When the Clouds Roll By (9 page)

Mama set a plate of toast in the center of the table and settled into her chair. “Joseph, dear, could I prevail upon you to do without Annemarie at the factory today?”

“I suppose, if you need her at home.” Papa slathered blackberry jam across a piece of toast. “Things have slowed down quite a bit, what with Christmas right around the corner.”

Annemarie spooned up a bite of oatmeal. “Papa’s right. There’s nothing much to do in the office but a little bookkeeping and some filing, and I can easily finish it another day.” Although she’d intended to use the free time to glaze several of the ceramic pieces she’d recently fired. A tremor of guilt tickled the back of her neck, and she forced a compliant smile. “What do you have planned for today, Mama?”

“I was hoping to have the tree and decorations up by this weekend. Christmas is scarcely five days away, and I still have shopping and baking to do, and the choir concert rehearsal is tomorrow morning, and—”

“Now, Ida, don’t work yourself into a tizzy.” Papa patted her hand. “You do this every year, you know, and for all your fussing and fretting, Christmas manages to come just fine on its own.”

Mama gave an embarrassed chuckle. “You know me too well, Joseph Kendall. But admit it. You love the trappings of the season as much as anyone.”

“Speaking of shopping—” Annemarie finished the last bites of oatmeal and dabbed her mouth with the corner of her napkin. “I still have a few gifts to buy. Give me two hours, Mama, and I’ll hurry right home to be at your beck and call the rest of the day.”

“That would be lovely, dear-heart. While you’re out, I’ll get the lights and ornaments organized and plan our attack on the tree.”

Papa laughed. “Ida, Ida! You make decorating sound more like a battle than preparing for Jesus’ birth!”

Annemarie’s breakfast sank cold and heavy in the pit of her stomach. She pushed her chair back and stood. “I think we’ve had quite enough talk of war for a long time to come.”

Before her parents could respond with much more than sheepish smiles and understanding glances, she carried her bowl to the sink and strode out of the kitchen.

At the foot of the stairs she locked trembling fingers around the newel post and closed her eyes in prayer.
Dear Lord, help us. Help us all to heal from the wounds of war.

10

A
nnemarie stepped inside the Arlington Hotel to find
the lobby bustling with guest activity. Maneuvering between arriving and departing guests, she stepped to one end of the registration desk and signaled for the attention of a clerk. “Pardon me, but is Thomas Ballard available?”

“In his office, I believe.” The thin-lipped desk clerk nodded toward a doorway before returning his attention to an elderly gentleman demanding to pay his bill so he could catch a train.

Tucking her gloves into her coat pocket, Annemarie started toward Thomas’s office. She found the door standing ajar and peeked inside. “Good morning, Thomas. May I trouble you for a moment?”

“Annemarie! Come right in. I always have time for you.” Thomas jumped up from behind his desk to clear a stack of papers off a chair. “Here, have a seat.”

“I won’t keep you. I just wondered . . .” She chewed her lip. Why did she always feel so awkward about asking if any of her ceramics had sold?

Thomas held up one finger. “I think I have what you came for right here.” He rifled through his desk drawer, tossing aside pens and scraps of paper and rubber bands and all sorts of paraphernalia. Finally, from the back of the drawer, he retrieved a bulky envelope. With a triumphant grin he passed it across the desk to Annemarie. “I would have said something last night, but it was clear you had other things on your mind, and the next thing I knew, you’d gone home.”

She offered a sad smile of understanding as she took the envelope. The weight of it stunned her. “This is all for me?”

“The hotel’s percentage has already been deducted, and the rest is yours.” Thomas came around and perched on the corner of his desk. “Don’t tell me you didn’t notice on your way through the lobby. As of an hour ago, every last one of your ceramic pieces has sold.”

Numb with disbelief, hands shaking, Annemarie folded back the envelope flap. Inside, a stack of crisp bills strained at the seams. She looked up at Thomas to see a smile splitting his face.

“We could have sold even more if we’d had the inventory. I took the liberty of accepting a couple of special orders from some big spenders who’ll be back in town after the first of the year.” Thomas swiveled to reach for a notepad near his telephone. He tore off the top two sheets and handed them to Annemarie. “Think you can handle these?”

She studied the descriptions. One requested a soup tureen with lid and four matching bowls. The other asked for a pair of oversized vases. Both specified her unique “Ouachita sunrise” glaze. Hefting the envelope in one hand, the orders in the other, Annemarie laughed out loud. “This is . . . this is amazing!”

“Thought you might be pleased. I felt mighty lucky I set aside the pink and gold candy dish for Mother’s Christmas gift before someone else snatched it up.”

“Oh, Thomas, you didn’t pay for it, did you?”

“Of course I did.”

Annemarie started to count out the price she’d set for the candy dish. “I can’t take your money, not after all you’ve done to put my work on display and handle the sales.”

“Business is business. A craftsman—crafts
woman
—deserves to be paid for her work.”

“I know, but you’re—” She started to say,
you’re practically family
, but considering how things stood between her and Gilbert, perhaps it would never be true. The elation she’d felt moments ago vanished like wood smoke in a gust of winter wind.

Before despair smothered the last remnants of her exhilaration, she tucked the money and pottery orders into her handbag and stood to give Thomas a grateful hug. “You are a dear, dear friend, and I can never thank you enough.”

“No thanks necessary.” A blush tingeing his cheeks, Thomas nudged her toward the door. “Now get out of here and go make some more pottery. The display case out front looks pretty stupid sitting there empty, and we sure don’t want those Ouachita folks bringing in their wares to fill your space.”

“I can have a few more pieces ready by next week.” Annemarie patted her bulging handbag, tempted to rush straight to the factory and show Papa before she spent one cent of the money on Christmas gifts. Maybe at last he’d be convinced there was a viable market for ceramic artistry.

Halfway across the lobby, Annemarie skidded to a halt. A tall, blond man in a military overcoat stood before the empty display case and looked for all the world like a child who’d just found coal in his stocking on Christmas morning.

She edged closer. “Samuel?”

He started and swung around to face her, his boyish grin bringing a sparkle to his eyes. Then he seemed to catch himself, hemming and hawing and shuffling his feet. “I, uh, hoped to purchase one of your pieces as a gift for my mother. I see they’re all gone.”

“I just discovered that, myself. I hadn’t taken time to stop in recently and had no idea they were selling so well.” She glanced at the empty shelves and released a sigh. “Thomas said he meant to tell me last night, but . . .”

Samuel’s smile brightened again. “You’ll be glad to know Gilbert’s a bit better this morning. I sat with him while he had breakfast.”

Heart lifting, Annemarie pressed a hand to her chest. “Have they removed the restraints?”

“For now.” Samuel’s gaze skittered toward the floor for a brief moment. “He’s still heavily medicated but lucid enough to realize what happened, and he’s quite remorseful about hurting the young nurse.”

Annemarie strode toward the front windows, her thoughts up the mountainside at the massive Swiss chalet–style hospital. “If only he’d allow me to visit.”

Samuel came up beside her and hooked her arm through his. “Walk with me back to the hospital. Somehow, some way, I’ll convince him to see you. It’ll do you both good.”

“
I’m sorry, Lieutenant Ballard, but I cannot authorize an increase in your morphine dosage.” The doctor pressed his lips together in a grim frown. “In all honesty we should be weaning you off the drug, but first we have get you through this next round of surgery.”

Gilbert jammed his right fist into the mattress. A thousand curses exploded in his brain, but if he gave vent to them—or worse, flattened the stingy doctor’s bulbous nose—a half-dozen orderlies would materialize out of the woodwork and strap Gilbert to the bed again. By sheer force of will, he held his tongue, instead drawing several deep, slow breaths until he sensed control returning. “When will you do the surgery?”

“No rush. I understand your family lives right here in Hot Springs. I can write you a pass to spend Christmas at home, and we’ll do the surgery on . . .” The doctor consulted his notes, then looked up with a patronizing smile. “How’s the twenty-seventh sound?”

“Fine, I guess.” Gilbert ran his tongue across dry lips. “But I’d just as soon stay here over Christmas.”

The doctor’s eyebrows shot up. “Whatever for? Considering you’re in tolerable health otherwise, I can’t imagine anything more depressing.”

Gilbert could. And did. His mother’s fawning attention. Thomas’s grating good nature.

Annemarie’s pitying gaze.

Wetness slid down his left cheek, escaping from the eye that still occasionally blurred and watered. He swiped at his face with the back of his good hand and tried to keep his breathing steady, though his chest ached from the effort.

“Look, son,” the doctor began in a condescending tone, “I’ve been a military surgeon for longer than you’ve been alive. War is hell, to quote the late General Sherman, and you’ve just lived through it. Now it’s time to quit feeling sorry for yourself and start thanking the Lord above for what you
do
have instead of mourning what you don’t.”

With a final shake of his head, the doctor marched away.

Gilbert squeezed his eyes shut.
Curse this screaming headache!
“I am not a coward, not a coward, do you hear!”

“I hear.” Samuel approached the bedside, a concerned smile turning up one corner of his mouth. “And so does half the city of Hot Springs by now. What was that all about?”

Embarrassment burned Gilbert’s face. He glanced at the patients on either side of him, who quickly averted their stares. “He doesn’t understand. If he’d spent even one day in a field hospital—”

Samuel slid his gaze to the man in the white coat examining a patient at the far end of the ward. “Did your
doctor
call you a coward?”

“Not in so many words.” Locking his fingers around Samuel’s wrist, Gilbert lowered his voice to a rasping whisper. “This isn’t self-pity, Sam. It isn’t cowardice or weakness. I led my platoon through some of the worst fighting along the Marne, and I never flinched, not once.”

“Of course, you didn’t.” Samuel lowered himself into a chair.

“I just—” His stupid left eye started leaking again, and this time he couldn’t restrain the muttered curse.

Samuel passed him a handkerchief. “Take it easy, Gil, and tell me what the doctor said.”

Dabbing the corner of his eye, Gilbert heaved a frustrated groan. “He wanted to talk about my surgery. He won’t do it until after Christmas.”

“You sound disappointed. Weren’t you just telling me yesterday he shouldn’t waste his time?”

“Just shut up, will you?” Teeth clenched, Gilbert fought to keep from insulting his friend with an even stronger spate of expletives.

“I don’t think you mean that, seeing as how I’m one of the scant few willing to put up with your guff.” Samuel drew his chair closer and folded his arms along the edge of Gilbert’s mattress. “So . . . this is all because your doctor gave you a surgery date?”

Gilbert rubbed his mangled left arm. Sometimes it burned like the stabs of a thousand needles. “He’s giving me a pass to spend Christmas at home.”

“I see.” Samuel’s expression said just the opposite.

“I can’t do it, Sam. You know why, and it has nothing to do with being a coward.”

“No, but I do think you’re afraid of something—and not just your mother’s hovering or your brother’s admiration.” Samuel sat back and crossed his arms. “I think it’s because you know you couldn’t avoid seeing Annemarie.”

The mere mention of her name shot waves of agony through Gilbert’s chest. He let Samuel’s words hang in the air while a nurse stopped at the foot of the bed to check his chart. Not the young redhead this time—he hadn’t seen her since yesterday’s fiasco—but a wizened hag who looked ancient enough to have served in the Civil War. She made a
tsk-tsk
sound, tapped a pen against her yellowed teeth, and moved on.

Apparently he’d have to wait awhile longer for his next pain injection.

“Gil?”

“
What
?” As soon as the snappish word left his lips, he wanted to snatch it back.

Samuel filled a glass from the water pitcher on the bedside stand and offered it to Gilbert. He took several swallows, relishing the coolness sliding down his throat. Small comfort, but he’d have to take it where he could find it. Memories gnawed at him—craving even a small sip of water as he drifted in and out of consciousness in an artillery-scalded crater, his mouth tasting like the dirt that half-buried him, his own blood staining the ground.

When his hand started to tremble, he thrust the glass at Samuel before he dropped it. His left ear throbbed in time with his pulsing heart. Any moment now, the top of his skull would rip away.
Dear God in heaven, help me!

“Take it easy, Gil. Take it easy.” A cool hand eased Gilbert’s tangle of hair off his forehead. A soft chuckle sounded next to his good ear. “Remind me to make an appointment for you with the hospital barber. You’re long overdue for a haircut.”

The friendly chiding helped Gilbert refocus. Shallow breaths gradually deepened. The black mists retreated. “Guess if I’m going home for Christmas, I should at least look presentable, huh?”

“That would be a start.” Relief flickered behind Samuel’s eyes. “You don’t need me to tell you how blessed you are to have so many people who care about you. Let them love you, Gil. That’s all they want to do.”

“I’m not sure I can bear up under such love.”

“You can, Gil. God will give you the strength if you ask Him.” Samuel cleared his throat and sat forward. “In fact, someone who loves you more than life itself is waiting right now to see you.”

Gilbert’s stomach convulsed. “No. Tell her—”

A vision in forest green plaid moved into his line of sight, and his words froze on his lips.

“Tell me yourself, Gilbert Ballard.”

Annemarie!
Heaven help him, she was beautiful. While Gilbert floundered for words, fumbled through his muddled brain for some logical argument to send her away again, Samuel rose and offered her his chair.

She sat primly, hands folded in her lap, and pierced him with a determined glare. “But it’ll do you no good, because nothing short of a stampede of wild mustangs will budge me from this spot. And even then, I’d wrap my arms around you and hold on tight to save us both.”

Gilbert shifted his gaze to Samuel. He tried to voice a plea for help—for understanding—but Samuel’s position remained all too clear.

“I’ll check in on you later, Gil.” Sam winked. “Enjoy your visitor.”