Thaddeus looked out the window above the sink. A faint orange glow was just becoming visible on the horizon. “Hardly seems worth going to bed,” he said, lifting his chin in that direction. “Day’s breaking. Time to get to work.”
In the event that his father was serious, Remington quickly finished spreading preserves on his heel of bread and took a bite. He slowed down so he could taste what he put in his mouth when he heard Thaddeus snicker. “Funny,” he said, cheeking the bread.
Thaddeus shrugged, stretched his arms wide. “I thoughtso.” He finished his coffee and stood. “I’m going to bed, to sleep, perchance to dream.”
“That’s not the kind of sleep Hamlet had in mind.”
Thaddeus looked at Ellie. “You ever notice that college knocked the stupid right out of him? Sometimes I think it’s a damn shame.” He chucked Remington on the shoulder as he skirted the table. “Thank you again for seeing after her,” he told his son. “You, too, Ellie. She needed wrangling in the worst way.”
When Thaddeus was gone, Ellie’s candid gaze fell on Remington. “Are you going to tell me?”
“Are you going to feed me?”
“Fried eggs or flapjacks?”
“Both. It’s a long story.”
• • •
By nature, Phoebe was an early riser. The long nights demanded by the theater had never translated into lingering in bed come morning. Ellie had closed the curtains in her room—Ben’s room, she reminded herself—so that contributed to the lateness of the hour when she woke. She knew it was late because somewhere in the house a clock chimed and she counted out nine on her fingertips.
She turned onto her back, pulled the quilted coverlet up to her shoulders, and took inventory of the parts of her thatdidn’thurt. As it happened, it was a short list, and she finished it before she was ready to leave what she determined was an extraordinarily comfortable nest.
The choice was taken from her when the bedroom door opened in a grand manner that could only mean that Fiona was about to make an entrance. In Fiona’s hands, the door had such a significant supporting role that Phoebe was always tempted to give it credit in the playbill. Such was Fiona’s gift.
“Ah, you’re awake. You are, aren’t you?”
Phoebe raised herself up on her elbows to prove that she was but did not fool herself into believing that it mattered. Fiona was obviously determined that she should be awake and would have made it happen.
“Good.” Fiona closed the door and crossed the room. The hem of her satin robe swept the floor behind her. “Are you comfortable like that? You can’t be. Sit up.”
Phoebe did, resting against the headboard after she stuffed a pillow behind the small of her back. “Is that better for you?”
Fiona made a moue. “Don’t be cross.” She sat on the edge of the bed, turned slightly so she could draw up one knee, and set her hands on Phoebe’s shoulders. “Let me look at you. Suffer the examination if you must, but I am determined.” After several long moments of serious study, Fiona removed her hands from Phoebe’s shoulders and placed the back of one of them against her forehead. “You don’t have a temperature. You are simply quite fine, aren’t you? No ill effects from your ordeal?” She dropped her hand to her lap. “Thaddeus told me all about it. How awful it must have been. Was it awful?”
Phoebe did not expect Fiona to wait for an answer, and she was not proved wrong. Fiona launched into an explanation of her absence at the station and then her absence from the front porch when Phoebe arrived. Further, she explained why she had written so few times and why the invitation to visit had come from Thaddeus and not her. Phoebe listened with half an ear to what was likely only a quarter’s worth of truth. She would sort through it later, parse what she thought she could trust. Fiona needed time to settle with the truth as well.
Phoebe waited for the spring inside Fiona to completely unwind before she asked, “What about you? Are you well?”
“Now that you’re here, I am. You cannot imagine how I worried.”
“Oh, I think I can.”
Fiona’s amethyst eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “I’m not sure I like your tone.” She held up one finger. “No, wait. Iamsure, and I don’t like it.”
Phoebe flushed. It was a reminder that Fiona could still make her feel like a child. “I’m sorry. Of course you were worried.”
Fiona tilted her head to one side, thoughtful now. “Perhaps you are more overwrought than your appearance suggests. I think a hot bath and a hotter meal are in order.” She stood, put out a hand to forestall an argument. “Put your robe on and I’ll have a couple of the hands move the tub in here. Once Ellie’s heated the water, they can fetch and carry. I have bath salts.”
Phoebe admitted it sounded wonderful. “I should help.”
“Ellie won’t let you,” Fiona said. “Doing for others is her domain.”
Phoebe thought that the way Fiona said it, it was a matter of fact, not opinion. She wondered, then, about the faint thread of bitterness that stitched the words together. She did not think she imagined it, but it was also difficult to believe that Fiona longed for purpose in her life that included doing for others.
Fiona rose and picked up Phoebe’s flannel robe from where it lay over the spindle rail of a rocker. She handed it over. “I’ll see that everything’s made ready.”
Then she was gone.
