Cate Campbell (37 page)

“You see the photos in the
Times?”
her neighbor asked.

She shook her head.

“I saved the paper. Yesterday’s edition.”

“What did it say?”

“Mostly pictures after the fire was out. A total loss, it says.”

She stared into the blackened rubble of her clinic as other businesspeople from Post Street gathered beside her. The barber, the Italian grocer, and the shoe repairman came to murmur over the mess, and offer their sympathies. They spoke kindly, and if their assurances were a little paternal, under the circumstances, it was understandable. And forgivable. She did her best to thank each of them for their concern.

When they disbanded, to go back to their own intact businesses, she approached the mass of burned wood and shattered glass, tiptoeing gingerly around it. It still smelled of chemicals. She peered into the interior, but it didn’t look as if anything could be saved. The blackened autoclave lay on its side among other ruined bits of equipment. Somewhere in there was her medical bag, and everything it had contained, all turned to ashes. Everything would have to be shoveled up into wagons or wheelbarrows and carted off. What would be left?

She finished her circuit of the site. Just as she reached the street again, a spot of red caught her eye in the detritus at the front. She crouched down, and pushed away a chunk of something that looked like charcoal, but which had probably once been part of the front door. Beneath it, charred but intact, was the sign she had so proudly ordered and hung the year before—a lifetime before. M. B
ENEDICT
, M.D., painted in red letters and varnished against the weather. The varnish was cracked now, the cheerful red paint darkened.

She pulled the sign free, and stood, brushing ash and dirt from the surface. Her eyes stung at seeing it there in her dirty hands. It was ruined. She had lost her hospital privileges, and she had lost her clinic. She might even have lost her family.

She didn’t know about Frank. Would he be glad about what she had done? Or furious?

 

When Margot reached Benedict Hall and opened the front door, an eerie silence greeted her. She glanced inside the kitchen, but found no one. She peeked inside the small parlor, but it was similarly empty. She stood in the hallway for a moment. The house was unnaturally quiet, no sounds of water running or wardrobes being opened or doors clicking shut. She took a tentative step toward her father’s study, and spotted Loena creeping down the staircase on tiptoe.

The maid put a finger to her lips. “Mrs. Edith is sleeping,” she whispered. “The doctor gave her something.”

Margot kept her voice low. “What about Ramona? And Hattie?”

“Mrs. Ramona went with Mr. Dick and Mr. Dickson to arrange the service for Mr. Preston. Hattie’s in her room. She’s been crying all morning.”

“I’ll go see her,” Margot said. Automatically, she bent to pick up her bag, then remembered. Gone. She could talk to Hattie, but she had no medicine, nothing to give her. “Fetch the brandy bottle, Loena.”

“Yes, Dr. Margot.” Loena’s eyes were bright and untroubled. No grief here, Margot could see, and probably not for Leona, either. Their illusions about Preston had already been shattered.

She found Hattie huddled on her bed in her little room behind the kitchen, sobbing into her apron. She looked up as Margot came in. Her round cheeks dripped tears, and her eyelids were swollen. “Oh, Dr. Margot,” she choked. “I keep thinkin’ it ain’t true. That he ain’t . . . that Mr. Preston ain’t . . .” She put both hands over her mouth, shaking her head, swallowing tears. “I can’t help cryin’, but I been stayin’ in my room so I don’t start Mrs. Edith off again.”

Loena came in with the brandy bottle and, in an unusual display of initiative, a kitchen glass. Margot poured two fingers of brandy, and held it out to Hattie. “Drink, Hattie,” she said.

Hattie didn’t argue. She took the glass and drank it down. When it was empty, she tried to set it on the bedside table, but missed. The glass rolled across the carpet, and Loena retrieved it. Hattie’s eyes pleaded with Margot. “Mr. Preston—was he trying to put it out? The fire? Is that what happened to him?”

Margot could find no answer for this. She said, “Hattie, please lie down. Kick your shoes off. I’m going to cover you with your quilt, and pull the curtains. Try not to cry anymore.”

Hattie hiccuped, and sniffled, but she did as she was told. Margot sat on the single chair in her room, and waited beside the bed for Hattie’s breathing to even out and her tears to stop. She waved Loena out, and leaned her head back, closing her own eyes, listening to the quiet of the house. Time suspended for a few moments, and in the transient peace, her thoughts stilled.

A slight snore from Hattie told her the brandy had done its work. Margot stirred, and opened her eyes. The dim little room smelled of brandy and soap and that indefinable scent that was Hattie. Suddenly, intensely, Margot longed for Blake, and the comfort of his rooms above the garage. She got to her feet, and slipped out of Hattie’s room as quietly as she could. She went through the kitchen, out the back door, and across the patch of lawn. She let herself in through the side door of the garage, and went up the narrow staircase.

Everything was just as she had seen it last, even to the teacup in the dish strainer. Through the open bedroom door, she could see that his bed had not yet been stripped. On his nightstand a carafe of water had dried, leaving a faint haze. A clean glass rested next to it. She opened the little icebox where he had always kept milk and butter and bread. It was unnaturally empty, the ice compartment dry and warm to the touch. The air in the apartment was hot and still.

Margot sat down beside the old table where she had so often sat with Blake, playing checkers or reading one of his books. She knew in her heart it was likely he would never return to these rooms, never stand beside the sink looking across the lawn at Benedict Hall, keeping his watchful eye on them all. She knew the chances of his full recovery were small—perhaps even nonexistent—but her heart yearned to see him here once again. To see everything, and everyone, in their rightful place.

She started at the sound of the door opening at the bottom of the staircase. “Margot?”

“I’m here,” she called.

It was Dick, his footsteps sounding heavy on the treads, nearly as heavy as their father’s. “Loena saw you come over, although I thought she must have been mistaken. Are you all right?”

“Yes.” He appeared, huffing a little from the climb. “You look exhausted, Dick. I suppose you’ve been trying to hold everyone together.”

He waved one hand. “Nothing much I could do. It’s a nightmare.”

“Sorry I wasn’t here. I was up all night after the fire, and I had to sleep.”

“You couldn’t have helped, anyway.”

“Where’s Father?”

“He’s picking out a coffin.”

“But, Dick—we don’t have Preston’s body. What is the coffin for?”

“We’re going to bury the bones they found in the ashes of your clinic.”

She stared at him. “The bones?”

“Well, what’s left of them. God, Margot, it’s all so macabre. Mother’s falling apart, I’m afraid. She really needs this funeral, even though it seems a bit—what’s the word? Gothic?”

“It makes sense, I guess. She’ll cope better if she can have a ceremony, and a place to visit at the cemetery. But oh, Lord, poor Father. What an awful task.”

“He’s holding up all right. Terribly sad, of course, but—it’s almost as if he’s not surprised. As if he was expecting some disaster.” Dick broke off, and stared around him at the tidy apartment. “I haven’t been up here in years. What made you think of coming here?”

“It’s silly, I suppose. I’ve just always felt safe here.”

Dick heaved an enormous sigh. “Margot—no one’s telling us what really happened. At your office, I mean.”

She folded her arms, and regarded her elder brother. “Mother and Hattie will never believe it, but you might as well know. Preston started the fire. He didn’t know there was oxygen in the storeroom. The fire accelerated, and caught him. The firemen thought they had him on a stretcher, but it seems in the confusion he fell off.”

“What were you doing there at that time of night?”

“Thea—my nurse—brought her husband in. He was dying, and she didn’t want him in the hospital. We were all in the dark, just waiting. Preston probably thought the clinic was empty—although I don’t know if he would have cared.”

“Parrish was there.”

“Yes, sitting with me in the reception room. He ran around the back to try to pull Preston out, but it was too late. Frank burned his hand and his arm, and I went in the ambulance with him to the hospital.”

“And your nurse’s husband?”

“He died shortly before the fire started.”

“So those bones could be . . .” Dick raised his eyebrows. “Talk about Gothic!”

“I know. It’s better not to think about it too much.”

“Is Parrish still in the hospital?”

“Yes.”

“His hand okay?”

“It will be.”

“My God, Margot. If he had lost his other hand!”

“Unthinkable.” Margot lifted her gaze to the window, where a brilliant shaft of sunlight poured into the quiet apartment. She thought of Frank’s amputated arm, of the repaired nerves, the clean new surgery. A little swell of satisfaction lightened her grim mood. “But he’s going to be fine,” she said.

“He’s a good man, Margot.”

“Yes, he is.”

“You two—do you have an understanding?”

Margot pictured Frank’s Black Irish eyes, his lean face, and heard again the steel in his voice as he refused to let her examine his arm. She looked into her brother’s face, and shook her head. “I don’t know, Dick. After everything that’s happened . . . I just don’t know.”

The nurse smiled down at Frank. “There, I’ve opened the window for you, Major,” she chirped. “It’s a beautiful day.”

He could see that from where he lay, propped on a pile of pillows. Sunshine poured across the linoleum floor, and birds sang exuberantly in the trees outside the hospital. The pain in his arm was different, a healing ache rather than the familiar fire. He woke every morning with a little spurt of surprise at the difference. There had been other men in the ward, but their beds were empty now, with fresh sheets piled on the bare mattresses. “Didn’t think warm weather was ever coming,” he said.

“Oh, we often get our summer in August and September.” The sandy-haired nurse laughed. “Though there are some years it never does show up!”

She fluffed his pillows, and Frank wriggled back against the bed frame so he could sit more or less upright. “When can I get out of here?”

She giggled. “Feeling better, are we? It’s only been three days, Major.”

“Is Dr. Clay coming today?”

“Someone will come.” She gave him a twinkling smile as she produced a washbasin, a cake of soap, a razor, and a comb. She set all of it in his lap, and took a folded towel from a cupboard. “I’m going to shave you,” she said brightly.

“Thanks,” he said. “Don’t think I can manage that on my own just yet.”

“No,” she said comfortably. “Not with all those bandages. And why not let me do something about your hair? It’s getting a bit long on the neck.”

Frank submitted to her deft hands. She soaped his chin with a brush, and wielded the razor with efficiency. She used scissors on his hair, then brushed hair off his pillow, and emptied the basin into the sink. When she came back to the bed she stood looking down at him, hands on hips. “Very handsome, Major. I think we’re ready.”

“Ready?” He blinked. “For what?”

“You’ll see.” She gathered her things and piled them into the basin. “Breakfast first. Then you’ll see.”

When his breakfast arrived, the nurse helped him out of bed and into a cane-backed wheelchair. She settled the tray on the bedside stand and pulled a chair close for herself to sit while she helped him to eat eggs and bacon and fresh biscuits. “Well,” she said. “We’re hungry today. That’s an excellent sign.”

He swallowed the last of his breakfast, finishing everything, and savored the cup of coffee. “Thanks,” he said again, as she dabbed at his chin with a napkin, then picked up the tray. “I’d sure like to get out of these bandages.”

“Not just yet, Major. We don’t want to risk infection, now, do we?”

Frank felt restless and out of sorts from inaction. He had been taking less and less medication. He had had no whisky at all since coming to the hospital. What he needed now, he thought, was a good brisk walk. So far, he had not been allowed out of bed except to use the latrine, and that was a miserable experience. A man should be able to use the latrine on his own.

The
Times
had been folded on his breakfast tray, and the nurse spread it on the bed for him before she left. He bent over it, smoothing out the creases as best he could with his elbow. The front-page headline screamed that the Poles had “routed the Reds.” So much for the war to end all wars. With difficulty, Frank used his bandaged fingers to scrape the front page over. On the second page he found an article about the imminent ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. He lingered over this, thinking how pleased his mother would be. And Margot.

Because he was thinking of her, it seemed to him he was imagining the sound of her voice. It had appealed to him from their very first meeting, when he heard it from the hallway at Benedict Hall, deep, assured, crisp. Now he turned his head to listen. Who else sounded like that?

The voice came closer, speaking to someone in the corridor, then ceasing. He sat back in the wheelchair and turned it with his feet so he was facing the doorway when she appeared in it.

“Good morning, Frank,” she said. She wore her white coat, with her stethoscope draped around her neck. Her hair swung against her jaw as she crossed the ward to him with her characteristic strong steps.

“Good morning.” He hardly knew how to address her. She looked dauntingly professional, and somehow polished, hair and skin and eyes clear and glowing. Her gaze assessed him, and he remembered that he was her patient. She had seen—handled, operated on—the horror that was his left arm. The thought made his breakfast churn in his stomach.

“How do you feel?” She stood, tall and slim, beside the wheelchair.

He felt ridiculous and vulnerable, looking up at her. “People keep asking me that.”

Her lips curved. “And what do you answer?”

He moved his head impatiently. “I feel fine. Like getting out of here.”

Her lips curved a bit more. “I’m glad to hear it.” She touched his wrist, held it for a moment, nodded. She touched the bandages on his left arm, but to his great relief, she didn’t offer to peel them back. “Dr. Clay says you’re healing well.”

“Good.” He wanted to say more, but the words wouldn’t come. He wanted to tell her how beautiful she looked, her dark hair shining in the sun. He wanted to touch her, but at the moment he had no hand to do it with. “You operated on me.”

She tugged on the ends of her stethoscope, looking suddenly less confident. “Yes. I know you said—you didn’t want me to treat you, but—” She dropped her hands, and thrust them into the pockets of her white coat. “The thing is—it looked so—”

“Hideous,” he said, and dropped his gaze. “I told you that.”

“No!” She crouched beside him, so he had to look into her eyes. “No, Frank. Not hideous. Painful. You had an amputational neuroma, and it must have been a nightmare to live with. I don’t know how you’ve managed.”

To his horror, his eyes suddenly stung with tears. He cleared his throat, and said roughly, “Didn’t have a choice.” He felt her hand on his shoulder, but he set his jaw, and stared at the blurred blue sky beyond the window.

She took her hand from his shoulder. “You’re angry with me.”

He didn’t dare speak, for fear he would sob. That would be more than he could bear.

“Very well,” she said. Her voice changed, a little rough like his own. There was a rustle of fabric as she stood up, and the whisper of her shoes on the linoleum as she took a step back. “I knew you might be, but I—I had to do what I thought was right.”

Frank swallowed hard, and took a shaky breath. He turned his head, able to face her again. “Margot,” he began.

She shook her head. “You don’t have to explain. I took a chance.” The pitch of her voice rose, as if her throat, too, was constricted.

“Margot—”

She scowled, and thrust out her chin. “Just so you know, the surgery went very well. You should have no more pain, once the incisions have healed.”

“Margot, stop! Listen to me!” Frank made a helpless gesture with his bandaged hand. He knew he was making a mess of it. “Please.”

Her chin dropped, just the tiniest bit. “Yes?”

“I’m lousy with words. You know that.”

Her chin relaxed a bit more. “Yes?”

“I want to explain to you why—I thought if you saw my arm—”

She said with asperity, “You underestimate me.”

“I’m sorry. But I could hardly bear looking at it myself, and—I didn’t want
you
to have to look at it. To—to think of me that way.”

Her face softened. “That would never make a difference to me. It’s just flesh. Broken flesh. And you’re going to find it looks much better now.”

He looked up into the face of Margot Benedict, her clear dark eyes, the firm set of her mouth. Suddenly, it was hard to remember Elizabeth’s face. Hers belonged to the past, and this one—strong and fine and dear—belonged to the present.

She said, “You’re not angry, are you, Frank?”

“It’s more than I can take in.”

“Take your time.”

“I seem to have plenty of that.”

“I’m afraid so. We can’t release you just yet.” She stood up, smoothing her coat, smiling. “I’d better go now. I have patients to see.”

She was already out the door before it struck him that she must have had her privileges restored. He hadn’t even asked her about that. And he hadn’t thanked her.

“Goddamn it, Parrish,” he muttered, kicking his wheelchair toward the window. “You really are a cowboy.”

 

Margot was not Frank’s only surprise of the day. In the middle of the afternoon, a new nurse bustled in, with another visitor in tow. She opened the door for him, nodded to Frank, and said, “Here he is, sir. Not too long, now. Dr. Clay wants Major Parrish to rest.”

Frank was in bed again, and he struggled upright against the pillows, awkwardly, using his elbow. “Mr. Boeing! Sir, I didn’t expect—I—” He started to hold out his hand, then dropped it as he remembered. “Sorry.”

“Not at all, Frank, not at all.” Bill Boeing reversed the chair beside the bed, and straddled it. He held his hat in one hand, and in the other he held out a little bunch of flowers wrapped in a cone of paper. “I saw these at the Public Market. I thought they might brighten this place.”

“Thanks,” Frank said. “I sure didn’t expect to see you.”

Boeing laid the flowers on the nightstand. “I’m so damned sorry, Parrish, about—well, everything. Now you’re a hero—again—and I don’t even get credit as your boss!”

“Hero?”

“Sure, hero. Didn’t you see the paper? The
Times?”

“Only today.”

“Preston Benedict was
their
employee, and the report says you tried to save him from the fire. At risk to your—your hand,” he added, a little shamefacedly.

“My only hand, you mean.” Frank gave him a lopsided grin. “Not news to me, sir.”

“No, of course not. But still, now you’re a hero in Seattle. Young Benedict didn’t make it, they say. Not that they could find his remains, but—well, you probably know that.”

“A shame,” Frank said cautiously.

“Yes.” Boeing turned his hat in his hands, and cleared his throat. “Look, Frank. I need your skills. Douglas has this new airplane—”

Frank sat up straighter. “The Cloudster. I read about that. It’s going to carry a load that exceeds the airplane’s weight. That should be interesting—if it works.”

A light kindled in Boeing’s eyes. He leaned forward, as if they were back in his office in the Hoge Building. His fingers curled, and Frank had the impression they yearned for a pencil, and paper to sketch on. “That’s the one,” he said eagerly. “I want to get ahead of Douglas. We’re in a tough spot since the army cut its order in half. We need to look ahead, innovate.”

“What about the BB-1s?”

“The market isn’t big enough.” Boeing spread both his hands in an expansive gesture. “It’s going to be the military that keeps us going. And for that I need men like you, men who have seen service, who know how the military does things.”

“Are you offering me my job back?”

Boeing grinned, managing to look boyish despite his owlish spectacles and graying temples. “More or less begging you to come back. When you’ve recuperated, of course.” He pointed to Frank’s bandaged hand. “You’ll need that.”

Frank held up his heavily wrapped stump. “I’ve had surgery on this, too, sir. I’m going to need a bit of time.”

“As much as you need, son. As much as you need.”

Later, Frank couldn’t remember for certain if he had actually agreed to go back to work for Boeing. He stared at the flowers the nurse had put in a pottery vase, and went over the conversation a dozen times. He had a job again! He hoped he had said yes, in so many words. He hoped if he hadn’t that Bill Boeing would understand. And would ask him again!

He lay back against his pillows, and waited impatiently for Margot to return.

 

It felt strange to Margot to go home again, to step out of the hot afternoon light and into the coolness of the foyer of Benedict Hall. She had only been away a few days, but the world had changed in that time. Changed, and changed again.

Leona met her at the door, and took her valise to carry it upstairs. Loena went to draw her a bath. No one else seemed to be around, and Margot supposed her mother and Hattie were still in seclusion with their grief.

While she was waiting for the bath to fill, Margot drew the curtains against the afternoon heat, and opened the valise on her bed to sort soiled clothes from clean ones. A smell of smoke rose from the pile, and she picked the pleated skirt and shirtwaist from the other things, thinking they should probably be washed separately. As she shook them out, the sapphire fell from the skirt pocket and tumbled toward the floor. Its chain caught on the clasp of the valise, and the sapphire in its nest of blackened silver chain hung over the edge of the bed, glowing.

She had forgotten all about it. She found herself, now, reluctant to touch it. She remembered Preston holding it in his hand as he bent over Loena in the hospital, and pressing his palm over it as he convinced everyone he hadn’t meant to lose his temper, that awful night in the parlor. He had had it with him when he set fire to her clinic, and she had picked it up from the ground, despite the chaos around her and her fears for Frank.

It had been in her pocket as she operated.

Loena knocked on her door, and put her head around. Her freckled face was solemn, but her eyes were bright, her cheeks rosy. “Your bath’s ready, Miss Margot.”

“Coming. Thank you.”

“Is this your laundry?” Loena reached for the skirt and shirtwaist flung over the chair.

“Yes.”

Loena turned toward the valise on the bed. “Is there more?”

“There is, but I haven’t unpacked it yet.”

Loena made a maternal shooing motion with one hand. “You go and have your bath while it’s hot. I’ll sort through your things.”

“Thanks.” Margot took her dressing gown from the wardrobe. As Loena crossed to the bed and the open valise, Margot thought she should make it clear she had finally learned how to tell the twins apart. “Thank you, Loena,” she said.