bus day after tomorrow. Her mother was full of worried and sympathetic looks, but short on words of comfort beyond her usual
Sarah kept her chin up and her mouth shut. She thought of Matt every single moment. She had never in her worst nightmares imagined it would hurt this much to leave him. After all, she had known the end would come eventually; she had been prepared for it from the first. But the ache gnawed at her incessantly, and she wondered vaguely if it were possible to die of such a pain.
When the dishes had been done and everyone else had settled into the living room to read or sew, she sought the one person in her life who had a chance of easing her suffering just by smiling at her—Jacob. He had had a miserable day of sickness and fitful sleep. As Sarah let herself into his room he moaned and kicked the quilt that covered him.
Sarah lit a lamp on the simple bedside table and settled herself on the narrow bed, bending over her little brother and brushing back damp strands of blond hair-from his forehead. He was burning up with fever. That alone was enough to put her heart in her throat, but when Jacob clutched his stomach and moaned, her worry soared to near the panic margin.
“Shhh … rest,
“Sarah?” Jacob called out weakly. “Sarah, it hurts me too much.”
“What hurts?”
He didn't answer her but clutched his stomach and started to cry. Sarah bit her lip until she tasted blood, desperate to help Jacob, but uncertain of what she could do. He seemed much more ill than Dr. Coswell had diagnosed. Dr. Coswell, the man Matt had said wasn't fit to practice medicine on monkeys. What if the man had been wrong about Jacob? What if the boy had something that could threaten his life? She couldn't bear to lose Jacob!
In a panic she flew down the stairs and through the living room, saying nothing to anyone, registering their shocked looks only in the nether reaches of her mind. At the back door she paused only long enough to grab her cloak off its peg, then she was gone.
“She's being sent to Ohio to stay with relatives for a while,” Ingrid said, slipping into the armchair catty- corner from Matt. They were in the library. The stereo hummed in the background. Matt had wedged himself into a corner of the sofa he had once shared with Sarah, sitting stiffly, riffling through the Minneapolis paper. He scowled and turned a page, cracking it like a whip, glanced over the columns without reading, turned a page, snapped it open with a flick of his wrists.
“No word of excommunication”
“Good news travels fast,” he said sarcastically.
Ingrid ran a hand through her short dark hair and sighed. “I just heard via the grapevine. Isaac purchased a bus ticket this morning.”
Matt nodded curtly, not looking up, though he wasn't taking in a single word of print. His first thought was to ask when Sarah was leaving, but he stifled it ruthlessly with common sense. It was over. There was no point in trying to see her again. She didn't love him enough to leave her folk and he loved her too much to ask. Time for any smart bachelor to cut bait and run. Actually, it was past time for that. He never should have let himself get so involved in the first place. But he'd been so in need of something, anything that would help life make sense again, and there had been Sarah, the embodiment of everything he thought had gone out of life—goodness, innocence, faith.
Maybe Julia had been right. Maybe he had been trying to compensate. Maybe he had been trying to withdraw from the world, wrapping himself in the cocoon of Sarah Troyers homemade skirts.
“I'll be going back to the Cities at the end of the week,' he announced.
Ingrid said nothing. She probably knew he was not well enough to return to work, but she also knew better than to protest.
Outside the wind howled and hurled rain against the panes of the bay window. In the snug warmth of the library, the Righteous Brothers sang the mournful opening bars of “Unchained Melody.” Matt folded his
Ingrid had just pushed herself up out of her seat when Sarah came rushing into the library, looking like the headless horseman had chased her all the way to Thornewood. Her
“Sarah!” Ingrid said on a gasp.
Sarah looked right past her, her terrified gaze focusing on Matt. “Matt!” she exclaimed, her eyes huge in a pale face. “It's Jacob. He's terribly ill. You have to come. Please say youTl come right away!”
“Of course, I'll come,” he murmured, so stunned by her sudden appearance that he had yet to react.
“Now!” she insisted, flying across the room to grab his hand and pull him up off the couch. Her fingers were like icicles, wet and white and painfully cold. She tugged him like an anxious child, sobbing, teeth chattering. “There's no time to lose! I'm afraid. Oh,
She began crying then and Matt instinctively pulled her into his arms, offering her his warmth and strength for an instant… and his love. It poured out of him unchecked, and he squeezed her tightly, not caring that her cape was wet or that her hair was dripping on his cashmere sweater. The hurt he had been struggling with was instantly set aside, concern for Sarah and for Jacob overriding all else.
“Hush, sweetheart,” he whispered, stroking a hand over the damp tangle of her hair. “Everything's gong to be all right. Tell me what happened.”
“Jacob … he's ill. So hot … in such pain. I'm going to lose him,” she whispered, trembling violently in Matt's arms. Her legs and arms ached from clinging to the back of the horse she had ridden there bareback, and now her knees threatened to give way beneath her. She was scared out of her wits thinking about Jacob, thinking about how they had waited too long to try to save her own little Peter. “Please, Matt, she sobbed, sagging against him. “He's going to die!”
“Nobody's going to die,” Matt said firmly, standing her back from him. “Do you understand me, Sarah? Nobody's going to die.” He grabbed the jacket Ingrid tossed him and shrugged into it, his eyes never leaving Sarah's. “Not as long as I can prevent it,”
Ingrid drove because she knew the way and had experience driving on gravel. The horse Sarah had galloped to Thornewood on had been hastily locked in the barn. No time had been spared to see to the animal's needs because Jacob's-life hung in the balance.
The trio burst in on the Maust family like marauders, flinging back the kitchen door and storming into the house in a swirl of rain and wind that made the lanterns flicker in protest. A stunned Isaac raced into the kitchen to meet them, his feet bare, his suspenders dangling.
“Sarah! What is the meaning of this?” he demanded in a thunderous voice. “Why do you bring these people into my home? How dare you-”
“I dare because Jacob is dying!” she shouted in his face.
“Nonsense! The boy has been to see a doctor—”
“I won't take the time to argue with you on that point, Mr. Maust,” Matt said, shouldering his way past Sarahs father. “Sarah's word is good enough for me. Where's the boy?”
“Upstairs. Hurry!” Sarah shouted, well beyond the verge of hysteria. “Hurry!”
Ignoring the stunned faces of the rest of Sarahs family, Matt turned and took the stairs as fast as he could, blocking out his own pain with the need to get to Jacob as quickly as possible. Footsteps rumbled like thunder behind him. At the top of the stairs he hesitated, uncertain of which direction to go and Sarah nearly bowled him over, running into him and shoving him down the hall.
In Jacob's room, he set about the business of examining the boy as best he could without benefit of any of the tools of his trade. The old cool settled inside him. His hands were steady. His mind functioned with the flawless precision of a computer, absorbing information, analyzing it, considering and discarding options and answers. He rattled off questions in rapid succession.
“When did he first become ill? How long has his fever been this high? Is he taking any medications?”
Anna Maust answered him in a thin, trembling voice as she stood beside the bed looking down on her
