You what?” Christy cried.
“I know, I know.” The doctor held up his hands. “I can’t believe I did it, either. But if you knew James, Christy, you’d understand. We were rivals over everything. We always came in first and second on exams. One week it would be James, the next week, me. We were even rivals for the same girls.”
“Oh?” Christy asked with a cool smile. “And who usually won that little competition?”
The doctor jumped from his chair and began pacing the length of the wooden porch. “I don’t blame you for being annoyed. It was stupid. Not like me at all, actually.” He paused. “I love Cutter Gap. I chose to be here. I didn’t want the fancy practice and the other fancy things.”
“Just the fancy wife,” Christy said.
He rolled his eyes. “It’s not like that, Christy. I was just . . . spinning a little fantasy on paper. I was going through a dark time awhile back. I was having some doubts about my choice to stay here. David had just proposed to you, and maybe that put the idea in my head. I don’t know. Obviously, I never thought it would come to anything.”
“And now it has?”
The doctor pulled an envelope from the pocket of his plaid hunting shirt. “Yes, in the form of that wedding invitation. James insists on meeting you. He can’t wait to see you dance with the waltz champion of Tennessee.”
“And that would be—”
“Uh, me.” Doctor MacNeill gave a sheepish grin. “What can I say? I exaggerated a little.”
“Is there anything else you exaggerated about?”
“Well, your father is a wealthy industrialist. Very well-off. And you speak four languages.”
“Only four?”
“I didn’t want to get carried away.”
Christy stared at the doctor in disbelief. This was so unlike the down-to-earth, practical Neil MacNeill she knew! She was torn between teasing him, yelling at him, and feeling sorry for him.
“I also told James,” he continued, “that you were the most beautiful girl I’d ever set eyes on. Not to mention the toughest and smartest.”
“More lies . . .”
“No,” the doctor said softly. “All that was the truth.”
Christy felt her cheeks burn.
“Well, I appreciate your telling me this, Neil. As long as you tell James the truth, I suppose there’s no harm done.”
“That’s the thing, Christy,” the doctor said, then hesitated. “I was thinking maybe we could go.”
“Go? And pretend to be engaged and all the rest?”
“What could it hurt?”
“Well, I can think of a few little problems with your plan. First, I speak one language, not four. Second, my father is not a wealthy industrialist. Third, I’m not much of a dancer—even if you are. And—oh yes. There’s that little matter of our imaginary engagement.” Christy folded her arms over her chest. “Besides, it would be lying, Neil. And that would be wrong.”
“You wouldn’t have to lie.” The doctor winked. “I’ll present you as Miss Christy Rudd Huddleston of Asheville, North Carolina.”
“Neil, you know very well that James will presume the rest. What if he speaks to me in Italian while we’re waltzing?”
“You just bat your eyes and smile. I’ll say you’re very shy. Besides, your dance card will be full.” The doctor took her hand and gave an awkward bow. “You’ll be dancing with me all night. After all, whom do you think I won my imaginary waltz championship with, anyway?”
“Let me guess—your imaginary fiancée?”
“How’d you guess? Actually, I did win a local dance contest a few years back. So I’ve only partially stretched the truth.”
Before she could object, the doctor pulled Christy from her chair and swept her into his arms. “May I have this dance, Miss Huddleston?”
“Neil,” Christy said, groaning, “I am not going to go along with your plan—”
“Just one dance.”
She allowed herself a small smile. “Well, all right. I mean, oui, monsieur. Which, incidentally, is the sum total of the French I know.”
Humming an old mountain tune, Doctor MacNeill swept Christy around the porch in dizzying circles. “That’s not exactly a waltz, you know,” she chided.
“I know. But I’m better at this.”
“How is it you managed to win that imaginary championship, I wonder?” Christy teased.
“The judges were swept away by my partner’s beauty,” the doctor replied.
“Neil,” Christy said as they whirled, “you have to tell James the truth, you know.”
As suddenly as he’d swept her into his arms, the doctor let go of Christy. He went to the porch railing, staring out at the deep green woods.
“Tell James the truth? Tell him that I have to beg for medical supplies from old classmates? Tell him that I perform surgery in the most primitive conditions imaginable? Tell him that I spend my days sewing up the wounds caused by ignorance and hate and feuding?”
Gently Christy touched his shoulder. “Neil, what’s wrong? Why all this self-doubt all of a sudden?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it started when I sold that parcel of land to the Washingtons. They’re good people, and I was happy to give them the chance to make a home here. But when I signed over that deed, I started wondering what’s kept me attached to this particular place so long.”
“You were born here. You have roots here.”
“You were born in North Carolina. And here you are, far from home, because you wanted to help change people’s lives.”
“You’ve changed people’s lives right here, too.”
“I wonder sometimes . . .” He sighed heavily. “I just wonder if my life has come to anything. If what I’ve done here matters.”
“Of course it—” Christy stopped short. She pointed toward the woods.
Two small figures were approaching fast. “That’s Creed Allen,” Christy said, waving, “and Della May.”
Creed, who was nine, was holding his pet raccoon Scalawag in his arms, wrapped in an old shirt. His eight-year-old sister followed close behind.
“What a surprise,” Christy said. “What brings the two of you here?”
“Hey, Miz Christy,” Creed said softly.
“Hey, Teacher,” Della May said.
“Is Scalawag all right?” Christy asked.
“He’s feelin’ a mite poorly is all,” Creed said. He glanced over his shoulder nervously.
“Well, I generally tend to humans, but if you bring Scalawag on in, I’ll have a look at him,” Doctor MacNeill said cheerfully.
There was a noise in the woods. Della May gulped. “We’d best be headin’ inside,” she whispered to Creed.
“Creed,” Christy said, “is there something worrying you?”
But before the boy could respond, Christy realized the answer.
A man burst from the thick trees. He was dressed in a worn black coat and was wearing a battered hat. In his right hand was a shotgun. The man was Bob Allen, the children’s father. He was the keeper of the mill by Blackberry Creek.
“What do you young’uns mean, comin’ here?” Bob cried. “I done told you not to go near this place no more!”
Christy had never seen Bob Allen so out of control.
“But Scalawag’s sick, Pa,” Creed said. “I had to do something.”
“Bob?” Doctor MacNeill asked. “What’s wrong?”
Bob strode up to the porch steps. A scowl was fixed on his grizzled face. He looked Doctor MacNeill in the eye and spat on the ground.
“I’ll tell you what’s wrong. What’s wrong is you sold your land to them what don’t belong here. Cutter Gap’s a place for white folks, and white folks only. Now, I was goin’ huntin’ for squirrel, but these bullets will work just as well on a low-down skunk like you.”
Slowly, his hand trembling, Bob raised his shotgun and aimed it straight at Doctor MacNeill.
“Bob,” Christy whispered in horror, “please don’t—”
“What the doc done was plain wrong, Miz Christy,” Bob muttered.
He cocked the gun. Christy jumped at the awful sound.
“And now,” Bob said, “he’s a-goin’ to pay for it.”