The doctor listened to Maisy's chest, asked her to breathe, asked her if her throat hurt. Maisie said her throat hurt a little. He looked in her throat. Tonsil fever, he said. Not uncommon.
Not nothing. He looked at Margaret. You gave the willow bark at midnight. A small dose. Good.
Keep it up. Every 4 hours. He produced two things from his bag, a packet of dried herbs and a small bottle, and explained their use to Margaret and Clara, who had come back into the doorway with a brisk economy of a man who expected to be understood. He looked at Maisie. You're going to feel bad for a few more days, he told her in the direct tone that children often respond to better than softness.
Sore throat, headache, tired, but you're going to be fine. Maisie looked at him. When's P coming? She said. I'm here, Calder said from the doorway.
He had not sat down long. He was still in his damp shirt, but he had left the wet coat. And he was in the doorway with his hand on the frame the same way Wesley had stood there hours ago. When Maisie heard his voice, she turned her head toward it, and something in her face did what faces do when the thing they've been waiting for arrives. She held out her hand.
He crossed the room and took it, and she held his fingers with the same grip she'd used on Clara, and she looked at him with her dark eyes and her two warm face, and she said very quietly, "I knew you'd come back. " The doctor found somewhere else to look. Margaret turned to examine something on the windowsill. Calder sat on the edge of the bed and held Maisy's hand and did not say anything because what he would have said was not the kind of thing you could say out loud in a room full of people without breaking something that didn't need to be broken. He stayed there until she fell asleep. The doctor left at 3:00 in the morning with payment that Clara had calculated from the household funds without being asked because Clara knew the household funds by now the way she knew the bread.
And when Calder tried to add to it, she shook her head once and he didn't argue. Margaret should have left too. She didn't. She was in the kitchen at 3:15 making something hot. And when Calder came out of the bedroom, she was standing at the stove with her coat still damp and her hair not quite the careful arrangement it usually was, and she looked like a woman who had been in a hard night and was still in it.
She set a cup of coffee in front of him. He sat down and drank it without speaking. She'll be fine, Margaret said. In a week, she won't remember being this sick. I know, he turned the cup.