call it something like Mrs. Lane’s Advice to a Young Woman. Or A Guide for the Modern Woman—hell, I don’t know, I just think there’s some damned good points in it.”
“There sure are. All those things that country woman knew … well, I almost couldn’t believe everything myself, but there wasn’t a recipe for anything that didn’t work. I don’t guess it would hurt to talk to somebody about it before I made up my mind.
“I think it’s a good idea. Spence, she’s getting fidgety, so I expect she’ll be wanting to eat before long. Besides, I’m about ready for that fancy hotel you’ve been promising me all the way from Nebraska,” she added, taking his arm. “It’ll be real nice soaking in a bathtub tonight. I’m going to stay in there a solid hour; then I’m going to dab some of that French perfume where it counts, and I’m going to put that lawn nightgown on.”
“It won’t stay on long.”
“I sure hope not, anyway.”
As he walked beside her down the road from the observation hill, he took a deep breath of the sea breeze blowing in. Now that he’d made up his mind, it felt as though a heavy weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He almost had everything he’d ever wanted, and with Josh, the circle would be complete. San Francisco was a beautiful place, and if he found the right spot, he was going to build his wife the house she didn’t think she wanted. Jesse just hadn’t realized it was easier to convince a woman of something if she thought the
idea was hers.
She came out of the water closet, pea green from losing her breakfast, to announce, “I’m going with you, Spence. I’m not about to let you face Ross Donnelly alone.”
“I’m not looking for him today—I’m just going to the bank and a couple of other places. Since I don’t know my way around the city yet, I don’t know when I’ll be in. I don’t want to be dragging you around as sick as you are.”
“I’m not sick—I’m having a baby. My stomach’s going to settle in a little while, and I’ll be fine.”
He shook his head. “Besides, you need to stay with Jessie.”
“Spence, I’m not a fool. I know why you’re going to the bank, and it’s because that’s where you think you can find out about Donnelly.”
“Laura—”
“You just don’t want me there when you confront him, and I don’t want you to go without me. I don’t want you getting that temper of yours up enough to kill him.”
“If there’s any trouble, he’ll be the one making it. All I want from him now is Josh.”
“I don’t want him killing you either. And according to this folder that came with the key, I can hire someone through the hotel to watch Jessie.”
“Yeah, and I’d like to see somebody else try to feed her. And I’m going to be gone all day.”
“If you’re going to be civilized when you talk to him, it’s not going to take all that long to ask him where the boy is, she argued reasonably. “For one thing, I don’t want anybody to start anything. For another, if the news is bad, I want to hear it, too.”
“Laura, I don’t want you there. This is something between him and me, and even if I get an address, I’m not going there today, I told you. I’ve got something else to do first.”
“A man doesn’t spend a year coming thousands of miles to wait another day. It’s not going to take me long to get ready,” she promised.
“You can hardly stand up. You’ve had your head in the commode, puking up your guts, not ten minutes ago.”