Chapter Forty-Three

Around eight o’clock, Lyddie came into the bedroom to say she’d put Benji to bed. She didn’t ask about Eleanor because Jacob knew she didn’t have to. Lyddie had seen enough ill patients to know when one was in a dire situation. She gasped and darted to Jacob’s side.

“Oh, Papa,” she said. She put an arm around his shoulders.

An hour later, Eleanor’s eyes opened, and she looked around the room at Andrew, Mary, Lyddie, and Jacob, her eyes clear for the first time in hours.

“Where’s the baby?” she said.

Andrew dropped to his knees next to the bed and clutched her hand.

“Sleeping,” he said. “Lyddie’s here. She’s been watching him.”

Eleanor nodded and turned her gaze to Jacob. “Thank you for saving Benji. Don’t grieve. He’s worth it. He’s worth it all.”

She closed her eyes and slipped into unconsciousness.

Eleanor’s breathing grew increasingly ragged over the next two hours. When it began to rattle, Mary told Lyddie to ride for Will. Occasionally Eleanor would cry out as if in pain. Andrew climbed into the bed next to her, and wrapped his arms around her, his tears dampening her hair and pooling on the pillow.

Jacob’s ears rang like someone had fired a gun next to his head. His eyes never left Eleanor’s face as she fought for breath through the fluid pooling in her lungs.

Death was at its cruelest when it came slowly. Better a bullet to the head than one to the gut. And yet, he’d seen patients recover from the brink of death and others succumb to little more than a common cold. How could human bodies be so resilient and so fragile all at once? How could something as significant as life be so tenuous? Why did he, a worthless, helpless, hopeless excuse for a man, linger while a young woman with Eleanor’s potential was ripped away?

Spots danced in front of his eyes, and he was gripped with the urge to rip the room apart. To grab the end table and hurl it through the window. To smash the mirror on the wall and beat the armchairs into thousands of pieces.

But he continued to sit, to pretend to pray, to be as impotent and worthless as he ever was.

Shortly before midnight, Jacob’s only friend took one last, rattling breath and went still.

Andrew threw himself across his wife and sobbed her name over and over while Mary rubbed his back, tears coursing down her own cheeks.

Jacob stared at the motionless form in the bed who only moments ago had been Eleanor Hale Lewis. The dark hair puddling around the pale face with its delicate features. The long eyelashes nearly brushing cold cheeks.

He leapt to his feet and stormed out of the room, down the hall, through the parlor, and out the front door. He was halfway across the yard when he realized he didn’t have anywhere to go. The realization only enraged him further, and he stomped aimlessly into the barn.

The inside of the barn was pitch dark. He hadn’t brought a lantern or even a candle, and he had no hope of finding a match in the blackness. He tripped over something and fell, catching himself at the last moment before he hit the ground by throwing out a hand and finding a wall for balance. He felt around with his foot and located the offending item. It felt like a wooden pail. He picked it up and hurled it, smiling with satisfaction when he heard it splinter against the opposite wall. He wished he could see, to find other things to throw and smash. He wanted to destroy the entire world.

But he couldn’t see. Of course he couldn’t. Why should anything ever go his way?

With a primal howl, he balled his right hand into a fist and punched it into the barn wall over and over and over again. He felt his knuckles split, the warm stream of blood running down his hand, but he didn’t stop.

“Who’s there?” a gruff voice hollered. Jacob stopped his fist halfway through another swing at the wall and heard the click of a revolver’s hammer being pulled back.

“Will?” he said.

“Jake?”

A blaze of yellow light blinded him. When his eyes adjusted, he saw Will, Frank, and Lyddie standing in the door. They each held the reins of their horses in one hand. In the other, Frank and Lyddie held lanterns, and Will had his Remington drawn. He eased the hammer back into place and holstered the weapon. His eyes drifted down to Jacob’s right hand, streaming blood and already turning purple. He dropped his horse’s reins and dashed over to him. He cradled Jacob’s hand in his and beckoned Lyddie to bring the lantern closer. The fear in Will’s dark eyes faded to sorrow.

“Eleanor,” he said. His voice cracked on the last syllable.

Jacob bit his lower lip, trying to stay composed, to hold onto the last shred of dignity he had left tonight. But Will’s hand moved from his injured knuckles to his cheek.

“Jake?” he said gently, and Jacob couldn’t stay together any longer.

“Oh Christ, Will,” he said, his voice breaking. “It’s all my fault.” The sobs he’d been holding in for so many hours tore from him, and his knees gave out. He would have fallen to the ground if not for the strong arms of his older brother, catching him, embracing him, holding him together.