The Mountain Midwife (18 page)

“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.

C
HAPTER
13

A
SHLEY
’
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, and 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.”

“You’re not boring me.”

“Thank you.” Her cheeks turned pink. “Feel free to go to the library in town and look us up. Several people have written local histories.” She returned the picture to the living room, then came back to stand in the doorway. “Can I get you something to eat or more to drink? I have food left over from lunch today.”

“No, thank you. I’ve eaten.” He stood beside the glassed-in books, wanting to simply stay and talk, thinking asking her if they could just get going was rude.

As if she read his mind, she glanced at an oversize watch strapped to her left wrist. “Did you bring those directions with you?”

“I did.” Relieved that he could do something proactive, he removed the paper with the directions from his coat pocket and unfolded it on top of the desk.

Ashley crossed the room to stand beside him and read them. Her hair smelled sweet yet tangy, like lemons and spring flowers. He breathed deeply and wished he hadn’t. The scent set up a longing inside him he couldn’t explain, something about the memory of a time when he felt secure and sure of where he had come from and where he was going.

He stepped away under the pretext of scanning the bookshelves. “Do you have an atlas of this area?” As he spoke, he spotted one behind the desk and rounded it to bring the book down. “I don’t know how those directions and a map of the area coincide, but perhaps it will help.”

“I think so.” She took the book from him, her hand warm against his for a moment.

She spread the atlas open to a page with crisscrossing roads and rivers, mountains and valleys in colorful display. Glancing from directions to map, she traced her finger along a circuitous route that would go up and down and loop-de-loop enough to make the
most ardent roller-coaster devotee happy. The more she followed the course, the grimmer her mouth grew.

“Bad news?” Hunter asked.

“Not bad, as in possible for us to reach, but it will take a while.” She glanced toward the window.

Though no rain fell, the sky had grown overcast in the past half hour.

“More rain?” Hunter asked.

“Not necessarily. We get a lot of gray skies here. Clouds get trapped between the mountains. Mostly they amount to nothing, but I’m concerned about how dark things can get under the trees even without their leaves, and down in the hollers.” She glanced at her watch again. “Thing is, if we’re going to go up here”—she tapped on the map a ways north of their current location—“then we need to leave in the morning or risk being out there late at night.”

“Not recommended?”

“Much of that land is national parkland. You won’t find a lot of people around and probably no cell service. If there’s a problem, you’re kinda on your own.”

Hunter opened his mouth to say he had been in similar situations, then said nothing of the sort. He hadn’t been. He was always with a crew of men. This woman, however, probably had been in that remote area on her own. What courage, what dedication to her job that took.

“It’s waited this long, another day or two won’t matter.” Disappointment accompanied his words. He had nothing to look forward to but an empty hotel room or northern Virginia and an empty condo.