Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [20]
They were a quiet little group at the ranch, just the three women: Dolores, her nurse, the cook-housekeeper, the child, and the dog. The months passed and still Harmon did not bring her son to visit her. Dolores’s energy waned, she no longer rode in her wheelchair and instead lay on a rattan chaise longue on the porch, watching Francie in the distant paddock putting Blaize through her paces, sadly counting the final sun-filled days of her last summer.
As fall approached the days grew misty and there was a sharp tang of winter in the cold wind. The nurse wrapped warmer blankets around her and kept her on the porch in the hope that the crisp weather would do her good. And all the time Dolores was waiting, her eyes fixed anxiously on the curve of the sandy drive where one day Harmon would bring her son to visit her, just as he had promised.
Fall moved quickly into winter. The rains came, turning the sunbleached clapboard ranch to a damp gray. The leafless poplars no longer rustled in the icy wind and Dolores took to her bed. Dr. Benson still came once a week, bringing with him hampers of special foods and bottles of port wine with messages from her husband saying he was too busy to come to see her personally, but that he hoped she would enjoy the California hothouse fruits, the plump chickens, and the port wine that would enrich her blood and make her stronger.
The doctor knew better; his patient was dying not only of tuberculosis but of a broken heart. “Did you see my son Harry?” she would ask each time he came, her eyes sparkling with fever and her cheeks burning red. “Tell me, is he well? He must be growing taller, stronger. He’s almost four now, you know. Maybe Harmon will find time to bring him to see me on his birthday.”
Dr. Benson answered all her questions about the boy except the one she really wanted to know … when was Harmon bringing the child to see her?
Just before Christmas she said to him, “There’s not much time left, Doctor. Please, please tell my husband I beg him to let me see my boy. Just once. That’s all I ask.”
Replacing his stethoscope, the doctor quickly snapped his black leather bag shut. “I’ll tell him, my dear,” he promised, trying not to show his contempt for Harmon Harrison. The man was a monster, leaving his wife to die alone in the middle of nowhere, in a place that was little more than a wooden shack, while he lived like a lord in his mansion, giving dinners and attending the theater and parties as though nothing were wrong. If it were not for the Hippocratic oath that forbade a doctor to discuss his patients, he would have made sure that San Francisco knew of his conduct, and sure, too, that poor Dolores Harrison saw her little boy for the last time.
Raging at his own helplessness he said good-bye to Dolores and almost fell over Francie and Princess, who were waiting outside her door.
“Is Mama better?” Francie asked, clutching anxiously at his hand. “She looks so pretty now, her eyes are sparkly and her cheeks are pinker than mine. That means she’s better, doesn’t it?”
Dr. Benson sighed. He looked at her thoughtfully. It had been ten months since they had come to live at the ranch and Francie had grown. Her simple cambric smock was clean, but it was way too small. She wore no stockings despite the cold and her clumsy boots must have been purchased at the local store and were more nails than leather. But Francie had bloomed at the ranch while her mother lay dying. She had a sort of golden glow of health about her and she brimmed with vitality. And she was surely pretty, with her heart-shaped face and eager expression, her shiny pale-blond hair and those deep sapphire eyes, so like her poor mother’s.
Patting her head,