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“None,” Zane agreed. He studied the plate before him. “Good cake.”
Suddenly she realized he had successfully gotten her to stop crying. “You’re a good doctor, Zane.”
“Not very good at whist, though.”
“Maybe not, but you’re good with hysterical females, good with pneumonia cases, good with mothers having bab—” Except for Cissy.
She closed her eyes in anguish. “Oh, Zane, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
He said nothing, just forked bites of cake into his mouth and washed them down with lemonade. When his plate was clean, he set it on the floor of the porch and turned toward her.
“I am good with women having babies, Winifred. Celeste didn’t die in childbirth. But she hemorrhaged afterward, and I couldn’t stop it. I have never felt so helpless in my life.”
“Oh, Zane. I—”
“Now, let’s go inside and congratulate Mr. and Mrs. Cloudman.” He took her plate and the empty lemonade glass, set them on the floor and stood up. “Damn, I could sure use a shot of whiskey.”
“Oh, so could I!”
They walked home slowly in the cooling dusk, the air soft and scented with roses and honeysuckle, the evening song sparrows audible over the neighborhood sounds of children’s hopscotch and piano practice.
“Do you like Smoke River?” Zane asked suddenly.
“Yes, I do. It’s a pretty town. The people are friendly.”
“Do you think—?”
“No,” she said quickly. “I don’t.”
Zane lifted his eyebrows at her over-fast response, but he didn’t argue or challenge. He merely took her hand and kept on walking.
Chapter Thirteen
Winifred tossed the sheet off her sticky body and sat upright. She couldn’t sleep. It was too hot, and the July air outside her wide open window smelled so sweet and delicious it made her ache. Why, why did everyone in Smoke River have to grow roses or jasmine or honeysuckle or other things that smelled so evocative?
What was wrong with her?
All at once she heard Cissy’s voice. Nothing is wrong, you silly. You’re just alive.
She felt as jumpy as Sam’s cat. Restless and short-tempered. At supper she’d snapped at Zane about everything, the soup, the mint tea Sam had brewed for her, even the salt and pepper shakers they passed back and forth. Every time their fingers brushed she wanted to scream. Or cry. Or both.
After supper Zane had made fresh peach ice cream, refusing to let Sam or Yan Li take over turning the crank and refusing to believe her when she said she didn’t want any. He simply chuckled in that maddening way of his, scooped up a big dish and plunked it in her lap. Then, when she’d absentmindedly eaten it all up, he laughed.
Oh, why did this man make her so mad?
She slipped out of bed and padded to the open window. The moon was up, spilling silvery light over the quiet street and the wide meadow beyond the house. It gilded the field of wild buckwheat stalks and the low-growing blue daisy-like flowers so they looked like miniature swords and tiny shields. It was beautiful out there, so serene and untroubled it looked like a Monet painting.
She should read something until she grew sleepy. But lately even Milton was making her cry. Everything made her cry.
She could write to Millicent in St. Louis... No, she’d be vacationing at her home in Rochester. Millicent had wanted her to come home with her for the summer, but Winifred could hardly wait to come west to see Rosemarie. And Zane.
She could steal silently downstairs and out onto the porch.
Maybe rocking in the swing would settle her nerves.
And maybe not. The sound of crickets made her jumpy, reminded her of creatures that made noise to attract mates—bullfrogs and nightingales and owls. Did owls mate at night? What about swans? And wolves and...and giraffes? How annoying. Why did all God’s creatures have to mate?
She drew in an uneven breath. Because if they did not, the creatures of the earth would die off and life would cease. The cycle of birth and death would stop and Milton’s paradise would be truly lost.
She didn’t know how long she stood staring out at the moon-bathed grass and silver-leafed trees, but it didn’t help her jangled nerves or her fluttery heart one bit. Instinctively she knew that nothing would help; she would have to unjangle her own nerves, as she did on performance nights. But, she wondered, how did one unflutter one’s heart?
The next morning promised to be another scorching day, and by ten o’clock Winifred had exhausted a lemon meringue pie lesson, Milton and a frustrating practice session on her Mozart piano concerto.
