December 20, 1945
Sun sneaking in through the window the next morning woke Fran. No more time for sleeping. Fran pulled the spread up over her bed. Outside, the eaves dripped as the snow melted. Weather could change quickly in Kentucky.
Becca was in the chair rocking her baby while Carl slept in the bed. “I told him he could, Nurse. He was plumb tuckered out from the walk home in that snowstorm yesterday.” She smiled at the sleeping man. “Weren’t it something him showin’ up in time for the baby to come?” Becca shook her head a little. “Ma says that’s how things work sometimes. God’s doing. Fixing it so’s folks show up when you ’specially need ’em to.”
“He loves you.” Fran looked over at Carl. “He told me so last night while you were sleeping.”
“I ain’t never doubted that for a minute.” Becca’s smile slipped away. “What I been ponderin’ is whether he can be a passable husband and a daddy. Do for us, you know. A girl can jump off in love without a second thought, but a mother has to consider other things.”
Fran had no answer for that. “I’ll bring you breakfast after I take care of the horses. Well, horse, since Jasmine is still up in your barn.”
“Ben will see to her. He’s a man who does what needs doing.” Becca looked up at Fran. “You like him, don’t you?”
“I like all of you.” Fran sidestepped her question. “You’ve been so good to me.”
“There’s all kinds of ways of liking.” Becca smiled down at her baby. “And loving. I’m finding out one of them ways right now with baby Carlene.”
You like him, don’t you? Becca’s question followed Fran around all morning, but she kept avoiding an answer, even in her own thoughts.
Instead she busied herself checking on Becca, peeling potatoes for soup, and writing up notes for her records. Outside the snow melted almost as fast as it had fallen the day before.
Jeralene stared out the window and warned the creeks would be rising. “Tides don’t generally happen this time of the year, but then it don’t generally snow a foot in December. Getting anywheres is apt to be hard for a spell.” Jeralene looked around at Fran. “You got any new babies near to coming?”
“Not for a while, but something’s always happening.”
“Ain’t that the truth.”
As if to prove their point, Sarge stood up and barked as somebody knocked. Fran rushed to open the door, expecting to see Ben coming for Becca. But it wasn’t Ben.
“Seth.” Fran blinked. Her eyes had to be playing tricks on her. “What in the world are you doing here?”
“I’ve come to take you home.”
“What?” Fran was too surprised to see him standing there to make sense of his words.
“It’s almost Christmas. You need to come home.”
“Is something wrong with Mother?” An uneasy worry awakened inside her. What else could bring Seth all the way to the mountains?
“No, no. She’s fine.” Seth laid her worries to rest. “Other than missing her only daughter.” He shivered a little. “I’m about froze. Are you going to let me come inside?”
He did look cold in spite of his heavy coat, but he didn’t have a hat or boots. His shoes were soaked.
“Of course. I’m sorry. It’s just that I can hardly believe you’re actually here.” When she pulled the door open wider, Sarge barked again. Fran touched the dog’s head. “He’s all right, Sarge.”
“Sarge?” Seth frowned at the dog. “Odd name for a dog.”
“He likes it.” Fran kept her hand on Sarge. “Come over to the fire and take those wet shoes off.” She scooted a chair closer to the fireplace in the front room. He had to have a reason to come all this way, but she couldn’t imagine what it could be. Maybe something her mother cooked up to get Fran back to Cincinnati. Could her mother have paid him to come get her?
“I don’t think I’ve ever been this cold. Not even in the army.” He sat down without taking off his coat and leaned down to untie his shoes.
“Did you walk all the way here?”
“How else can you get to this godforsaken place?” Seth slipped off his shoe.
She wanted to tell him there was nothing godforsaken about it, but she bit back the words. He was obviously miserably cold. That could make a man cross. “So you came on the bus to Hyden?” She could still hardly believe he was sitting there in front of her eyes.
“No, I didn’t come on the bus.” He glared at her. “I came in my car. Got to what passes for a town in the middle of a snowstorm. Took my life in my hands driving that road up to the hospital and then you weren’t there. Some short little nurse tells me you’re out here in the hinterlands, a place I’d never be able to find in the dark. I’d end up killed or worse.” Seth jerked off his wet sock. “Wasn’t sure then what could be worse than killed, but that was before I spent the night shivering in my car.”
Fran thought of her own night. Delivering a baby in the back of a truck. And of Becca having that baby. She caught the faint cry of the newborn from the clinic and wanted to leave Seth by the fire to check on her. Instead, even though she wanted to tell him nobody had asked him to come, she summoned up a sympathetic look. “Sounds like you had a hard time.”
“A hard time doesn’t begin to describe it.” He stared at his toes. “I think I have frostbite.”
Fran doubted it, but if he did, he might need treatment. She leaned over to examine his foot. “No frostbite.” She rubbed his toes to warm them.
He yanked off his other sock and poked that foot up toward her. “You better check this one too.”
She didn’t particularly like the way he grinned at her, as though she were touching his foot in a more personal way than simply as a nurse. This time she turned loose of his foot after examining it without trying to warm his toes.
“Nothing wrong that dry socks won’t cure.” She stepped back from him.
He kept his foot up in the air for a second. “You have good hands.”
“A good thing for a nurse-midwife.” She picked up his socks and spread them on the hearth near the fire. “Do you have other clothes with you?”
“Yeah, in my car maybe a mile from here. It’s stuck in a ditch.” His scowl was back. “There’s probably not a wrecker to be found for miles.”
“The men around here will help you.”
“Are you sure they won’t just shoot me and take my car? I hear they don’t like outsiders.”
“As long as they don’t think you’re a revenuer, you should be fine.” Fran kept her face solemn.
“Should be?” Seth shook his head. “I don’t like the sound of that.”
Fran did smile then. “They’ll help you if I tell them you’re a friend.”
“Are we friends, Fran?” His expression changed. “Like we used to be?”
Fran’s smile disappeared. “What about Cecelia?”
“She’s gone. Back to England. For good.”
“I’m sorry,” Fran said.
“Don’t be. The parting was mutual. She wasn’t the same Cecelia once she was here. Nothing like she was over in England. She didn’t like my family. She didn’t like Cincinnati. Wanted me to go to California.” Seth frowned as he rubbed his toes. “What would I do in California?”
“I don’t know. They say it’s warm out there.”
“That part would be good.” He scooted nearer to the fire. “Can you put some more coal on the fire? Warm it up in here.”
Fran dropped a chunk from the coal bucket beside the hearth onto the fire. The coal already glowing red in the fire broke apart and sent up sparks. She turned back to Seth. “Why are you here, Seth?”
“I told you. To take you home. Before Christmas. Your mother says you won’t pay any attention to her letters. That I needed to come get you.” He stood up and stepped closer to her. “We, the two of us, can start over. See if we have as much fun together now as we used to before the war and everything.” He reached and took her hand. “That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it? What you wrote about in all your letters to me.”
It had been what she wanted. Or thought she did. She pulled her hand free and stepped back. “That was then. Things have changed.”
“They don’t have to be changed. We can make it work again.” He followed her away from the fire. “All you have to do is come home with me.”
“I can’t do that. I have patients here who depend on me.”
“They can put somebody else here. That nurse at the hospital said so. Said you could go home if you wanted to.” When Fran didn’t say anything, he went on. “Don’t you want to have your own babies, our own babies, instead of merely helping others have babies?” He caught her hand again and raised it up to touch her fingers to his cheek.
He was right. She had been ready to marry him. Perhaps the feeling was still there inside her, but then why did she not like the way he kept grabbing her hand? She eased her hand free again. “I’m not going with you. At least not now.”
A smile settled on his face. “But you will give it some consideration? I know I was a bum, but I’ve wanted to come after you ever since I saw you at church that day. Even before Cecelia left.”
“I’ll think about it.”
A knock sounded on the door, but this time Sarge didn’t bark. Instead he ran toward the door with his tail flapping happily. She knew before she opened the door that Ben would be standing there, and she wished Seth anywhere but beside her fire.