The Midwife's Dilemma (19 page)

She watched with blurred vision as the carriages headed out of town. Today was a life-altering day for her daughter, who had set aside her place as a child and a daughter to assume the adult role of a wife, but it was also a day that marked a significant change in Martha's life. Now that both of her children were grown and married, her primary role as a mother was basically finished.

When Fern and Ivy took a place on either side of her, she let out a long breath. She did not argue when they urged her
to go back to the confectionery with them, leaving Rosalind behind to take charge of recruiting others to help clear away the remnants of the celebration in the yard.

As the two sisters bantered back and forth about how lovely the day had been, Martha barely heard them because she was too caught up in the thought that now that the rest of her family was gone, she would finally have time to make one of the most important decisions of her life.

“Finally, home is within view,” Fern announced.

With no traffic on West Main Street, they crossed right away, quickly rounded the far end of the confectionery, and turned down the alley. As they passed the side window, Ivy took Martha's arm. “We haven't seen you for more than a few moments after the ceremony, and I'd surely love for the three of us to be able to sit a spell and chat.”

“You mean gossip, which will have to wait if you're absolutely determined to lower yourself to the same level as Anne Sweet,” Fern noted with a huff and glared at her sister. “Honestly, Ivy, can't you see that Martha is thoroughly exhausted? She needs a good nap, not a gossip session.”

“I'd love to have your company and have a cup of tea with both of you,” Martha offered, “but as far as gossiping . . .” Embarrassed, she paused to stifle a yawn. Whether she was tired from lack of sleep or overwork or simply a case of experiencing too many emotions today, the thought of a nap was tempting indeed, but she favored some time with her friends to savor the excitement of the day a bit more.

“Fern's right,” Ivy suggested when they reached the back door. “I'll fix a cup of tea for you and bring it up to your room. We'll have plenty of time to chat together later. It'll be just like old times,” she said as she opened the door and stepped back to let Martha and Fern enter before her.

“Old times,” Martha repeated. She did not want to argue with Ivy, yet she was quite certain the days ahead would be anything but. With Dr. McMillan gone, she could look forward to long days of work that would often extend into all hours of the night, and on less busy days she would be consumed by her search for her replacement and the question of how she would make use of the gifts she had received from Aunt Hilda and her children. When she would finally crawl into her bed at night, however, she had little expectation she would get any solid sleep.

Not until she resolved her dilemma and decided exactly what she would tell Thomas when he returned. And in the end, it all boiled down to which two simple words she would say. “I do” or “I won't.”

Those words were not really so simple to say at all, were they?

T
he cottage had needed a good scrubbing after a family with two young children had called it home. It had taken Martha nearly a week to put a shine on the cottage again, but she had finally finished today.

She took one last look around the sitting room before she secured the front door. As she retraced her steps and returned to the kitchen, she tucked the new memories she had created here with her own family, most especially her precious granddaughters, right next to her lifelong memories of Aunt Hilda.

Martha paused for a moment to arch her back and eased away an annoying kink. She wished she could chase away the pain and worry in her heart as easily.

With Thomas's return drawing ever nearer, she was no closer to knowing what she was going to tell him than she had been before he left. In addition to working here at the cottage and helping occasionally with household tasks at the confectionery, she had been called out to duty for one ailment or another nearly
every day for one of her patients or Dr. McMillan's. She'd simply not had enough time to resolve all the uncertainties in her life.

More determined than ever to end her days as a midwife, however, she had used the one totally free day she'd had yesterday to borrow a mare from Thomas's stable. After riding out of town to see the final two women on her list of likely replacements, she returned to Trinity in failure—not that she could argue with either of the two women. Daisy Pyne's elderly parents had moved in and required too much care for her to leave them, and Esther Mitchell simply said she had absolutely no interest in becoming a midwife, in part because of her husband's disapproval.

Disheartened, Martha resolved it was time to decide whether or not she should marry Thomas. Right now and right here.

She glanced over at the rocking chairs in front of the hearth and shook her head. No, not here. The cottage was definitely not the place she should make her final decision about whether she would marry him or not—not with images of what it might be like to live with him here as his wife.

But she knew exactly where she had to go.

She walked out of the cottage and locked the back door, then took her time as she walked along the dirt path that led through the woods. She was grateful for the shade that protected her from the hot, late-July sun.

She noticed some of the mountain laurel lining the path on either side of her was still in full flower, the best time to make remedies from the evergreen. Stooping down, she put on gloves and stripped some leaves from their crooked stems in order to dry them. Others she would pound into a powder she could use to reduce fevers. She took even more to bake in lard to make a different remedy and made a carryall with her apron to cradle her fragile collection.

She resumed her journey, but decided to stop and stoop down one more time to take a few pale pink blossoms from another mountain laurel.

“I like to pick flowers. Can I help you pick some?”

Startled, Martha nearly let go of her apron but caught herself just in time. When she looked up, she found Cassie standing just a few feet away. “Goodness, child! I didn't even hear you coming down the path.”

Cassie giggled. “That's because I walk quiet, like a little deer. At least that's what Mr. Fancy says. He's around here somewhere, but you don't need to worry. He'll walk along out there and watch over us on our way home,” she offered, looking deep into the woods.

Martha heard just the hint of a man's chuckle coming from the woods and shook her head. She was curious about what Cassie was doing here. “Did you come all this way to find me?”

“Mama asked me to fetch you back. Miss Fern wants everyone home for supper on time tonight.”

“It's a good thing she sent you. I haven't given a thought to the time,” Martha admitted as a flush of guilt warmed her cheeks and reminded her she had been late for the past two days.

“That's okay. Mama says you've been working real, real hard.”

“Too hard, I fear,” Martha said, then turned and started them both walking back home again. She never did see Fancy, but she heard him in the woods as they made their way along the path and caught just a flash of the sun when it hit one of his earrings, just as they turned down the alley leading to the back door of the confectionery.

Although a host of tantalizing aromas greeted their arrival, Martha found the kitchen abandoned. Other than a dozen skyberry tarts cooling on the table, there wasn't a single pot on the cookstove or a place set to eat, and she looked to Cassie for
an explanation. “Would you happen to know where everyone might be?”

“They're waiting for us in the yard, right behind the place where they're building the new church.”

Martha cocked a brow. “Of all places, why are they waiting for us there, especially since Fern is so worried about having supper on time?”

“Because we're not having a regular supper. We're having a picnic supper tonight! Won't you please, please hurry and wash up? I want to get to the picnic,” Cassie replied, a grin teasing her lips and delight lighting her eyes.

Martha nearly groaned but managed to return half a smile. She'd had every intention of having a quick supper and hanging up some of the mountain laurel leaves in her room to dry before calling it a day, although baking the rest of the leaves in the oven would wait until tomorrow.

Feeling a bit grumpy, she deposited her bounty on top of the table. “Maybe you can put these flowers into some water so they don't wilt. Just don't touch anything else, especially the leaves,” she cautioned and headed for the staircase. She wondered if she should take a good dose of belladonna to forestall the new aches and pains in her back that she knew would be coming after sitting on hard ground instead of a chair to eat her supper, but she decided to wait until right before she went to bed.

Yet less than half an hour later, she was sitting on something worse—the front seat of a farm wagon. With her travel bag, birthing stool, and bag of simples bouncing around in the back, she was traveling some thirty miles north with Kenneth Rhoads to deliver his wife of their fourth child.

Unaware that Liza Rhoads was even pregnant in the first place, she could not argue the point that calling for a midwife a few days before the woman expected to deliver was a good
idea, especially when there was such a long distance to travel. She could, however, take argument with her back, which did not wait for more than a few miles before it protested every bump in the unpaved road with spasms that nearly took her breath away.

Gritting her teeth, she was grateful that she was able to salvage one element of the picnic supper she had left behind. After making certain that Mr. Rhoads had no interest in sharing her treat, she nibbled at one of the three skyberry tarts she had packed for herself. And she was just brassbound enough to finish the other two, despite the fact that she knew very well that sweets were no substitute for the belladonna she had forgotten to take for her aching back before she left.

Indeed, if she had her way, a spoon of honey and a piece of a sugarloaf would be the only remedies anyone would ever need to cure their ailments, but they weren't.

Pity that.

Three days after Martha arrived, baby Rhoads had yet to decide it was time to enter this world. She did not expect that would happen for another couple of days, although she did hope the rain that had pelted the area since she arrived would stop.

She had expected to be living temporarily with a typical homesteading family in an isolated cabin on an ordinary plot of farmland in the wilderness, but she had not been to the Rhoads homestead for more than three years. What she did find when she arrived was astounding.

Kenneth Rhoads's cabin was now one of five that made up a family compound where he and his three brothers, as well as their respective families, lived in separate households in cabins arranged closely together in a pattern that resembled the
crescent of a waning moon. They worked the land together, worked a common kitchen garden together, shared the fruits of their collective labor, and served God together as one very large extended family.

With each short break in the rain, adults and children alike were able to escape from one cabin to play or work in another, and the three sisters-in-law made sure the very pregnant Liza had an hour or two each afternoon to rest by taking in her children. Martha also had the opportunity to visit with each of the four families while waiting for Liza's labor to begin. She also took turns sharing her meals with each family.

But at the end of the day, instead of sleeping on a cot in a crowded household, she retired to a fifth cabin, located at the western end of the crescent next to Kenneth and Liza. Come fall, the cabin he originally built when he first arrived would become home for Mr. Rhoads's younger sister, who was expected to arrive with her husband and only child. One bedroom had been set up as a birthing room, and Martha had been given the other room, an oasis that offered her another surprise: privacy.

Lying in bed for the past two nights, Martha had listened to the rain tap a constant, but peaceful, rhythm on the roof above her. Drop after drop, the rain shifted time and time again from a sprinkle to a soaking downpour, creating nature's hymns to accompany her prayers.

Tonight when Martha knelt down by her bed, she was determined to decide how she would spend the rest of her days. She prayed silently but fervently, worshiping God, praising Him, and asking Him to guide her to make the right decision. When she finished, she crawled into bed, curled on her side, and folded her hands beneath her cheek before weighing her options.

“Should I marry Thomas when he returns or not? I suppose
the answer depends on two very different things. What do I really want and what can I have?” she whispered.

What
did
she want?

First, a home of her own. Thanks to her children's generous gift, she could have that home, with or without Thomas, although she did not take the time to consider how different her home would be if she lived there with Thomas or alone.

She also wanted the companionship and support of a loving spouse that she thought she had lost forever when John died. She could only have that if she married Thomas. He was a most unexpected gift, one that would satisfy longings buried so deep in her heart that they had only recently resurfaced.

She sighed and snuggled deeper under the covers. There were other things she desperately wanted, too. Wearied by her work as a midwife, she wanted a different life, a respite from nonstop work that would allow her to choose how she would spend her days.

She wanted the freedom to travel to Boston to visit Oliver and his family or to spend time here in Trinity with Victoria and the grandchildren she hoped would come in time. Now that she had the funds to do all that, the only thing holding her back was the fact that she had yet to find a woman willing to replace her as midwife, and she feared she would not find her anytime soon.

She lay very still and let all of these thoughts simmer together in her mind as her longing for Thomas stirred her emotions.

Yet no matter how very deeply and surely she wanted to marry him, doubt gave her pause. He had promised her that if she married him when he returned, he would be patient and supportive until her duties as a midwife were over.

For the first time since he had renewed that promise and presented her with a new proposal, she knew that the questions
she had about his ability to keep that promise were the crux of her dilemma and the reason that she had not been able to make a decision before now.

She knew he meant to keep that promise, but would he? Truly,
could
he? Not very likely, if she considered that he had originally promised to be patient and wait to marry her until she had found someone, only to prove himself otherwise within days. How many times had he asked her since then to marry him, often twice in the same day, so they could go to New York together as husband and wife? Three or four? Or more?

Troubled, she wrapped her arms around her waist to consider what might happen if she did marry him when he returned. What if it turned out that he could not be as patient as he had promised to be? What if he grew so frustrated when their lives together were constantly interrupted when she was summoned away that he eventually lost his patience and insisted that she give up her work as a midwife, even before she had a replacement? What would he do if she refused? Would he try to use his authority over her as her husband to force her to stop? Would she let him?

Her eyes welled with tears. She loved him with all her heart and trusted that when he had made this promise to her, he had every intention of keeping it. As often as she had been frustrated by the fact that he knew her well, to the point that he could almost read her thoughts, she realized that after twenty-five years, she knew him well, too.

Well enough to know, in her heart of hearts, that even though he meant to keep his promise to be patient as she continued her work as a midwife, he would resent all the time they would spend apart. Eventually, his resentment would build, and her disappointment in him would grow to the point that the love they had for each other would slowly but surely be destroyed, along with their marriage.