Dance Away with Me - Susan Elizabeth Phillips Page 0,82
and it’s only a couple of hours away. Let’s leave them alone for a day or so to talk things over.” He looked at Tess. “I promise you, we’ll make the transition as easy on Wren as we possibly can.”
Diane touched the back of her husband’s hand and gazed at her granddaughter. “You’re not the only one who’d give up her life for her, Tess.”
* * *
They were offering Tess a short reprieve. Ian, predictably, stomped off into the woods as soon as they drove away, muttering something about peace and quiet as he left. Tess fed Wren, changed her, trying not to think—not to feel—but it was impossible. Diane and Jeff were two of the most decent, well-intentioned people she’d ever met, and it wasn’t right to hate them the way she did right now. As for Ian . . . He’d behaved honorably—more than honorably. What she was asking of him was beyond unreasonable, and she had no right to blame him for refusing. No right to blame any of them. But she did.
* * *
Ian was gone when she came downstairs the next morning, but his Land Cruiser sat outside, so at least he hadn’t fled to Manhattan. As she finished feeding Wren, she heard a knock at the door. Were the Dennings back already? Or more teenagers? She couldn’t deal with either, but her conscience wouldn’t let her ignore the knocking. She tucked Wren in the sling and went to answer.
A broomstick-thin woman with lank, gray-threaded hair stood on the other side. Her age could have been anywhere from forty to sixty. She had the coarse, weather-beaten complexion of someone who’d earned her wrinkles outside. Unlike Rebecca Eldridge, this woman appeared to have been part of these mountains for generations.
“Sorry to bother you, missus. I’m Sarah Childers, and my husband, Duke—he’s out in the truck—he cut his hand real bad on the posthole digger this morning. I heard you helped out the Eldridges when their little boy cut his leg, and I’d be mighty grateful if you’d take a look at Duke.”
Tess started to say everything she needed to say—that she wasn’t a doctor, she had virtually no medical supplies, and she wasn’t certified to practice any kind of medicine in Tennessee, but the woman had already zeroed in on Wren. “God bless America, but isn’t she a little sweetie pie?” She pressed a sun-spotted hand to her cheek. “Duke’s mad as a hornet at me because I wouldn’t sew up his hand myself.”
Making it highly unlikely Sarah Childers could get her husband to a doctor.
Tess stepped back from the door. “I’ll take a look at it, Mrs. Childers, but if the wound is serious, he has to see a doctor.”
“Duke don’t believe in doctors. And last time I sewed him up, God bless America, I ended up fainting right on the floor and had a headache that lasted all week.”
“Concussions will do that to you,” Tess muttered as Mrs. Childers went to the truck to retrieve her husband.
Duke Childers was even more grizzled than his wife, with big ears, an unkempt mustache, and wires of gray hair sticking out from beneath a work-worn hat of indeterminate color. A none-too-clean towel wrapped his hand. “Jes sew it up. I got work to do,” he said, by way of a greeting.
“There’s no need to be talkin’ to missus like that.” Sarah chided him as Tess fetched the first aid kit. “I apologize for my husband. He doesn’t take well to bein’ hurt.”
“If you’d a done what I told you . . .” he grumbled.
“I’m not stitchin’ you up again, Duke Childers!”
Tess directed him toward the dining table, which seemed to be turning into her general surgery table. “Have a seat, Mr. Childers.”
“Name’s Duke,” he said. “I been settin’ fence posts all my life. Damn fool thing to do.”
The gash ran deep in his palm near his thumb and gushed fresh blood as Tess unwrapped it. Even if she’d had more of the same wound dressing she’d used on Eli, she wouldn’t have been able to use it at that location. “This needs stitches,” she said.
“God bless America, but that’s why we’re here,” Sarah said, as if Tess had missed the point.
Tess pressed a clean gauze pad over the wound. “I’m not a doctor. I don’t have any anesthesia to numb the area, and you need antibiotics.”
Duke drew back his lips over crooked yellowed teeth. “It’s not hard to see you ain’t from around here. Up here in