Charlie waltzed around the room, and he stretched out his hands to his oldest sister. “Dance with me, Fernie.”
She snipped the thread with her scissors. “I don’t have time. I’m hemming Bill’s trousers for you.” A savage smile flickered in the lamplight. “If he ever comes home, he shan’t have a stitch to wear.”
Ivy’s pencil whispered over the paper. She hadn’t heard a kind word about her brother-in-law for months. “I can’t imagine how difficult this is for you. I know how you miss him.” Especially since messages came through the Red Cross only twice a year, limited to twenty-five words.
Fern’s mouth opened and shut, and she shook her head, not as if about to cry but as if swallowing words best left unsaid.
“So dance with me and cheer up.” Charlie swayed to the tune, smiling, reaching, utterly charming.
“I don’t have time.” Fern spooled out thread. “I have too much work, and Ivy isn’t helping at all.”
Ivy’s pencil paused midstroke. “Pardon?”
Fern flicked her chin at Ivy. “How can you sit there drawing when you see me hard at work, all day, every day?”
“Be fair, Fern.” Charlie set his hands low on his hips. “Ivy and I work all day too. We have evenings off. You have afternoons off and visit your friends.”
Fern sent Charlie a dark look, but Charlie was right. Aunt Ruby came in every afternoon to clean the surgery and answer the telephone. But reminding Fern would shred more threads from the family blanket.
Fern took a stabbing little stitch. “Regardless, it’s rude of her to draw when I’m working.”
Ivy’s chest tightened. Fern’s timetables made Ivy feel pumped up with adrenaline. No time to breathe. Never to record on paper the sights that captured her imagination. Before rounds, Fern checked Ivy’s medical bag to make sure she hadn’t packed her sketch pad, as if Ivy were a sneaky, errant child.
Now Fern wanted to take away her evening drawing time as well?
Something sparked in her chest. She never talked back to Fern, but she couldn’t lose yet another thing that fed her soul. “When I agreed not to draw on my rounds, you promised to allow me to sketch in the evenings.”
“Allow?” Charlie stepped closer. “Ivy, she isn’t your boss. You’re her boss.”
Fern gasped. “She is not my boss. I’m the eldest.”
“She’s the doctor.”
Tension whirled, destructive as a gale, and Ivy sprang to her feet. “Come, Charlie. I’ll dance with you.”
A grin dug into one cheek. “You’re a lousy dancer.”
“But a willing one.”
Charlie tipped his head in grudging acceptance, and he swept her into his arms and twirled her around.
What an appealing boy he was, with Mum’s good looks and Dad’s congeniality. Soon he’d be a most attractive young man.
Her heart twisted as it did each day when she saw boys in the smart blazers of Victoria College. What would become of Charlie now that he’d sacrificed his education? Yet she had to honor his decision and the heart behind it, the heart to help his family.
“What is this?” Fern stood by the sofa, the trousers draped over one arm, the sketch pad shaking in her fist. “Is this supposed to be me?”
Ivy’s steps faltered. “Yes.” She hadn’t paid much attention to her sketching.
Fern’s chin quivered. “I never would have thought you to be so cruel.”
“Cruel?” Ivy stepped away from Charlie and took the sketch pad.
Her breath caught. The lines of Fern’s face always called Ivy’s pencil to soft shading and gentle curves. Tonight she’d drawn pointed corners and blunt edges.
In the sketch, Fern’s eyes held the sharp darkness of a knife of flint.
Ivy met the point of that flinty knife. “I—I—”
