Page 34 of A Forgotten Heart
But this morning, she was acting as nervous as a barn cat brought inside the house.
As he walked into the room, Elsie glanced over her shoulder, her eyes wide when she registered his shirt was still unbuttoned. “Can you button up, please?”
Someone pounded on the door.
Elsie flinched.
He grasped her elbow, not sure yet whether to push her behind him or make a run for it.
The visitor didn’t knock a second time. The door flung open, and a familiar figure stomped in.
“Ed!”
Relief flooded Ed’s face as his eyes flicked from Nick to Elsie and back. He took a longer look at Nick, and his expression shifted to concern.
“What happened?” Ed demanded.
Elsie shrank back, but Ed didn’t seem to notice as his gaze zeroed in on Nick. He strode forward, flipping the side of Nick’s shirt open. “You hurt?”
“Bullet grazed me.”
“It more than grazed you,” Elsie said quietly.
Ed’s attention snapped to her, and his eyes narrowed.
But Nick’s focus returned to the door that Ed hadn’t closed all the way. The crack in the door widened as a furry snout pushed inside even before the door swung fully open.
A dog with a grayish coat and a spot over one eye trounced to Nick with a whimper, leaving a trail of snow clumps falling from its fur.
Ed leaned in for a closer look at the bandage wrapped around Nick’s head. “Merritt was worried when you didn’t stop by her house to say goodbye. She got Rebekah all riled up. Then, when Patch showed up…Who shot at you?”
Ed’s rapid-fire questions made Nick’s head hurt, and he brushed past his brother to scratch the dog’s ears. It nuzzled into Nick’s hand, tail swishing.
“Rebecca who?” he asked absently.
Ed seemed frustrated when he turned on his heel toward Elsie. “Who shot at him?”
Nick scrutinized the dog. It seemed so familiar…He froze. “Patch. You’re Patch.” Images of this dog, his dog, flashed across his mind.
Something wiggled loose inside his head, and memories—of teaching Patch to dance on his hind legs, of cuddling the puppy inside his coat on a cold day, of Patch curled on the end of his cot in the bunkhouse—all filtered through Nick’s mind.
Followed immediately by a penetrating pain behind his right eye.
He must’ve gasped, because both Ed and Elsie were right there, each with a hand under his elbow, helping him to stand.
It might’ve been humorous, the way they stared at each other from either side of him. If his head didn’t hurt so much. He pressed one palm into his forehead.
“Start talking.” His usually mild-mannered brother must be upset if he was taking that tone. “Who shot at you?”
Nick started to shake his head, then thought better of it. “I don’t know. And you were mentioning someone named Rebekah. Rebekah who?”
Ed frowned. “What do you mean ‘Rebecca who?’ My wife.”
Nick’s knees weakened, and he slumped against the wall. Wife? His brother was married? “Not Rebecca Edwards. You hate her!”
Ed sent him a slanted look, both angry and worried. “What’s wrong with you?”
The memories with Patch still tumbled in his brain, and he couldn’t process this new information.
