"That's Doc Hanley. He's supposed to check me out."
"Then I won't keep you," Monica said coolly. "I’ll say good-by here."
She went down the steps and started walking toward the corral. I stared after her bewilderedly. I never could figure her out when she got into those crazy moods. "I'll have Robair drive you to the station," I called after her.
"Thanks!" She flung it back over her shoulder without turning around. I saw her stop and talk to the doctor, then I turned and walked back into the house. I went into the room that my father used as his study and sank down on the couch. Monica always did have a quick temper. You'd think by now she'd have learned to control it. I started to smile, thinking of how straight her back was and how sassy she'd looked walking away from me, her nose in the air. She still looked pretty good for a woman her age. I was forty-one, which meant she was thirty-four. And nothing on her jiggled that shouldn't.
The trouble with Doc Hanley is that he's a talker. He talks you deaf, dumb and blind but you don't have much choice. Since the war started, it's been him or nothing. All the young docs were in the service.
It was six thirty by the time he'd finished his examination and begun to close up his instrument case. "You're doin' all right," he said. "But I don't hold with them newfangled notions of getting you out as soon as you kin move. If it'd been up to me, now, I'd have kept you in the hospital another month."
Nevada leaned against the study wall, smiling as I climbed into my britches. I looked at him and shrugged. I turned to the doctor. "How long now before I can really begin to do some walking?"
Doc Hanley peered at me over the edges of his bifocals. "You kin start walkin' right now."
"But I thought you didn't agree with those city doctors," I said. "I thought you wanted me to rest some more."
"I don't agree with them," he said. "But since you're out, an' there ain't nothin' that can be done about that, you might as well git to movin' about. There ain't no sense in you jist layin' aroun'."
He snapped his case shut, straightened up and walked to the door. He turned and looked back at me. "That's a right pert gal you got there, your daughter."
I stared at him. "My daughter?"
"That's right," he said. "With her hair tied back like that, I never seen a gal who took so after her father. Why she's the spittin' image of you when you was a boy."
I couldn't speak, only stare. Had the idiot gone off his rocker? Everybody knew Jo-Ann wasn't my daughter.
Doc laughed suddenly and slapped his hand on his thigh. "I’ll never forget the time her mother came down to my office," he said. "She was your wife then, of course. I never seen such a big belly. I figured, no wonder you got married so sudden like. You'd been doin' your plantin' early."
He looked up at me, still smiling. "That was before I examined her, you understand," he said quickly. "You could have knocked me over with a feather when the examination showed her only six weeks gone. It was just one of those peculiar things where she carried real high. She was so nervous an' upset just about then that she blew up with gas like a balloon. I even went back to the papers an' checked your weddin' date just to make sure. An' dang my britches if it weren't a fact you'd knocked her up at most two weeks after you were married. But there's one thing I got to say for yuh, boy." He turned back at the door. "When you ram 'em, you ram 'em good. Right up the ol' gazizzis, where it sticks!" And still laughing lewdly, he walked out.
I felt the tight, sick knot ball up inside me. I sat down on the couch. All these years. All these years and I had been wrong. Suddenly, I knew what Amos had been going to tell me after we returned from the flight. He'd seen how crazy I'd been that night and turned my own hate against me. And there was little Monica could have done about it.
What a combination, Amos and me. But at least, he'd seen the light by himself. No one had to hit him over the head with it. And he'd tried to make up for it. But I – I never even turned my head to seek the truth. I'd been content to go along blaming the world for my own stupidity. And I was the one who'd been at war with my father because I thought he didn't love me. That was the biggest joke of all.
Now I could even face the truth in that. It never had been his love that I'd doubted. It had been my own. For deep inside of me, I’d always known that I could never love him as much as he loved me. I looked up at Nevada. He was still leaning against the wall, but he wasn't smiling now. "You saw it, too?"
"Sure." He nodded. "Everybody saw it – but you."
I closed my eyes. Now I could see it. It was like that morning in the hospital when I looked into the mirror and saw my father's face. That was what I'd seen in Jo-Ann when I thought she looked so familiar this afternoon. Her father's face. My own.
"What shall I do, Nevada?" I groaned.
"What do yuh want to do, son?"
"I want them back."
"Sure that's what you want?"
I nodded.
"Then get 'em back," he said. He looked at his watch. "There's still fifteen minutes before the train pulls out."
"But how? We'd never get there in time!"
He gestured to the desk. "There's the phone."
I looked at him wildly, then hobbled to the phone. I called the stationmaster's office at Reno and had them page her. While I was waiting for her to come on, I looked at Nevada. Suddenly, I was frightened, and when I'd been little, I'd always turned to Nevada when I was frightened. "What if she won't come back?"
"She'll come back," he said confidently. He smiled. "She's still in love with you. That's something else everybody knew but you."
Then she was on the phone, her voice worried and anxious. "Jonas, are you all right? Is there anything wrong?"
For a moment, I couldn't speak, then I found my voice. "Monica," I said. "Don't go!"
"But I have to, Jonas. I have to be on the job by the end of the week."
"Screw the job, I need you!"
The line was silent, and for a moment, I thought she'd hung up. "Monica, are you there?"
I heard her breathe in the receiver. "I’m still here, Jonas."
"I've been wrong all the time. I didn't know about Jo-Ann. Believe me." Again the silence.
"Please, Monica!"
Now she was crying. I could hear her whispered voice in my ear. "Oh, Jonas, I've never stopped loving you."
I looked up at Nevada. He smiled and went out, closing the door behind him.
I heard her sniffle, then her voice suddenly cleared and filled with the warm sound of love. "When Jo-Ann was a little girl she always wanted a baby brother."
"Hurry home," I said, "I’ll do my best."
She laughed and there was a click as the line went dead in my hands. I didn't put the phone down because I felt that as long as I held it, she was close to me. I looked down at the photograph of my father on the desk.
"Well, old man," I said, asking his approval for the first time in my life, "did I do right?"