The Last Midwife: A Novel by Sandra Dallas

Author:Sandra Dallas [Dallas, Sandra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466886148
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2015-09-28T16:00:00+00:00

Twelve

Gracy was mute as she and the lawyer followed the crowd outside. She could see Daniel standing a few steps away; he was angry and agitated as he stood in the sunshine, taking in huge gulps of air.

These charges against his wife, they were all a mistake, Gracy heard him say, his voice loud with scorn.

Jeff gripped his father’s arm as he searched the crowd for Gracy. “Ma needs us. Come along, Pa.”

Daniel nodded and said in a voice loud enough for Gracy to hear, “She was right glad to see you. Surprised, too.”

“You didn’t tell her I was coming?” Jeff’s voice rose above the murmur of the crowd.

“Didn’t know for sure you really were, not after the way you taken out. I didn’t want to disappoint her if you didn’t show up.”

“You knew I would.”

“Did I?” Daniel shrugged. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d run off that way. God, hell!”

Gracy hurried toward her husband and son. At seventeen, Jeff was a slimmer, taller version of his father. No one could doubt that Jeff was Daniel’s son. The boy had Daniel’s handsome face, his broad shoulders, his hips, but his brown eyes were the color of Gracy’s. Well, almost. They had bits of amber that Gracy’s didn’t have. The flecks made his eyes sparkle like shards of quartz in the sun.

Just as Gracy reached the two, someone grabbed Daniel’s hand and said, “It’s a crime, them charging her with murder. My missus thinks a heap of yours after the Sagehen sat through two nights with her. I don’t hardly believe she’d have made it if Mrs. Brookens hadn’t been there. You let us know can we do anything.”

Others murmured their support and slapped Daniel on the back. But not everyone, and a miner said in a loud voice, “That’s the murderer’s man.”

Daniel punched the fist of his right hand into the palm of his left and stared at the miner who’d insulted Gracy. The man backed away, and Jeff grabbed his father’s arm and steered him to Gracy.

She watched them approach, her back straight, her lanky body in the dark dress black against the shadow of the courthouse. After Gracy’s dress was ripped in the buggy accident, Daniel bought her a new one, red, the bright color of fireweed, and she had exclaimed over it. But Ted had said her black merino—her Sunday dress—would be better for a courtroom, even though the room would be as hot as a frying pan inside, and so she had worn the old dress, a garment that had been old when Jeff was a baby.

People stopped talking then, and the silence was eerie, so quiet that Gracy heard the song of a lark bunting and the swish of a squirrel as it scampered up a pine tree. Most people looked openly at Gracy, curious, although a few pretended not to stare and glanced at her from the corners of their eyes. They were watching, waiting to see if she said anything they could repeat, something they could gossip about.

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