Breathless by Bonnie Edwards Page B

slammed into a tree. All I saw then was you, flying up and over the front of the car.”
    “I went through the windshield?”
    “You don’t have a real windshield,” Bart explained. “You replaced it with that monocle glass to reduce the weight so you could go faster. Got rid of your wooden wheels too. You told Doc Stephens about all that the first time you met. Don’t you recall?”
    “No, I don’t.” She patted her hair. “I guess I’ve lost more memories than I knew.”
    “That’s to be expected considering when I first set eyes on you,” Lizzie explained, “I could have sworn you were a goner.” She looked closely at Blue’s neck. “Seems strange there’s no bruise or anything.”
    Melted ice trickled down her spine and set off tingles of apprehension. She covered her neck with both hands. “Why?” She’d had a bruise on her neck, but it had disappeared faster than any others. She remembered Colt kissing it once. It had been gone the next day.
    “I got to you first, but we both thought your neck was broke,” Lizzie explained. “Your head dangled like a straw doll that’s lost its stuffing.”
    Bart nodded his agreement. He spoke in a rumbling baritone. “All twisted up, you was.”
    Blue’s belly dropped with the weight of a boulder. Stella had died! There hadn’t been a switch at all! Stella had died and Blue had been given the chance to live this life. Stella’s life.
    The room went watery as tears filled her eyes. Distressed, Lizzie rose and patted her back. “There, there, you’re fine now. Right as rain, just like always. In no time, you’ll be back taking care of all the women who need you.”
    She nodded, unable to sort out all her thoughts. All her feelings.
    Colt hadn’t said a word about a neck injury. As a test, she rolled her head from side to side. She felt fine, not a crick or a creak anywhere. “See? Good as new,” she said to reassure the other couple.
    Badly shaken, Blue did her best to hide the effect of their news from her guests. But they were due for lunch at Perdition House, so they climbed into Bart’s carriage and left. Lizzie had driven Stella’s car, slowly and carefully, and under Bart’s watchful eye. After Lizzie and Bart left, she swept the kitchen and tidied the bedroom.
    Like every other major event in her life, she had to handle this alone.
    She couldn’t tell Belle her sister was gone forever. She couldn’t tell Colt the woman he’d cared for was dead. No one would believe any of this, so she had to slip into Stella’s life like a hand in a glove.
    Even her training as a doula had been destiny. Cursing her stubbornness, she recalled the school counselor’s suggestion that Blue take the midwifery classes. She’d assumed the old lady was just after the higher tuition. Her low-paying job convinced her to stick with the less expensive doula option.
    She’d bucked destiny that day and didn’t want to try it again; there was no saying how she might mess up.
    Another side reminded her she’d done her best. That’s all anyone can do, she told herself. And that’s all you can do now.
    She tore up the note she’d written to Stella and burned the fine paper in the stove’s firebox. Then she sat and had a good cry for the woman whose life she’d taken. Stella McCreedy had had good friends, family who loved her, and a fine man who’d been interested in her. And not a one of them would ever know she was gone.
    Blue had a lot to live up to, and she was very grateful to have the chance.
    But she had to make certain that the future would unfold as it should.
    She considered the next step of her plan and stood at the kitchen door staring at the automobile that waited at the bottom of the back stairs. She could see the attraction. Stella had had it painted a bright yellow, rather than black, the windshield was tiny and oval shaped and would offer no protection from wind or rain, but it looked cool. The heavy wooden wheels she saw on all the other vehicles