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But not Darla Bledsoe.
And not me.
She rolled over and then heard a soft cry. Not Rosemarie, who wailed at a different pitch when she was hungry or wet. This was stifled sobbing that drifted from the guest bedroom next to hers.
Yan Li. She sprang out of bed and tiptoed next door, tapped once and walked in. The girl was sitting on the bed, her knees drawn up, her face buried in her hands. Winifred sank down beside her, reached out her arms and drew her close.
“There, now,” she crooned. “It’s all right. Everything will be all right.”
She knew Sam’s bride couldn’t tell her what was wrong, so she just smoothed her hand over the thick black hair and rocked the shaking girl.
After a long while Yan Li lifted her head and tried to smile. But in the moon’s light Winifred could see her mouth tremble and her cheeks glistened as fat tears rolled down and dripped onto her neck.
“Yan Li, watch my hand.” Winifred forked two fingers and walked them across the quilt. With her other hand she formed another set of legs and moved them until they mashed together. Then she looked at Yan Li with a question.
“Is that it? You do not want to marry Wing Sam?”
The girl caught on instantly. She formed her own set of legs and brushed Winifred’s left hand aside, then walked her fingers around and around the remaining set of legs. She looked up expectantly.
“Of course,” Winifred said. “You like Wing Sam. It is the thought of marriage that frightens you. And you have no mother to calm your fears.”
She laid her free hand over the girl’s fingers and nodded. “It will be all right, Yan Li. I promise.” She hugged the slim form, gently pressed her down onto the pillow and smoothed her damp cheek. “It will be all right,” she whispered.
* * *
Halfway through breakfast the following morning, the doorbell clanged. Zane threw his napkin down onto the dining table and rose. “Jupiter, it’s Christmas Day. Nobody gets sick on Christmas Day.”
But it was not a patient. Before him in the doorway stood Leah MacAllister.
“I rode in from the ranch this morning because last night at the dance Winifred asked me to come for your houseboy, Sam’s sake. You see, I speak Chinese.”
Zane knew Leah MacAllister was half-Chinese, the niece of the bakery owner Uncle Charlie, whose fan-tan losses had partly paid for Yan Li’s passage to Portland.
“Come in, Leah.” He took her coat and wool scarf and gloves just as Winifred stepped into the hallway.
“Oh, Leah, thank you for coming into town on Christmas morning. I was right, we do need you.”
The two women brushed past Zane and he sat down to finish his breakfast, listening to the women’s voices in the kitchen speaking the same strange-sounding language Sam did until Winifred joined him. A smile played around her mouth and she shot him a significant look from across the table.
“Was I not clever to ask Leah MacAllister to come? Poor Yan Li has no one to calm her wedding jitters, certainly not Sam.”
Zane could only nod. The unspoken bond between women sometimes amazed him.
Winifred smiled. “There are times when a woman wants to confide in another woman. Cissy used to confide in me until—”
She broke off.
“Until she met me,” Zane supplied. “She often said how much she missed you.”
“But she never wrote,” Winifred said in surprise.
“She was afraid to. She felt you were angry with her.”
Winifred looked away. “I was angry,” she said quietly. “I could not understand how she could throw away her musical career, and mine along with it. I was very angry.”
“Are you still angry?”
“I was for a long time. Cissy and I were the Von Dannen sisters, duo piano artists. After she ran away with you, I had to become a soloist. It was a difficult transition.”
“And now?”
She looked into his eyes. “Now I am beginning to understand how she could give it all up. She fell in love with you, and when that happened, I no longer mattered.”
A peal of girlish laughter sounded from the kitchen. A moment later Sam poked his head into the dining room. “Wedding two o’clock, Boss. You come?”
Zane snorted. “Of course I will come, Sam. It isn’t every day a man gets married.”
Sam grinned and disappeared into the kitchen.
“Or a woman,” Winifred added. “Just think how Yan Li must feel this morning.”
“Scared to death,” Zane acknowledged. “I’ll wager Sam is, too. I’m going to hitch up the buggy so Sam can drive Yan Li to the church. I can walk. It’s just down the hill.”
