There are no details left, Rachel.” Rand looked down, uncomfortable beneath her scrutiny, but even more with his own deceit. “I just said that so Carnes would leave.”
“But . . . I don’t understand. You’re the one who asked him to come. What made you change your mind? And why did you lie?”
“I didn’t change my mind. Not exactly. But I did lie. . . . And I’m sorry.” He sighed, knowing there was no excuse. “I . . . panicked.”
“Yes, I saw that. I’m still waiting to understand why.”
“It’s a long story. . . .”
“Then it’s good that I have the time.”
Dread filled him. He wished there were a way to explain his reactions that wouldn’t leave him looking smaller in her eyes, foolish and weak. He motioned to one of the chairs before the hearth. “Would you sit with me? Please?”
She did as he asked.
He stoked the fire in the hearth and added more logs. Within minutes, the flames burned bright again, warming the front room of the clinic. He sat beside her and leaned forward, realizing where he needed to begin. “Do you remember that night at your cabin . . . when you found me on the porch?”
“Yes, I remember that night . . . quite well.”
He shook his head. “Of course you do.” He looked down at his hands. “I told you then that sometimes when I wake up at night, I start to feeling a little closed in.” He winced. “That wasn’t the entire truth.”
When she didn’t respond, he lifted his head. Her expression was inscrutable, guarded. But most of all watchful, waiting for the truth.
Memories stirred inside him, and unable to sit any longer, he rose. “Something happened to me the night I got shot.”
“The night you got your scar. . . .”
He nodded, fingering the puckered flesh on his neck. “I’m not sure how long I lay there on the battlefield. Bullets zipping past me, hitting the ground on all sides . . . men falling, moaning, some crying out. But . . . I couldn’t make a sound. I tried to draw breath, but my lungs felt like they were full of holes.” He walked to the window and stared out into the night, the crackle of the fire in the hearth strangely reassuring.
“I must have passed out, because the next thing I remember . . . I woke up in the surgeon’s tent. I saw a man . . . standing a few feet away. He never looked over at me, but his hands . . . they were stained with blood.” He bowed his head. “It was all over the front of his apron and running down his arms.”
He grimaced—the memory so clear in his mind, so vivid, even after so many years. He could still smell the chloroform, hear the battle raging outside the tent, and feel the earth tremble beneath each cannon blast.
“It was the surgeon?” Rachel whispered. “The man who sutured your neck?”
“Yes.” He took a breath, hoping to cleanse his senses of the sounds and smells of war, but in vain. “After some time passed, and I was well enough, I went searching for him.”
“You wanted to thank him,” she said, her voice quiet.
He smiled. “Yes. I wanted to thank him. . . .” He turned to her. “But I also wanted to warn him.”
She frowned. “Warn him . . . about what?”
Ignoring his instinct to look away, he held her gaze. “About the dangers of overdosing a patient by administering morphine and laudanum . . . with too much chloroform.”
She stared. “But he saved your life.” Incredulity colored her tone.
“Yes, he did. In more ways than one. And when I finally found him, I told him how grateful I was. But I also had to tell him . . .” Needing to feel a support beneath him, Rand sat down again. “I had to tell him about the mistake he’d made.”
Her eyes narrowed. She watched him, her expression keen.
“Following the surgery, after he sutured my wound . . . I didn’t wake up. And he never detected a heartbeat.”
Her brow furrowed tight. She shook her head. “I don’t understand. . . . He never detected a heartbeat?” Her laugh was brief, frustrated. “You’re here. You’re alive.”
As delicately as he could, Rand searched for a way to fill in the missing piece for her. “He didn’t send me to a hospital after the surgery, Rachel. He sent me to City Cemetery, there in Nashville.”
Seconds passed, ponderous and heavy.
The subtlest of shadows crossed her expression. She blinked. Her lips moved before the words were formed. “Are y-you saying that . . .”
“I was buried on December seventeenth, just hours after the battle ended.”
Her hand went to her stomach. “But . . .” She took a stuttered breath. “How is that possible?”
“A series of mistakes,” he said quietly, having been over the reasons so many times, on so many nights. “The combination of medicines and the loss of blood slowed my heart rate to a point where it was no longer detectable. And the setting didn’t help either. The surgical tents were chaotic. Too many men, too few doctors. The battle was still being fought all around, and the Federal Army bearing down hard on us.”
Silent tears slipped down her cheeks. “You’re excusing what that man did to you?”
“That man . . .” Rand warmed at her coming so quickly to his defense. “No, I’m not excusing what he did. And neither did he. I’m just allowing room for understanding how the mistake was made. I guess that’s been part of how I’ve dealt with it through the years.”
For the longest time, she stared into the fire, her cheeks wet with tears. When she looked up again, the aversion and hesitance in her eyes revealed her question before she asked it. “How did they . . . find you?”
“The gravedigger, a man named Jessup Collum, had tended that cemetery for years. As he did right up until the day he died. . . .” Speaking of Jessup brought a tenderness despite the harshness of the accompanying memories. “People thought he was a little touched because he did some strange things at times, but he had a way about him.”
Rand stared into the glow of the flame as Rachel listened, never interrupting. He spoke of that night, of Jessup telling him how he’d tied the string around his wrist, and of hearing the bell. He told her things he’d never told another soul, things he never thought he’d speak aloud. And when he finished, feeling strangely unburdened, he dried tears he hadn’t realized he’d shed.
Moments passed.
Rachel didn’t look at him, and he sensed the distance between them increasing. He bowed his head, counting the cost of having been so transparent, while trying not to imagine how he must look in her eyes.
Finally, he stood. It was late. He’d promised James he’d see her safely home, and James was probably wondering where his little sister was about now. “The livery was closed, so I left my horse at James and Molly’s,” he said quietly, helping her slip her coat on. Then she turned to him.
She brought his hand to her lips and kissed it, much as he’d done to her that night at the resort. The warmth of her breath and the gentleness of her touch moved him. More than she likely realized.
“We’re all afraid of something, Rand,” she whispered, laying her hand on his chest. “And you have reason beyond anyone I’ve ever known.”
He traced the curve of her lower lip with his thumb, her words— her acceptance—touching a place deep inside him. But they also stirred a question. One that he thought he already knew the answer to. But, he wondered . . . did she?
He framed her face with his hands, seeing the affection in her eyes while also feeling her tense the slightest bit. “Now you know my deepest fear . . . but what is yours?” He moved closer. “What are you most afraid of, Rachel?”
She tried to look away, but he gently coerced her focus back.
She covered his hands on her face. “I think you know what I’m afraid of,” she whispered.
He drew closer, loving this woman with everything in him. “Tell me.”
Tears rose in her eyes. “I’m afraid of . . .” A frown pinched her brow. “Of going through what Lyda’s going through right now, all over again. I’ve lived that before, Rand.” She took a breath. “I don’t ever want to hurt like that again.”
“Who’s to say that you will?”
She stepped back, and he let her go.
She pulled her coat closer about her. “You don’t know what it’s like. You’ve never been in that place before.”
He couldn’t argue that point. “You’re right, I haven’t. But I do know what it’s like to sit by a couple’s bed in their final moments together and to see them, to hear them . . . declaring their love for each other.” His throat tightened. “If you were to ask them, in that moment, if they would undo all the years of being together, all the joy they’ve shared, in order to avoid the coming pain”—he leveled his gaze—“neither of them would say yes, Rachel. Neither of them,” he whispered. “Including Lyda.”
Her gaze lowered, and he could feel her thinking, turning things over in her mind. He also saw her hands, balled into tight fists, and that gave insight into her as well. He’d told her before that he was a patient man, and he was. But he had a feeling she might just put his patience to the test. Still, whatever it took to win this woman’s heart, he was willing to do it.
He banked the fire and grabbed his duster from the coat hook, the lack of sleep catching up with him. “It’s time I got you home.”
She joined him by the door, then paused and looked up at him. Then, wordless, she retrieved an oil lamp from the table and disappeared with it down the hall, in the direction of the storeroom. She returned a moment later without the lamp, but with a smile lighting her eyes.
Realizing what she’d done, Rand leaned down and kissed her cheek. “Thank you,” he whispered. He opened the door and offered his arm. She tucked her hand through.
More than eight inches of snow had fallen the previous night, and if the current rate of snow kept up, that much would likely fall again. A subtle wind blew down from the north, sending powdery white flakes wafting downward, shrouding the town and lending the night an uncanny resemblance to day. The streets were deserted and the jagged snow-dusted knife blades of the Rockies stood sentinel above the town like sleeping giants. Rand thanked God again for bringing him to this breathtaking country, and into the life of the woman walking beside him.
He slipped an arm about her waist as they climbed the icy stairs to James and Molly’s home. He waited for her to produce the key, then slid it into the lock. “You stay inside. I’ll get my horse and meet you back here.”
Rachel stepped inside and paused, briefly bowing her head. “I want you to know that it’s not because I don’t care about you. I do.” She smoothed a hand over his lapel. “Very much. There’s a part of me that knows what you’re saying is right, and I want to follow that voice. But there’s another voice”—she shook her head, her face pale in the moonlight—“that’s screaming inside . . . telling me to run. To hide.”
“I have a solution,” he said quietly, caressing her cheek. “Either go with the first option, or go with the second and run to me. I’ll hide you and keep you safe.”
She sighed, a tiny smile peeking through. “I wish I could make you understand what I’m feeling.”
“I think I do understand, Rachel.” He fingered a dark curl at her neckline, struggling with how to phrase his thoughts in a way that wouldn’t leave them on the wrong footing. “I know you’re afraid of opening your heart again, of losing someone . . . like you lost Thomas. And while I know life doesn’t hold any guarantees, I’ve also learned that there’s no joy in this life without pain. I’m willing to take some risks in order to have that kind of happiness. And, if you’re willing”—he hoped he wasn’t overstepping his bounds, pushing too hard, assuming too much—“I’d like to share that kind of happiness with you.” The tender look in her eyes encouraged him. “Maybe together,” he said, “we could help each other face our fears.”
“Help each other face our fears,” she repeated, her voice soft and her smile tentative, revealing both the hope she had, as well as the slenderest thread of lingering doubt. “That sounds so beautiful. . . . And so easy, the way you say it.”
He brushed the hair back from her forehead and kissed her— once, twice . . . and a third time—hearing her quickening breaths, which only made him want to kiss her again. “I doubt it’ll be easy, Rachel. But I promise you, it’ll be worth it. Now”—not wanting to, he gave her a gentle nudge farther inside—“I’ll be right back.”
Half an hour later, he guided the mare up the mountain toward the Boyd ranch, the snow coming down heavy. Rachel sat sidesaddle in front of him, tucked warmly against his body, and he had a peace he hadn’t felt in . . . well, that he couldn’t remember ever feeling before. He glanced up at the stars, thinking of Ben, and wondering what heaven was like. He recalled something Ben had said to him once, some time back. “If this side of heaven’s this pretty, Doc . . . just imagine what the other side must be like.”
Rand looked heavenward, thankful his eternity with Ben Mullins had started in Timber Ridge, and envying the fact that Ben didn’t have to use his imagination anymore.
He guided the horse along the final curve to Rachel’s cabin and pulled back on the reins, seeing someone riding straight for them.
Rachel straightened. “It’s James,” she whispered, concern in her voice.
James reined in sharp, his face half hidden beneath his hat. “I was just on my way to town to find you.” His horse whinnied, struggling at the bit, and James pulled the reins taut. “I’m sorry, Rachel . . . it’s the boys. Molly and I have looked everywhere for them. But they’re gone.”