Cate Campbell (40 page)

The girl smiled, and put out her hand in a grown-up fashion. “Thank you, Dr. Benedict.”

As she turned to leave, Margot said, “Colleen.” The girl turned. “You must be back with your family.”

“I am.”

“What did you do about your baby?”

Colleen’s gaze was frank now, and a wise expression came into her eyes. It reminded Margot of the look in Mrs. Li’s eyes, with her toddlers at her side. Mrs. Li was only four years older than this girl.

“You were right about my family,” Colleen said. “They didn’t throw me out after all. Mama and Pa are raising Peter as their own. Pa said no grandson of his is going to be given away to people he doesn’t know.”

Margot smiled behind her hand as she watched the dark skirt and shiny Mary Janes swish away from her.

As she left the hospital for the evening, she encountered Alice Cardwell just coming on for the evening shift. “Good evening, Matron.”

“Dr. Benedict,” Nurse Cardwell said. “Are you going to rebuild your clinic?”

“Yes. The builders are going to clear the site next week, and start on the foundation.”

“But you lost your office nurse.”

Margot nodded. “She went back to her people in Chicago.”

“Well,” Cardwell said. She carried a charge book in one hand, her cap in the other. “I have several student nurses who show promise. Let me know if you would like a referral.”

“I would indeed,” Margot said. “Once the building is under way, I’ll ask you.”

“Good. Good evening, then, Doctor.” Cardwell walked off, her long apron rustling. As Margot went out through the front doors, she saw Dr. Whitely walking across the lobby with another physician. He looked away, avoiding her eyes.

She smiled to herself as she stepped out into the Indian summer sunshine. It was a relief not to have to worry about him, or to pretend a respect she didn’t feel. And it was a damned good thing his wasn’t the only voice on the hospital board.

She arrived back at Benedict Hall just as Hattie was carrying a leathery leg of lamb into the dining room. Margot would have preferred to take a plate in the kitchen, but Dick and Ramona and her parents were all seated at the dining room table. It seemed better to sit down and make the best of it.

“Have a good day, Margot?” her father asked.

“I did, Father, thanks.”

Ramona said, “Are you really going to live over the garage?” Dick flashed her a look, but Margot smiled.

“It’s better that way. So the telephone doesn’t disturb you all at odd hours.”

“It’s just so strange,” Ramona said. “I mean, servants’ quarters—”

Dick blew out a breath, and snapped, “Leave it alone, Ramona. Margot has a right to live where she wants.”

Ramona flushed, and Margot felt a flash of sympathy. “It’s all right, Dick. Ramona’s quite right. It’s a bit unusual.”

“Makes perfect sense,” Dickson rumbled, and began to struggle with the carving knife and the overdone roast. Leona came in with a dish of watery mint sauce and passed it around. “I hear from Peretti you’re going to assist him in the operating theater next week.”

“Yes. He asked me yesterday.”

“Good, good. Something interesting?”

Margot was about to answer, but caught herself. “I’ll tell you about it sometime if you like, Father. Some other time.” The glance Ramona gave her across the table was grateful, and almost sisterly. Margot smiled at her, and Ramona smiled prettily back.

Margot glanced at her mother, at the end of the table. She looked better than she had the day before. She had bathed, at least, and it looked as if Hattie had tried to help her with her hair. She wore powder, and lipstick, but beneath the cosmetics her face was pale and her eyes were hollow. She kept her eyes down as Dickson put meat on her plate and passed it.

With her eyes on her mother’s still face, Margot said, “Have you set the date for the funeral, Father?” Dickson answered, explaining that it would happen the next week, that the interment would be at the new Evergreen Cemetery, and that Father McBride would officiate. Edith’s features didn’t change throughout his recitation. It was as if she hadn’t heard the question.

Or didn’t want to hear the answer.

 

It was strange to say good night to everyone, then make her way through the kitchen, out the back door, and across the yard to the garage. It was already dark, the autumn evenings beginning to close in. She switched on the bulb hanging in the stairwell, and climbed the stairs, hearing no sounds but the faint buzzing of electricity and the click of her heels on the treads.

She was startled, as she reached the top of the staircase, to see that a brand-new candlestick telephone rested on the kitchen counter next to the old hot plate. She smiled, and touched its black surface with her fingers, caressed the shining brass trim. This was her father’s doing, of course. He hadn’t mentioned it, but he must have arranged to have it installed while she was at the hospital. She wished she knew how to reach Frank. She would have liked to hear his voice, but he had been adamant. She had been allowed to doctor him once. No more.

She turned off the light over the stairs and went into the bedroom to undress in the dark. It was a clear night, and without the camellia blocking her window, she could lie in Blake’s old four-poster bed and watch the stars until she fell asleep. It was comforting, somehow, to climb in between the fresh sheets, lay her head on the pillow, and think that the last person to sleep here had been Blake himself.

She gazed at the stars beyond her window, and thought about Preston, who had discovered what it was like to die. Margot had seen plenty of death, as any physician would, but though she had watched people breathe their last, seen their bodies go limp and empty, felt that absence in a room that only a death could create, it was still the final mystery, the one all of her science couldn’t solve.

She rolled on her side. Only one way to find out, she thought wryly. And she wasn’t ready for that for a long, long time. She yawned, and closed her eyes, warm, comfortable, deliciously drowsy.

 

When she startled awake, she had no idea how long she had been asleep. Clouds had rolled in to obscure the stars, and she could see only the faintest outline of the window. She sat up, pushing her tumbled hair away from her perspiring face. She shuddered, thinking of the nightmare that had disturbed her sleep, and glad it was over.

She had dreamed of Preston. In the dream he was a shadow figure, eerily silent, pursuing her through the corridors of Benedict Hall. She couldn’t see his face, but she knew it was him. She fled from him, up to the third-floor servants’ rooms, down to the basement laundry, around the long porch, through the shrubberies of the garden. He was so close behind her she thought she could feel his breath on her neck. She didn’t know what weapon he might carry, but her back, in the dream, tingled with anticipation of whatever violence he intended.

In the dream, she reached the garage, and managed, barely, to lock the door before he could follow her inside. He still made no noise, but he hovered outside the garage, demanding she give in to him.

There was something he wanted. Something he believed she had.

The whole thing was irrational. Preston was gone. He couldn’t hurt her anymore. The dream was no more than a remnant of the years of conflict and misery.

But somehow, still, she knew he wanted the sapphire.

Margot lay down again, and pulled the blankets up to her chin. She would not give in to such a pointless fancy. It was no less silly than Ramona and her fairies. Preston might have believed the stone had some sort of special power, but she was a scientist. She knew better.

Determinedly, she closed her eyes, and willed herself to go back to sleep. She had to get up early to be at the hospital. She needed her rest.

It was no use. The sapphire filled the little apartment with its presence, imagined or not. Margot berated herself for allowing an illogical idea to take hold of her—as it had her mother—but she couldn’t banish it.

“Damn,” she muttered, and threw back the covers.

She fumbled her way through the dim bedroom and the even darker kitchen. She opened the cupboard, and reached into the back for the coffee can, groping with her fingers. When she got hold of it, and pulled it to the front of the cupboard, she gasped, and nearly dropped it.

A second later she laughed. It was just a stone, after all. A big sapphire on an antique silver chain.

But when she had first looked into the old coffee can, she had seen—or thought she had—a blue glow coming from the stone, glimmering through the darkness where there was no light for it to reflect. Flickering, as if—

“Poppycock,” Margot said aloud. She thumped the can onto the counter with unnecessary force. “It’s a rock, and if it keeps me awake all night, so be it!”

She turned her back, and marched back to the bedroom. She got into bed, plumped her pillow, and pulled the covers over her head.

The day of Frank’s return to Seattle was glorious, brilliant with Indian summer sunshine. The cottonwoods along Aloha were shedding the yellow coins of their leaves, sending drifting veils of gold over the streets and lawns. Margot took the streetcar down Broadway, and walked to King Street Station. There she stood beneath the coffered ceiling, watching the reader board for the train’s arrival time, pacing back and forth on the marble floor as the Northern Pacific train pulled in and the passengers began to disembark.

She caught sight of him as he made his way past the line of cars toward the station entrance. He wore his Stetson at a jaunty angle, and he carried a valise in one hand and—her heart leaped as she saw it—a newspaper in the other. In the other hand. Not really a hand, of course. It was artificial, a Carnes arm, the latest in prostheses. But that didn’t matter. It didn’t matter in the least. He was wearing it, using it, swinging his arms in the most natural way.

Margot’s eyes filled with tears of relief. She pressed the heels of her hands to her cheeks, trying to stop them. He shouldn’t see her crying, for heaven’s sake. He should see her smiling, confident, as if she had always known it would work out.

He caught sight of her, and she saw his grin from beneath the shadow of his hat brim. She hurried to meet him as he came through the turnstile.

He didn’t say a word when he reached her. He set his valise on the floor, and his newspaper on top of it, then took her in his arms and squeezed her so tightly she laughed. The artificial arm felt slightly stiff against her back, but she felt the flex of the wrist, the bend of the elbow, and her heart swelled with pride. She hugged him back, both arms around his neck, then kissed his ear, his cheek, and finally found his mouth.

When he released her at last, her tears had escaped despite her intentions, but it didn’t seem to matter. He brushed them away with his right hand, smiling down at her. “Left hand is a bit hard for tears,” he said. “But it works damned well for everything else.” He held it up to demonstrate. The wrist rotated in a clockwise motion so the jointed fingers turned naturally toward him. When he straightened his arm, the wrist turned back. She ran her hand up his shoulder to feel the snug fit of the brace. “Officer’s arm, they call it,” he said with a chuckle. “Best of the lot.”

“Oh, Frank,” she said, through tremulous lips. “I’m just so—so
happy!”

He took her in his arms again, oblivious to the people swirling past, jostling them. “Good,” he said huskily. “That’s good.”

 

Frank had just completed a circuit of the building site, double-checking measurements before the concrete would be poured, when Margot came striding up Post Street. Her legs, long and slim, flashed beneath her skirt, and Frank remembered that her legs were the first thing he had noticed about Margot Benedict, before he had any idea who she was. Today she wore a small white straw hat and white cotton gloves. Her dress was low waisted and narrow, her hair bobbed to swing just below her earlobes.

“Who’s that?” one of the workmen asked, leaning on his shovel.

“Dr. Benedict,” Frank said.

The man gave a low whistle. “I never seen no doctor who looked like that!”

Frank chuckled, and went to meet her. When he told her what the workman had said, she laughed. “You should have seen what I put on first! I got dressed to dig in the dirt, but then Hattie wouldn’t let me out of the house unless I changed. Hattie, who gave me such a look when I cut my hair and shortened my skirts! Now she says my young man shouldn’t see me in a dowdy three-year-old dress.”

She squeezed his fingers, and they walked together up the street to the site.

All the detritus from the fire had been cleared away. To Frank, the bare dirt seemed as full of possibilities as a freshly ploughed bed must seem to a gardener. He could see the new building in his mind as clearly as if he had sketched it in the air, the footings installed, the walls constructed and poured. He pointed here and there, telling Margot where her office would be, where the examining room and the waiting room would stand. In his plans, he had rotated the building so that the window of her office gave her a glimpse of the waters of the bay. The entrance to the building would be wider than it had been, with a short walk to the street. He planned a trellis to make it inviting.

“And I have a surprise,” he said.

She smiled. “Show me.”

He had wrapped it in a piece of canvas, and laid it ready for this morning. As he folded the material back, she exclaimed, “Frank! Where did you get it?”

“It was in the pile of things to be carted off.” With pride, he handed it to her.

She took the sign, and ran a loving hand over its surface. M. B
ENEDICT
, M. D., it proclaimed, in fresh red paint. The new varnish sparkled in the sunlight. “Oh, Frank! This is the nicest thing you could have done for me. Thank you so much.”

“Glad you like it.”

They stood together watching the concrete for the slab flow in a thick, gritty stream onto a neat layer of gravel that had been trucked in from the foothills. By the time the men started smoothing and detailing the slab, the sun was high overhead, and the heat had begun to rise. It was, Frank thought, a fine omen that there was no rain today. The concrete would cure perfectly.

The men wandered off with their lunch pails to find some shade. Frank was about to ask Margot if she wanted to go down the street to the café for some lunch when she released his arm, put her hand in her pocket, and stepped close to the smoothed wet concrete. He followed, wondering, and stood behind her as she crouched next to the northwest corner, where the anchor bolt showed above the level of the soil. He caught sight of the sapphire in her hand, gleaming blue in the sun. It was a beautiful thing, surely a valuable thing. And she was going to drop it into the wet cement.

He said, “Wait!”

She glanced at him over her shoulder. “Why? Do you want it?”

“Margo—a museum, or something—”

She held up the necklace, and the sapphire revolved slowly in the sunshine. “I don’t think so,” she murmured. “I know it’s not scientific—but there’s something strange about this stone. It has an effect on people, real or imagined, and I think it’s better if it’s hidden away.” She grinned. “You’ll think I’m becoming a spiritualist, I suppose.”

Frank crouched, too, his bent knee touching her shoulder. “The thing scared Carter.”

“Preston seemed to think it had some sort of power, but then, my brother wasn’t really sane. Mother is sane, of course, but she’d had a lot of sedation. That might account for her obsessing over it. Everything can be explained in a logical way.”

“But?”

She turned her face up to the sunshine, closing her eyes, drawing a deep breath. “It’s a feeling. It’s like—like when I know what’s wrong with a patient before I really have enough information to make a diagnosis.”

“Instinct.”

“Yes.” She made a rueful face. “Many of my colleagues don’t believe in instinct, of course. They want facts. Evidence.”

“But you—”

“I prefer facts, believe me. But when instinct is what there is . . .”

“Margot.” He touched her shoulder with the fabricated fingers of his left hand. “Do what you want with it.”

She nodded. She held the stone out on its chain, then released it so it dropped into the wet cement, chain and stone lying on the surface in a little crater of gray paste. With her finger, she pushed it beneath the surface. He reached down to help her, pressing down the links of the chain until the whole thing disappeared. He got up, and went to the pile of tools at one side of the foundation to find a trowel. He carried it back, and smoothed the surface of the wet cement.

When they stood up, there was no sign they had disturbed the slab at all. Margot sighed. “It will be safe there,” she said, “for a very long time.”

Frank encircled her with his arm, and bent to kiss her cheek. “Too bad, though,” he said softly, his lips right beside her ear. “It could have helped buy our house.”

He felt the tremor that ran through her, and heard her sudden intake of breath. She said in a dry whisper, “What? What did you say?”

He held her close to him, his cheek against her sun-warmed hair. “Our house,” he repeated. “When we’re married.”

She drew back, and her chin lifted in that challenging way he had come to recognize. “Frank Parrish,” she said sharply. “Is that a proposal?”

He held his ground against her level gaze, but it wasn’t easy, and thinking that made him smile. “Cowboy proposal, I guess.” Her lips parted, but she didn’t speak. He released her, and stood back a little. “Margot—are you surprised?”

“I—” Her chin dropped, and she bit her lip. “I just thought— it was so nice, being together. Having each other. I didn’t think beyond that.”

“But it’s natural,” he said awkwardly. “A man and a girl. The next step.”

Her expression was one of confusion, even fear. He wanted to pull her against him, to kiss away her doubts, but he made himself stand still. She said, “Frank—I’m going to want to practice. To go on being a doctor.”

“Why wouldn’t you?”

She stared at him, her lips parted, her cheeks flushed. “My mother would be so relieved someone wanted me. She would say that now I should settle down. Give up all this foolishness.”

“And
my
mother,” he said, in as steady a voice as he could manage, “would call that a terrible waste.”

“I want to meet her, Frank.”

“She wants to meet you.”

“Even if . . .” Margot’s voice trailed off. She turned her head away from him, gazing out to the west, where the waters of Puget Sound sparkled bravely in the cool sunlight. “I just never thought I would be . . . a wife, I suppose. Someone’s wife, like someone’s house or someone’s automobile. It has always seemed so—constricting.”

“I don’t want to constrict you.”

“I don’t know if you could help it.”

“But you—you do want to be with me?”

She turned swiftly back to him. “Oh, yes! I want to be with you!” She moved close to him, pressing her cheek to his chest, pushing her little hat askew. “Frank, there are so many things that change when a woman marries. It’s not the same for a man.”

“What’s not the same?”

“A woman is expected to change her name.”

It was his turn to hesitate, to gaze out toward the water in search of answers. He said, searching for the right words, “I’d like you to have my name, but if you don’t want to take it—” He broke off.

She pulled back, and looked up at him as she straightened her hat. “I love you,” she blurted in a rush. “I’m ruining this, I know, but—I warned you I’m not like other women!”

Relieved, he grinned at her. “I don’t want other women.”

“You really don’t mind if I—” Her voice broke, and he saw that her eyes shone with sudden, surprised tears. “If I go on being—me?”

“Margot!” He gripped her hands, one in his good, flesh right hand, the other in his careful, stiff, but working left. “Sweetheart! I wouldn’t want you any other way!”

“It doesn’t seem possible.” Her chin thrust forward, even as one of the tears trembled on her eyelashes and escaped down her cheek. “But I’m so glad, Frank! You’re just—you’re the most wonderful man!”

At this he burst into laughter. He put his arm around her to guide her away from the building site and down toward the Public Market. “I want to buy you flowers,” he said. “And try to propose properly.” He squeezed her against him. “But only if you promise to say yes.”

She flashed him a sidelong look. “We’ll see,” she said, but she was smiling, and she pressed herself close to his side, their steps matching as they walked. “We’ll just see.”