Stay a Little Longer
Read Stay a Little Longer Online
Authors: Dorothy Garlock
Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #General, #FIC027000
B
OOKS BY
D
OROTHY
G
ARLOCK
After the Parade
Almost Eden
Annie Lash
Dreamkeepers
Dream River
The Edge of Town
Forever Victoria
A Gentle Giving
Glorious Dawn
High on a Hill
Homeplace
Hope’s Highway
Larkspur
Leaving Whiskey Bend
The Listening Sky
Lonesome River
Love and Cherish
Loveseekers
Midnight Blue
The Moon Looked Down
More than Memory
Mother Road
Nightrose
On Tall Pine Lake
A Place Called Rainwater
Promisegivers
Restless Wind
Ribbon in the Sky
River Rising
River of Tomorrow
The Searching Hearts
Sins of Summer
Song of the Road
Sweetwater
Tenderness
This Loving Land
Train from Marietta
Wayward Wind
A Week from Sunday
Wild Sweet Wilderness
Will You Still Be Mine?
Wind of Promise
Wishmakers
With Heart
With Hope
With Song
Yesteryear
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are
used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 by Dorothy Garlock
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced,
distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
Grand Central Publishing
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First eBook Edition: April 2010
Grand Central Publishing is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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ISBN: 978-0-446-56904-0
Contents
This book is lovingly dedicated to
Kelly and Jason Brubaker
and Baby Bru
All the flags were waving
All the band’s music blared.
I took her in my arms
And said how much I cared.
I promised her that I’d return
(Though not like this… )
When I took her in my arms
For a good-bye kiss.
There are no flags a-waving
After eight long years.
There is no music playing,
No sound of long-dried tears.
I’ve come for just a glimpse
Of the girl I left behind.
But she must never see me
To that I am resigned.
For I was lost a world away.
I’m not the man she wed.
The face she loved no longer mine,
The man she knew—is dead.
—F.S.I.
Carlson, Minnesota—October 1926
R
ACHEL WATKINS
wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand while absently moving a strand of her coal-black hair from her green-flecked
brown eyes. Though the early October day carried the crisp chill of autumn, the inside of Will and Clara Wicker’s small home
blazed as if it were the hottest day of July; water boiled in a cast-iron pot on top of the wood-burning stove and candles
flickered in every corner, their meager light sending faint shadows dancing across the walls.
“Oh, Rachel… it hurts…”
Clara Wicker lay on her back in the bed, one thin-boned hand spread across her enormous pregnant belly. All of the color had
drained from her thin face except for the dark purple circles under her eyes and her bitten, red lips. Her blonde hair, slick
with sweat, was drawn back from her face. Beads of moisture stood out on her forehead. Her eyes were closed tightly and her
breathing was shallow. Not particularly pretty, Clara’s face was now a mask of agony.
“It’s to be expected,” Rachel comforted her.
“Ohhh!” Clara answered, her cry almost a moan.
“It’ll be over soon.”
Gently, Rachel wiped the sweat from Clara’s pain-chiseled face. Looking around her, she took inventory of all that she would
need to bring the young woman’s first child into the world; the extra sheets that had been prepared for the birthing, a nightdress,
towels, clean rags, and a dented bucket for water. Everything was as ready as it could be.
“You sure you know what you’re doin’…’bout birthin’ and all?” Will Wicker asked from where he meekly stood at the head of
his wife’s bed, his voice little louder than a whisper. He nervously shifted his weight from one foot to the next, his small,
dark eyes flickering back and forth from Clara to Rachel, never lingering for long. His filthy fingers, the fingernails caked
with dirt, twitched uneasily as he rubbed one thin hand over the stubble of his bony jaw. His clothes hung loosely on his
small frame, just as sweaty and soiled as the body they covered.
How did Clara allow this man to lie between her legs?
“I do,” Rachel answered simply.
“Wouldn’t it be better if your mother was here?” Will followed.
“I’ve already told you that she couldn’t make it.”
“But don’t you think… that…” he stammered. “You know… given that…”
“There isn’t time for this.” Rachel took a deep breath, trying to settle her growing dislike for the man. From the moment
she’d been summoned to the Wickers’ ramshackle house at the far outskirts of town, she’d hoped that Will would simply accept
that she was every bit as capable as Eliza Watkins of bringing a newborn child into the world. Instead, he’d eyed her warily
from the moment she’d set foot in his home, as if she had come to harm instead of help. So far, he had contented himself with
a few derogatory comments. She hoped that was the way it would remain.
“I’ll need you to bring me the water when it’s time,” she told him.
“Don’t worry ’bout me none,” he answered. “Ain’t no—”
Before Will could say another word, Clara moaned in pain as blood-tinged water gushed from between her legs and formed a puddle
around her feet on the mattress.
Sensing Clara’s panic, Rachel did her best to settle the pregnant woman. “Don’t worry about the water,” she said calmly. “We’ve
got plenty of rags and oilskins to keep things dry. This happens to every woman when giving birth to her child.” Covering
Clara with another clean sheet, she grabbed a pair of rags and tucked them between the woman’s legs to catch the remaining
fluid.
“I’m… I’m sorry…” Clara struggled to say.
“There’s nothing for you to be sorry about,” Rachel said with a soft smile.
At a sudden rustling behind her, Rachel turned to find that Will had moved from the head of the bed and quickly shuffled over
to the ramshackle home’s lone window, as far away from his wife as he could get without going outside. The look on his face
was one of utter revulsion and horror. Clearly, the sight of Clara’s body preparing to give birth, readying itself to finish
what had begun when Will had planted his seed inside her nine months earlier, had completely unsettled him.
“That there… that there…” he stuttered, “ain’t… ain’t right!”
“Will… Will… don’t…” Clara struggled to say through the vicious waves of pain that washed over her, one shaking hand stretched
toward her husband, desperately urging him to return to her side.
“I can’t, Clara,” he answered with a shake of his head. “I just can’t.”
A small cry escaped Clara’s lips and the hand that she had offered to her husband was withdrawn, instead clenching into a
tight fist that she pounded heavily on the mattress. Her head swung from side to side as she rode out a spasm that hurt so
much her eyes, though still open, couldn’t seem to focus on either of the faces around her.
“Help her!” Will shouted at Rachel.
“I’m doing all that I can,” she answered as calmly as she could.
“Maybe Doc Clark is back,” the man kept on. “Maybe he can do this!”
Clarence Clark was Carlson’s new doctor, having recently arrived from the state college. For many years, the town simply made
do without a full-time physician, relying instead on the folk knowledge that had been brought from the Old World, mostly a
mixture of Norwegian and German home remedies. Though Dr. Clark was a young man in his early thirties, he had proven to be
an excellent caregiver and was well respected. If not for an emergency in his wife’s family that had taken him from town,
he would have been where Rachel now sat.
“We don’t need Dr. Clark’s help,” Rachel said, her eyes never leaving Clara.
“Then we should get your mother,” he insisted. “She’ll know what to do!”
“She can’t help us,” Rachel answered curtly.
“But she’d know—”
“We don’t need her!”
Though Rachel had remained calm through Will Wicker’s suggestion that she needed Clarence Clark’s help, she bristled at the
insinuation her mother was more capable than she. Before the doctor’s arrival, Eliza Watkins had been the midwife for the
birth of nearly every child in Carlson. Her opinion had been sought for every sort of illness or condition, even those outside
of childbirth. But then Mason Tucker had gone off to war…
And everything had changed!
Nowadays, Eliza Watkins almost never left her room in the house she owned with her brother, Otis. She contented herself with
fretting incessantly about those unfortunate enough to get too close, working herself into fits of worry. She agonized over
the slightest sign of a cold, the hidden danger of a flight of stairs, or the tiniest of cuts. To combat these imaginary threats,
she hid herself away. Even now, in Dr. Clark’s absence, she couldn’t bring herself to help. Instead, the burden once again
fell to Rachel.
As a child, Rachel had never been her mother’s favorite; that honor had always belonged to her older sister, Alice. Where
Alice had been fawned over, eagerly encouraged to follow her dreams, Rachel had forever been second fiddle. When she’d been
told what to do, there was no other expectation than for her to agree. Thankfully for the Wickers, she’d watched her mother
deliver babies so many times that there was little that could surprise her. They were in safe hands. In the end, it seemed
that everyone now depended upon her.
Her mother, her uncle Otis… and especially Charlotte.
“Look at me, Clara,” Rachel encouraged.
Hesitantly, the pregnant woman’s eyes fluttered open and stared into Rachel’s face, not seeing her, but using her voice as
a point on which to focus her mind while her muscles knotted and pulled. Her voice cracking, she answered, “It… it hurts,
Will… Rachel…”
“It won’t be long, Clara,” Rachel soothed.
“Is she supposed to be hurtin’ like this?” Will asked from the far corner, his voice finally returning after Rachel’s rebuke.
He looked at them over his shoulder, as if he couldn’t bear to bring his full attention toward the bloody, unsettling sight.
“It don’t seem right.”
“Take one of these rags,” Rachel told him, holding a swatch of cloth out for him, “and dip it into the water bucket, then
use it to wipe the sweat from her brow.”
“I—I can’t,” he said with a shake of his head.
“Stop asking questions and complaining about things you know nothing about. Clara and I need you to do this one simple thing,”
Rachel commanded, the fire in her heart momentarily bubbling to the surface. “We need to make her as comfortable as we can.
Whining about how this looks isn’t going to do her any good.”