Marion sat up in her chair the next day. Maggie enjoyed all her chores and duties so much more with Marion to talk to, especially because Marion praised her industry and ingenuity so highly. Maggie welcomed the change from their first days at the cabin, when Marion taught Maggie everything from cutting up meat to boiling water in a pot.
Melody joined them at the table for a while, but since she couldn’t—or wouldn’t—join the conversation, Maggie essentially ignored her. She went back to her bed before very long, leaving Marion and Maggie alone again.
Paul and Parker took a few extra days to recover. They first sat up in bed for short periods. Then they ventured as far as the table for meals before collapsing again.
Finally, Paul hauled himself out of his blankets and teetered to the cabin door. He leaned against the door frame. He bobbed his head to Maggie. “I thank you for your hospitality, but I’m going back to the barn.”
“Do you feel well enough to go about your business?” she asked.
“I’m still a little tipsy on my feet,” he admitted. “but I’m too good to be sleepin’ in the cabin anymore. It ain’t right with you ladies around. You can have my bed back now.”
“No.” She shook her head. “I’ll let Marion sleep there. She needs to be in a bed more than I do. I’ll stay on the floor.”
“Suit yourself,” he barked, and stumbled across the yard to the corral.
Parker sat up in bed. “I suppose he’s right. I should go, too.”
“Don’t be foolish,” Maggie snapped. “None of you is well enough to go back to sleeping in the barn. It’s freezing cold out there at night. You could wind up just as sick as you were before, and then where would we be?”
“It’s not too cold up in the hay loft where we sleep.” Parker swung his legs over the side of the bed. He rested his feet on the floor for a minute and sighed. “I’m sure we won’t be back to work for a few more days. But for decency’s sake, we should move out of the house. You ladies need your privacy.”
“When do you think we’ll head to Boise?” Maggie asked.
Parker shook his head. “I really don’t know. None of us can travel the way we are now. We’ll just have to wait and see how long it takes us to fully recover. And anyway, we can’t go until Prescott has fully recovered. That’s likely to take a good while.”
“He has a long recovery ahead of him,” Maggie agreed. “That’s for sure.”
Parker stood up and lumbered to the door. “It’s all right. We can take the extra time to build up our winter food supply. We haven’t got much time left before the first snow, so it’s better we get as much meat laid in as we can before we go off to Boise.”
He let go of the door jamb, swayed once, and followed Paul out to the barn.
Later, Maggie saw Paul brushing down Nero in the barn door, and she knew she needn’t tend to the horses anymore, either.
Over the next few days, the brothers came back to the house in the mornings for breakfast and at nightfall for supper. But they spent less and less time around the homestead. Paul disappeared onto his trap line, and Parker went off hunting by himself.
As health and vigor returned to Marion and Melody, Maggie found her own work load lessened somewhat. But she still bore all the responsibility of tending Prescott. She also found herself instinctively taking over the cooking duties that once belonged to Melody.
She rose at dawn each day. The squawking of the birds outside the cabin began long before the sky lightened and roused her. From her bed of blankets on the floor by the fire, she opened the vent in the fire box door and stuck a few sticks of kindling on the embers.
Then she lit the lamp and fetched the water for heating.
Her biscuits and cured meat, slathered with juice and grease, replaced Melody’s flapjacks as the standard breakfast fare. Over the course of days, Maggie discussed different recipe ideas for supper with Marion. She experimented, with great success.
As her confidence increased, Marion and Melody conceded more and more ground to Maggie, until she dictated to them their daily tasks and they consulted with her before taking any initiative around the homestead, especially concerning Prescott’s care. They adopted the pattern established in their weakened condition and continued it even after their strength returned.
The more Maggie took the lead role around the cabin, the closer she cemented her bond with Marion. At the same time, Melody receded into the background, until Maggie barely registered her presence at all. Marion spoke to Melody less and less, and found less opportunity to sing Melody’s praises. Instead, she looked to Maggie to set the day’s objectives and guide her in their execution.
Maggie’s habit of sleeping on the floor persisted, as well, which surprised her. Even though the cabin only held three beds, one of which Prescott occupied, she didn’t resent Melody and Marion for keeping the other two. When she thought about it, her attitude didn’t stem from their recent illness, either.
For some reason not clear to her, she bore her position close to the stove like a badge of honor. This place afforded to her a custodial status, not only over Marion and Melody, but over the brothers, as well. When they came to the table for meals, they ate her food. When they washed, they used water she fetched and heated over the fire she fed and tended.
One evening, when Maggie filled the kettle to perform her usual procedure of changing Prescott’s dressings, Melody threw down her basket of laundry and stomped out of the cabin.
Maggie stole a glance at Marion. “What’s wrong with her?”
Marion stared after Melody. “I’m not sure, but I think she might like to take over Prescott’s care. They’re going to be married, after all, and you’ve done everything for him all this time. I think she’d like the opportunity to get close to him once in a while.”
Maggie looked toward Prescott’s bed. He lay perfectly still. He might be asleep. She never considered Melody might have any interest in taking care of Prescott. Melody couldn’t be jealous of her, could she? After all, she was just doing what had to be done. She’d taken care of Prescott every day, multiple times a day, feeding him and changing his bed linens, since the first day of his illness.
Maggie made a quick judgment of Marion’s expression. “Maybe Prescott should be the one to decide that.”
Marion shrugged, but she didn’t smile at Maggie like she usually did when she approved of her taking charge of their welfare. Her face hardened. “All right.” Then she turned away.
Maggie continued making her preparations. What should she do? Should she give ground? Should she go find Melody and tell her to take over Prescott’s care? Should she consult Prescott to find out his wishes? Should she wait for Melody to come back? What if she didn’t come back in time to do the job, leaving Maggie to do it anyway?As she waited for the water to heat, she buzzed about the room, tidying and finishing her other chores. She took Melody’s basket of laundry, set it on Marion’s bed, and folded it. As she did so, she watched Prescott out of the corner of her eye. Almost two weeks of tending him morning, noon, and night gave her a particularly acute sense of his movements. She listened to his breathing and observed the subtle movement of his limbs underneath the quilt. She was certain he was awake.
The water boiled in the kettle, and Melody still didn’t come back. Maggie laid out the clean bandages on the adjacent bed. She put the bowl of alder tonic and the new poultice on the table, but still Melody did not appear. She stirred the supper in the skillet and stoked the fire.
She couldn’t wait any longer. She went over to Prescott’s bed and laid her hand on his quilt. “Prescott,” she murmured, going along with his pretense of sleep. “Prescott, are you ready to change your bandage?”
He sighed and rolled over on his back. “Hmm,” he breathed, “I guess so.”
She plodded through the same old routine, and neither she nor Prescott gave any indication of anything out of the ordinary. At the end, he said, “Thank you,” as he always did, and she patted his hand and smiled at him as she always did. She even stroked his forehead, and pushed his hair back, as she always did, her sick baby bird.
Afterward, she gathered up the soiled bandages and set them aside for laundering. She got some of the supper from the skillet in a bowl and brought it over to Prescott’s bed to feed him.
But they didn’t laugh and joke as they always did. They didn’t even talk to each other. They barely looked at each other, except when she brought the spoon to his mouth. What had changed?
Halfway through the feeding operation, a shoe rapped on the doorsill and Melody entered the room. Maggie didn’t look up. She heard Melody pause on the threshold when she saw Maggie and Prescott together. Neither Maggie nor Prescott turned around or acknowledged her in any way. Melody crossed the room and sat down on her bed next to Prescott’s.
Maggie deliberately brought another spoon of food up to Prescott’s mouth. As she put it into his mouth, she stole a fleeting glance at his face and their eyes met above the spoon. A weighty silence hung over the room. Melody sat on her bed and stared at them. Maggie lifted spoon after spoon of the food to Prescott’s mouth. No one said a word.
Across the room, Marion stood motionless and watched the scene unfold. Maggie flushed over her neck and chest in embarrassment at the thought of angering Marion, but still she persisted. She fed Prescott the whole bowl of stew. When she finished, she smiled at Prescott and patted his hand before she took the bowl back to the stove. She took not the slightest notice of Melody’s presence.
She set the table for supper. Through the open cabin door, she saw Paul and Parker brushing the horses in the corral and called them to come and eat. She grabbed a bucket and went around the back of the cabin to the creek. Only after she got there did she notice Marion following her.
“Hello, there,” Maggie greeted her.
But Marion scowled at her in a way Maggie’d never seen before. She caught her breath in alarm. “Honestly, Maggie, I never knew you could be so cruel.”
“Why?” Maggie gasped. “What’s wrong?”
“You know perfectly well what I mean,” Marion snapped. “I just told you Melody wanted to take over Prescott’s care, and you deliberately flounced in her face and did it yourself. I saw you with my own eyes.”
Maggie stooped to fill her bucket. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Marion grabbed her by the arm and yanked her into a standing position. “You do, so! Don’t stand there and lie to me. I saw you do it. You know perfectly well what you did.”
“Okay, I did it!” Maggie admitted. “So what? So I changed Prescott’s dressings and I fed him his supper. It’s the same thing I’ve done for the last two weeks. I don’t see why you’re making such a big deal about it now.”
“I just told you why,” Marion shot back. “I just told you Melody wants to take over his care. They’re going to be married. She wants to get close to him, and you doing all those things for him is making her uncomfortable.”
“I think you’re imagining things,” Maggie remarked. “You don’t know that Melody wants those things or feels that way, because she can’t have told you so. I think you’re telling me what you want me to do, not what Melody wants.”
Marion narrowed her eyes. “I’ll tell you one thing. You wouldn’t know what Melody wants or thinks or feels, because you’ve never taken two seconds out of your life even to think about it. If you did, you would know as well as I do. She’s nothing but a piece of furniture to you.”
“Can you blame me?” Maggie sneered. “How could she be anything else to me? She never talks. She’s like one of those dumb idiots who works at the circus, cleaning up the stands after the show’s over.”
Marion hesitated. Then she shook her head. “And to think I thought so highly of you these last few days. I never knew you could be so heartless. And she’s going to be your sister-in-law in another few days. If this is the way you’re going to act, we’re all going to have a very unpleasant existence up here together.”
“You can’t expect me to just drop everything I’ve been doing for Prescott,” Maggie argued. “Melody hasn’t done any of it. How am I supposed to know whether she’ll do it properly?”
“Now you’re just making excuses,” Marion retorted. “For one thing, if you cared at all, you could easily show Melody what to do. And while we’re on the subject, she probably knows a lot more about this sort of thing than you do. It wasn’t that long ago that you didn’t know anything. If you really want to learn something about living up here, you should learn from her. She knows a lot more than I do about a lot of things.”
“There’s no way I could learn from her,” Maggie reasoned. “She doesn’t talk. She couldn’t tell me anything.”
“We both know that’s nonsense,” Marion barked. “But putting that aside for a moment, you have to admit it’s a little bit inappropriate for you to be feeding another woman’s fiancé like a baby when she’s sitting right next to you and he’s perfectly capable of feeding himself.”
“He is not!” Maggie cried. “His right arm is maimed.”
“He can use his left arm well enough,” Marion pointed out. “He certainly doesn’t need you feeding him. Watching you two together is like watching two lovers in bed together. It’s scandalous! I’m shocked by it, and I’m not even the man’s fiancé. Just imagine how Melody feels about it.”
“That’s a lie!” Maggie shouted.
“You think so?” Marion shot back. “Prescott shouldn’t even be in the house anymore. He should be out in the barn with his brothers. He’s well enough now that he could keep his arm tied up in a sling so he doesn’t move it. He’s not sick anymore. Melody can change his bandages every morning when he comes up to the house for breakfast.”
“He cannot,” Maggie insisted. “He’s nowhere near strong enough for that.”
“I’ve been watching him,” Marion continued. “He’s strong enough to sit up in bed, and there’s nothing wrong with his legs. Take my word for it. It’s not appropriate for a man as healthy as he is to stay in a house with three unmarried women. He’s not weak or injured enough to need to be in the house, and he’s not sick at all. He has an injured shoulder. That’s all. He should go back out to the barn.”
Maggie’s hand flew to cover her mouth. Why did Marion’s statements distress her so much? Why did she care where Prescott stayed? Why did she care so much whether she fed him or changed his dressings? He wasn’t her fiancé. She was going to marry Paul.
“Fine,” she snapped. “I don’t care. He can go out to the barn, and Melody can change his dressings every morning when he comes in for breakfast. Have it your way. It doesn’t mean anything to me.” She dipped her bucket into the icy water and stalked off with it to the house.