Ivy turned the dial, and it started ticking. The loud ding would break into Ivy’s dreamworld when she was drawing. In fifteen minutes, she could sketch an outline, the essence of what had attracted her. Then she could finish the drawing in the evening.
She clasped the timer to her chest. “Charlie, you’re brilliant. And so thoughtful.”
He flapped a hand at her, and his cheeks reddened.
“Speaking of kitchens and timing...” Aunt Ruby frowned at the kitchen door.
“I’ll check.” Ivy stood and set the timer on the sofa. “I didn’t greet Aunt Opal properly anyway.”
Aunt Opal sat at the kitchen table. She sprang to her feet and to the stove. “It’s almost ready.”
Aunt Opal never sat when cooking. And her color was high. Her voice rasped.
“Are you all right?” Ivy asked.
“Of course.” Her neck contorted as she swallowed, and she wobbled as she stirred the pan on the stove.
“Let me see your throat.”
“Nonsense. It’s nothing to—”
“Dad always says doctors make the worst patients. Must I add doctors’ daughters to the list? Let me see.” Ivy came beside her aunt.
“It’s nothing.” Her sigh released a foul odor. A familiar odor.
Ivy gagged. The odor of the sickroom where she’d watched Dulcie des Forges die. The odor of Overdale Isolation Hospital right now.
She set her fingers on her aunt’s chin and turned her toward the light from the kitchen window. “Open wide.”
Ivy needed no torch to see the gray membrane on her aunt’s tonsils, no thermometer to detect her aunt’s fever.
She moved the pan off the stove. “It looks like diphtheria.”
“Diphtheria? That’s a children’s disease.” Aunt Opal groped for the pan handle.
Ivy stilled her aunt’s hand. “This epidemic is hitting adults too. We’re all weakened by our poor diets. I’ll send you to Overdale straightaway.”
“Right now?” Bleariness dulled Aunt Opal’s dark brown eyes. “But dinner—”
“We’ll make do.” Ivy went to the kitchen door. “I’m afraid we have a change in plans. Aunt Opal might have diphtheria.”
“Diphtheria?” The cry circled the room.
“Uncle Leo and Aunt Ruby, please go home,” Ivy said. “Even if you had the disease as children, we mustn’t take chances. Uncle Arthur, please pack a bag of necessities for Aunt Opal. Charlie, please go to the telephone box on the road and ring for an ambulance—then go home straightaway. You never had diphtheria.”
“An ambulance?” Aunt Opal said from behind Ivy. “That’s hardly necessary.”
“It’s quite necessary.” Ivy leveled a firm gaze at her aunt. “TheGermans requisitioned your car, and you mustn’t exert yourself by bicycling. Charlie?”
“On my way.” Footsteps pounded to the door.
“Diphtheria?” Aunt Opal sank into a kitchen chair, and her eyebrows tented.
“We caught it early. That makes for a good prognosis.” Ivy gave her the most comforting, most confident smile she could muster.
Even as fear wrenched through her gut.
chapter
