Free Stephanie Mittman by A Heart Full of Miracles Page A

suppose if you hadn’t been here and his father had just wrapped it up good, it’d be just as fine today, don’t you think?”
    “I get your point, Abidance. You don’t have to lay it on quite so thick,” he said, taking a second helping of the quince pie he supposedly hated.
    “I have apple, too, if you prefer. I know I want my fill before I give up sweets for Lent,” she said, opening the top of the pie keep and popping a bit of crust into her mouth. It didn’t taste as good as her best pies, but she surely liked the way Seth watched her eat it, liked the warmth that spread inside her under his gaze. She took a bit of the crumb topping and put it carefully into her mouth, then licked her finger, her eyes locked with his.
    “I remember things too, Abby,” he said softly. “I remember a little girl coming to me in tears because her baby doll had lost her arm and wanting to know if I could fix her. I remember you and Sarrie hiding in my examining room so that you could see if the pictures in my medical books were for real.”
    “I’ve grown up, Seth,” she said, reaching out and running her finger down the side of his face, feeling the stubble on his jaw that came with the night.
    “And while you were doing that, I grew old,” he said sadly, taking her hand in his and putting it back down on the desk. “Much too old and sad for someone like you.”
    “Maybe you’re right,” she said thoughtfully. “Aboutmedicine, I mean. Maybe it makes you too sad. Maybe you could love me if you were a prospector.”
    “But I’m not a prospector,” he said with a sad smile. “Am I?”
    “Not yet,” she said, “but maybe you will be.”

M Y D EAREST A BIDANCE ,” A BBY’S COUSIN A NNA
Lisa had written.
    It has finally happened! Our own dear Armand, whose cause you have always championed, has asked me to marry him! You can imagine how he laughed when I told him you and I had pledged never to marry but to grow old together in a grand run-down old house with tattered lace hanging in the windows! I trust, knowing your feelings for your darling doctor, that you will not hold me to our childhood promises. And I expect your help at every turn in planning my nuptials
.
    The paper crinkled in her pocket and Abby’s mother frowned at her as if the tiny noise would disrupt the dignity of Joseph Panner’s funeral. As if there were any dignity to Joseph Panner’s funeral! Had it not been that he’d drowned in frozen waters, she’d be tempted to saythat they’d be fighting over his legacy before the man’s body was cold.
    “A man of honor, a devout man, known to all of us for the ability to live up to his shortcomings …” her father was saying, while behind her Ansel snickered at her father’s words.
    But her father’s words, as he always complained, were going in one of Abby’s ears and out the other, no matter how hard she tried to work up some sorrow at Joseph Panner’s passing. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Mr. Panner, it was just that she couldn’t forget the letter in her pocket.
Married
. Her cousin was going to be married. And Abby was happy for her. Delirious. Why, she couldn’t be happier if … She looked over at Seth, next to Ella Welsh, decked out in more black crepe than they’d hung on the firehouse when the old chief had died.
    Seth stood solemnly, respectfully. But she could see his fingers curling and uncurling, and she was sure that all he could think about was getting away from the cemetery. Only twenty or thirty feet away, Sarrie lay still and cold beneath the hard earth. Despite Abby’s trying, the winter weather had made it impossible for anything to grow over her grave. The ground was still as raw as Seth’s pain.
    He looked tired. She’d heard that Mr. Youtt’s oldest son, John, had awakened in the night with a horrible pain in his stomach. They’d run for Seth and he’d spent the night there, packing Johnnie’s stomach in ice and trying to keep him calm. Mrs. Youtt was