Read Online Witch Dance by Peggy Webb - Free Book Online Page A

her.
    But Cole had been very specific, and Anna had absolute trust in her husband. Without a word to the medicine woman, she turned around and hurried back to her car.
    “I thought we were going to the ‘point shop, Mama.”
    “Hush, Clint.”
    Anna could still see the medicine woman, standing in the middle of the street. She looked as if she’d lost her best friend. Anna started the car and headed home, but for the first time in her marriage, she questioned Cole’s judgment.
    Kate watched the car drive away.
    “I will not cry,” she said, but she felt the tears gather anyhow.
    The letter she’d sent her mother was nothing but a pack of lies. But how could it be otherwise? How could she tell her mother that the people she’d come to serve hated her so much they stomped her flowers into the ground, tore down the walls of her clinic, and passed to the other side of the street when she walked by?
    In South Carolina everybody crossed streets to get to Kate, and in Virginia, where she’d gone to medical school, she was never without at least half a dozen invitations to go out for pizza and a beer. How could she say to her mother that she had only three friends in Witch Dance, and one of them had been so terrified of her father’s censure that she’d almost refused a brochure about nursing school, and the other came and went on his black stallion as the mood struck him.
    “If they think I’ll leave, they’ve underestimated me. I’m a Malone. Nothing can stop me.”
    Having added talking to herself in the middle of the street to her list of sins, Kate marched across the street and into the ice cream shop with her head held high and a smile on her face.
    Not only that, but she sat on a barstool at the counter and ordered the biggest banana split they had—even after the two people already there picked up their ice cream bowls and moved to a table. For good measure, she turned and gave them her best smile.
    She’d never known it was so hard to smile with a lacerated heart.
     o0o
    That night they came to her in dreams. Charles and Brian came to her with their hands outstretched and their voices distorted by the water.
    Help me. Help me, Katie.
    The dream was always the same. They called to her and she couldn’t answer. Weights held down her arms and legs, and a wide, watery expanse separated her from them. Her brothers.
    Her fault.
    “No!” she cried, her sleep-drugged voice as weak and mewling as a kitten’s.
    The covers were tangled around her legs like seaweed. She kicked frantically, trying to free herself. She had to get free.
    “Kate?” Clayton stood in the doorway of her bedroom. “Are you all right?”
    “Yes.” Her hands trembled as she pushed her damp hair back from her forehead.
    “Are you sure? Can I get you a glass of water . . . anything?”
    “I’m fine. Just a bad dream.”
    “Well . . .” He lingered in the doorway concerned.
    “I’m okay. Really.” She made herself smile at him.
    His footsteps were soft, padded by the moccasins he wore as he crossed the room and stood beside her bed.
    “Kate . . .” He reached toward her, wavered, then gently touched her forehead. His hands were damp against her skin. “Might as well make sure you don’t have a fever.”
    “I’ve always heard the doctors are the biggest worrywarts of all when it comes to people they—” Premonition sent shivers along her spine. She’d never felt self-conscious around Dr. Colbert, but suddenly she was aware of the thin white cotton T-shirt that barely covered her bottom, of her naked legs and her tumbled hair.
    “. . . when it comes to family,” she added briskly.
    It was an awkward moment. He took a step back.
    “You’re almost family, Kate. Like a . . . daughter to me.”
    “Thanks.”
    “Well . . .”
    His eyes were too bright. Kate wanted to pull the covers over herself, but that would only draw attention to her attire. More than that, it would indicate a lack of trust in him. Her dearest friend.