her eyes still gentle. “I think not, sir. Friendship with me will not further your own cause. Good day.”
She walked past him and up the steps of the Reeses’ quarters. Miserable, he watched her as she stood a long moment, her forehead against the door, as though trying to work up her courage to turn the handle.
“Susanna, I know what it feels like to be where you are not wanted,” he said distinctly, so she could hear him.
“Perhaps you do, but you’re a man and you have the ability to change your situation,” she told him as she went inside and closed the door quietly behind her.
“No, I do not,” he whispered to the closed door. “I can’t leave this place, either.”
Chapter Eleven
I will leave that lady alone, Joe told himself for three days. It wasn’t difficult, he decided, even though he felt ashamed of his attitude. Maybe if he was not popping in to offer whatever puny commiseration he thought useful, Susanna and her cousin Emily would finally start to talk.
To his gratification, even though it hardly mattered now, Jim O’Leary told him of Susanna’s midnight visit and her confession. “She’s been too frightened to speak up,” O’Leary said.
His voice low, he told Joe what Susanna had said of her husband’s mistreatment of her. “She just took it, until she feared for her life,” he said, appalled at that kind of brutality.
Jim had told him of his visit to the Burts, where he minced no words, either.
“What was their reaction?” Joe asked.
“Shock. Revulsion. Uncertainty. No one knows what to believe,” Jim said. “People have to know, though, even if Susanna is the last one who would ever tell such a sordid story.”
It was a sordid story, Joe knew, after Jim O’Leary bared that kind woman’s shame. He should have gone to her then, but it was easy enough to stay away because duty called, the kind of duty that he could cure with stitches or medicine. Susanna’s wounds were different. With something approaching relief, Joe treated a nasty forefinger avulsion in the stables, which would more than likely cause an infection that led to amputation; a trying childbirth on Suds Row; and a more pleasant one just down the row at the O’Leary household, which resulted in a lively little redhead much like Katie O’Leary herself. Then his contract surgeon left unwillingly for detached duty at Camp Robinson, and Captain Hartsuff decided he needed another week in Cheyenne doing God knows what. By the fourth morning after Susanna Hopkins had returned the key to the classroom, Joe began to worry.
He was thinking about it over breakfast—lumpy oatmeal with everlasting raisins—when he heard a timid knock at his side door, the one that dependents used when they needed his services. It was Emily Reese. He didn’t feel like looking at her, but Hippocrates overruled him as usual, and he ushered her inside.
“Mrs. Reese, what can I do for you?” He couldn’t resist himself then, because he knew his ill-mannered joke would fall on stupid ears. “Did Stanley choke on a bar of soap after too much cussing?”
“Stanley is fine,” Emily said. She clutched Joe’s arm. “I haven’t seen Susanna in five days.”
“What?”
He hadn’t meant to shout. He took a deep breath. Surely he hadn’t heard her correctly. “You share a four-room house. What do you mean?”
She seemed to think he was the idiot. “I haven’t seen her.”
He thought about that before reacting this time, even as he felt a chill down his spine. “You must see her for meals, at least. And everyone has to, well, void, now and then. Surely you’ve seen her.”
Emily shook her head, and he noticed for the first time that her lovely eyes were wide with worry. “I have heard her go downstairs late at night and early in the morning, but she is always behind that blanket, otherwise, and there is never any food missing.”
“She’s your cousin, Emily,” Joe reminded her. “You couldn’t just pull back the blanket?”
Emily’s eyes filled with tears. “I’m afraid of what I will find now.”
Joe didn’t bother to grab his overcoat. He ran out of his quarters, his mind intent on what he would find. He took the steps two at a time, not even breathing heavily as he yanked back the blanket so hard that it fell from its rod.
Her hair a terrible tangle, and her face pale almost to parchment, Susanna looked back at him, startled. Without a word, she turned on her side and faced the