The Last Midwife
Page 29
The two went on, Gracy silent as they approached the Halleck house. It was closed up the way it always was, but Gracy knew that no one lived inside anymore. Jonas Halleck had moved to a shack at the Holy Cross and had let it out that the mine was for sale. People said he ought to be in jail, but Ted Coombs told her that what the man had done with his daughter surely was a sin, but he wasn’t sure it was against the law. So Halleck hadn’t been charged.
Neither had Edna Halleck. Gracy wasn’t surprised. Ted had said that after the licking the prosecutor had taken, he wasn’t likely to want to go after Edna Halleck, who had the town’s sympathy. What’s more, folks believed that being married to Jonas Halleck was punishment enough. At winter’s end, Edna and Josie moved away from Swandyke, but not before Edna asked for a divorce. She appeared before the same Judge Downing, who gave her a good settlement. Gracy was glad to see them go. There were those who blamed Josie for the baby. It was best the girl was gone, best for everyone. Gracy was relieved.
She and Ted had talked about Edna’s confession. Had the woman really strangled the baby? Or had Josie done it and Edna taken the blame to protect her daughter? Ted didn’t know. But then, Ted hadn’t been convinced that Gracy wasn’t the killer. Gracy had seen it on his face when he turned to her after Edna said Jonas Halleck hadn’t murdered the boy. Gracy’d seen the questioning look and knew that everybody in the courtroom—everyone but Daniel and Jeff and maybe John—wondered if Gracy were indeed guilty. But she hadn’t remarked on it to Ted. It was enough that she was aware that her husband and son knew her heart.
The two midwives reached the trail to Gracy’s cabin, and Jane left to return home. “You did finely,” Gracy told her, and the girl smiled, happy but a little embarrassed at the praise.
Gracy started up the trail alone. Off in the distance, she saw Daniel with the old dog, Sandy. They had found him on a mine dump years before when Jeff was a boy, and the dog’s face now was white with age. Daniel’s back was to her and Gracy thought as she had so many years before that it was Daniel’s hips. She’d always had a liking for hips. Hips was what she was after, Nabby told her once.
She would miss him when the snows higher up melted and he left her to prospect in the high country. The cabin was warm. The boy Abraham had chinked it before the winter storms. Still, she dreaded to sleep alone. But Daniel would no more give up the search for precious metal than she would midwifery. Come snowmelt, he would tell her he could smell the ore. He’d pack a burro, and Gracy would send him off, holding her tongue, because she knew the summer’s work might amount to no more than a few nuggets in the peach can.
Daniel turned and saw her, and his face lit up. He hurried down the trail to his wife, then put his arms around her, right there in the sunlight where anyone might see them. He took her arm, and the two old people continued up the path. They reached the cabin, but they didn’t go inside. Instead, they sat on the bench in the light that came through the tree branches.
“There’s a letter from Jeff. He’s coming home.”
Gracy turned to her husband, and the smile lines on her face deepened. “Truly?” she asked.
Daniel nodded. “He doesn’t say for good, but he’ll be back. I knew he would.” He frowned. “You’re glad, aren’t you?”
“Of course I am.”
“But you sent him away after the trial. I think he might have stayed then, but you pushed him out. You told him he’d gone west and that it was time for him to see what was east of the mountains. I never understood it.”
Gracy shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. There’s not a reason now for him to stay away.”
“I pondered on it. You must have had a reason then. What was it, Gracy?”
“Best be kept a secret.”
“From your husband?”
Gracy thought that over. She picked up a stick and threw it for Sandy, who got up slowly and fetched it. The dog was as old as they were, she thought.
“We don’t keep secrets from each other. Haven’t for a long time,” Daniel said.
Of course they did. Or at least, Gracy did. She kept the secrets told to a midwife. But this secret was different. This wasn’t about one of the women.
“If there’s a thing to know about our son, you ought not to keep it from me.” Daniel had been after her for months asking why she’d encouraged Jeff to leave.
He was right, she thought now. In the years since Jeff was born, the two of them had grown so close that they were a part of each other. If Daniel’s heart had stopped beating, Gracy believed hers would, too. She had no right to keep this secret from him, although the knowing of it would pain his soul. She had thought to protect him, but he was right. The secret was his to know.
She watched as a dead aspen leaf drifted in the wind, landing in her lap. She picked it up and smoothed it with her fingers. The leaf had made it through the winter. The veins stood out like a line of fine stitching. It was too brittle to be pressed in her Bible, but she would save it because it had survived, just as she and Daniel had survived. And the leaf would remind her of the day she shared with Daniel the secret that was on her heart.
“Well, God, Gracy?” Daniel said. “Tell me.”
She dropped the leaf into her lap and fingered the dime she had worn around her neck for more than fifty years, the coin Daniel had given her the day she first laid eyes on him. She thought again of Jeff and how she had risked prison rather than let his life be ruined. She remembered the Halleck baby, his strange eyes with bits of amber that shone like quartz, his pale hair the gold of winter sun, the way his ears curled. He was the spit of the baby she had delivered so many years before.
“I couldn’t let Jeff stay while Josie was here,” she began.
Daniel frowned, then as if he had a presentiment of what his wife was going to say, he reached for Gracy’s hand.
“What I couldn’t let you know,” she said, looking out at a snow skiff on the range. “What Jeff didn’t realize until I told him after the trial…” She paused for a moment, then turned to her husband. “You know I can always tell who a baby’s father is?”
Daniel’s eyes narrowed, and he nodded slowly.
Gracy smiled, then pressed her husband’s hand. “The Halleck boy was our grandson, Danny. Jeff was the father of Josie’s baby.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SANDRA DALLAS is the author of fourteen novels, including A Quilt for Christmas, Fallen Women, True Sisters, The Bride’s House, Whiter Than Snow, Prayers for Sale, Tallgrass, and New Mercies. She is a former Denver bureau chief for BusinessWeek magazine and lives in Denver, Colorado. Visit her at www.sandradallas.com. Or sign up for email updates here.
ALSO BY SANDRA DALLAS
A Quilt for Christmas
Fallen Women
True Sisters
The Bride’s House
Whiter Than Snow
Prayers for Sale
Tallgrass
New Mercies
The Chili Queen
Alice’s Tulips
The Diary of Mattie Spenser
The Persian Pickle Club
Buster Midnight’s Café
Thank you for buying this
St. Martin’s Press ebook.
To receive special offers, bonus content,
and info on new releases and other great reads,
sign up for our newsletters.
Or visit us online at
us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup
For email updates on the author, click here.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chap
ter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
About the Author
Also by Sandra Dallas
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE LAST MIDWIFE. Copyright © 2015 by Sandra Dallas. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Cover design by Elsie Lyons
Cover photographs: woman © Mark Owen / Trevillion Images; medical bag © Taborsky / Shutterstock; cabin © Michael Shake / Shutterstock
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Dallas, Sandra.
The last midwife / Sandra Dallas. — First edition.
pages; cm
ISBN 978-1-250-07446-1 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-8614-8 (e-book)
1. Midwives—Fiction. 2. Infanticide—Fiction. 3. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 4. Colorado—Social life and customs—19th century—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3554.A434L37 2015
813'.54—dc23
2015017976
e-ISBN 9781466886148
Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at (800) 221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.
First Edition: October 2015