Fire Along the Sky
Page 68

Hannah said, “Opium.”
“It's the only thing that helps at all,” Curiosity said. “The only thing he can keep down, anyway.” She straightened her shoulders with an effort. “He'll hold on for those fireworkds he sets such store by and then he'll let go. The damn fool.”
“In the trading post I heard that the lawyer was here. Mr. Bennett?”
Curiosity nodded. “Come in yesterday midday and sat with Richard for an hour. Come out with his hands full of papers and went straight back to Johnstown, didn't even stop to take dinner. Next thing Richard say, he want to talk to you and Ethan together. You might as well go right in, get it over with.”
“Where's Jennet?” Hannah asked.
“I sent her over to the Wildes' place with some tea for Callie.”
Jennet was out tending to the sick, then, while Hannah had been sitting at Lake in the Clouds mending socks and reading newspapers. She blinked away this image, but not before Curiosity read it off her face.
“Go on now, see Richard. He's waiting on you, girl.”
Richard lay in the exact middle of the feather bed, covered by only a sheet. Ethan sat on a chair, a closed book on his knees.
Ethan said, “I just gave him a full dose. In a minute or two he'll be able to talk to us.”
Richard's eyes, red rimmed and watering, were alive with pain as sharp as broken glass. He blinked at her and blinked again, and every breath was followed by a shallow gasp.
Across the bed Ethan met her gaze, but they said nothing. There was nothing he could tell her that she could not see for herself.
The part of Hannah that was still a doctor and always must be noted that Richard's neck and arms were withered to almost nothing, but his abdomen was swollen, barrel shaped and ripe as a nine-month pregnancy. In his prime he had been a big man with fair skin and a head of thick red-gold hair, mostly gone now. His skin was the color of singed parchment, such a deep yellow that it was almost brown. Everything about him was yellow: the whites of his eyes, the palms of his hands, even the beds of his fingernails.
Hannah pulled the second chair up beside him and sat, folded her hands in her lap and waited.
The clock on the mantelpiece had stopped. The only sound was the fire hissing and rumbling to itself, the wind in the trees outside the windows, and Richard's breathing, in and in and out, hitching and uneven. Hannah could almost feel him coming alive as the opium pushed the pain back and back. There was a clicking sound in his throat. Ethan offered him water and he sipped from the cup.
“Well, then,” he said. “Let's get this over with.”
He spoke in stops and starts, his voice hoarse but purposeful, punctuated with wheezing gasps. “I want you to hear this from me before the will's read out. I'm leaving my medical practice to Hannah and the house and farm to Curiosity.”
Hannah was surprised, but Ethan was struck dumb. He opened his mouth and then closed it again, looked at Hannah for help, but got none.
“You're surprised,” Richard said. His voice was as thin and weak as old thread but there was considerable satisfaction in it.
“I don't need the house,” Hannah said. “And I don't want the practice.”
Richard's eyes narrowed. “Then burn it all down,” he said, his fingers fluttering on the coverlet.
Hannah bit back the things she might have said.
“I don't mind, Hannah.” Ethan's concern was for her, which both touched and aggravated Hannah. And Richard too, by the expression on his face.
Richard grunted. “You'll get all the rest of the land, here and in Albany. And most of the money. There's a lot of it.” His voice left him and he swallowed convulsively.
There was a small silence, broken by the sudden trill of Gabriel's laughter from far away.
“No more tenants. When the leases expire don't renew them. Let this place fade away. God knows it was a mistake to settle here in the first place.”
Then Richard managed a smile, just one side of his mouth drawing up to show bloody gums.
Ethan glanced at Hannah again.
“Don't look at her,” Richard said. “She can't tell you what I'm thinking.”
He coughed, just once; a cough that could have been muffled in a lady's handkerchief but must have felt to him like a hot blade. Hannah watched him swallow the pain, and she remembered that he had lived among her mother's people for much of his boyhood. The lessons he had learned there were still with him, even now. Especially now.
His gaze flickered to Hannah and fixed. He said, “A long time ago your father promised to bury me at Lake in the Clouds, next to Sarah.”
Hannah was more surprised at this than she had been at the gift of the house, but she managed to keep it from her face.
“I've changed my mind,” Richard said. “I want to be buried next to Kitty. I owe her that much.”
Ethan turned his face away but not before Hannah caught a flicker of satisfaction in his eyes. This request at least had pleased him, though Richard did not seem to care what any of them thought.
“One last thing,” he said, his voice worn down by exhaustion to a whisper. “A question for you.” He was looking at Hannah. “And I want an answer.”
She wanted to walk away, to turn around and close the door behind herself and never come back into this room until Richard Todd was beyond asking questions. Until she was safe from him and his need to understand things she could never explain to anyone. He wanted to know about her son and Strikes-the-Sky; for all these months he had been worrying at her, determined to extract an answer, like a splinter dug into muscle. Now he would have his answer, because he was dying; because she could not deny him. She wondered briefly if he had decided to leave the house and practice to her just so he could call her here to ask questions.