She waited for him to reprimand her for her tongue—it had happened often enough at Camp Jackson—but he stroked his chin with eyes narrowed in consideration. “I think you have much to learn about troubled children. And I suspect your assessment of what’s ‘worth saying’ might differ greatly from mine.”
Ida folded her hands in her lap. Mama always said she let her mouth run ahead of her sense.
“But I do wonder if we couldn’t use a dose of positive thinking around here.”
Ida looked up, feeling the first sparkles of hope light in her chest.
“You’re welcome to share your opinions, but I will ask that you do me the courtesy of sharing them with me and not with the other staff. I should like to temper your...shall we say, enthusiasm...with a bit of experience and practicality. I’d like to think I am in charge for a good reason.”
Ida nodded. “You are in charge, Doctor. If the army’s taught me anything, it’s how to take orders.” It wasn’t really a fib, though it was unquestionably an exaggeration. She’d been written up for doing just the opposite more times than she cared to count. But she’d been working on it—and praying on it—and would continue to do so.
“See you mind that cut for the next day or two. And stay away from Louie Oberman until you’re sure it won’t bleed again. The poor child vomits at even a drop of blood.”
* * *
MacNeil knocked on Daniel’s study door that afternoon. “I fixed the infirmary cabinet like you asked. Found one or two other loose nails and fixed them, too.” The groundskeeper wiped his hands on his trousers. “You mind telling me what she was doing poking her head into that cabinet?”
It had been an amusing scene to walk past the infirmary and see the profile of Miss Landway bent over with her head in the cabinets. “I expect our new nurse likes to poke her head into everything.” He chose his description carefully. “She seems more...enthusiastic than I was expecting.”
MacNeil smiled. “She’s a bit of life in her, to be sure. Not a bad thing, all around. Different from the others, though.”
“That’s what I’m hoping. We need this one to stay.”
MacNeil nodded. “Aye, we do. I wasn’t much for the last one, if you don’t mind my saying. She looked afraid of everything, and little ones pick right up on such things.”
The last nurse had indeed been a disaster. A frail, delicate woman who seemed astonished by every bump and bruise. She looked far more suited to a nanny’s job than to nursing fifty-eight children’s daily scrapes and ill stomachs. It’s exactly why he had turned to the army, thinking an army nurse would have the stalwart constitution to take on whatever harm the children encountered. “Miss Landway doesn’t strike me as afraid of anything.”
“We’re no battlefield. It can’t be that hard for her to tend to this lot.”
“I’d say we have a rather good safety record for the number of children and the age of our facilities. I owe a lot of that to you.” He did. MacNeil was a master of repairs, cobbling together old parts and generally working wonders with precious little funding. “I can’t think of anyone we depend on more than you.”
MacNeil flushed. “Don’t let Grimshaw be hearing you say that. Or worse yet, Mrs. Smiley.” He leaned in. “It’s my opinion Smiley thinks she’s second in command.”
“Nonsense,” Daniel replied with a smile, “you are.”
This sent MacNeil into a gush of laughter. “I don’t know why everyone says you’re such a serious lot. I find you funny. Smart, yes, but you can make your share of jokes when it suits you.”
“Only with you.”
“Well, I’ll be making no jokes with the kitchen drains this afternoon. We got one working fine enough, but the other one’s giving me fits. I might need to buy some new parts.” He delivered that last line with the air of bad news. It was—the Home had endured a run of failing equipment in the past month, and the budgets were stretched already.
“Parkers prevail, MacNeil. We’ll find a way to make it work.”
MacNeil nodded as he turned toward the door. “You always do, sir. You always do.”
Ida sat on the side of her precious private bathtub Friday evening and gingerly toweled her hair. My, but a cool bath did wonders to ease the tightness of a hot Charleston day. She’d been at the Home all of five days, and had discovered that by supper she felt so sticky and tired it was a challenge to converse with the other staff at all. Maybe that’s why the children were so quiet at supper—perhaps the days sapped their energy, as well. But they were hardly more boisterous at breakfast. No matter what the reason, Ida just hated to think that life had beaten the joy out of so many children all at once.
She walked into her bedroom, glad again to catch sight of the cheery yellow curtains her friend Leanne had delivered this morning. Leanne Gallows had been her roommate at Camp Jackson, and the two had fast become dear friends as well as colleagues. Leanne had met her new husband, Captain John Gallows, at the camp in a whirlwind wartime romance with the happiest of endings. John and Leanne lived in Charleston for now, but would soon be heading up to Washington, DC to John’s new post in the diplomatic corps. It seemed a special grace that even when Leanne left, these bright yellow curtains would remain as a daily reminder. They brightened the room the same way Leanne’s friendship brightened Ida’s service in the long, difficult war.
The old curtains had been a horrid dark green, nearly as lifeless as the endless gray of every building wall. Today even the old red brick of the building exteriors seemed to boast more life than the dull walls inside. Where were the paintings? The drawings? The happy fixtures of a joyful home? How could children grow and thrive without color and light?
Ida let her hand run along the frilly yellow ruffles that now skimmed her windowsill. She couldn’t wait to watch the sunlight catch them tomorrow morning. Braiding her hair, Ida toured her three-room suite again, giddy at the luxury of so much space. Walking over to the bureau in her parlor—her heart bubbling Look at me, I have a parlor! for the tenth time as she did—Ida opened the bottom drawer, where she’d stowed her paints and charcoals. These new days at the Parker Home were like a feast for the quantity of fresh faces to draw. Even now her hand hovered over a set of sketching pencils, eager to capture that skeptical look in Donna Forley’s brown eyes or the sharp angles of Fritz Grimshaw’s brows.
Only one thing stopped her: the charcoal’s gray color. She couldn’t bear to bring one more drop of gray into this world—even with something as harmless as a sketching pencil. I’ve simply got to paint. Certainly there were a dozen tasks clamoring for her attention on her first free afternoon tomorrow, but none of them would be more satisfying than to paint. Just the thought of filling any blank canvas she could find with a festival of color lightened her spirits. Ida wanted to capture the gentle blue of Gitch’s mischievous gaze or the particular pink of Jane Smiley’s ears when she got mad.
Or the curious puzzle that was the color of Dr. Parker’s eyes. She’d never thought of a set of eyes as colorless before. Not that they were without hue, but they seemed to have no distinct shade. They were dark, surely, but even the darkest brown eyes had flecks of warmer tones in them. Dr. Parker’s seemed neither brown nor gray, and yet Ida knew they couldn’t be a true black, either. The artist in her longed to stare at them hard in good sunlight, to unlock the mystery of why she couldn’t see colors in those eyes.
Restless, Ida closed the drawer and returned to her bedroom windows. She opened them as wide as they would go, hoping to catch Charleston’s famed off-the-water evening breeze, but the night’s stillness prevailed. The heat was like a living thing here, pressing against one’s chest, pulling a soul down. Ida found