Summer Lightning (41 page)

Once again she tried to punish him, but he caught her hand. Rolling on his side, he carried it to his lips and began tenderly biting each sensitive pad in turn.

“What could possibly make me change my mind and keep you around, Miss Parker?” he asked, as he moved her arm to lick into fire the ticklish nerves of her wrist.

“I can’t think of a thing .  .  . Oh, unless . .  .”

“Unless?” His mouth was only an inch from hers. She could feel that he was ready to love her again. The warmth growing in her lower body told her that she too could revive quickly.

Looking into his eyes, Edith said, “I love you. Is that reason enough?”

“That’s the best reason in the world.”

Epilogue

The autumn night brought a fog with it. Cold, Edith began wriggling upright, preparing to haul herself out of the armchair in the parlor. Instantly, Jeff left his record keeping.

“Here,” he said, offering her a hand. He had to pull hard to tug his highly pregnant wife to her feet. She playfully put her hands up to fend off his chest.

She thanked him, trying to fasten her gaping blouse. “I hope Dr. Butler’s right and it won’t be long. Nothing fits decently anymore.”

“I kind of like it,” Jeff said. He tilted his head to get the best view of her augmented bosom. “I know I can’t do much else right now, but . . .” His hand curved to steal inside her blouse and cup the warm breast within.

Edith closed her eyes, savoring the momentary pleasure. “Stop,” she said, when he began to open the rest of the buttons. “I can’t remember whether I covered the milk pails.”

“I’ll go,” he volunteered with a last gentle squeeze.

“No, I need the air. Just let me get a shawl.”

As had become usual during these last months, Edith and Jeff went together. The fog garlanded the yard with misty streamers. There was a promise of winter in the air. The quilts she’d received the year before as wedding gifts would be used tonight.

Edith was glad the girls were sleeping in town tonight. Vera was not nearly so far along as she was and could better cope with the two girls, wildly excited as they were by the impending birth of their brother or sister. The extra rest was a blessing.

They were halfway across the yard when Edith slopped, a preoccupied look coming to shadow the contentment on her face. “What’s the matter?” Jeff demanded. “It’s not . . .”

“I don’t think so. Believe me, Jeff, I’ll tell you when. No, I just had a strange feeling.”

“Oh?” He didn’t always believe, but he could never entirely disbelieve either.

“Like someone’s coming to visit.” She turned to look at the drive. For a moment, she stared hard at the swirling mist. “It can’t be,” she said wonderingly.

The woman coming toward them, striding along with her large sensibly shod feet placed just so, bore a startling resemblance to Edith’s late aunt. So extraordinary was the likeness Edith thought for a moment that it
was
her aunt.

But when the woman came closer, Edith saw that this woman was younger, slightly more attractive, and with the addition of temple pieces to her pince-nez. Her pale blue eyes flicked over Edith’s swollen abdomen.

“You are Edith Parker?”

“No,” Jeff answered. “She’s Edith Dane.”

The eyes flicked over him too and dismissed him. “Mrs. Dane, I’m here on behalf of the Sugar Hill Matrimonial Bureau of Kansas City. You are the heir of the late Miss Edith Parker?”

“That’s right. Miss . . .”

“Pettibone. Miss Eunice Pettibone.” She lifted the case she held. “There are few papers to sign, Miss Par . . . Mrs. Dane.”

Her smile was stagnant, as though it was rarely aired. “I have a pen,” she said, when Jeff moved impatiently.

“I wasn’t getting one,” he replied. “Look here, Miss Petti-bone, my wife isn’t signing anything.”

“It’s all right, Jeff,” Edith said, putting her hand on his arm. “Miss Pettibone and I understand each other. She wants to buy the matrimonial service.”

“That’s right. We understand of course that all your records were burned in the boardinghouse fire.” There was the faintest hint of a question, whether in Miss Pettibone’s voice or the cock of her head.

“Yes, completely destroyed. As well as all my aunt’s personal papers. There weren’t very many.”

“I’m sure. That is ... I’m sure it must have been a great loss. You know, you should have let someone know where you were. We had to trace you though your forwarding address, and it is so time-consuming dealing with the post office.”

The two women eyed one another. Edith suddenly understood what her place in the world had been before she’d met Jeff. She would never regret all that she’d unwittingly surrendered, for it was far better for her to belong to this one man. Miss Pettibone had chosen the other road. Edith had great respect for her.

She smiled in welcome. “Won’t you come in for a cup of tea, Miss Pettibone?”

“Thank you, but I must catch my .  . . my train.”

“There’s no other train tonight,” Jeff said gruffly. “There’s a good hotel in town.” Somehow he didn’t want this woman to stay in his house. She was too starched, too critical. Too strange for all she looked as normal as any spinster aunt.

“Ah, quite.” She coughed. “Getting down to business, we want to buy the name, copyrights and goodwill of the Farmer and Maid Matrimonial Service. As you are obviously not planning to operate the business yourself . . .”

“No, I have other things to think of now. Edith placed her hand on her protruding stomach and felt the little knee that pressed up from within.

“Excellent. If you’d sign here . . .” Miss Pettibone withdrew from her case a short document and a surprisingly frivolous pen topped with a long curling pink feather.

“Wait a minute,” Jeff said. “You’d better read that.”

“I’m sure it’s only the standard contract.”

“You know?” Miss Pettibone asked with a note of surprise.

“Not until you came. Then it sort of leaps to the eye. Will the name be used again?”

“I doubt it. It’s rather old-fashioned now. But it had a good long usage and will always be thought of with respect.”

Aware that Jeff was fuming beside her, Edith signed the paper as Miss Pettibone supported it. She gave him a smile as she straightened up. “Thank you, Miss Pettibone.”

“No, thank you, Mrs. Dane.” She put away the pen and the paper seemed to roll up by itself. “Ah, yes. There is one last thing. Payment.”

She took out a folder. “Here you are. All present and correct.”

Edith opened the folder and turned toward the light. Jeff tried to read over her shoulder. When they turned to ask Miss Pettibone what she’d given them, the yard was empty except for the swirling mists.

“Maybe we’d better go in,” Jeff said, touching her middle back.

Edith sat down again in her rocker, the folder on her lap. She did not open it again immediately. She listened with an air of absorbed interest as her husband scolded her for not reading a contract before signing it. “Yes, you’re absolutely right, dearest. I’ll never do it again.”

Mollified, Jeff sat down next to her. “It’s just that I worry, Edith. There are so many dangers . . .”

“But did you ever think how much disinterested good there is in the world? People devote their lives to good works, never reaping any reward. It seems almost incredible, but it is right to remember it. Sometimes people do good.”

“What did she give you?” Jeff asked. He was still uncomfortable when her eyes got that far-off look. Remembering how close he’d come to losing her, he grasped her hand to bring her back into the present.

“Oh, yes.” She opened the folder, freeing the slightest, vaguest scent of smoke. Her hands trembling with wonder, Edith withdrew a sheaf of papers tied together with pink ribbon. “My stories!”

“What?” Jeff scooped up two pieces of paper that had floated free when she’d pulled out the papers.

“My stories. All the things I wrote down, my dreams, my fairy tales. Oh, I thought they’d been burned up!”

Jeff read the paper. He put his hand over hers to silence her raptures. “Look at this, honey.”

It was a scrap of paper, hardly as big as Jeff’s hand. Scrawled on it as though with an unmanageable pen were the words, “Born to Jefferson Michael Dane and Jessica Hawes Dane, October 15th, Samuel Hawes Dane.”

“That’s today, isn’t it?” Edith asked.

“That’s right. And according to this,” he flourished another piece of paper, “today is also your real birthday.”

“Oh, I’ve always wanted to know that!” She put her hand on her abdomen again, in a different way. “Jeff, could it be ... ?”

Jeff met her eyes for a fleeting instant. “I don’t know what to think right now, Edith. I’d like to think that . . .”

“Oh!”

She lifted the papers high, afraid that the water coming from her body might soak them. They were precious, but she knew she wasn’t going to have a chance to look into the past right now. Not with the future coming any minute.

Jeff put the box on a shelf in the pantry while he was shut out of the bedroom. He tried to sit down but the sounds coming from behind the bedroom door seemed to make every chair red-hot. His father tried to make him drink some coffee.

“Calm down, son. It’s not like you haven’t been through this before.”

“I was just as nervous then, Dad. I don’t think it ever gets easier.”

Finally, a wonderful sound broke the tension. The sound of a baby crying.

Dr. Butler came out, rolling down his sleeves. “Ah, Dane. Mother and son doing splendidly. Strong woman that. Much stronger than she looks.”

“She’s all right? She’s really all right?”

“Of course, of course. Fine.”

“Did you say . . . ?” Jeff felt the blood rush to his head. “Son?”

“Yes, a fine, healthy boy. Loud too.”

Jeff wrung the doctor’s hand and dashed into the bedroom.

Sam looked at the doctor. “Can I ask you a question, Doc? How’d you know to come out here? Jeff didn’t go for you.”

“Funny thing about that, Mr. Mayor. I was thinking about bed when this woman knocks on my door. Don’t know who she was—and I thought I knew pretty much everybody in Richey. Anyway, she tells me to hightail it out to the Danes place ‘cause the baby’s coming. Good thing, too. That kid was in an all-fired hurry.”

Sam nodded. “Funny thing. A stranger stopped at our place too. She looked . . . familiar. I might have known her in Boston, but she looked kind of too young for that.” He shrugged. “Just one of those things, I guess. You want some coffee? Or something stronger?”

“Something stronger.”

‘Then you’ll have to come to my place, but don’t tell the voters. Edith doesn’t keep much in the house but Miss Minta’s strawberry cordial.”

Jeff knelt by the bed, gazing in wonder at the exhausted face on the white pillowcase. The small, red bundle in her arms gazed interestedly at nothing. “Did you see he has dark hair?” Edith whispered.

‘The girls are going to go crazy for him.” Jeff smoothed the damp auburn tendrils back from her forehead. “If it had been a girl I was going to call her Jessica Edith, after you. Strange, wasn’t it ... ?” he let the thought go unspoken.

“We don’t have to call him what was on that paper.”

“We’d talked about calling him Sam anyway.”

“But if you want . . .”

“No, Samuel Hawes it is. I think it’ll be a lucky name for him.”

“Very lucky.”

She was sleepy now, and happy. As though he knew that the tricky question of his name had been solved, little Sam whimpered and turned in search of her warmth. As Edith drifted off into sleep, she whispered, “All my dreams have come true. . . .”

“Mine too,” her loving husband replied, as he closed his eyes in a thankful prayer to the powers that be. “Mine too.”

Copyright © 1995 by Cynthia Bailey Pratt

Originally published by Jove Homespun (ISBN 0515116572)

Electronically published in 2012 by Belgrave House

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

No portion of this book may be reprinted in whole or in part, by printing, faxing, E-mail, copying electronically or by any other means without permission of the publisher. For more information, contact Belgrave House, 190 Belgrave Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94117-4228

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This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.