After locking the vault, by unspoken agreement John turned to leave, and I accompanied him, strangely unwilling to be parted from him. I knew I'd have to sort through the physical and emotional needs that were hammering at me. I wouldn't be one of those silly women who let physical attraction hold her in thrall. No, I—I felt a bitter laugh forming and forced it down. No. I had the knowledge of a hundred-year-old love to keep me rooted in reality.
When we reached the warmth of the kitchen, we found that Martha had returned. The tension between us was so heavy, Martha would have seen it if she hadn't had her back to us, unloading a bag of groceries and throwing canned goods into the pantry.
John took his coat from the hook but stopped at the back door. I went to Martha's side.
"What is it?" I asked her, concerned over her behavior and, knowing how she felt about John, half fearing a retort about unexpected company.
"That woman," she muttered, throwing another can onto the shelf.
I knew exactly who she meant. Although I'd never heard Martha refer to her in quite that way before, that was how I often thought of Louise Rustin.
John waited at the door as if he, too, were concerned about Martha's uncharacteristic behavior. I took the sack from Martha and put it on the cabinet.
"What has she done now?"
Martha was near tears. "Oh, Elizabeth, Marie is so sick. Louise has her there in the store and won't send for a doctor."
"Let's go," I said.
"I'll drive," John said from the doorway.
I looked up at him, surprised by his offer of help. Apparently our truce still held. But I was uneasy about accepting and worried that Martha would reject his offer as interference. He spoke again. "How bad are the roads, Martha?"
"Bad," she told him. "And getting worse."
"Then, if you want to get home tonight," he said, canceling any objections either of us might have, "you'll go with me in the truck."
No longer falling gently, the wind-driven snow blew almost horizontally as we left the house, drifting high against anything that blocked its passage. I waded through it to the truck, slipping once on underlying ice.
The solitary elm near the gate groaned heavily under the weight of ice-covered branches and snow built up in each fork of the tree.
The three of us were silent all the way down the hill. Even with the four-wheel drive of the pickup, I felt the truck sliding on the roadway and knew John had to focus his attention on keeping us out of a ditch. I was glad he had insisted on driving; my skills would never have gotten us down safely.
I pounded on the door of the darkened store until I saw a light come on inside. Louise opened the door only a crack. "I'm closed."
I pushed past her into the store. "Where is she?"
"In the back room," Martha said, following me inside, with John immediately behind her. I started toward the back.
"Wait a minute. You can't just barge in," Louise complained. I didn't stop; let her complain all she wanted.
As I opened the door Martha indicated, a wave of heat and the odor of unburned gas and unwashed body blasted from the room. An unvented stove blazed in one corner, and the heat in the room sucked the breath from my body. I turned off the stove.
Marie, frail and even more shrunken, lay on an old quilt on the unmade bed. I knelt beside her and touched her cheek.
"She's burning with fever," I told Martha. "We have to get her to a hospital."
"You're not taking her out of here," Louise snapped. "Not unless you want her death on your conscience."
"She's right." Johns stepped in front of Louise. "We can't take her out in this weather."
Such a feeling of frustration came over me that I was immobilized for a moment. John was Marie's only hope. "Are you influential enough to get a doctor here?"
A blast of icy wind rattled the windows at the back of the room. John looked first at the windows and then at Marie. "I can try."
I saw him at the telephone when I returned to the front of the store. I pulled the chain on each light I came to until I found what I needed, grabbed sheets and a nightgown from the counters, and handed towels to Martha. "Please see if you can find a basin and water," I told her.
"What do you think you're doing?" Louise demanded.
I didn't even try to hide my disgust. "What you should have done. Get out of my way."
She followed me back into the room. "You can't just come in here and take over." But she immediately fell silent when she noticed that John had entered the room.
"Any luck?" I asked him.
"Not yet."
While John held Marie, I stripped off the old quilt and put a clean sheet on the mattress. John settled her back in bed, and I covered her with another sheet.
"Can I do anything else?"
I shook my head. "Just keep trying to get a doctor."
Louise started in on me again. "I don't need you here. I don't want you here—"
"Louise." John's voice left no question of his authority. "I want to talk with you at the front. Now."
Martha joined me then. Together we removed Marie's stained clothing, sponged her body, and dressed her in the clean nightgown. Her fever-glazed eyes opened. "Eliza?"
"Yes, Marie," I said calmly, determined that she would see none of the fear I felt for her. Martha slipped from the room, leaving us alone.
I smoothed Marie's hair from her face and straightened her braids over her shoulders. In spite of my resolve, tears welled in my eyes.
"It's my time," she said softly.
"But I just found you. Please don't go yet. I need you so much."
"You're sturdy. You don't need me. Trust your feelings."
Trust my feelings? Which ones? The ones that said run to John? The ones that said I love David? The ones that said that none of this could be happening?
"Is it real?" I asked.
"Oh, yes." She was slipping away from me by the second. "More real than anything you've ever known."
"But if it is . . . is David here, too? Where, Marie? And why don't I know?"
"Oh, child, you have so much to learn. And so does he." Her eyes closed but she continued, almost in a whisper. "I told him he couldn't play God, but he had to try. . . ."
Through the tears I could no longer hold back, I saw Marie's image blur, grow darker, soften. In a misty vision, I saw Marie caring for Eliza's child, I saw Bessie caring for Eliza, and I knew this was not the first time I had watched this dear friend die.
I fought back a sob, knowing the answer, knowing I shouldn't ask. "You are Bessie, aren't you?"
With eyes still closed, she smiled as if as some ancient memory. "I was Bessie. I am Marie." Her smile faded. "That's something you have to learn, too. Oh, my child, have I done wrong? Have I done wrong by telling you?"
She was silent.
"Marie? Marie?" I took her fragile hand in mine and held it to my cheek. "I love you."
Her smile returned for only a second before pain twisted her mouth. "I know. But I'm so tired, Eliza. Please let me go."
I leaned over and kissed her cheek. Her hand fluttered in mine, and then she was still. I sat beside her, holding her lifeless hand, alone as except for a few brief weeks, I had always been.
Eliza reached the railroad depot just as a train was boarding and managed to board, clutching a ticket to St. Louis, just as the train was pulling out. She had asked for a compartment but was told there were none available unless the conductor could locate one.
She waited now in the almost empty coach for the conductor to return with an answer for her, and as she waited the strength that had sustained her during her flight began to drain away. She longed to throw off the heavy cloak and collapse against the seat, but to throw off the cloak was to be discovered, and to lean back was torture, for now every nerve in her body cried out.
"Mrs. Griffith?" She felt a hand touch her shoulder. Startled, she tensed forward.
"Mrs. Griffith?"
It was the conductor, using the name she had given him. She caught her breath and turned toward him.
"There are two gentlemen traveling together who have offered to share a compartment so that you can have one of theirs," he told her.
"I didn't mean to put anyone out," Eliza protested but breathed a prayer of thanksgiving as he brushed aside her objection.
"It's no trouble for them, I assure you. Please follow me."
To her surprise, she found that she was barely able to stand and less able to walk. She followed him haltingly down the aisle until a wave of weakness washed over her. She leaned against a chair, clutching it with her burning hands so she would not fall. At the coach door, the conductor turned to wait for her, and she straightened, not wanting him to see her weakness. Somehow she managed to go on, into the next car, where he tapped on a door, opened it, and stepped aside for her to enter.
A man knelt on the floor, closing a case, his face hidden from her.
"I'll be out in just a moment," he said in a rich, melodic voice that stopped her in midstep just outside the door.
David! What was he doing here?
He rose and turned to her, and she lowered her head, relying on the anonymity of the hooded, shapeless cloak, knowing that he must not recognize her.
"The conductor told us of your loss, Mrs. Griffith," he said softly. For a moment she was puzzled, until she remembered the story she had told of recent widowhood to explain her strange attire. "I know how difficult it is when you lose someone you love."
She dipped her head in acknowledgment, wanting nothing more than to look up at him, to drink in his closeness, but knowing that she could not. Then he was gone, and with him yet another part of her.
The conductor remained outside until she entered. "The porter will be here in a few minutes to make up your berth," he said before closing the door.
Alone. She sank onto the seat, grateful for the dimmed light of the compartment, but she couldn't divest herself of the cloak. Not until the porter had made his rounds. She rested her cheek against the window.
Why now, David? she thought. Why here? Oh, God, to be so close and not be able to go to him. The next car? The next compartment?
There was a hollow feeling behind her eyes, another in her throat. This had been his place, if only for a short while. He had sat in this same seat, breathed the same air, looked out this very window. She looked around the compartment furtively as if this, too, were something forbidden to her, and yet feeling that if she looked hard enough she could see the essence of him still here.
She found something wedged in the corner of the seat and pulled it toward her. It was a slim, dark leather portfolio with gold initials on the clasp. D. R. She placed the portfolio on her lap and touched it lovingly. "Oh, David," she moaned, "do you ever think of me?"
A tap on the door reminded her of the porter. "Come in," she said, not looking up from the portfolio. She heard the door open and waited for the noises that would tell her it was time to make way for the porter. She heard only silence and then the sound of the door closing.
"Eliza?"
It had been years since she had heard him speak her name, but as she turned to him she had the strangest feeling that this meeting had been predestined.
He stood just inside the door, his features taut, the expression in his eyes . . . guarded. "I don't understand."
There was no way to hide, no place to run, and she was too weary to have done so had there been. "You weren't supposed to leave for a few more days," she whispered.
He glanced at the portfolio in her lap. "Perhaps I do understand after all." David had never spoken to anyone in her presence the way he now spoke, and nothing Owen had ever done to her had the power to hurt her the way the cynicism she heard in David's voice did. "I came back for that, but if you need it so badly, I'll wait while you read its contents."
"What . . ." she stammered.
"I didn't think even Markham could sink low enough to send his wife to spy," he said. "He must be more desperate than I thought." He laughed, a mockery of the laugh she remembered. "When I left early, did he decide I must be carrying plans for a new strategy back to the nation?"
"What are you wearing under the cloak, Eliza? A party dress? That blue froth I saw you in earlier? Wasn't there time to change? Is that the reason for the elaborate story of mourning? Get you on the train, with me, and if all else fails play on old relationships to gain the information he thinks I have?"
His words struck her like blows. She could only stare at him, hollow-eyed, as he hammered away any hope she had that he still loved her.
"No," she whimpered, pushing the portfolio to the floor.
As he looked at the portfolio, a shadow flickered across his face. He dropped to the seat beside her, resting his head in his hands, and sat silently massaging his forehead with strong, tanned fingers.
"I'm sorry, Eliza," he said finally. "I know better than that. Markham might try, but you wouldn't go along with it. You can't have changed that much."
He shook his head. "And there's nothing to learn. The delegation is in shambles. They're worrying about what they lost, not that our nation may lose its entire invested wealth, and its identity. That's why I left—in disgust. Perhaps once I'm home we can reach some decision about what to do next."
He looked so disillusioned, so lost. She reached out and touched his shoulder. Oh, my poor David, she thought. What's happened to your dreams?
It was as though he read her thoughts. "We're not beaten, you know. We've just had a pretty heavy setback."
"I am sorry," he said again. "You must have important reasons for what you are doing." He reached for her hand, but she quickly tucked it inside her cloak.
"I do," she said softly.
"Where are you going?"
She saw a picture in her mind of a solitary hill in the middle of a wide valley, with the home he had once promised her rising from that hill. Perhaps it was only her dreams that had died. "I can't tell you," she said.
He closed in on himself again. "I see."
She couldn't tell him, but she couldn't bear the lack of expression on his face. "No. No, you don't see," she murmured. "I can't tell you, because it's better for you if you don't know." She drew a ragged breath. "I've left Owen."
She saw expression in his eyes then—incredulity.
"Why?" he demanded. "you had everything you wanted—a beautiful home, an influential husband, money, a place in society."
Where had he gotten those ideas? From her father, of course. But why had he believed them? "Oh, David." She shook her head in angry denial. "I have the clothes on my back, a little money, and a railway ticket." Her cloak had slipped away from her face, and a loose strand of hair fell over her eye.
"Are you positive this is what you must do?" David asked, reaching to smooth back her hair.
Oh, God, couldn't he tell? "Of course I'm positive!"
He put his hand under her chin and turned her face toward the light. She watched his eyes darken and narrow as he smoothed her hair behind her ear and gently probed the wound on the side of her face.
"Did he do this?" he asked tightly.
She heard noises in the room, strange, choking sounds, not sobbing, not laughter, and realized they were coming from her.
"Did he strike you?" he demanded.
She couldn't speak, couldn't breathe. His hands were on her shoulders now.
"Eliza, answer me!"
He clenched his fingers on her shoulders, and a bright burst of pain forced a cry from her. The noises stopped. His hands fell away.
He reached for the fastenings of her cloak.
"Please, don't," she whispered. She reached out to stop him, and he caught her hands in his.
Tears welled in her eyes as he looked at the marks on her hands and the burns on her palms caused by the leather pulling across them. The tears began falling as he raised her sleeve and saw the angry banding of welts across the old scar.
He bent his head to her arm, touched his lips to the scar, and placed a whisper-soft kiss in the palm of each hand.
The tears streamed silently down her cheeks as he unfastened the cloak. Only the twitch near his jaw betrayed that he felt anything as he pushed back the cloak.
As the cloak fell from her, so did what little control she had left. She collapsed against him, great gasping sobs tearing from her.
"David" she moaned, "Oh, God, David, please help me."
He knelt motionless beside her for endless moments, then slipped one arm around her, tentatively, as though afraid of hurting her further. He eased his other hand in her hair, holding her head to his chest as she cried.
"I'll help you, Eliza," she heard from a distance. "I owe you that much."
Owe, she heard. Not love. Evermore, he had once promised her, in this life and the next. But her father's lies, and time, had killed what David had once felt for her. Could she have expected more? Yes! she longed to cry. Yes, please God, yes. But she couldn't, no more than she could refuse the help David now offered her.
A knock at the door jolted me back to the present. John entered the room carrying a blanket, which he handed to me.
"The doctor is on his way."
I took the blanket and covered Marie.
"It doesn't matter now."
John called for me, two days later, to escort me to the funeral service. Martha declared the roads passable and, although she didn't know that my throat was scratchy and my head dull with the persistence of a low-grade fever, she warned me to bundle up warm so I wouldn't catch cold, and drove over to Mack's place to gather with the rest of her family early that morning.
My mood demanded gray, dripping skies, but the sun refused to cooperate. It glinted with uncomfortable brightness from the sky and from the melting snow.
The service was held at the small, one-room church in Richards Spur, a white frame building with a bell-less tower that leaned dangerously away from the building. A surprising number of persons attended the brief service in the church and then waded through the red clay mud to the graveside.
Mack was there, looking grim and uncomfortable in a dark suit and well-polished cowboy boots. In a whisper, Martha explained that Joannie was not feeling well and Mack had insisted she stay home.
Stan McCollum was also present. I caught sight of him, once looking disdainfully at the mud that spattered on his trousers, and another time looking at me with a speculative expression in his eyes. When he saw me return his stare, he glanced away.
Louise Rustin did not look away. I felt the heat of her ill-repressed anger often through both services.
John remained silent, as he had been since we first entered the church.
In the past two days, I had delved into the densely printed pages of David Richards's books seeking answers that still evaded me. And I still had nothing to go on but my own instinct, although that was much stronger now.
Well, Marie, I asked her silently, what happens next?
After the few words of the graveside service, McCollum started toward us. John stepped forward, almost, it seemed, to intercept him.
Unwilling to confront McCollum, I eased away from the remaining small gathering of people and wandered into the older part of the cemetery. Mine was not aimless wandering, but it would have seemed so to anyone watching.
I found the family plot at the back of the cemetery, a large, well-tended area not fenced but outlined with narrow flat stones. From the center of the plot rose a large white obelisk bearing the name Richards. The newer graves were marked with flat head-markers; the older ones with small, upright, carved marble monuments.
Snow still covered the ground, but the stones were easy to see from the edge of the plot. I wandered around the boundary until I came to a marker that bore the name Jonathon David. I walked to it and knelt beside it, brushing the snow from the dates. It was too new.
"My father," John said. I hadn't heard him walk up.
I looked back at the dates. "You must have been very young."
"Almost eighteen."
"And your mother?"
He knelt beside me facing the grave to his right and touched that stone.
"Mary Catherine," I read, and then the dates. She had died seventeen years before her husband.
"Complications after childbirth," John said, rising to his feet.
I stood beside him. He obviously didn't want my sympathy. "I'd like to see David Richards's grave."
"Sorry," John said, but he didn't sound as though he were. "It isn't here."
"Oh, well . . ." I couldn't argue with that. "Perhaps when I go into Fairview, I can stop at the cemetery there."
He shook his head. "I don't know where he's buried. Dad said something about a private cemetery, but I wasn't interested at the time, and I didn't pay much attention."
"The child?" I asked hopefully.
His eyes turned hard and dark in the glare of the sun.
Only one other question remained, but did I really want to ask him? Yes, I decided. This was something I had to know. "What about Eliza?"
"Who?"
"Eliza, his . . ." I hesitated, "the child's mother."
He took my arm and pulled me toward the church. "I don't know how you dreamed up that bit of nonsense," he said tersely. "No one still living has any idea what her name was, or where she went after she presented him with the child."
I shrugged away from his hand. "She didn't go anywhere."
He caught my shoulders and turned me to face him. For an instant I felt we were back in the shadows of the attic, with John about to kiss me, with me unable, unwilling to refuse. Then reality intruded. "You obviously have better sources of information than I do," John said. "What makes you so sure of that?"
I tried to meet his eyes but couldn't. I wasn't sure. Lord, I wasn't even sure of my actions at the moment. "I just don't think she would have," I said in a futile attempt at defense.
John was quiet for a long time. "Don't let anyone else hear you talking like that, especially Stan McCollum."
"Why would I say anything to him?"
"He wants to talk with you."
"But I don't want to talk to him."
"Elizabeth, he is trustee for the estate. You can't avoid him."
"I've been doing my best."
"He knows. Just try to cooperate with him."
John and I drove back to the house in the silence that marked so much of our time together. I tried to warm my feet against the car's heater vent but couldn't escape the chill. I had managed to get snow in my shoes, and my stockings were sodden. I wanted only to soak in a hot tub and then curl up in front of a fire, in a flannel nightgown, drinking hot coffee. But John was with me. And McCollum was right behind.
I resisted the temptation to make my trustee as uncomfortable as possible by taking his coat and leading him into the frigid drawing room. Instead, I led him and John to the library, where the remnants of a fire glowed in the fireplace.
John stirred the coals and fed the fire, and I waited for McCollum to say something. He glanced anxiously at John.
"Oh, for goodness' sake, John. Give him permission to speak and let's get this over with!"
McCollum shot me a malevolent glare and slammed his briefcase down on the desk. "I've written you asking you to contact me, but you've not seen fit to do so."
"I've been busy." Busy grieving the loss of a friend. Would McCollum understand that? Probably not. He'd probably never grieved for anyone.
"Obviously. In any event, it is necessary from time to time to contact you, so I've arranged to have a telephone installed."
What? He was actually giving me access to the outside world without the ever-present ear of Louise Rustin? "Thank you. Martha will appreciate that."
"But not you?"
"I have no one I wish to speak with."
With a grimace, he opened his briefcase and drew forth a sheaf of papers. "I have a number of invoices."
I remained silent. John seemed preoccupied with the fire.
"I want to examine the work that's been done before I pay these."
"When do you want to do that?" I asked, but I already suspected his answer, suspected it would be hours before I would be warm, before I would be rid of him.
"Right now. I also want to check the inventory."
McCollum prowled through every room of the house, from cellars to attics, examining pictures and furniture, making marks on his typewritten lists. I was torn between wanting to stay in the library, warm and out of his presence, and an uneasy feeling that he should not be allowed the freedom of the house. Comfort lost.
John accompanied us for a while, but he soon abandoned the tour. I couldn't watch both of them. I stayed with McCollum.
I couldn't follow him into the nursery. I waited in the hallway, listening to his footsteps on the bare floor, hearing the opening and closing of what was probably a closet door.
"Where are the contents of this room?" he asked when he joined me in the hall.
"I had them destroyed."
"You had no right to do that."
I didn't want to discuss the nursery with anyone, especially not with him, and my scratchy throat by this time had become painful. I ignored his comment and turned my back on him.
"I'm talking to you."
"Mr. McCollum, I'm freezing. If we must continue this . . . discussion, let's do it in the library."
John had pulled a chair close to the fireplace and sat with his feet stretched to the edge of the coals. He glanced at me before turning to McCollum. "Was your tour satisfactory, Stan?"
McCollum shuffled the papers and replaced them in his briefcase. "Not entirely. There are several items on the inventory I couldn't find."
McCollum apparently didn't know about the vault. Well, if John wanted him to know, he'd have to tell him.
"As you noticed," I said, "there are a number of boxes I haven't unpacked. If you'll leave me a copy of the inventory, I'll mark off any items I happen to find."
McCollum snapped his briefcase shut, taking his time before turning around. "Miss Richards, when you inherit this property, if you do, you will receive a copy of the inventory. Not until then.
"There will be no more work done on this house until that unlikely event, either."
I studied him, wanting to lash out in anger and knowing somehow that was what he wanted.
"The masonry work? The furnace?"
"The house has stood for over a hundred years. It won't fall down this winter."
John rose and stretched his hands toward the fire. "What about the furnace, Stan? Even you will have to admit it's a little bit chilly today."
"I don't consider major furnace repair this late in the season a reasonable expense. The house was designed to be heated by fireplaces, but if Miss Richards is not satisfied with those, I suppose we could rig up a few propane heaters."
I remembered the plain brown heater with the exposed copper tubing in Martha's sitting room. "No, we can't," I said. "Either it's done right, or it's not done at all."
"As you wish. I want your checkbook."
I blinked back my astonishment. What now?
"Your checking account has been closed. I have an arrangement with Louise Rustin. She will allow you an account for your household needs."
I held myself in the appearance of calm. "And if I should need something Mrs. Rustin doesn't stock—a tank of gasoline, for example."
McCollum picked up his briefcase. "I'm not at all sure that your automobile falls within the intended meaning of personal property. I've asked my attorney to render an opinion on that point. In the meantime, Martha can submit mileage claims for any necessary driving she does in connection with her work, and should you have need of other incidental sums of money, my secretary will process your requests."
John spoke softly. "That's a pretty tight rein, Stan."
"Don't bother, Cousin. I know what's happening." I crossed to the desk where I had tossed my purse. A worthless checkbook would do me no good. "Here." I held out the checkbook, making McCollum reach for it. He took it and walked across the room, preparing to leave, apparently having nothing further to say to me.
"I would like to see a copy of the will," I said. "I'm having a little trouble relating this conversation to my concept of the trust provisions."
McCollum stopped at the door and turned to face me, his animosity palpable even from this distance. "I assure you, I'm following them explicitly."
"Oh, I'm sure you are." The effort of speaking tore at my throat, but I continued slowly, distinctly. "I am also sure that I will remain the year, no matter how uncomfortable you try to make me, and that I will claim my inheritance."
McCollum had one further, parting shot. "Miss Richards, you have already destroyed a room full of furniture. If you remove one more item from this hill, I will instigate legal proceedings against you."
Neither man said good-bye. John just joined McCollum and closed the library door as they left. I sank into the chair he had abandoned, curling into the warmth of his lingering body heat.
McCollum's secretary would process my requests! Louise Rustin would allow me an account! And my car? I thought over our correspondence. Yes, I had told McCollum I would be driving to Richards Spur, and he had sent money for the travel expenses and given instructions for driving from Tulsa. I would have to put those letters in a safe place. As soon as I thawed out. God, I was cold. The air in the room felt like ice against my cheek.
The library door opened and John returned. "He's gone."
I rose to meet him and all the anger I had fought down rose with me, but when I started to speak I was wracked by a cough that left me clutching the chair for support.
He took me by the shoulders. "Come to the kitchen with me. I made coffee and lighted all the burners and ovens while you were on your grand tour. The room ought to be warm by now."
I was grateful for the warmth and for the rich, hot coffee John poured for me. I wrapped my hands around the mug and breathed in the rising steam as we sat at the kitchen table.
"I do want a copy of the will."
"He'll send one. If he doesn't, I will," John told me.
"Without a fight?"
"There's no point in refusing. All you'd have to do is go to the courthouse and ask to see it."
"I didn't know that."
John rose from the table and poured both of us more coffee. "It's public record. Probates, divorces, most lawsuits can be seen for the asking."
Another cough shook me just as the outside door opened, admitting a gust of frigid air, and Martha.
John didn't bother to sit back down. He walked to where his coat now hung and lifted it from the peg. "She's managed to get sick," he told Martha, opening the door she had just closed. "See that she gets to bed."
Martha gave him a long, appraising look before doing just what he'd told her. She managed to keep me in bed for a full day, cosseting me with hot tea and homemade soup, before I rebelled. The cough was better but not gone, my throat was still irritated, and my fever came and went, but I was not sick enough to tolerate the inactivity of bed rest, not for the second time in less than six months. At least that was what I told myself to explain my overpowering need to escape my bed . . . to be free. So, against Martha's protests, I resumed my work in the library.