“How about chicken and salad.”
“As long as the chicken comes in a bun.” Heather reached for the door handle.
Ashley knew it was a signal that the discussion was at an end, but she had one more question. “What about the baby?”
“What about him—or her?”
“Are you going to keep him?”
Heather’s eyes widened, then she puffed out her lips on a sigh. “For a sec I thought you wondered if I was going to abort her, and I was going to go into shock. But you mean am I going to give her up for adoption.”
“Ian may not want to raise another man’s child.”
“Ian may not want to keep a wife who has been with another man.” Heather spoke these words too calmly.
“Did he say anything about leaving you?”
“No, but I wouldn’t blame him if he did once he has time to think.” Heather curved one hand over her lower belly. “I’m going to keep this baby regardless. Now can we get to lunch?”
Ashley ignored the plea to ask the question she maybe should have asked earlier. “Does the baby’s father know?”
“Are you kidding? He might want to see his kid, and then the whole world would find out what a horrible person I am.”
The drawback of a small town—everyone’s business was too easily public.
“Still.” Ashley turned off the heater and car and grabbed her handbag from behind her seat. “He kind of has a right to know, don’t you think?”
“No, I don’t think, so drop it.” Heather’s tone was sharp, defensive.
Ashley decided to drop it. Heather had to make decisions on her own. The best Ashley could do was listen, give advice when asked, lend what spiritual guidance she felt qualified to give. Heather didn’t need to be on her own in this. Ashley was there for her friend, as she was there for her patients in crises. Time was the best cure. Time gave people a chance to absorb, think, plan.
Yet she couldn’t bear the idea of Heather and Ian splitting up. They always seemed too right for one another, so unified. When Ian traveled for his business, Heather simply took more shifts, subbing for other midwives wanting vacation time or just personal days. It seemed like a good arrangement.
Just proof that outward appearances told little of the truth beneath.
They exited the Tahoe. Ashley clicked the locks on, and they strolled into the mall side by side. Ashley didn’t feel like shopping. She didn’t feel much like eating either, but she should in the event an emergency occurred that would interrupt her next meal.
Heather needed maternity clothes, so after lunch they headed for the mother-to-be shop and picked out outfits for several occasions, from work, to casual, to one stunning dress. Heather tried to persuade Ashley to buy a dress they spotted in a store window, but Ashley simply laughed and shook her head.
“I haven’t worn the last dress you talked me into buying.”
“You might go on a date.”
“And the sun might rise in the west.” Ashley walked away from the deep-blue silk dress with only one glance back.
“See, I knew you wanted it.” Heather tried to nudge Ashley with her elbow but smacked her with her bags instead.
They laughed, paused to buy cold drinks before they hit the road, then loaded everything into the back of the Tahoe. They discussed Heather’s purchases, patients’ conditions—names carefully redacted—and reminisced a little about midwifery school, when life looked like one baby-catching after another and not all the minutiae in between, the problem patients who smoked, didn’t take their vitamins, worked too hard, exercised too little. Ashley didn’t mention how she had been assaulted in the middle of the day by someone who had broken into her house. She didn’t want to worry Heather with her own troubles when her friend had more than enough of her own. They avoided talk of Heather’s pregnancy and marriage.
Heather, however, grew quieter with each mile closer to home. Finally, as Ashley exited the highway, Heather stopped talking altogether. She sat gripping the dashboard with both hands as though braced for a head-on collision. None were likely. The streets were empty in the late afternoon.
Heather’s driveway was half empty.
“He left.” Heather’s face was stony.
“Did he just go to work?” Ashley made the practical query, fearing the answer.
Heather shook her head. “Not today. He’s due to leave the country tomorrow.” She slid out of the Tahoe and rounded to the rear, where she waited for Ashley to join her and open the hatch.
Loaded with packages, they trudged up to the house. Heather unlocked the door and pushed it open. “Ian?”
A hollowness rang in the house despite soft leather sofas in the TV room on one side of the foyer and tapestry-covered chairs and heavy carpet in the living room on the other. Dropping her bags on the parquet floor, Heather ran up the steps. Ashley gathered up Heather’s bags and followed her. The house shouted its emptiness. She knew the feeling from all the days she returned to her home and found no one there. The difference was, she didn’t expect anyone to be there except for the cats.
She trailed down the hallway to the master bedroom, the bags crackling, her footfalls silent on the carpet. Heather stood in the center of the bedroom holding an envelope. She thrust it at Ashley. “You read it. I can’t.”
“It’s personal.” Ashley dumped the bags on the bed.
Heather shoved the envelope into Ashley’s hands. “I make it impersonal.”
“All right.” Sure she might be sick, Ashley lifted the unsealed flap and drew out a single sheet of paper, little more than a slip torn from a pocket-size notebook.
I got an earlier flight to Dubai. It will give me time to think these weeks I’ll be gone. Meanwhile, take care of yourself and the baby. I.
Relieved, though sad that Ian had chosen to run rather than stay and work on his marriage, Ashley tucked the note back into the envelope. “He’s all right. He just left for Dubai early.”
Heather heaved a sigh of relief.
“How long will he be gone?” Ashley asked.
“I think a month.”
“Are you—will you be all right staying here alone, or do you want to come home with me? I’d welcome the company.”
“I need to be here.” Heather clasped her hands in front of her belly. “I can’t Skype with him on my laptop. It’s too small. I need the big monitor so I can see every detail. We always Skype at the end of the day wherever he is, as long as I’m not working. I know he’ll call in as soon as he gets to his hotel. He always does.”
And if he didn’t?
“Do you want me to stay here? I have clinic in the morning, but I can drive out early.”
“No, no, I’ll be fine. I’m on call tonight and need to sleep now.” Heather wrapped her arms around Ashley. “Thanks for being here, for shopping with me, for not calling me a slut. I’m so awful.”
“Calling you names won’t change anything. What’s done is done. You know it was wrong and you have to face the consequences. I’m here to listen and give you advice if you ask for it, and make sure you and your baby are healthy.”
“You’re such a good friend. Please don’t abandon me even if I’m so awful.”
“I won’t.” Ashley hugged her friend. “I should go home and feed the cats. Please call me if you want me to come back or you want to come out. I wish you would. I don’t like you being alone.”
“I’ll call. Right now . . . right now I need to think.”
“Call me if you want me to come back.” Slowly, Ashley backed away from Heather. She didn’t want to leave, despite having to clean the house, grocery shop, and review patient files.
She descended the steps and left the house for her Tahoe. The empty space in the driveway shouted to her about how Ian had departed, must have driven himself to the airport either in Roanoke or perhaps down to Johnson City, Tennessee. However he departed, he had gone, run. Because he didn’t care enough to stay and fight, or because he cared too much and feared the direct
ion the fighting might take? Ashley understood his need for time to think apart, and yet expected something different. She would have told him to stay and get counseling.
“You can’t run everyone’s life,” she reminded herself. She could barely run her own life. Right now, with Heather and Sofie both out of commission for taking over her practice, her desire to attend medical school looked out of reach despite her acceptance to MCV.
“God, isn’t this what you want for me after all? I’d be so much more useful as a doctor.”
Something else, someone else, would come along. She would simply take out an ad asking for a certified nurse-midwife to take over her practice.
Distracted with what to say in an ad, she nearly missed the sight of the white Mercedes SUV in the motel parking lot until she had driven past it. Ridiculously, her heart lifted. Ian Penvenan might have run away, but Hunter McDermott had returned.
CHAPTER 13
ASHLEY’S DRIVEWAY WAS packed with vehicles, from rusted-out pickups to a brand-new Escalade. Surely that many women weren’t pregnant in such a small town. Even including the entire Ridge, the number seemed steep. But what did Hunter know? On the phone that morning, Ashley had said she had patients that morning but should be free by one o’clock, and he could just stop by. She had sounded a little breathless, like someone who had run to get the phone, and she had hung up in a hurry, not asking him what he wanted or commenting on his return.
Then again, she must already know the purpose of his return to Brooks Ridge.
Hunter started to pull over to the one parking place left, only to find three women leaning on the side of an SUV there, smoking and laughing and looking far too old to be of child-bearing years.
Curious despite himself, Hunter waited for the women to see him, rub out the butts of the cigarettes, and climb into their vehicle. Then he parked and waited for them to pull out.
Their departure started an exodus of cars. Women from sixteen to sixty emerged from the house and climbed into their cars one after the other. Each one called something back to the woman standing on the porch, thanking her, promising to take her advice, to bring her a pie, a peck of apples, their babies to see how grown up they were. Ashley acknowledged each one, shook hands, even hugged a few. By one fifteen, they were all gone, leaving the area quiet and still save for Ashley standing in the doorway waving to him.
For a moment Hunter stayed where he was, looking at her. She was dressed much as he had seen her before in jeans and a fleece-lined hoodie, with her hair drawn back in a braid. But he’d never seen her in full sunlight until she stepped off the back deck out of the shadow of trees and house. Wisps of hair tugged loose from her braid shone like strands of gold fluttering around a face with a complexion so flawless even in bright light it hardly seemed real. He wanted to touch that skin and see if it truly was as smooth as it appeared, and his fingers twitched to tug the red band off the end of her braid and fan out the strands between his fingers, across her shoulders, over—
He shoved his door open and slammed it behind himself with more force than necessary to break the spell. A hundred feet away, Ashley’s eyebrows arched, and she started toward him.
“I was afraid you’d see all the cars and flee.” Her smile was as warm as the sun breaking through the chilly air.
“Some kind of luncheon?” He didn’t want to ask directly why all those women had been there. He could scarcely speak for the way the sight of her set his heart galloping out of control.
If the women hadn’t made him flee, this reaction to Ashley’s presence should.
Ashley appeared cool and unaffected by his nearness. “I do feed them, but it’s a women’s clinic I hold once a month.”
He must have given her a puzzled glance to match the questions he was too embarrassed to ask, for she continued, “I don’t just deliver babies. I give female exams too.”
Female? Oh. Hunter’s face warmed.
Ashley laughed. “TMI?”
“I did wonder why the older women.” He reached her and held out his hand. “I thought only doctors could do that.”
“Midwives do it all the time. Well, we’re doing it more.” She shook his hand with those lovely long, slender fingers of hers, then, to his disappointment, released her grip and headed to the house. “I have an exam room right here in the house. Actually, my mother had it added on about fifteen years ago. Some women prefer to come here rather than have us go to their homes, and, of course, we can hold the clinic this way.” She opened the door and then waved him ahead of her.
He stepped into a sunny kitchen smelling of coffee and cold cuts. “Where is your mother, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“I don’t. She and my father are in Central America on a short-term mission trip. Short-term as in six months. They’ll be home for Christmas.”
“So you’re here in this big house all alone?”
“I am, but I know who you are now, so I think it’s all right to have you in this time.” She smiled at him as she closed the door. “Coffee? Tea? Something cold?”
“Just water, thanks.” He glanced around at shiny pots hanging from a rack above the stove, to a wooden table and chairs that looked at least a hundred years old, to granite countertops holding thoroughly modern appliances. Virginia McDermott would approve of this decor for a country home, partly because it all looked expensive.
“Is your father a doctor?” Nosy, but he wanted to know more about her and thought searching online was cheating, though he had hungered for pictures of her, a video with the sound of her gentle voice, a whiff of her fragrance.
She had occupied his thoughts more than had his work or the McDermotts or the woman who had called him several times before suddenly stopping. He wasn’t altogether certain he was back on the Ridge to find the caller or simply to see Ashley Tolliver again.
Nothing simple about seeing her again if she was filling his head this much.
“Dad is a pastor.” Ashley talked with the ease of someone not at all affected by her companion’s presence. “Retired now.” She held a glass under the ice-water dispenser in the refrigerator door. “I’m the youngest.”
“So am I. Or rather, that’s how I was raised. Sarah and Michael are ten and twelve years older than I am.”
She handed him the glass and got one for herself. “My brothers are five and seven years older than I am. They are both doctors.”
“And you followed in your mother’s footsteps.”
“I did.” A shadow crossed her face. “Or have so far. Shall we go someplace more comfortable?”
He thought the kitchen looked comfortable, but he followed her into a hallway to a cozy room tucked behind a fine staircase. Paneled and carpeted, it held a massive and ancient oak desk, a wooden filing cabinet that also had to be ancient, and two leather armchairs.
“Have a seat.” Ashley took one of the chairs. “And tell me why you left.”
“Not why I came back?” He sat but didn’t relax onto the soft cushions. Her question had thrown him off balance.
“I think why you came back is obvious. You want to try to find the woman who called you.”
She set her glass on a side table between the chairs. “Has she called you again?”
“Not a word. That 540 number seems to be some kind of clinic south of here, not a private home.”
“Weird. Have you looked into it?”
“Not yet. I haven’t had much time.”
“Catching up on work?”
“I’ve been in Arizona. I should be there now, but I sent my business partner instead, though he says he’s not much for travel. So here I am now to find out if there is anything behind these calls or if . . .”
“Or if?” She waited, sipping her water, gazing at him with those big dark eyes behind their fringe of long lashes.
He took off his glasses and rubbed the lenses on the sleeve of his sweater. “I originally left here because I needed to catch up on some paperwork at my business, so I’ll still have a business, an
d to see my family. My adopted family. I wanted to ask them face-to-face if they knew Sheila Brooks had died at my birth. I left because . . .”
He couldn’t admit to this beautiful, self-confident woman, with her missionary parents, doctor brothers, and known heritage hundreds of years old, that he had run away from a lack of foundation there in the mountains, a solid reminder that he now felt rootless anywhere. “They think the calls must be a scam of some kind,” he blurted out like a child making a confession.
“But you don’t.”
“I don’t.”
“So you still want my help looking.”
“I didn’t. I almost decided not to come back, but—” His hands were sweating on the glass despite the icy water inside. “You still have a reputation for knowing these mountains better than anyone else.”
“That might be true. Tolliver women have been midwives in these mountains since the 1840s.”
“How is that possible? Has it skipped generations?”
“With the name Tolliver, a few here and there, but every generation has at least one midwife. Wait here.” She rose and left the room for a moment, then returned with a pen-and-ink drawing under glass of a woman who looked remarkably like the one holding the picture. “Esther Cherrett Tolliver. The midwife tradition in the mountains started with her teaching midwifery to her daughter-in-law. This was drawn by an itinerant artist.”
“She looks beautiful even in that medium.” Hunter’s gaze flicked from the ink rendering to Ashley. The same heart-shaped face, full lips, wide eyes.
“She was a legend in what is now Virginia Beach, where she came from.” She set the drawing on the table. “This hangs in the living room, but I never use that room when no one else is home, and it’s dark with the drapes drawn.”
“I can’t imagine knowing that much of my family history.” He had never felt the lack of the knowledge until meeting this woman who seemed to draw some kind of strength from her heritage.
“If you’re a Brooks, you have a long history here too. There was a feud between our families, and—” She laughed. “I don’t want to bore you.”
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