The Stranger. Elizabeth Lane

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СКАЧАТЬ he was going. His small feet groped for purchase. He was clearly in trouble.

      Laura gasped. “Wait, Robbie! Don’t try to move!” But the child was already slipping off the limb.

      Caleb sprinted out from the shelter of the springhouse and started up the tree. “Hang on, I’ll get you!” he shouted, scrambling up the knotted trunk. But he was already too late.

      He heard Laura’s scream as Robbie lost his grip and plummeted downward in a shower of twigs and leaves. She sprang for him, trying to break his fall, but as she reached out, she lost her balance and stumbled. The boy fell through her fingertips, struck the ground with a sickening thud and lay still.

       Chapter Two

      “Robbie! No!” Laura crumpled to her knees beside her son’s body. He was lying facedown on the grassy earth, one arm bent outward at a nightmarish angle. She could see no sign that he was breathing.

      “No—” She reached for him, frantic to snatch him up and cradle him in her arms, but a steely hand gripped her shoulder, pulling her back.

      “Don’t try to move him,” Caleb McCurdy said. “That could hurt him worse. Give me some room. I’m no doctor, but I’ll do what I can.”

      Struck by the urgency in his voice, Laura shifted to one side. She felt a cold numbness sinking into her bones, as if she were being frozen in a block of ice. The birds had fallen silent and she could no longer hear the gurgling creek. The only sound to reach her brain was the pounding of her own heart.

      McCurdy knelt beside her. She held her breath as his long, brown fingers probed the length of Robbie’s spine, pressing gently against his ribs. Seconds crawled past. This was all her fault. If she hadn’t scolded the boy, insisting that he come down at once, he would have waited for help. He would have been safe. Now he could be dying or so badly hurt that he would never run, swing or climb a tree again.

      Laura prayed harder than she’d ever prayed in her life. Five years ago she’d almost given up on prayer, but the words came now in a rush of silent pleading. Please…please let him be all right, I’ll do anything, give anything…

      More seconds passed in frozen agony. Then Robbie coughed, gulped air and began to struggle. His legs kicked freely, but when he tried to move his arm, he flinched and broke into a wail of pain.

      “There now, your mother’s right here.” McCurdy eased the sobbing boy onto his back and lifted him off the ground. Supporting the broken arm, he laid him tenderly across Laura’s lap.

      Laura pressed her face against Robbie’s dusty hair, kissing his ears and his dirt-streaked face, murmuring incoherent little phrases of love and relief.

      McCurdy exhaled and sank back onto his heels. The bright sunlight cast his eyes into shadowed pits. “My guess is he just got the wind knocked out of him. But you’ll need to watch him for a few days. Get him to a doctor if there’s any sign that something’s wrong. And that arm’s got to be set and splinted.”

      “There’s no doctor within twenty miles of here,” she said. “Can you help me with the arm?”

      He hesitated, then slowly nodded. “I’ve seen it done—had it done when I broke my own arm as a boy. There’s not much to it, but it’ll hurt.” He looked down at Robbie. “How brave are you, boy?”

      Robbie’s eyes opened wide in his tear-stained face. “I’m not scared of anything. Not bugs or snakes or even our big red rooster. Not even trees,” he added with a wan little grin.

      The ghost of a smile tugged at the corner of Caleb McCurdy’s mouth. He looked younger when he smiled, Laura thought. She had judged him to be in his thirties. Now she realized he might be closer to her own age. But he had clearly seen some hard living. Like her he was scarred. Inside, she suspected, as well as outside.

      Reason told her he was the last man she should trust. But right now her son needed help, and Caleb McCurdy was all the help she had.

      “Are you brave enough to let me straighten your arm?” he asked Robbie. “It’s going to hurt.”

      “It hurts now,” Robbie said, grimacing. “I’ll be brave.”

      “Good boy.” McCurdy brushed a knuckle against the boy’s flushed cheek. For Laura, the awkward caress was one more reminder of what Robbie had missed growing up without a father. She was doing her best with the boy. But there was only so much a lonely, frightened widow could do to raise a son to manhood. Every day the task became more daunting. The killer who’d gunned down Mark Shafton had shattered three lives—Mark’s, hers and Robbie’s.

      Caleb McCurdy rose to his feet. “The sooner we get this over with the better,” he said. “I’ll need some thin, straight wood for the splint and something to wrap around it.”

      “Try the woodpile,” Laura told him. “I’ve got an old nightgown I can tear into strips. That should do for wrapping.”

      “Fine. Take your boy inside. Lay him down and get him as calm as you can. I’ll be in as soon as I get the wood ready.”

      Cradling her son in her arms, Laura carried him through the back door and into the house. Through the window, she caught a glimpse of McCurdy rummaging through the woodpile. Less than an hour ago the man had been a complete stranger. Now he’d be coming into her home. She would be trusting him with her life and the life of her precious son.

      The last time she’d opened her door to strangers was the day of her husband’s murder. The thought of doing it again sent a leaden wave of fear through her body. Not all men were evil, she reminded herself. So far, Caleb McCurdy had treated her with courtesy and kindness. But she couldn’t afford to lower her guard. Robbie’s life and her own could depend on her vigilance.

      Robbie was whimpering with the pain of his broken arm. Laura laid him on her own bed, propped him with pillows and arranged the arm gently across his chest. She could see where the bone angled halfway between the wrist and elbow. The sight of it made her stomach clench.

      Soaking a cloth with cold water from the pump, she laid it over the swelling flesh. Then she brought him some fresh cider to drink out of his special blue china cup. “My brave little man,” she whispered, kissing his damp forehead. “Close your eyes and rest. Everything’s going to be all right.”

      She waited until his whimpering eased. Then she found the threadbare flannel nightgown, sat down on the foot of the bed and began tearing the fabric into strips.

      Caleb chose a straight chunk of pine and split off two thin slabs with the hatchet. Then he sat down on the chopping block and began smoothing the pieces with his knife, rounding off the rough edges and shaping them to the contour of a child’s arm. Laura’s son would need to wear the splint for at least six weeks. He wanted it to be comfortable.

      As he worked, his mind pictured Laura, seeing the terror in her eyes as she plunged toward her fallen child. What if the boy had been killed? Laura was so deeply scarred by the past that one more loss would have shattered her.

      And the boy was not out of the woods yet. He could have internal injuries that might not show up right away. Days from now, he could start vomiting blood. Caleb had seen a man die that way in prison after a vicious kick to the gut. The same thing could happen to a child.

      Caleb СКАЧАТЬ