Sawbones by Melissa Lenhardt Page A

Elliston?”
    I couldn’t very well refuse without alienating the girl. I agreed, reasoning her company would distract me from my looming downfall.
    “Please, call me Laura. I only insist on Dr. Elliston with those it makes uncomfortable.”
    “Laura. Isn’t this a glorious day?”
    I noticed the bright blue sky spotted with fluffy clouds for the first time. “It is. It makes one believe in endless possibilities.”
    “You sound like my father.”
    “You don’t share his optimism?”
    “It can be quite annoying.”
    “Do you like to temper his optimism with gloom?”
    “No, just realism.”
    “What a jaded opinion for such a young girl.”
    “I am seventeen. I prefer to think of it as balance. Imagine if both my father and I were always looking for a better angle, for a better life over the horizon? Nothing useful would get done. My father is thinking of lunch before he arrives at the breakfast table.”
    “A dreamer.”
    “Yes.”
    “You put his dreams into action?”
    “I do as much as a seventeen-year-old girl with little education can do.”
    “Were you not tutored at home?” Anna had the carriage and speech of a well-born girl.
    “Until I was eleven, yes. When the war ended we moved to New Orleans. Engaging a tutor was always something he meant to do, but he never got around to it. What I have learned since has been through my own studies.”
    We walked in silence. Something kept me from asking directly about her mother. Instead, I searched for a viable excuse for Cornelius’s neglect of his daughter’s education. Sensing my struggle, she provided one for me.
    “He never said, but I suspect he couldn’t find a woman willing to teach the daughter of a carpetbagger. Putting me in boarding school was out of the question. He did not want me away from him.”
    “My father had no such qualms.”
    “You went to boarding school?”
    “Not precisely. I went to live with my aunt in England. I was tutored at home with her daughter.”
    “How exciting.”
    “It would have been if I hadn’t been under the chaperonage of my aunt. I had my cousin Charlotte to keep me company. She made England bearable.”
    “How long were you there?”
    “Seven years.”
    “What brought you back to the States?”
    “My father. The threat of war. A scandal .”
    “Would it be impolite to ask about the scandal?”
    “Yes, it would.” I laughed. “My aunt’s design in taking me back to England with her was to make a respectable woman of me, and if I made an eligible match, so much the better. My time in England confirmed I did not want a conventional life or marriage.”
    “You don’t wish to be married?”
    I considered her question for some time. I finally replied. “If I could find a man to accept me as a doctor, woman, lover, and wife, in that order, I might well consider it.”
    Anna blushed. She was so young and innocent. I wondered how long her innocence would last in a rough frontier town.
    “What do you want out of this move to Timberline?”
    “I want my father to be happy.”
    “What about yourself?”
    Anna shrugged. “I’m not sure I’m fit for anything other than being a wife. I have little formal education and no skills.”
    “You would make an excellent midwife. Or nurse.”
    “But not a doctor?”
    “I’m not sure you have the personality to be a doctor.”
    “Meaning what?”
    “You have to not care what people think of you. You have to be able to ignore what people say to you. You have to love medicine above all else. Most important, you will have to be twice as good as every man to get a fraction of the credit.”
    “You make it sound so appealing, how could I refuse?” Anna chided. After a few steps, she said, “In seriousness, what made you choose this path?”
    I gently prodded Piper and thought how best to answer. The safest course would be to tell her nothing. Catherine Bennett was dead, found floating in the Hudson, and so were her reasons for becoming a doctor. Why take the