“He can take better care of Lucy without you hanging over the bed.” She’d gently herded him and his steaming cup from the room. “Go outside and breathe some fresh air before the doctor has another patient to tend to.”
In the parlor Matt was surprised to see the preacher sitting on the couch with her hands folded in her lap, her head bent low in either sleep or prayer. She looked up when his boots scraped the floor.
“Good morning, Mrs. Sizeloff,” his mouth said out of habit, but this was far from a good morning. Even though the sun shone brightly on the prairie grass and streamed in through the windows it might as well have been midnight. “You haven’t been here all night, have you?”
Since he hadn’t been out of Lucy’s room in…how many hours, he’d lost track. It had been light when he’d last seen her and it was light again, with a night passing in between.
“Lands, no. Wouldn’t Josie have a time trying to care for little Maudie by himself? Infants aren’t the most agreeable folks if they’re hungry.”
He remembered that. Lucy used to raise a fuss if her bottle wasn’t at her lips the moment she needed to eat. Mrs. Sizeloff would be even more tied to her infant, since the baby was likely a nursling.
“It was good of you to come back. Looks like we need all the prayers the good Lord will listen to.”
“He’s got a wonderfully big ear. So do I.” She got up from the couch in a rustle of brown plaid. “Let’s take a walk in the sunshine and you can tell me what the doc thinks.”
Morning light was blinding after having spent so much time in a darkened sickroom. Without his hat to shade his eyes, he had to stare at the ground.
That suited him fine, since the happy blue of the sky looked too much like Lucy’s eyes had only days ago, alive with laughter and health. It felt as if a stone weighted his heart when he looked into her eyes now.
He led the preacher toward the well where the shade under the roof would give his vision some relief.
“Doc says there’s not much change since last night, but I think Lucy’s getting weaker. He’s trying to keep her from going into decline. If that happens—” Some words just shouldn’t be said—they hurt worse than physical pain. “There won’t be much hope.”
“There’s always hope.”
Matt looked at the preacher’s face. A blaze of white hair cut through the darker strands, streaking from her forehead to the bun tucked in a proper roll at her neck.
Folks in town said the streak had come from God. She’d asked him for it as a sign that a sick friend would recover from a terrible illness. According to the story, she’d got the streak and the friend had gotten well. He’d like to think the tale was true. Maybe she knew more about hope than he did.
“Sometimes things that seem bad turn around to be something wonderful,” she said.
He didn’t know what to say about that. He’d seen things that started bad get even worse.
“Take your own life, for example.” The doubt must have shown on his face. She smiled and patted his arm where it crossed his chest. “It’s not often a man goes from robbing a bank to falling in love and legally wed in the space of an hour.”
He sputtered, or gasped. He must have gone red as sunset, maybe pale as the moon. He sure couldn’t think of a blessed thing to say. A man couldn’t very well lie to the person who had spent untold hours praying for his daughter.
“It wasn’t so hard to figure out.” A chuckle shook her shoulders. She planted her hands at her waist and shuffled the dirt with the toe of her shoe. “I believe in hope, Matt. I also believe that love can happen in a minute.”
The woman might be a dove in God’s service, but she had the eyes and instincts of a hawk. He still couldn’t figure out what to say, so he offered her water.
“No, thank you,” she said, her eyes lighting with laughter. “There’s no call to look so green about the ears. Since I haven’t let on to the law about it by now, I suppose you are safe from me…and Josie, too. There are a few things I don’t understand, though, like why you only took ten percent. It’s a subject