The Mountain Midwife (33 page)

She thought of Mary Kate scooping out pumpkins. “Lucy Belle makes the best pumpkin pie on the Ridge anyway.”

“Order me a couple for Christmas.” Daddy patted his almost flat stomach. “Right now I need to get to bed and you should too. You look tired.”

“I feel tired, and I have patients in the morning.”

They said good night, prayed together over the cyber connection, and signed off.

Ashley wanted to think more about what they said to her and the implications for her future, but she was too worn out. Barely able to put one foot in front of the other, she made sure all the doors and windows were locked, then climbed the steps to her room. Two cats had already taken up residency on her bed. After changing into warm pajamas, she shoved the felines over and climbed into the sheets they had warmed. Two more cats joined her. She said good night to each of them and fell asleep wondering if this was her future—climbing into bed with forty pounds of cats and saying
good night to them. If she wasn’t careful, she would start reading them stories before bed instead of reading stories to real children. She simply was not on a track for having children, just catching those of others.

When she went to med school, she wouldn’t be catching any babies except when she reached the obstetrics rotation.

She went to sleep on that idea and woke with a sense of urgency and concern that she had slept for eight hours straight through. Even the cats had abandoned her.

She grabbed for her phone, felt like crying when the screen showed nothing but the usual status menu of time, Wi-Fi connection, cell service, and so on. Of course Hunter wouldn’t have contacted her. He didn’t have any service in the holler where his momma lived.

Could she maybe drive over there after she saw her patients?

No, no, no. If he wanted her help, he would have asked. She had no right to barge in uninvited.

She showered, dressed in her usual jeans, sweatshirt, and ballet flats, then went downstairs to make coffee and feed the cats. Not until she stood at the kitchen window did she realize that snow had come over the Ridge. Not much of it. A mere dusting of white layered the grass and shrubbery and clung to tree branches. With sunshine peeking between gaps in the mountains, the snow would be gone within the hour. For now, though, it looked clean and pure and fresh, like an empty page ready to write a new day.

“Write on my heart, Lord, what you want from me.”

She poured herself a cup of coffee and set about preparing for her day.

The two new patients came first. They were sisters expecting, as best they could calculate, within a couple of weeks of one
another. One was a stay-at-home mom with three kids already. The other managed a women’s clothing store in Bristol.

“This is our busiest time of year,” she confided, “and I am sooo tired. What can I do about it?”

“Sleep as much as you can manage. Drink lots of water, and eat right.” Ashley eyed the young woman’s twenty or thirty excess pounds. “Lots of fruit and vegetables and lean protein.”

“But not fish,” her sister said. “Fish is bad ’cause of the mercury.”

“That’s always been the understanding,” Ashley affirmed. “Some studies now say the benefits of fish outweigh the risks of mercury, but the choice is up to you.”

“I only like fish fried.” The sisters made the proclamation practically in unison.

“Then let’s skip fish.” Ashley gave the women brochures on nutrition she and Momma had made up years earlier, gave them bottles of vitamins, and told them to come back in two weeks. “And feel free to e-mail or call anytime you have questions or concerns.”

Clutching their information, the sisters departed, talking and laughing and looking joyous in the shimmering sunlight. One’s husband was a long-haul trucker, and the other one wasn’t married. Motherhood couldn’t be easy for either of them, yet anticipation of new life made them both happy.

And Ashley was jealous, just plain, embarrassingly jealous.

Ashamed of such a reaction to two new patients, Ashley greeted Stephanie with a hug and overenthusiastic expressions of how great she looked.

“I can’t believe you can still walk around in heels and look so fashionable in maternity clothes.”

Stephanie sank onto the exam bed. “I feel like I’m carrying around Shamu.” She patted her belly. “Every step feels like I’m
running a marathon. And my shoes only fit because I bought some a half size up.”

Stephanie’s face lit up. “But we have the nursery all ready, thanks to my adorable husband, and I can stop working as of next Wednesday.”

“None too soon.”

Ashley examined Stephanie, checking the baby’s position, listening to the baby’s heartbeat. Stephanie’s pulse and blood pressure were perfect. She hadn’t gained an ounce more than she should have. Her ankles weren’t even swollen.

“This just shouldn’t be so for a woman who works too much, especially this late into your pregnancy. But I could use you for a model patient.”

“What can I say? I have a great midwife and a supportive husband.” Stephanie slipped her feet back into her Manolo Blahniks and smiled with complete serenity. “I am so blessed.”

“Do you have names picked out?” Ashley didn’t want to let Stephanie go for some reason.

Stephanie emitted an explosive, “Ha. We have too many names picked out. I want Isabelle, if it’s a girl, and Colin wants Susan. No one names their daughter Susan anymore, but it’s his mother’s name, so he’ll probably get his way.”

“And if it’s a boy?” Ashley made notes on Stephanie’s chart.

“We have about five names picked there. Fortunately, we like them all, both of us.” Stephanie stood and drew on her coat. “I’ll see you next week.”

She left, making a wide berth around Mary Kate, who was just getting out of her car, as though she smelled bad. Mary Kate didn’t. She just looked poor, her car a far cry from Stephanie’s Lexus.

Before Mary Kate came in, Ashley glanced at her phone. She had
it on Mute, so she hadn’t heard if any messages had come through while she was with her patients. She had two, one from Jase saying they still had not located either the black F-150 or Racey Jean Davis. The other was from Hunter, impersonal and informative.

S
TAYING HERE FOR A FEW DAYS
. M
AKING ARRANGEMENTS FOR HER CARE
. T
HX FOR HELP
.

L
ET ME KNOW WHAT
I
CAN DO TO HELP
, Ashley responded in kind.

She hit Send just as Mary Kate reached the door. The sight of her face drove thoughts of Hunter out of Ashley’s head.

“What’s wrong?” She drew the younger woman into the house with an arm around her shoulders—her heaving shoulders. “What’s happened?”

“Boyd.” Mary Kate sobbed into Ashley’s shoulder. “They took him away from me.”

C
HAPTER
25

H
UNTER DROVE WITH
care through snow that would have been nothing to blink at if not for the winding twists of even the state road. He kept his speed down and distance between himself and any vehicles he encountered, mostly tractor-trailers flying by as though they were racing on a sunny speedway. Remembering Ashley’s adage with a smile, he let the trucks go ahead of him going downhill and got ahead of them going up. Twice he passed the entrance to Sheila Brooks’s house—if it could be called a house. Finally, he managed to find the narrow opening between the trees and pulled into the drive.

The night was quiet, eerily so. Not even the wind blew now that the snow had begun. The snow itself fell in silent puffs, building up on the graveled driveway and the roof of the ramshackle home. Not even the dogs barked off in the woods.

He caught the scent of wood smoke, so at least a fire was burning, and light from the TV shone through the sheer curtains
over the front window. Grocery bags in one hand and duffel bag in the other, Hunter walked to the house and knocked on the door.

“Jeremiah, that you?” the smoked gravel voice called.

“No ma’am, it’s—” He took a deep breath to get out the name he had despised all his life. “It’s Zachariah.”

No response came, but a few moments later, just as Hunter was about to knock again, the door opened. Sheila stared at him, eyes wide. “Didn’t think you’d be coming back.”

“You’re my mother. I couldn’t abandon you.” He stepped over the threshold.

Sheila still held the door, her face working. “Even though I abandoned you?”

“You had good reasons.”

Far better reasons than why the McDermotts had lied to him.

“I’m just glad I learned about you.”

Before it was too late.

Eyes watering, Sheila closed the door behind him and shot the dead bolt. “Whatcha got there?”

“Some food. I thought you might want something hot like soup on a night like this.”

She cast a glance at the duffel. “I mean that.”

“I’m going to stay with you for a while.” He offered her a sheepish smile. “Unless you don’t want me to.”

She shrugged. “Suit yourself.” Then she tottered back to her chair and sank onto the worn cushion.

She was blinking hard, but a few tears managed to escape down her cheeks. Hunter hesitated a moment, torn betweeen going to her and leaving her alone. In the end, he decided her pride would want him to leave her alone.

“I’ll just take this stuff into the kitchen.” He hefted the grocery bags and crossed to the trailer section.

Ashley had been right. Cupboards and refrigerator were nearly empty. Hunter put things away, then set about finding pans for heating soup. He made himself coffee and fixed his mother a cup of tea. While those heated and brewed, he peeked down the hallway. Yes, two bedrooms. One was obviously Sheila’s. The other was generic—a neatly made bed, a dresser clear of anything on top of it, a closet empty of all but a battered pair of winter boots. The dresser contained the remnants of a man’s clothes—an unmatched sock, a clean but stained T-shirt, a wool sweater in a virulent shade of green. Hunter set his duffel on the dresser, then returned to the kitchen to serve the food.

A cookie sheet served as a tray, and he took bowls and cups into the living room. The news was on the TV, mostly talking about the snow moving east by morning, accumulation only enough to be troublesome, maybe six to eight inches. Sheila sat wrapped in her afghan, her hands folded on her lap. She glanced up at him and half smiled. “Virginia McDermott raised you right, I see.”

“I learned to fend for myself a long time ago.” He set the tray on her knees. “It’s just canned soup. I’m not much of a cook.”

The soup at Ashley’s had been homemade, a memory that set up a longing inside him.

“But it should nourish you.”

She was far too thin.

“I’ll build up the fire again.”

“You’re going to join me?” Her tone held hope and command.

“I am.” Hunter added logs to the fire, then took his own bowl to a seat on the sofa.

“And stay?” she asked, crumbling saltines into her soup.

“And stay.”

“How long?”

“I can leave tomorrow if you like.”

“But when do you like?”

“I’d like to stay as long as I can. As long as I’m needed.”

Justin wasn’t happy about going to Arizona Thanksgiving week, but he was willing under the circumstances. “You’ll get bored here,” Sheila said.

“I have books. I can feed your chickens. I’ll find a way to entertain myself.”

And so he did. Sheila slept a great deal, sometimes in her chair, sometimes in her room. She ate little, half a cup of soup, a quarter cup of oatmeal, a glass of milk. She didn’t talk much, and, too often, pain etched lines in her face that looked like fissures. She spoke little, but occasionally, Hunter caught her looking at him with a half smile and softness to her eyes.

That look warmed his heart. He was making her happy. He wasn’t sure he had ever made anyone truly happy.

He wished he had made Ashley happy. Their last conversation had held contention he never intended yet knew he had perpetrated. His excuse that one couldn’t shake off over thirty years of one way of thinking and life experience in so short a time. He had grown up with all sorts of paradigms that were wrong and not even known that they were. Normal, he supposed, but not something he liked about himself.

During the next few days, he had a great deal of time to think about how to go forward with Sheila Brooks, his mother, with his father, with the rest of his family—with Ashley. He wanted to go forward with Ashley. On a long walk in the snowy woods, stunned by the beauty and isolation of the area, he thought about Ashley a
great deal. She never truly left his mind, and alone with God and nature, he took the time to examine how he felt about her.

He didn’t know her enough to think he loved her, and he knew that the potential, the near certainty that he would love her, was obvious. Yet she had a future plan that wasn’t compatible with his life. He lived in northern Virginia and she would be in Richmond, if she didn’t get into a DC med school. Besides that, med school was difficult, time-consuming. It wasn’t a time to start a relationship or build one up. And they wouldn’t have this next year with her life down there in the mountains and his up in the city. A future between them was impossible.