Plum Creek Bride

“Yessir, Dr. Callender, right away. Say, Ma’s sure been feelin’ better since you gave her those pills last month. What’s in ‘em, anyway?”

“Carbohydroxygenate,” Jonathan said shortly. They were plain sugar pills, but he didn’t think it any of the boy’s business. What Mrs. Ellis needed was attention, not medication.

“Mr. Brumbaugh?” he reminded.

The youth ducked his head and disappeared through an inner doorway. In a moment he was back, gesturing Jonathan forward through the swinging wrought-iron gate.

“Go right on in, Doc. The mayor’s been expecting you.”

“I’ll just bet he has,” Jonathan muttered under his breath. Four long strides and he entered the bank president’s inner sanctum.

The round, florid-faced man rose from behind the spotless desk. “Jonathan, good to see you.” He extended a beefy, freckled hand.

“Plotinus, let’s not play games. You know you dislike the sight of me. You’ll like it even less when you know what I came to say.”

“Now look, Jon, can’t we agree to—”

“We cannot,” Jonathan snapped. “Or rather, I cannot,” he said, softening his tone. “Dammit, man, you’ve got to swing the vote on a new water system. I’ve walked every mile of Plum Creek these past few weeks. We’ve got privy and barnyard waste seeping into the water along a ten-mile stretch north of town. Drinking water pumped from that creek is contaminated.”

“Yes, yes. You’ve said it all before, Jon. We’re getting tired of hearing—”

“It’s dangerous, ‘Tinus. Polluted water brings disease.”

“Aw, come on now, Jon. You’re expectin’ a disaster like you read about in those back East newspapers you’re always quotin’. But hell, my house and your house get their water from wells, so we have nothing to worry about.”

Jonathan grabbed the mayor’s shirtfront and pulled him up nose-to-nose. “Plotinus, you simpleminded ass, don’t you realize that, wells or no wells, if we have cholera here, the whole town will suffer? You, me, everybody?”

Sweat stood out on the mayor’s mottled face. “Just how come you’re so sure?”

“Because I’m a physician,” Jonathan snapped. “Because I’ve seen the bacterium under a microscope!”

“Dr. Chilcoate says—”

“Good God, man, Chilcoate’s not a qualified doctor! He’s a medicine hawker, not a physician. Come on, ‘Tinus, I need a vote.” He released the perspiring man, steadied him with one hand while the shorter man regained his balance.

“We need the water system,” he continued in a milder tone. “You know we do.”

“Mebbe. But there’s no more I can do, I’m afraid. Council already decided the matter. Nothing more can be accomplished, this year at any rate.” The mayor straightened his shirt collar with shaking hands. “You oughtta go away for a rest, Jon. Been strung up kinda tight since—”

“You know, and I know,” Jonathan said between gritted teeth, “that this has nothing to do with Tess’s.” He couldn’t say the word.

“Sure, Jon, I know. You’re just doin’ your job.” He reached up, clapped a thick hand on Jonathan’s shoulder. “Now get out of my office and let me do mine.”

“You’re a damn fool, ‘Tinus,” Jonathan snapped.

“I know. Always have been, I guess. Leastways I’ve got no power over the council members to force another vote.”

Jonathan clamped his jaw shut in frustration. He couldn’t just give up. He didn’t know what else to do, but he had to think of something. The health of an entire town was at stake.

“I want you to try, anyway. Call another meeting.”

The mayor worked his lower lip. “I’ll try. But don’t hold your breath. And stay away this time. You’re gettin’ folks riled up with all your talk about horse dung and bugs.”

Numb with disbelief, Jonathan drove back to Maple Street and the house he had shared with Tess. Somehow, now that his wife was gone, his whole life shattered, it was important—desperately important—that he try to save Plum Creek.

A sickening feeling of failure rose inside him. Now that the baby was ensconced upstairs, out of his study, he could once again pore over his medical journals from the East and abroad. Much good it did him.

With foreboding, he noted that the leaves of trees that had been frothy with blossoms in May were even now brown and sere around the edges. Midday temperatures had hovered around the hundred-degree mark for over a month, and the thick pall of road dust swirling about Daisy’s feet smelled dry and smoky. The worst heat of this long summer was still ahead.

But there might still be time to find a suitable building—a barn, a warehouse, even a church cellar—to scrub down for use as a temporary hospital if the need arose. He thought of Tess, and the familiar knot of anger tightened around him like a hangman’s noose. She didn’t die on purpose, he reminded himself. But he still felt abandoned. It felt like pure, unadulterated hell.

He stopped the buggy, laid the reins on the bench and climbed out. “The irony, old girl,” he said to the mare as he unhitched her and led her toward the barn, “is that I finally have all the time I need for my medical practice. But now there’s no joy in it.”

It was all wrong. Tess had always wanted more of him than he could give. She’d resented his commitment to medicine, the long days spent seeing patients, the emergencies that called him out in the dead of night. To be honest, he had chafed under her misguided nagging.

He had fallen in love with her that day in Savannah, deeply in love. But in the short time they’d had together, they couldn’t seem to balance passion and resentment. He regretted that he hadn’t been able to manage things differently—make Tess happy as his wife.

And now it was over. His time with her was past.

Is life always like that? he wondered. Always learning too late what went wrong?

Chapter Six

Jonathan rounded the corner of the barn and started across the lawn toward the front porch. What an ass he’d been in Plotinus Brumbaugh’s office this morning. He’d lost his sense of perspective and his temper, as well. He wouldn’t be surprised if the mayor put it out that Jonathan was deranged.

Right now, he needed to be alone. He’d hole up in his study, a stiff whiskey at his elbow, and get a grip on himself. As close as he was to the edge, he didn’t want to blunder into Mrs. Benbow or that slip of a German girl. She already regarded him as an ogre. He’d seen it in her eyes that first day—a wary, assessing look, as if she expected him to bite.

Mrs. Benbow would tut-tut when she discovered the empty whiskey glass and the telltale smell of spirits, but he didn’t care a whit. He was accountable to no one. His sanity outweighed the disapproval of his housekeeper, even one who’d been with his family as long as Mrs. Benbow had. This was his home, his sanctuary. The world outside seemed unreliable. Treacherous.

For the first time in his life, he acknowledged, he could not control events by force of will. But he’d be damned if he’d change one thing about the few things he could govern—and one of them was his residence and another was his private study.

Tess had come into his life and been taken from him, and there had been nothing he could do about it. His sense of self, his trust in those things he had valued—knowledge, love, even his skill as a physician—had been shaken to the core. He needed. what? Privacy? Escape?

He needed sameness, he knew that much. Something on which to anchor his equilibrium.

He skirted the expanse of green grass, inhaling the comforting, earthy smells of summer honeysuckle, the peppery hint of horse manure, wood smoke. Cicadas screamed in the plum tree.

Four steps from the front walkway he brought himself up short “What the devil?” He raked an unsteady hand through his hair.

A new crop of scarlet zinnias poked their bright heads up along the square cement stepping stones Tess had insisted on. But instead of bordering the path in the neat orderly line he was used to seeing, the new plants were arranged in masses, mingled with clumps of purple woods iris and drifts of skyblue pincushion flowers. It looked like a riotous dance of blooms casually swirling in the general direction of the front steps.

He sucked in a breath. Never in a month of Sundays would Tess have tolerated such a wild-looking garden!

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