“Do you need your medicine?” Eliza asked.
“Please.”
She fed Jenny two teaspoons of the elixir Dr. McKee provided for pain, then helped her turn on her side and adjusted a few pillows for comfort. Eliza pulled the chair close beside the bed and took a seat.
Jenny Lee reached for her hand. Her sister’s cool fingers felt alarmingly slim and frail and Eliza was always afraid of hurting her. Jenny was wearing a smile, though, when Eliza’s gaze rose to her face. Her skin was unnaturally translucent and white, her eyes too shiny.
“Remember when we were girls, Liza, and we couldn’t wait to get home from school with Vernelle? We’d all go up into the attic room and play for hours. Mother used to shoo us out of doors for fresh air, and we’d take the same fantasy game we’d been playing to Nora’s backyard behind those big lilac bushes.”
“I remember,” Eliza answered. Nora had brought bouquets of lilacs from those very bushes into Jenny Lee’s room all that spring. “You always wore Grandma Pritchard’s rose evening dress and the bead necklace.”
“Those were pearls,” Jenny Lee insisted. “And you liked Mother’s blue dress with the ruffled sleeves.”
“We were quite the fashionable ladies, weren’t we?”
“I felt rather deserted when Vernelle married Robert and moved East,” Jenny Lee confided.
“As did Nora.”
“And then I married Royce.” Jenny Lee’s gaze wandered away for a few moments and then returned. “Did you feel I’d deserted you?”
“Of course not. You were only across the neighborhood.”
Royce and Jenny Lee had rented a small home. Shortly after Henry Sutherland’s death, Jenny Lee’s health had declined to where she needed more and more attention, and she was unable to care for Tyler. Moving here had been the practical and necessary thing for all of them. Eliza had quit her bookkeeping position at the brickyard and devoted herself to her sister and Tyler. She’d never been sorry, and she never would be.
Confirmation of Royce’s true nature had come soon after. The truth of what she’d suspected for some time had been unraveled in startling increments and ugly realizations. Eliza covered up his disinterest in Jenny Lee and Tyler to protect them. Her sister was dying. She didn’t need the hurt of knowing her husband had married her to get his hands on The Sutherland Brick Company and their other investments.
Henry had left a portion of the business to each of them, and they’d had equal say in decisions. Most often Royce had been able to sway Jenny Lee to his point of view on investments and holdings, and Eliza hadn’t been willing to fight him in front of her sister. The few times she’d tried, the hurt look on Jenny Lee’s face had discouraged her.
She didn’t want to plan for her sister’s death, but she had to be realistic. Once Jenny Lee was out of the triangle, Royce would own the major share of the brickyard and could do whatever he pleased.
His intentions didn’t stop there. A shudder ran up her spine and infused her with ominous panic. With controlled effort, she fought down the feeling.
Eliza Jane had a plan.
She’d stashed away and hidden her savings—not in the bank, because they owned a share of the bank and Royce could look at accounts anytime he wanted. But in a safer place. When the inevitable time came to escape, she would be able to take care of herself and Tyler.
“Remember how Father used to read to us in the evenings?” Jenny Lee asked, and Eliza was grateful to return to a happier time with her. “Mama would sit in that brown wing chair and work on her quilts while he read us stories. He was a good father, wasn’t he?”
Eliza sensed the disappointment her sister felt that her husband had never been a caring or loving father to Tyler. It had always seemed to Eliza that he’d tolerated the boy just to pacify Jenny Lee and her father. Now she knew it was so.
“It’s so unfair that I got this puny heart,” Jenny said with a catch in her voice. She rarely spoke in such a hopeless fashion.
“I’m going to take care of Tyler.” Eliza looked right into her sister’s eyes and assured her.
Jenny Lee squeezed her hand without much strength. “I know you will.” The medicine had taken its effect, and her eyes drifted closed. “I’m going to rest for a few minutes.”
Her lashes lay against the dark hollows under her eyes. With her blue eyes closed, she didn’t even look like herself. Eliza often washed and curled her hair, but it was thin and lank. Eliza swallowed a painful lump in her throat and fought tears. A show of emotion wouldn’t help a thing. Strength would.
“I love you, Liza.” Jenny hadn’t opened her eyes, for which Eliza was grateful. Pain was sure to be evident on her face.
“I love you, Jenny.”
Once she was sure her sister slept comfortably, she slipped out of the room. In the hall, she stood with her back against the wall, a great weight crushing her heart, and the pull of tears threatening her last shreds of composure. As sorrow washed over her in cresting waves, she clasped both hands to her breast, and pressed her fingers to her lips to hold back sobs. If she started now, she would never stop.
After several minutes, she took a deep breath, collected herself and made her way downstairs. She found Tyler working on his arithmetic assignments in the kitchen. She stoked the oven and checked the temperature to bake the bread. “I remember sitting here doing my schoolwork when I was your age.”
Jenny’s talk had kindled memories, and Eliza ached for happy carefree times. Jenny Lee had never been strong, not even then, but the seriousness of her heart condition hadn’t been apparent. They’d simply been two young girls with two parents, sharing the comfortable home their father had built for them and that their mother ran with aplomb.
“And Mama, too? Did she do her arithmetic right here?”
“That she did.” She cut him a wedge of cheese and poured him a cup of milk.
“Is she as good at numbers as you are, Aunt Eliza?”
Eliza put on a kettle of water for tea and sat across from him. “Her strengths tend to lie in word studies, subjects like spelling and English. As I recall she was very good at geography, as well. We always dreamed about the faraway places we would see one day.”
“Did you ever?”
She studied his fingers on the pencil. “No. We never traveled farther than Denver.”
“Maybe we could all go.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes. He had confirmed his understanding that Jenny Lee would not get better, but did he truly comprehend that she was going to die?
A stab of pity snatched her breath and formed an aching knot in her chest. He was too young to learn this particular life lesson. “Tyler,” she said, approaching the subject cautiously. “You understand that Mama is very, very sick, don’t you?”
He nodded, keeping his gaze on his paper.
“And you know that…” She pursed her lips to keep them from trembling. “You know she won’t be with us much longer.”
He didn’t look up. “She’s gonna die.”
“Yes.” She barely managed a whisper.
“She told me.”
Eliza studied the curve of his cheek, the delicate sweep of his pale eyelashes and experienced a swell of love. Of course her sister had prepared him. Jenny Lee loved him more than life. Again, she blinked back the sting of tears.
At last he raised those bright blue eyes to hers. Eyes as earnest and clear as Jenny Lee’s had once been. “She said not to be afraid ’cause