The Whippoorwill Trilogy - Sharon Sala Page 0,303

a bit under the weather today. Let’s go on in the house and give her some space. Okay?”

Katie nodded, but didn’t seem all that convinced. She hid her face against Alice’s bosom, afraid she was about to witness another death.

Letty could hear the women whispering among themselves as they went back into the house. She was thankful for their concern, but too queasy to dwell on it.

T-Bone came out from under the porch and sat down at her feet, staring up at her with a brown, soulful stare.

Letty laid a hand on his head with an absent touch, as she leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes, letting her body go limp.

The breeze was fairly stiff, and the cool mountain air blowing against her face felt wonderful. It didn’t appear that she was going to ride out to the mine after all, and hated to think about Robert Lee not getting any of Alice’s fine chicken and cornbread. She’d have Alice save it for a while anyway. There was always the chance that he’d ride by.

She sat for a bit, letting her thoughts wander as her stomach slowly settled. Finally, she opened her eyes and as she did, caught a glimpse of the cross marking Eulis’ grave. Without thinking she got up from her chair, stepped off the porch and headed for the stump. The urge to talk to Eulis was strong.

Columbines were blooming along the edge of the path, their pale, rosy blooms dangled from the fragile stems like tiny bells. A pair of robins were fussing over a green wooly caterpillar, and a small gray squirrel was digging near a clump of rocks, searching for nuts it had buried last fall. T-Bone’s presence made the squirrel nervous and it disappeared up a tree.

The peacefulness of the moment was, for Letty, bittersweet. It was the kind of scene that Eulis would have loved, and she felt more than a little anger that fate had taken him away.

When she reached his grave, she eased herself down onto the stump, and as she did, realized she was shaking.

“Lord, Eulis, what’s the matter with me? I’m carrying on like some helpless female, and you and I both know I’m anything but that.”

Her complaint seemed out of place within the peacefulness, and since it was obvious Eulis wasn’t going to answer, Letty decided to shut up. For a while, she just sat, watching a tiny trail of ants marching from somewhere beneath the stump to an anthill on the other side of the white cross bearing Eulis’ name, trying desperately to concentrate on anything but the constant rumble in her belly.

As she sat, a quiet enveloped her. The shaking eased. Her stomach settled. She closed her eyes and drew a deep, cleansing breath, and as she did, a realization dawned.

Eulis had been gone for more than two months. There had been so much turmoil in her life afterward that she hadn’t given the normal functions of her body a single thought, but she was thinking about them now. Not once since Eulis had died, had she had her monthly flow.

She stood abruptly, her gaze frantic, her heart pounding in disbelief. Then her vision blurred as she gazed down at the cross on Eulis’ grave.

“Oh, Eulis… Eulis… can it be? Here I’ve been thinking you went off and left me all alone.” Her voice began to shake as she laid her hands across the flat of her belly. “I’m not sure about this, because… well… I haven’t been in this situation before… but I just realized we might be having a baby.” She sat back down on the stump, stared at the bulge of bare earth over his grave, and then started to cry. “All I have to say is… it’s not fair.”

It took a few minutes of bawling out loud before she could finish what she needed to say. The ants were still in the midst of their march, but the robins had flown away and the squirrel was still up a tree. Letty shuddered, overwhelmed from the realization and from the new wave of grief.

Eulis was gone, but he’d left a bit of himself behind. She didn’t have to see Dr. Angus to be told, there was a knowing deep in her heart. She was going to have a baby. She came off the stump and went down to her knees, then fell forward, embracing the bulge of brown earth that blanketed her man. She laid there, numb to everything