Read Online The Mirror by Marlys Millhiser - Free Book Online Page A

When he'd finished between her legs, he came back to listen to her chest again.
    "The Lord works in strange ways, Mrs. Strock, and I'm not about to outguess him." He stood, wiped his fingers on a handkerchief and put his instruments in his bag. "But the McCabes are a hearty breed and you appear to be one of them. Your lungs sound clear. It's possible you've just spent too long a day in too tight a corset."
    "I hate them."
    "Throw yours away then. Your figure don't need one and I doubt Thora K. or Corbin'll care. You're not in Boulder now." He turned to go and stumbled, catching himself on the bedpost. He sat suddenly on the edge of the bed and covered his face with his hands.
    Shay sat up. "Doctor?"
    "I apologize, Mrs. Strock. I'm very tired. Give me a moment." His voice trembled and a shudder passed through his body to the bed and to Shay.
    Dr. Seaton took a deep breath and stared into the air. "I just lost Cara Williams and her baby too," he whispered, as if to himself. "And I don't know how. I must get back to Samuel."
    He blinked and refocused on her. "Forgive me, I shouldn't be troubling you now. Lie down." He struggled to his feet and pulled the blanket over her.

    9

    Shay awakened to darkness and Corbin's voice in the main room. "I told you about the rumors after my first talk with McCabe."
    "But they do say her's barmy fer sure. Wot do 'ee say now ye've wed she? Be it rumor?"
    A long sigh from Corbin. "The stories she told me on the way up the canyon and the way she changed from one minute to the next . . . she can't be sane."
    "Wot sort of stories?"
    "Oh, about a reservoir and dam to be built on Barker Meadows, a town called Tungsten in the canyon, men flying in metal monsters and going to the moon, herself being her own granddaughter because she looked in a mirror--"
    "Sound like grand stories. Might be 'er read 'em in a book."
    "But she believes them, Thora K. Truly believes in every one of them. We'll have to watch her."
    "And 'ow is us to do that, ye bloomin' numbskull, when 'ee go off to that 'ole in the ground and me to the 'otel? Never thought of that, did 'ee?"
    "We'll have to think of something."
    "Well, daft er no, she'd best be able to work."
    "That could be the answer. Keep her busy while we're away."
    "Give she somethin' to do to keep 'er mind off not havin' one, huh? And wot if, Corbin Strock," Thora K. said slowly and in a tone that chilled Shay, ". . . she wanders off and 'urts herself or some 'un else?"
    "Then we'll just. . . have to have her put away," he answered sadly.
    Shay came fully awake at that. He'd seemed so sympathetic. She knew he hadn't believed her, but for some reason she'd come to trust him.
    "'Ee can't be meaning to 'ave yer way with she. The children may be daft too."
    "I'll sleep on the pallet in the loft"
    "Ahhh, tez a wisht uld job of it." Thora K. made an eerie wailing sound. "Am I never to 'old a grandchild on me knee, boy?" And then after a long silence, " 'Edden with babe already, is 'er? Faintin' off the bench?"
    "Doc Seaton says she's never been touched."
    Shay lay wide-eyed and worrying long after the sounds of Corbin settling himself in the loft overhead had stopped and after Thora K.'s candle no longer sent slivers of flickering light through the cracks between the boards of the wall next to her.
    The mattress was hard and lumpy, without springs beneath it. When she rolled over, sharp points poked through the ticking and her nightgown. Dull moonlight found its way into the room, shadowed by the porch overhang. The smell of pine and charred wood . . .
    She'd pretend to be Brandy and go along with the Strocks until the mirror arrived. If she were "put away" in some institution before she could get to the mirror, it might be years before she returned to herself.
    She slipped into dream-filled sleep where Rachael's image in the wedding mirror became Lon Maddon with a cruel smile, hands of cold bronze. Shay awoke sweating, to the shivery wail of coyotes and the stomp of some