A Basket Brigade Christmas (35 page)

“Sorry I’m late,” Zona said as she came into the kitchen.

She’d expected to find Mary Lou at the stove, making sure their dinner didn’t burn. Instead, she saw her sitting at the kitchen table with a small wooden box nearby. She quickly slipped something in her lap. Hiding it.

“’Tis no problem,” Mary Lou said. “I assumed the first rehearsal would run long. How did it go?”

The flush on her friend’s cheeks added to Zona’s need to know what she was hiding. “What’s in your lap?”

Mary Lou didn’t look down. “I was simply going through some of your mother’s old papers.”

“Show me.” Zona took a seat at the table and held out her hand. Mary Lou took two full breaths before she answered. “You don’t want to see.”

“As you say that, I certainly
do
want to see.”

“They will make you sad.”

Zona’s curiosity was fully piqued. “I’ll take the risk. Show me.”

Mary Lou handed over a stack of letters. There were no envelopes, the address merely written on an outside portion of the folded page. Zona looked at the addressee of the top one then the others. “They’re addressed to me.”

“They’re from Cardiff.”

Her words coincided with Zona reading the return address: Corporal Cardiff Kensington, Republic of Texas. The postmarks were mostly illegible, but she didn’t need confirmation as to the dates. “These are from Cardiff when he was off at war.”

“That is correct.”

“I never saw them.”

“Unfortunately, I believe that is also correct.”

Zona pulled the wooden box close. It was filled with letters. “Where did you find this?”

“In a dresser drawer that still held some of your mother’s things. I haven’t gone through it since we moved out of the family house. Today I was rearranging the linens in the storeroom and thought about using that dresser for storage.”

Zona opened the top letter and read aloud. “‘My darling Zona. I regret the way in which we parted. How I wish we would have come to terms. I fear you think I do not love you. I do, dearest girl; I love you greatly.’”

She felt the threat of tears. “Cardiff apologized? He still loved me?”

“Apparently.”

The implications tightened her throat. “I find this out after all these years?”

“I know it must be hard to read.”

Zona swallowed with difficulty. “If he loved me, he shouldn’t have left me.”

“Perhaps not, but … read on.”

The words were read aloud with difficulty. “‘Do not worry over my well-being, as I am doing my best to stay safe. Although I was shot—’” Zona looked up. “He was shot?”

“Read on.”

“‘Although I was shot in the leg, I am recovering. Meanwhile, I have been assigned to a civilian doctor who takes care of the wounded on the battlefield. Dr. Niles is teaching me so much, and I find I have a talent for medicine that I didn’t know existed before now. But enough about me. I want you to know I think of you always, and hope you understand my need to leave Chicago.’”

“I did not understand. I do not.”

“Perhaps after reading all these letters you will.”

Zona wasn’t sure she wanted to understand. For what good would it do? She handily moved her thoughts beyond the issue of love. “Medicine? There was never any indication.”

“Perhaps the war was a blessing in this regard. Do you suppose he became a doctor?”

Dr. Kensington. Zona would have liked being married to a doctor.

“Finish the letter,” Mary Lou said.

Although she wasn’t sure she wanted to know more, she continued. “‘I must go now, but I will write again when I can. Please know that I love you and ask your forgiveness and your patience as you wait for me to return. Yours always, Cardiff.’” She set down the letter and rose from the chair, her emotions requiring movement. “Why didn’t I see these? Why did Mother keep them from me?”

Mary Lou’s head shook back and forth then ended in a shrug. “Your heart was broken. You were angry and hurt that he left you. Perhaps she didn’t want the hurt to continue.”

Zona looked at the stack and saw that each letter was opened. “Did you open these?”

“I did not.”

Which meant … “Mother read the letters! She knew he still loved me and wanted me to wait until he came home. I would have waited if I’d known his feelings remained. I thought he left me because he didn’t love me anymore.”

“Surely he never told you that.”

No. Up until she’d seen him off at the train station, Cardiff had insisted his love was constant. He simply needed time away to …

To what? She tried to remember his words. Reluctantly, they came to her, and she heard his voice saying, “
I love you, Zona. I am fully committed to you, but find I cannot commit to the future you’ve planned for us. Knowing of no better future to offer you, I must go and see if I can discover a different path for the two of us.”

Us. He’d said us.

Now, as an adult woman instead of a flighty girl, she heard his words with the maturity she’d previously lacked. She pressed a hand to the space between her eyes, pushing against the new insight and its subsequent hailstorm of regrets.

“Are you all right?” Mary Lou asked.

“Not really.” She sighed and let the awful truth have a voice. “I was angry that he gave up a position in Father’s printing company. I was angry that he chose adventure over me. I was—”

“You said you never wanted to see him again.” Mary Lou’s voice was soft.

Zona’s memory of those words—said more than once with the vehemence of youth—returned with fresh teeth. “I didn’t mean it. I was a child. I was hurt. My pride was hurt.”

“You were used to getting your own way. You were determined to get the life you wanted. Your own house. A family. Status of your own apart from your parents.”

Yes, it was true she had wanted all those things, but one past desire rose above the rest, one that should have taken precedence above everything else. “I wanted him! Yes, I wanted all the rest, but …” Memories of her indulgent rants and demands stepped forward to demand inspection. She’d made the details of their future very clear. She had allowed no discussion.

Acknowledging her past faults made her uneasy. Yes, she’d been unreasonable, but wasn’t the greater sin sitting on the table before her now? She put a hand on the letter. “I could have had him back. He would have returned to me if I’d given him encouragement.” Her throat tightened. “I never wrote him. I didn’t know where he was.”

“Would you have written him if you’d known?”

Another sorry truth. “Probably not. Not without seeing these letters.” Another point loomed. “He never knew my anger could be overcome. He never knew I still loved him.”

“Love him?”

Zona shoved the letter in the box, closed the lid with a snap, and pushed it aside. “Don’t be silly.”

“Then why have you never married another? You had suitors.”

The images of Timothy and Dwayne and Oscar passed through her thoughts, a procession of nice-enough men who had not been
enough
for her to bind her life to theirs.

The reality of her life wrapped around her too tightly and tears began to flow. “This isn’t fair. We loved each other, but now I’m alone. I could have had a life with Cardiff. Not the life I concocted, but still a life.” She glared at Mary Lou. “Mother stole that life from me! How could she do that?”

Mary Lou shook her head. “I don’t know. It was wrong of her.”

It felt good to have her feelings confirmed, yet the validation was hollow. Zona struggled to her feet, her entire being emptied. “I can’t regain the past. It’s gone forever.” Mary Lou’s nod infuriated her, yet what could she say to offer comfort?

There was no comfort.

Zona’s practical nature stepped forward, once again coming to her rescue, defending her against the things she could not change.

“This entire discussion is wasted. Why talk of my love for a man who’s disappeared from my life so completely? Surely Cardiff has moved on.”

“As have you?”

Until now, perhaps yes. But this evening, everything had changed. The letters had fully awakened the dormant pain of what could have been. Her chest tightened as the old wound that had been patched by years of determination was torn open.

She smarted with a new rush of regret.

Cardiff’s landlady stood in the doorway of his room. “Breakfast is served at seven in the morning and dinner at seven in the evening. Does that suit you, Dr. Kensington?”

He dropped his trunk beneath the single window and set his medical bag on top. “I’m not sure I’ll often be here to dine. Work at the hospital creates variable hours.”

“Be here or not, those are the hours I serve the meals.”

“I understand.” He leaned on his cane. His knee screamed with pain. He didn’t want to be rude, but he needed her to leave. His body was weary, and his mind needed silence and solitude.

She pointed to the washstand. “There’s a water pump in the kitchen. I don’t abide by sloshing water on my carpet runners.”

“I’ll be careful, Mrs. Driscoll.”

“I filled the pitcher this evening since you are new, but from now on, it’s your job to get it and pitch it.”

“I understand.”
Go now. Go.

She took a new breath, making the bodice of her dress rise. “Each boarder gets an evening to have a bath in the kitchen. Thursdays are free, if that will suit you.”

“Thursdays will be fine.”

She looked a bit surprised, as though she’d expected an argument. “Very well, then. I’ll leave you to settle in.”

Upon her exit, Cardiff’s survey of the room didn’t take long. It was barely ten-foot square, with a narrow bed, a dresser, a washstand, and a chair. The only benefit of the room was that it faced the alley at the back of the house, which should allow him to sleep whenever he got the chance.

Which he needed to do as soon as possible. He’d missed Mrs. Driscoll’s dinner, and knowing that back home shepherd’s pie and plum pudding were on the Wednesday menu made his stomach growl. Although he hadn’t experienced true hunger since the last war, the issue couldn’t be helped, so he set it aside.

He unpacked the trunk, using the bureau and the hooks on the wall, then got ready for bed. His shoes were dusty, and his impulse to tell Gregory to clean them was met with the reality of being totally on his own. He sacrificed a handkerchief to the task, washed, brushed his teeth, and climbed into bed.

His feet hit the footboard, and when he scooted up, his head hit the headboard. Sleeping diagonally on the narrow mattress was impossible, so he turned on his side, missing his more generous and softer bed back home. His left knee did not like to be bent to such a degree, so full comfort was impossible.

You didn’t have to come. You didn’t have to take this job. You chose to be here.
But then he thought of Will Thompkins and his friend Cooper, and his commitment was renewed.
I will serve my country well and with honor.
In a hospital far from the battlefield. In Chicago, his hometown. It could have been worse.

A small room and a too-small bed were small sacrifices compared to the horrendous conditions the doctors and soldiers endured in the field.

He fell asleep, counting his blessings.

T
he hospital was a sea of white, a ward of beds made with white linen that covered pallid men swaddled with white dressings. Bandages covered wounds on heads, arms, legs, and hands. Some wounds would heal and some would not. Notable were oddly shaped appendages where hands and legs and feet should have been.

The men took little notice of Cardiff, many groggy from morphine or despair. All seemed uninterested in seeing yet another person who couldn’t make them whole again, turn back time, or make their futures worth living.

The soldiers ignited memories of Cardiff’s other war, where he assisted in a never-ceasing parade of amputations on the battlefield, soldiers with limbs shattered, their guts oozing, their blood mixing with the dirty ground, creating a ghastly mire. The memory of it made him look to the floor, and for a moment, he was surprised to see that it was made of wooden planks instead of dirt.

“Dr. Kensington!”

He looked up to see the familiar but older face of a man who also belonged in the war memories of his past.