Chapter Two

      Christmas Eve morning dawned crisp and cold. Just as dawn was breaking, Rachel rose from the cot beside Gabe’s bed and lit the lamp.

      He had rested well in his laudanum-induced sleep, but she had not been so blessed. Sleep had eluded her, as thoughts and recollections tumbled round and round in her mind like colorful fragments in a kaleidoscope. Besides a jumble of troubling memories, her mind replayed the conversation with her father again and again.

      She couldn’t believe how light her heart felt since sharing the secret she’d carried alone for so long. Who would have thought that something that seemed so small could weigh so heavily on a heart? She would be eternally grateful that her father’s love and support had not wavered, even after learning the truth.

      She knew Edward was right about telling Danny about Gabe, yet the very thought of doing so filled her with dread. How would she find the words? What would Danny say...and think?

      She stoked the dying fire and went to see how Gabe was doing, busying herself with changing his bandages and checking his temperature. Her ministering seemed to agitate him, and he began to move about. When she tried to restrain him, he cried out and opened his eyes. Thankfully she saw no recollection there, no wicked, teasing gleam, nothing but agony. The doctor in her wanted him to be pain free and improve under her care; the woman in her shrank from the moment he would open his eyes and look up at her with recognition.

      What would he see when he awakened? What would he think when he saw her for the first time in nine years? She turned toward the mirror hanging above the washstand, drawn to it like a June bug to the light. Her reflection wavered in the flickering light of the oil lamp.

      She stared at herself for long moments and then, womanlike, rubbed at her forehead with her fingertips as if she could massage away the few slight creases she saw there, lines etched by her deep concern for her patients.

      Exposure to the elements in all sorts of weather had tanned her face and hands despite the bonnet she wore, and squinting against the sun had left tiny lines at the corners of her eyes. Despite regular treatments of lemon juice, a faint spattering of freckles dotted her nose.

      Age and Danny’s birth had added a few pounds, but according to her father, it was weight she needed. Strangely, her face was thinner than it had been nine years ago, refined by age and life.

      She had no illusions. She no longer looked twenty-two. Shouldering the responsibilities that went hand in hand with the demands of her father’s practice had taken its toll on her in many ways.

      Mirror, mirror on the wall, would Gabe still think her fair at all?

      Would he even recognize her? What would he say? What would she? Would he be the shocking flirt she recalled, or would he be filled with contrition?

      Telling herself she was a fool for wasting so much as a thought on him, she went back to the bed and dabbed some antiseptic to the cut on Gabe’s face.

      As she tended to his needs, her mind turned to Caleb’s ambivalent feelings about his brother’s return. She could relate to them only too well. Like Caleb, and even though she knew that not to pardon Gabe jeopardized her own forgiveness, she couldn’t imagine any scenario that would make her feel differently about the man who had taken everything she had to give and walked away as if it meant nothing to him.

      Then why are you having such contradictory thoughts about him?

      She had no answer for that.

      Satisfied that he was fine for the moment, she went to the kitchen, rekindled the fire in the stove and filled the coffeepot. While she waited for the stove to get hot enough to start breakfast, she opened her Bible. Instead of reading, she flipped the pages until she found the pressed petunia she’d placed there. A gift from Gabe, plucked from Mrs. Abernathy’s flower bed and tucked behind Rachel’s ear when they’d returned from a walk. “A memento of this evening.”

      She could picture the half-light of dusk, could almost hear the sounds of children playing and smell the sweet scent of the petunias dancing in the breeze. Felt again the light brush of his lips against hers. A small, impromptu gesture was so like him. She planned. Gabe lived for the moment.

      Impatient with her unruly thoughts, she slammed her Bible shut and began to slice the bacon, placing the strips into the cold cast-iron skillet. Gathering the ingredients for buttermilk biscuits, she measured and mixed flour, salt and leavening and started working the lard into the flour with her fingertips, finding comfort in the simplicity of the everyday task.

      Seeing that the stove was hot, she set the skillet of bacon over the heat. After adding just the right amount of buttermilk, she pinched off a biscuit-size piece of dough and deftly rolled the edges under to make it reasonably smooth and round. Placing it into the greased pan, she made a dimple in the center with her knuckle.

      Danny, his dark hair standing on end and covering a yawn, came into the kitchen as she was filling the slight indentations with a small dollop of extra lard, just the way her mama had done.

      “Good morning,” she said, sliding the pan into the oven.

      “Morning.”

      She wiped her hands on a wet cloth and sighed as she watched him pour a splash of coffee into a tin cup and fill it to the brim with milk and two spoons full of sugar. He’d started having morning “coffee milk,” as he called it, when Edward had started sharing his own sweetened brew. When she’d questioned the wisdom of the action, Edward had assured her that it was more milk than anything else and maintained it was fine; it hadn’t hurt her, had it?

      Grandparents! she thought, lifting the crispy strips of bacon onto a platter. If she didn’t remain vigilant, no telling how Edward would spoil Danny. But how could she deny him his little indulgences when he had taken on a very special role in Danny’s life? Not only was he the child’s grandfather, he’d been the closest thing to a father as he was ever likely to know.

      Until now.

      With her father’s words ringing through her mind, Rachel searched her son’s face for anything that might give away his paternity. He definitely had Gabe’s long, lush eyelashes, as well as the slant of his eyebrows. The dimple in Danny’s chin would be a dead giveaway as he grew closer to manhood and his jawline firmed the way his father’s had.

      His father. Rachel stifled a groan. How could she not think of him when he lay just down the hall? Resolutely, she opened a jar of red plum jam one of her patients had given her in lieu of payment for stitching up a nasty cut.

      “Are you excited about going to the Gentrys’ tomorrow?” she asked Danny as she smoothed down the recalcitrant “rooster tail” sticking up from the crown of his dark head.

      He nodded, his eyes bright. “I made a present for baby Eli.”

      “Really? What did you make?”

      “Roland gave me some old cedar shingles and helped me drill some holes