Just after dark, the old doctor arrived with a young girl. He’d loaned her his coat, but Nichole noticed her feet were bare and mud covered. The look of her reminded Nichole of the poor folks who lived far back in the Tennessee hills.
Wilson explained quietly, as she looked at the babies, that she’d lost her month-old son three days ago. Apparently she’d never had a husband, and her pa had beat her regularly all during the pregnancy. “She’s simple- minded,” the doctor whispered. “But as sweet natured as they come. Her baby hadn’t been healthy since birth, but she’d taken care of him as well as any mother could. Even walked the four miles to town to bring him to the office several times, knowing her pa would beat her for not finishing her chores.”
Adam knelt by where the woman sat with one of the babies on her lap. She seemed half woman, half child in her homespun dress and faded blue apron. “Hello.” He smiled. “My name’s Adam.”
The girl didn’t look away from the infant. “I’m Willow,” she said. “I had me a baby, but he died.”
“Would you like to live here and help us take care of these two, Willow?”
The girl giggled and raised her head. Adam noticed bruises spotting her round face and swelling the corner of her bottom lip.
“Doc told me you might ask so I brought my roll of clothes.” She looked like she was about to cry. “I’d like to stay, but I’m not much good around the house. I drop things and forget. My pa wallops me but I don’t learn. I heard him tell the doc that if you’re a-willing to feed me, good riddance to my no-good bones.”
“All we want you to do is take care of the babies. If you do that, you’ll earn your keep.” Adam patted her shoulder. “And no one here will ever lay a hand on you as long as you’re with us. I give you my word.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“They got names?”
Adam glanced toward the door and the sound of the chopping. “Dan will get around to naming them in time. We could sure use your help, Willow.”
Willow smiled with pride. “I got milk. Lots of it.”
Without hesitation, she pulled her blouse open and offered one baby her pink-tipped breast.
Wes shot from the room like a cannon, and Adam couldn’t hold his laughter. After a few tries, the baby took to the breast hungrily, making Willow giggle.
“That’s good, Willow,” Adam managed to say before he followed Wes to the parlor. There he broke into a round of chuckles everyone in the kitchen heard.
“Shut up!” Wes snapped. “You sound like a fool.”
“I wish you could have seen your face.” Adam tried to hold down his voice.
“Well, you saw what she did. Pulled that breast out like it was no more than a pitcher, and she was offering drinks.” Wes paced in a circle around the parlor table.
“That’s pretty much it.” Adam laughed. “We did need a wet nurse. And with two to feed every few hours, it might be a blessing she’s not overly shy.”
“Overly shy! I’ve seen cows with more modesty.”
Adam couldn’t argue.
“Well, maybe we should look around for someone else,” Wes continued. “This Willow couldn’t be more than fifteen, and like the doc says, she’s simple.”
“We don’t have time. The infants need to be fed.”
Wes paced faster. “Couldn’t we let some family take care of them? Just till they’re old enough for Daniel to handle.”
“You know as well as I do that most families got more than they can feed now. Besides, I doubt Daniel would let them out of his sight. From the look of her face, Willow needs a home as badly as those babies need a nurse.”
“Well, I’m not sitting around at the dinner table looking at some woman’s breast. Daniel can handle that when he fights through the grief. I’m heading for Texas day after tomorrow, and if you had any sense, you’d go with me and pray Texas is far enough away from Bergette.”
Wes stormed out of the parlor, ending the conversation. He almost collided with Nichole standing just outside the door. For a moment, he looked at her, then pointed with his head toward the open parlor door. “My brothers are both crazy, you know.”
Nichole didn’t argue.
“Between saving the world and healing it, there won’t be a sick sinner left within a hundred miles before long,” he mumbled.
She smiled.
Wes wagged his finger at her. “I know what you’re thinking. It’s only a matter of time before they turn on me. Well, I’m not staying around long enough for that.”
He grabbed a whiskey bottle and tried to cross the kitchen without looking in the direction of Willow and the table. “I’ll be outside watching Danny destroy the barn!” he shouted. “By the time he’s finished, I’ll have us both too drunk to stand. Then we’ll bed down on the porch, it’s always too humid in the house after a summer rain.” His voice dwindled as he hurried outside.
Nichole moved into the darkened parlor. The room seemed cold and smelled musty, unlike the rest of the house. She should just go, she told herself. Adam had his problems, his family, his life. He didn’t need or hadn’t asked for her to come to add additional worry. He wouldn’t have accepted her help with May, if there had been any way he could have done it alone. When Wolf got back, they’d make plans to leave by dawn.
“Adam?” she whispered as she moved through the shadowy room. “I came to tell you I’ll be leaving at first light. Wes offered me his room for tonight and said he’d bunk on the porch.”
The air was so still she wasn’t sure Adam was there. He could have passed through the door on the other side of the room. He’d shown no interest in talking to Bergette. Why had she thought he would want to talk to her?
She reached a hand out and touched the thick cotton lace cloth that covered a round table in the center of the room. “Adam?” She wanted to say his name one more time even to an empty room. “Adam?”
He moved in the darkness.
She waited. Listening. Her trained senses judging where he stood.
“I thank you and your brother for the help.” His words were forced, almost hard. “The McLains are in your debt. If there is ever a way to repay, name the price.”
“There’s no need-”
“The McLains pay their debts,” he interrupted with words laced in anger.
Before she could think of anything to say, he was gone out the far door and taking the stairs three at a time without a word of good-bye.
Nichole returned to the kitchen. She watched Willow with the babies for a while. When both infants were fed and sleeping, Nichole offered the girl a bowl of stew. While Willow ate, Nichole pulled a cot from the downstairs bedroom.
“I think Daniel would want you to sleep here by the babies.” Adam and Daniel had moved a cradle by the stove a few hours before the funeral. “Daniel may not be in tonight but he’ll know you are watching after the twins. Will you be all right here?”
Willow nodded. “Long as I got water. I get mighty thirsty after they feed.”
Nichole checked the pitcher.
“And,” Willow turned her head down and to the side as if afraid to ask, “would anyone mind if I ate that bread on the table if the little girls wake me up tonight? This stew is the first meal I’ve had today. Pa never lets me eat until all my chores are done.”
“No one will mind,” Nichole answered. “And help yourself to the jam May made.”
“May?”
“May was their mother.” Nichole couldn’t help but smile at the sleeping infants. “I didn’t know her well, but I think she’d be pleased if you ate what she made. From what I hear, she was a great cook. Remember to tell the twins that when they’re older. And tell them she was brave, very brave to the end.”
“I will,” Willow answered as she lay down on her cot. “And I’ll tell them how their pa chopped down a whole barn the night after they was born.”
Nichole lifted her holster from a peg by the door and lowered the lamp’s glow before heading upstairs. Halfway
