Joe had a handkerchief ready. “Believe me, Claudine is better off. And so is Maddie, although she might not know it yet.”
“What about you, Joe?”
The question came out before she even realized it, and she knew she had startled him. Startled herself, too; she had never called him Joe except in private, and her question was impertinent. Or maybe it wasn’t; she wanted to know.
He thought a moment before he answered, but she knew Joe was a deliberate man not given to impulse. A smile started to play around his lips, and she felt the rest of the callus around her heart dissolve. All the slights and vitriol, the humiliation and sorrow paled in significance as she watched his dear face relax, even though they stood in a military cemetery.
“I’m better off, too. Unlike Maddie, I already know it.”
He said it so simply. He turned his attention to a corporal from Company H, Ninth Infantry, an ordained minister, who recited the Twenty-third Psalm, and the passage from Job about “men born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward.”
“That would be Claudine,” Joe whispered. “Come to think of it, none of us are wholly good or completely bad.”
“I think you’re wholly good,” Suzanna said, discarding every fear that had ever controlled her. She made herself vulnerable.
Such a light came into the post surgeon’s eyes that she stepped back, wondering at her own temerity. He came closer again, such a small distance to move, but one that made her heart beat faster. She knew her cheeks were red, but it was cold out. No one would notice.
“Wholly good? Not so, Suzie. Before you arrived with Eddie, I was admiring Fifi’s assets.” He looked straight ahead then, the very image of military deportment, as she struggled not to laugh at a funeral.
Only by bowing her head and cramming her fingers against the bridge of her nose could she control herself. Susanna looked up when she was firmly in charge again, this time to observe the four women who stood between Jules Ecoffey and a man who must be Adolf Cuny, his partner in commerce and vice. Fifi was easy to spot.
“Someone should take out your eyeballs and wash them with pine tar soap,” she murmured out of the side of her mouth, and it was his turn not to laugh at a burial.
By the time the brief service ended, the wind had picked up, tossing around dead cottonwood leaves from last fall. She looked around for Eddie, but Katie O’Leary had his hand now, and Rooney’s. They walked away, leaving her to stroll down the hill toward the hospital with the post surgeon only. He held out his elbow a little and her arm went naturally into the crook of his arm.
“I’m supposed to read tomorrow night at the hospital, but I don’t have a book. We finished Little Men last week.”
He shook his head. “Not this week, Suzie. We’re expecting the wounded from the battlefield any hour now, and I know there will be frostbite cases, too. Al picked up a telegram from Fetterman’s post surgeon to warn us what’s coming. Looks like we will be performing at least one amputation, maybe two. Better you stay away for a few days. I’ll be sleeping at the hospital.” He sighed. “It was easy enough during the late war. Maybe I’m getting old.”
Susanna took another chance, even though it made her blush to bring it up. “Joe, if you’re at hospital, would you mind if I slept in your quarters for a few nights? Captain Reese will be newly home in one half of the house, Captain O’Leary in the other one. The walls are thin and I’m in the middle.”
He threw back his head and laughed. “Suzie, you’re more than welcome in my ever so humble abode! I’ll be camping on a cot at the hospital. Give the lovebirds a couple of days.” He grew more thoughtful. “I hate for you to sneak around, but no one will understand, if they see you in my place. Back door and after taps, all right?”
She did as he said. Private Benedict dismissed school early the next afternoon as the troopers rode into Fort Laramie, as dismal a bunch of campaigners as Maeve said she had ever seen. Susanna stayed for supper at the Rattigans, impressed with how quickly Maddie had taken over the duty of setting the table. Bless her Gallic heart, there were the first dandelions of spring flared out nicely in a teacup