Papa’s dreams were over.
Abby wanted to save them. It was her responsibility, after all, to take care of him, but she’d failed. Miserably. Jonathon and Charles were packing their luggage in their cabin, preparing for an abrupt early departure. The guided excursion was ended with Papa’s incapacitation.
She gripped the windowsill and gave Harold an absentminded scratch. The squirrel’s tail waved and brushed her wrist. Abby watched Charles open the cabin door and her eyes narrowed. Papa would live, but his broken ribs and bruised torso were going to take weeks to heal. Not to mention the gash in his arm that the nearby logging camp doctor had closed with twelve stitches. There would be no income generated from entertaining the wealthy. It was over, all of it. Papa’s dream, their income, everything. Abby’s stomach turned at the thought. They would lose it all. The cabins, their future …
Charles lugged two suitcases to the back of the horse and wagon hitched to the rail between the cabins. Abby grimaced at the sight. The wagon had brought the doctor and now it would take him back, along with Jonathon and Charles. They would catch the train in town and return to Milwaukee. To their lives. Leaving her here to pick up the pieces alone. That knowledge put the final stamp on her assumptions that when it came to real life, the wealthy simply up and ran, buying their way out of hardship.
Abby’s breath shuddered as she inhaled. She glanced over her shoulder at the cot set up in front of the fireplace. Papa’s still form sent waves of anxiety through her. He could have died! He could have drowned, or bled internally, the doctor said. She should be thankful. Thankful? She looked back out the window at Charles, who hefted the luggage into the back of the wagon. There was no doubt in her mind that the uncoordinated rich boy had done something to make the canoe tip. Papa, in his urgency to save the canoe, had become its victim.
A frown creased her brow. Why was Charles shaking hands with Jonathon?
She hurried from the cabin, shutting the door softly behind her, sequestering Harold with Papa. The logging camp doctor sat beside a logger on the wagon seat. The two men ignored them as Jonathon hoisted himself into the back of the wagon.
“What’s going on?” Abby demanded. And why was Charles not getting into the wagon beside Jonathon?
Charles stepped back from the wagon, his hands jammed into his trouser pockets, suspenders stretched over his shoulders.
“I hate to leave you here, Abby.” Jonathon appeared genuinely distressed. He adjusted his seat in the wagon. “But I need to get back to Milwaukee. I want to see if I can make arrangements.”
“Arrangements?” The day’s events kept coming so fast and unexpected that it left Abby bewildered.
Jonathon gave her an understanding smile. “For you and your father.” He waved toward the cabin. “You can’t stay here. There will be no income. And the winter? Your father might not even be recuperated by then, let alone prepared for the snow.”
Abby swallowed the lump of shame in her throat. What could she say? The writing was on the wall. It had been even before her father’s accident.
“I want to see if my father can make arrangements to assist you and your father to relocate to Milwaukee. At least until he’s fully recuperated. Then, you both can make whatever decisions are necessary.”
Abby gave him a short nod, but the realization of his words seeped into her wounded soul. Friendship. Kindness. She blinked her eyes against sudden emotion, and turned her face away so Jonathon couldn’t read her expression or discover how sheepish she felt. She’d been so sure they were escaping; but instead, Jonathon was hurrying home to find help. To take care of them. And what about Charles?
Shaken, Abby shifted her attention to him. Regardless of Jonathon, Charles was still low on her list of favorite people. His dark eyes slammed into hers.
“And what are you doing?” She glanced at the cabin behind him with its open door and the obvious absence of his luggage in the wagon.
“Staying.”
The one word made Abby’s heart spiral up in an uncontrollable sense of hope and then crash almost as fast. What help would he be? And why would he choose to stay when he was so underqualified to cast a fly rod, let alone help her survive in the forest while tending her father?
“Abby.” Jonathon’s voice of reason penetrated through her cloud of shock and consternation. “Let Charles help. I can’t leave you and your father here alone without some sort of assistance. Charles has offered, and I know how you feel, but—”
“No, you don’t know how I feel.” Abby interrupted her friend and sealed his mouth with a firm line.
“You’re right. I don’t.” Jonathon’s searching gaze made Abby shift her feet uncomfortably. “But we’re not villains, Abby. We care. No one cares more than Charles. Please stop blaming him for things he cannot help. If anyone understands your pain … well, it’s him.”
The wagon lurched forward as the logger flicked the reins. “Talk to each other,” Jonathon directed as the wagon rolled away. He lifted his hand in a wave and Charles and Abby stood in the wagon’s dust.
“I’ve no intention of talking,” she stated bluntly, eyes fixed on Jonathon’s disappearing form.
“I didn’t think so.”
So. That was that. Abby marched back to her cabin, to Papa, and as far away from Charles Farrington III as she could get.
Maybe she wasn’t going to talk to him, maybe she was going to continue to blame him, but blast it all if he wasn’t going to at least try to find some atonement. Once was awful, but twice? The horror of seeing Mr. Nessling pinned between the canoe and the boulder, white water swirling around him and his face twisted in agony … It was just too much.
Charles hefted the axe over his head and brought it down onto a log with force. The blade bounced off the wood and hit the stump the log was balanced on. So maybe he couldn’t chop wood to save his soul, but wasn’t that what all hearty American pioneering males did when angry? Chop wood? What an absolute mockery to humanity he’d turned out to be.
Lifting the axe again, he dropped it with enough force to elicit a grunt. This time it stuck in the wood, but barely, and didn’t make a crack.
“What are you doing?”
The contemptuous voice behind him was of course none other than the only person in the vicinity besides himself capable of walking. He dropped the axe by his foot and swiped his hand across his sweaty forehead. “Chopping wood.”
“It’s August.” Abby’s statement of the obvious was no help.
“You’ll need wood for the winter.”
She eyed his rolled-up shirt sleeves and his sweaty neckline, and her expression remained impassive. “According to Jonathon, we won’t be here during the winter.”
Blasted woman. In the matter of a few days, Charles had gone from seeing her as conquerable, to wanting to draw her out of her grief, to now wishing he’d hightailed it back to Milwaukee with Jonathon. Penance. It’s what made him stay. Some way to repay Mr. Nessling, prove that the wealthy weren’t unkind and self-centered, and maybe even make up a little for David’s death years ago. God had to count that all for something, right? But the censure in Abby’s eyes was almost enough to convince Charles that no amount of works could beg forgiveness from anyone.
“You’re not doing it right.” She pointed to the axe.
Of course. There was a right way to chop wood, same as there was a right way to fling a fly line, or row a canoe, or duck under a branch. If he were honest, Charles missed the smell of the streets of Milwaukee. The breweries, the smoke from the chimneys, the fumes from the motor cars, and the pungent smell of sauerkraut over sausages. There was too much fresh air here, too much … Abigail Nessling.
She hiked over to him and lifted the axe from where it rested by his foot. “You’re going to cut off an appendage.”
Charles narrowed his eyes. She was insulting now. All gloves were off. It was war. She wanted to live in her bitter grief? Well, he wanted free of his, and he’d be flipped if he let Abby stand in the way of it.
“Give it back to me.” He sounded like a petulant boy.
Abby held the axe away. She pointed at the log. “You’re trying to chop against the grain. Turn the log so the grain runs vertically away from you.”
Charles bit his tongue but did as she said. Once the log was positioned, she handed him the axe. “Now, when you bring the axe down, don’t rely on your arm strength. Use your whole body. Like you’re going to drive it straight through.”
He eyed her for a moment. She didn’t sound pompous, but he saw the tiny shake of her head. He exasperated her. She felt he was above living in the woods, above eking out a life here like her father had so aptly done since she was a babe. Fine. He’d show her.
Charles brought the axe down with fervor, his entire torso following through with the motion. The axe head embedded in the log and it split partway. He couldn’t help but smile. Ha! Take that, Abigail Nessling!
He turned to see her astounded expression, but she was gone. The cabin door closing echoed through the trees. Charles blew a puff of frustrated air from his mouth. Was any amount of forgiveness worth this exasperation, this sense of being completely out of one’s element? He looked down at the half-split log. His efforts would never bring back David, and they would never make Mr. Nessling heal quickly enough to stay here in his forest home. In a swift motion, Charles brought the axe around and split the log the rest of the way. It fell in two halves.
He could only hope God would see his efforts, because Abby certainly did not.