Had Brigid already gotten to him? No. Abby’d come straight from the dining hall. It wasn’t possible, was it?
She slowed her approach, tamping down the flood of anxiety sliding up her back. He couldn’t know.
The smile she pasted on her face couldn’t possibly look real.
“Evening, Brother Isaiah.” With the glow of Luc and the hope of her mother’s help long burned away, the cold penetrated the cotton of her dress and the thick, homespun wool of her coat. This man waiting here could not be a good thing.
“Abigail,” he said, pushing his voice into that low register that said hours of preaching could ensue.Hours.
She bit back the words she wanted to let pour out—about Sammy and hope and God being everywhere—and waited, schooling her face into a close approximation of the interested believer she was meant to be.
“How are the fences?” he asked.
“Wonderful,” she said.Tell him about the medicine, something inside her urged.Maybe he’ll understand. Maybe he’ll agree.“Perfect, but I’ve—”
“Good. Good.” He cut through her words and paused, indicating that she should precede him inside. As she passed, entering the only home she’d ever had to herself, a slew of images hit her—Hamish coughing up blood, Sammy’s face stained brown with the stuff. Resentment rose up on a tide of fear and frustration. It burned a hot trail through her belly and chest and throat to press like tears against her sinuses. Isaiah, their fearless leader, this man who ignored his own people’s suffering.
“You worked the market today.”
Slowly, she nodded. Should she tell him about how sick Sammy was? And about the medicine that could cure it?
“And where were you just now?”
“With Mama at the Center.”
“Before then?”
Her throat seized up. Someone must have seen her with Luc.
“Checked the fences.”
“Very impressive.Ambitious.” His smile was a benediction. “I looked for you. Along the southern fence line. Up to the rocks. Didn’t see you.”
“Oh.” She forced the word out as calmly as she could, swallowing back the lump of fear. He’d come across the hole in the fence with her coat and bonnet beside it, and now he was playing cat and mouse with her. He had to be. “Must have just missed each other.” The words sounded artificial. She made her way past him in the disappearing light and slipped into the kitchen, where she filled the kettle. An image of Luc arose, unbidden, of his hot coffee and his hotter tongue. She almost cried, thankful that she’d gotten that moment with him.
“What’s that, dear?” Isaiah asked, polite as ever, hat in hand, brim curled into his palm.
“May I serve you some tea?”
“Certainly. Thank you kindly, Mistress Merkley.”
She could feel Isaiah watching her as she put the kettle on the stove and moved to fetch her single loaf of bread, hiding her shaking hands in the folds of her dress.
The silence was finally broken by the flare of a match when he lit the hurricane lamp on the kitchen table before going to work on the woodstove in the center of the one-room cabin. Once he’d gotten it crackling, she heard the creak of him settling into one of the wooden chairs that her late husband had built with his own hands. On the cushion she’d stuffed and sewn herself. The cushion Hamish had sat on every day, until he’d moved to the bed, never to sit again.
“The outdoors suits you,” he said.
She nodded in return, since anything more would suggest that this was a compliment. Which it assuredly wasn’t. Isaiah did not compliment. He spoke in simple truths. Proclamations.
“Sit with me,” he said while they waited for the water to boil.
“Thank you. Sir, I have—”
“Sit, child. Listen. I think you’ll be glad of what I have to share.”
He sounded so reasonable, so like the man she remembered from her childhood, that hope flared. This was it—her opportunity to tell him. He would agree that medication was the solution. And with Isaiah on his side, Sammy would be fine. She had to try. Shehadto.
“If I may, Isaiah. It’s about Sammy. There’s a chance we could fix what ails him.”
