Butterfly Garden (15 page)

Adam strode toward the doctor until they stood facing each other. “Why is it impossible, smart man?” he asked, fists clenched, happy for the challenge of the question, hoping for a greater challenge, for a reason to use his itching fists.

Sara scowled at him, then she turned a smile could sweeten gooseberries toward The
English
.

Adam growled, but no one paid him any mind.

“Come, Jordan, sit and eat with us,” Sara invited. “And tell us how Emma does.”

The doctor ate the food he had provided, Adam thought, without so much as looking in his direction. “No lasting damage,” The
English
said. “And she’s sleeping well. But what you said about her never speaking, Mrs. Zuckerman, puzzles me. If she has a voice to scream, she has a voice to speak. She’s stubborn, though, if she’s chosen her whole life not to use it.” He did look at Adam then. “She may have your stubborn, but at least she doesn’t look like you.”

Lizzie and Katie giggled.

“She does when she smiles,” Sara said.

“Datt don’t smile,” Lizzie said.

“Datt goes ‘grrrr’,” Pris said, exaggerating a ferocious snarl.

“Like Trixie when Ginger takes her pups,” Katie added.

“Someone steal your pups?” the doctor asked him with a grin.

Sara’s easy laugh made the ache in Adam’s chest grow for some odd reason. “Your Aunt Emma has your Datt’s temper too,” she said to the children, which increased Jordan’s laughter.

And why it should anger him that they all seemed happy, Adam did not know. He pondered the question until someone knocked at the door.

A stranger, Amish, but from a different community, with thinning hair, big teeth and frightened eyes spoke so fast, Adam could barely understand him. But The
English
did. “Sara,” he said as he threw on his greatcoat. “Come with me for this delivery. “Mary Jakeman’s bound to deliver breech again, twins, I think. You’ll never get another chance like this.”

Sara nodded before Adam could respond. “Lena, will you get the girls off to bed?”

Adam snapped out of his confusion. “Now wait a minute—”

“Of course. What else are
grossmommies
for, if not to hear prayers and kiss cheeks?”

Sara did some cheek-kissing of her own. But not his, never his. Adam didn’t want her to go, but before he knew what to do about it, she was tying her bonnet.

Why this odd sense of loss?  She was only going with The
English
to deliver a baby. Wait a minute. “Do not tell me you need Sara’s help?” Adam shouted.

Sara took offense, no missing it.

“Sara is not the only one who still has things to learn,” The
English
said, implying that Adam could learn a few things, himself. “This birth is a good chance for both of us.”

Adam was surprised at that admission, and yet ... what was wrong with him?  “Go,” he shouted. “Just go.”

The look Sara threw him before she went out the door cut him to the bone. He knew she was angry at his gruff; he just wished he knew why that bothered him.

The house was silent after she left. Too silent. Everybody felt it. His mother bid him goodnight with a look of understanding—which he hated—before she shepherded the girls upstairs and he was left alone.

He went right to bed, early as it was, and lay there. Alone. It took him a while to realize that what he felt was not anger, but disappointment. He had expected, but dreaded, having Sara in the bed beside him, and now he was alone. He should be glad. Except that she was with The
English
. Again.

During the night, he tossed in a bed that seemed suddenly too big and drifted in and out of sleep. When he heard the kitchen clock chime two, he sat up and saw that Sara was still missing.

He put on his trousers and went up to see if she was in either of the girls’ beds, hoping, yet dreading the thought of finding her there. For if she chose a different bed from his, the die would be cast and there would be no budging, for either of them. He did not want her in his bed, true, but he did not want her anywhere else either ... except home, damn it!

Adam sat in the kitchen rocker and lay his head back. Where had they said they were going?  North, yes, but what was the name of that farm?

The clock chimed; Adam’s head fell forward and he sat up straight. Four o’clock. All night. They had been gone all night. His wife had not spent the night with him, but with the fancy English doctor.

Jakeman; that was the name, and he knew that farm.

Adam hitched his horses to his buggy and set out after his wife. Enough was enough.

A frosty snow-cap blanketed the earth, the sun still far from rising, as Adam rounded the bend. The farm he sought lay in the valley, its windows lit even at this hour. That, Adam thought, was a good sign.

He left the horses standing, climbed the steps, opened the door and stepped onto the porch. At the same time, the kitchen door creaked open, pulled by the draft from the porch door.

All was silent in a dark kitchen that smelled of baked bread and pickled beets, except for the sound of a man’s snores. The man with the big teeth, the husband, slept and snorted sitting in a kitchen chair, his head in his arms on the table. The
English
snored too, but it was the position in which he slept, and with whom, that chilled Adam’s blood.

It looked as if Sara had fallen asleep sitting on the daybed, though now she slept leaning way over sideways. The doctor’s head was in Sara’s lap, her hand in his hair.

The
English
looked relaxed, comfortable—who wouldn’t be?—too bloody damned comfortable. His Yankee tie was loose, his sleeves rolled up, his arms bare. Sara’s kapp had fallen off and her hair, unpinned on one side, hung in a flow of soft curls that rested in the doctor’s lap.

Adam must have made a sound that only Sara heard. She opened her eyes, disoriented and sleep-soft. Something in Adam stirred, something both emotional and physical at one and the same time, and it started him trembling.

When Sara saw him, she looked confused for a minute, and when she recognized him, there was no life in her awareness. But her gaze softened when it rested on the doctor, and the warmth in her regard struck Adam sharply. She stroked the man’s cheek with a finger, whispered his name, smiled ... and turned Adam to stone. She knew exactly how to awaken the man.

As if that were not enough, The
English
moaned and rubbed his face against Sara’s lap. His feelings were surely as far from Adam’s as heaven was from hell, yet he slept on.

Adam heard the roar that came from his throat and was surprised even as he lunged.

Both men woke with a vengeance and shot to their feet, teetering between grogginess and vigilance.

The husband cursed and made for the stairs.

The
English
made to protect Sara by stepping in front of her, his expression changing from outrage to red-faced comprehension.

The whole thing was a farce, but Adam’s laugh became another roar as he lifted the doctor off his feet and away from the object of his need.

Adam knew in that blink of time that he needed to touch Sara, to claim her, despite disguising urgency with outrage. This new wife of his had not slept beside her husband, but beside another, likely not for the first time, judging by their mutual ease in the situation.

Adam grasped Sara’s arms. Touching her was pain, it was succor. “You will never—”

“Doctor Jordan,” the husband shouted. “It’s started again and it’s—” The man’s voice quivered and died.

Sara and The
English
ran.

Adam was alone again, abandoned in his foolishness. Hating the feeling, he took the stairs, determined to reassert his ire and claim his wife, but what he saw inside that bedroom stopped him cold.

Sara and the doctor worked furiously, but as perfectly together as gears in a thresher, to help Abby—no it was another woman this time. This time a different husband cowered, tears streaming down his face.

Adam left, and fast, determined to outrun the fiend at his heels. Though he refused to acknowledge its presence, he knew with gut-slicing instinct that it followed too closely behind for him to slow, even for a minute.

Hours later, Adam heard Sara’s buggy in the drive. Sitting on a hay bale in a dark corner of the barn, he removed his hands from his face and watched the woman who shattered but renewed his spirit make straight for him. Her eyes were wild, and challenge thrummed in her every step. Strong, unbreakable Sara, marching to meet him as a foe, while he, her foolish opponent, longed only for her return.

“She lives,” Sara said, as she stopped, framed by the wide, open barn door behind her, her black cape billowing in the snapping wind. Sunshine blurred the edges of her form, giving her the look of an avenging angel. Dangerous. Beautiful.

“Mary and her new daughters live,” Sara repeated, her voice rising with each word. “Because Jordan was there, Adam, and maybe because I was there too. You will not intrude on a birthing again, do you hear me?  Never again.” She stepped closer then, becoming no more than a woman, breathtaking in her righteousness. “Birthings are my private world, mine, yes, and the doctor’s too, if need be, for however many days and nights necessary and in whatever place.” She stood so close, now, Adam needed to look up to see her. “A place where you do not belong.”

There were many such places, Adam thought, and one of them was beside this woman—at any time.

She walked away. He let her go.

The following night, Adam’s wife slept silently beside him for the first time ever. He reveled in each breath she took and in each of her movements that rocked him.

They had not spoken the entire day.

With his mother, Sara shared every detail, sometimes whispering, sometimes crying, getting hugged and hugging back. And with his girls, she had laughed, even sung. But with him, she was more stone than sand, more foe than friend, more stranger than wife.

As was best.

* * * * *

If she had to go one more day not speaking to Adam, Sara thought she would scream and scare everyone. Despite her anger, she had so wanted to share the joy of that birthing with Adam. She wanted to tell him that she’d slept beside Jordan of necessity. She had almost wept that the first night she was to share Adam’s bed, she had spent the night away from him, instead.

She and Jordan had needed rest to go on, so they’d be alert and ready when labor began again. No other room in the Jakeman house had a bed, yet every Amish kitchen had a daybed. It was used daily, for elderly parents, children with the sniffles, even for mothers who needed to rest as much as they needed to watch the roast on the fire or their children at play. Midwives, doctors, always used the daybed during long nights of illness or birth. That night had been no different.

Sleeping beside Jordan, Sara had felt relaxed, safe.

Sleeping beside Adam, she felt, if not quite safe, then freshly alive and teetering on the brink of ... something ... like a bud, swollen and ready to burst into bloom, frustrated, for only he could nurture her to flower. But in the days since that birthing, he had not nurtured, but seemed to forget her presence entirely.

Wilting, she was, and parched for Adam’s look, his touch. If she were not so miserable, she might laugh at such foolishness.

That night, the third that they had gone to sleep without speaking, on far opposite sides of the bed, Sara was awakened from her own fitful sleep by Adam’s thrashing. Trying to calm him, Sara was forced to grapple with him, until finally she held him down with the weight of her body, a hand to his brow.

Less at his brow did she feel real heat, than along her leg near his slow-healing thigh. Even through his nightshirt, she felt the fire of infection. She looked back at his face in moonlight to see he’d awakened, fever visible in his eyes. He looked surprised to see her.

“You’ve got a fever,” she said cupping his cheek, then his forehead with her palm. “You’ve let that leg fester without letting me tend it, haven’t you?”

Adam grunted, trying to shift her off him she thought, but he only managed to dislodge her enough so that one of her legs fell between his.

She recognized the reaction in him instantly, warmed to it, despite herself, and willed herself to move, but before she could make her lethargic body respond, Adam’s hands were at her waist.

Whatever his intent, it changed. She felt it in his touch, in the altered beat of his heart. His hands slid upward to rest beneath her arms, his palms skimming the sides of her breasts, their pressure increasing. At the same time, Sara felt the heaviness of him, there, where she became more liquid as he became more erect.

Boldly, she fitted herself intimately against him, bringing a gasp, as much of appreciation as denial, from somewhere deep in her husband’s throat.

Bent on seduction, she raised the hem of his nightshirt. But as she skimmed his thigh, she encountered the source of his fever and emitted a gasp of her own, for her hand came away wet and sticky with blood.

She scrambled aside to examine that thigh, and no mistaking what she saw. Following the direction of her look, Adam seemed as surprised by the sight.

Cursing, he pushed her away. “Blast it, Sara, can’t a man get some rest. Took me long enough to get to sleep, now you have to go waking me up.”

“Blast it, yourself,” she snapped. “You’ve torn the wound open again and it’s been getting worse for God knows how long.” Efficient as the healer she was determined to become, Sara rose, lit a lamp and carried it around to his side of the bed. Even now, the sight of that angry wound was a shock. “Why didn’t you tell me,
dummkopf
. Keep this up and we’ll be having Jordan over to take the leg.”

He looked at her sharply, to see if she was serious.

“I am not fooling, Adam. This is bad. If you go on like this, you will lose it for sure.”

Adam sighed and lay back while Sara tended him. “Just what he needed, to have her soft hands all over him. Well, it was what he needed, just not like this. “I am sorry,” he finally said. “It started the other day when I went chasing after Emma.”

Sara sighed. “I should have realized, I suppose, that would cause damage, but so much happened that night, then I went off on that delivery with Jordan. Later when you came running after me, I was so, so—”