The Mountain Man Started Buying Baby Clothes — But Everyone Knew He Lived Alone
Chapter 10
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Lucy had kept the stove roaring all night: she had boiled everything in the house twice, held her mother's hand through every pain, and was now asleep upright on a stool with Mr. Bishop in her fist.Granny Pruitt took off her coat and said, "Out."Thad stood in the kitchen with his back to the wall for two hours beside Amos Dowd, who offered him coffee and a great deal of silence. He had never in his life been so useless.Early on the morning of the 18th, a Friday, a thin, furious wail went up through the cabin."A girl," said Granny Pruitt from the door, holding up one finger because he looked ready to fall. "Small, but sound, and a very bad temper. Wash your hands, Mr. Rourke. You are wanted."He went in on legs that did not feel his own. Hannah lay propped on the pillows, white as paper, with her hair damp on her forehead. Lucy had woken and was sitting on the bed in her nightgown, examining a tiny red face with great suspicion. In Hannah's arm lay a bundle in the gray shawl."There she is," said Hannah. Her voice was a thread. "Come here, Thad.""I will frighten her.""You will not.""My hands—""Thaddeus." She almost smiled. "Do you want to hold her?"He came to the bedside and held out his hands—the same ones that had felled pines and hauled men out of snowdrifts—and found they were shaking.Hannah put the baby into them.She weighed nothing at all. She was folded in the shawl like a letter, with a thatch of dark hair and a fist the size of a walnut. The infant frowned at him and opened a pair of dark, unfocused eyes, and looked straight up into his face.He began to weep. He did it without a sound: the tears ran down into his beard, and he stood perfectly still, afraid the smallest movement might break something.Ruth Dowd looked at her husband, and Amos found a sudden interest in the stove.Lucy looked up at her mother. "I told you," she said with deep satisfaction. "I knew he was a good giant."Three weeks later, Hannah got up and made breakfast. She was thinner and tired by noon, but she was on her feet. The baby, whom she had named Ada Grace, kept the entire cabin awake with a regularity that Thad found, privately, rather magnificent.On a gray Sunday in February, after supper, Hannah said what she had to say:"I am strong again. I wrote to a school in Pueblo about a place for Lucy, and a woman there needs a seamstress. I can take the spring train."Thad said nothing for a long time. The stove ticked. Ada slept in the cradle, one fist against her cheek. Through the window, he could see Lucy in the yard teaching the mule to bow.Then, for the first time in his life, he made himself say what he felt:"I asked you to come because I owed my life to Daniel." His voice was rough, and he forced each word out like a splinter. "I do not want you to stay because of him."Hannah turned and looked at him. "Then why?"