A Heartbeat Away: Quilts of Love Series (17 page)

“You can fight God’s will, or you can trust.”

“I am trusting. I’ve had no choice but to trust Him.”

“Really?” Gerta’s eyes burned into hers. “Is trust fear and hatred? Walking in darkness and shunning the light?”

Beth’s heart slammed in unadulterated rage. Of all people, Gerta should understand. Her voice shuddered. “I didn’t ask for this.”

“For what, Bethie?”

The use of her childhood nickname sucked the rage from her. This was her grandmother. “For the war to come here. For Jedidiah to leave me or . . .” She bit down hard.

“Or for Leo to die or your leg to be crushed. No one in their right mind asks for trouble, but sometimes it is measured out to us to prove what we are made of.”

“I don’t want to talk about this.”

Gerta patted her shoulder and rose. “I love you, Beth.”

The words were there on the tip of her tongue, poised to be spoken, yet she could not push them out. Instead, she pulled her knees to her chest and pillowed her head. Tears should have streamed down her face, instead she felt nothing but a cold fierceness.

Whatever had passed between the two women, Gerta returned looking the worse for it. She fussed over Joe for a few minutes, declaring his temperature almost normal and the brevity of his fever a miracle, then retreated to her corner of the cabin. Jim hovered over her for a few minutes, trying to coax the woman to eat, coming away with the same carrots and apples, untouched.

Despite his body’s need, Joe forced himself to stay upright. His eyes strayed to the front door from time to time. Jim, too, seemed anxious over Beth’s continued absence. Between the two of them, they crafted four more crutches until darkness demanded they either stop or light the lantern. Still Beth had not come inside.

Jim’s head jerked up and he lunged to his feet.

“What is it?”

Jim didn’t answer, he crossed toward the corner of the room where Gerta had reclined and knelt beside the woman.

“Miz Gerta? Miz Gerta?”

Joe watched the man rock the frail form as her name spilled from his lips. Sourness boiled in his belly as the knowledge
settled over him. Jim sat back on his heels, head bowed low. He stood up and met Joe’s gaze, his face a haggard mask. “She’s gone.”

The numbness grew and twisted until Beth felt nothing at all. Heard nothing more than the distant squeak of wagons, the whinny of the occasional horse. Riley had come to them in the night with the news that the Confederates were pulling out of Sharpsburg in a long line heading west, over the Potomac. Her heart could not rejoice. He did not stay long enough to discover Gerta’s death. No one said a word about the hole Jim had dug in the side yard or the shrouded body of her grandmother, wrapped in the quilt that marked her wedding day. The loss was too fresh, too shocking, yet she should have known. The paleness of Gerta’s lips, the obvious discomfort she’d shown. She had not done enough to protect her.

In that same moonless night in which the enemy retreated, Jim carried Gerta’s slight form to the grave, lowered her to the ground so he could jump down into the hole, and laid her gently down at his feet. It was Joe who used his mother’s Bible to read Scripture. His voice choked with emotion. She could only stare at him as the words of Scripture spilled from his lips. Jim dared to hum a song, low and slow, that Beth did not recognize.

They formed a line and returned to the safety of the cabin. Beth went to the corner where Gerta had slept and tried to make sense of all that had happened, the suddenness. Shouldn’t God have warned her somehow? Shouldn’t the discovery of her grandmother’s death have been more than Jim’s ragged voice interrupting her solitude on the porch? The cold chill of the evening air had clutched her harder as Jim’s announcement
settled around her and was immediately rejected. So she had gone to see for herself. Felt the coldness eating away the natural heat of her grandmother’s body when she’d dared to reach out and touch the frail form. And then she had pitched forward, tears demanding release she would not give.

She didn’t know how long she had stood there before realizing that Joe’s hand had been on her back, her arm. She’d wanted to be left alone, but his hand guided her into a one-armed hug that had further chipped at the wall she’d erected.

“I’m so sorry.”

Rage surged back, then ebbed again.

“At least she is in a better place.”

Words she’d heard all too often during Leo’s funeral as if a silent finger of accusation were being pointed at her.

Huddled on Gerta’s bed, she was joined by Joe. He didn’t touch her, didn’t say a word, but he sat there with his Bible until her vision of him hazed over and she closed her eyes. Sometime in the night she jerked awake.
I love you, Beth
. Gerta’s voice went with her from sleep to wakefulness. If only she’d been able to say those words in response to her grandmother’s affectionate words. She should have capped her anger more quickly.

She turned her head and wondered why her leg hurt so much when she put weight on it. She leaned to rub her knee and ankle before wandering the few steps to where Jim and Joe slept. She wondered if the Confederates still marched west and strained for sounds of the retreat. Joe, too, might leave. Joe’s Bible lay open beside him and, caught beneath his leg, the quilt blocks. Harbingers of God’s love. God was her hope, and for the first time in a long time, she knew she needed more than her anger. If Leo’s accident was to prove what she was made of, God must have been sadly disappointed to discover her shallowness. She blinked and limped back to the cot Gerta
had used. What would she do without her grandmother? And she knew the answer to that lay in their last conversation. Gerta’s assertion that God wasn’t just her hope for the past, but her future. That by holding on to the past she was rejecting that hope. Gerta had tried to tell her in words. Her mother was trying to show that to her through the quilt pattern. That golden square that beckoned her.

Joe’s arm was maimed. How many other soldiers had she seen who had suffered much worse wounds, even died, with God’s name on their lips? Begging for a merciful God to take them. And in many cases He would, but some He would not.

Beth buried her face in her hands. They didn’t matter though. She knew that deep down. It wasn’t a matter of God’s intentions toward the sick and dying around her, it was a matter of her heart and her salvation. In the end, she could blame no one but herself because it was her choice what to do with trouble when it spun her world out of control. She’d heard men blame God. Point their finger at the trouble of others and discount God’s power because of what they saw as God’s failure.

It didn’t matter. God didn’t need her opinion to run the world, He just needed her to do her part. She bit her lower lip and tried to stifle the sob but it leaked out as God’s name whispered from her lips on a rush of air and a flood of salt.

Joe woke to an eerie quiet that seemed loud in his ears. It seemed strange when he knew a stream of soldiers like him was marching in a long line through Sharpsburg toward the Potomac and the safety of friendly soil. He was being left behind. The reality was he needed to gather his haversack, slip out into the moonless night and rejoin his regiment.

But Beth had not cried.

Not one tear.

Rage combed the edges of her composure, and while he understood the anger over the death of a loved one, he didn’t understand her inability to grieve. It was as if she was frozen inside. He’d seen glimpses of a woman he wanted to know better, but the time and place, his reasons for being with her, were all wrong and he knew it.

He captured one of the crutches Jim had finished for him and pulled to his feet. He wobbled and closed his eyes. He could stay. He knew of men who deserted, sick of the fighting and infrequent rations. Every man he’d talked to dreamed of home as he had known it before the war. Most of his friends joined when they saw those same homes destroyed by the Yanks or heard of a brother or father killed. There was no
more strength in him. Stumping down the dirt road and into Sharpsburg would strain the limits of his ability.

His friends would wonder where he’d gotten to. They would want to know about Ben and maybe be able to shed light on the subject. Excuses crumbled beneath the call of duty. Joe retrieved his haversack and lifted it across his shoulder, shifted the crutch to his good arm and took his first, quiet step toward the door. He wanted to say good-bye. To Jim. To Beth. But hesitation was a snag to his determination and he kept his eyes straight forward. At least the old pair of boots would protect his feet, and he, for the moment, would be free from the crawl and bite of body lice.

Union soldiers would pour into Sharpsburg and he would be taken prisoner. He released a pent-up sigh and stroked his hand down the length of his stubbled jaw. He hesitated at the door, turning to see through the dark to the place where Beth would be sleeping. Dimness swallowed her outline. He wanted to see her one more time. Telling her good-bye would ease his guilt for leaving her and his inability to protect her from the ravages of war that she’d been made to endure. Perhaps when the war was over he would come back. Listen for rumors in town and ask questions to make sure she had chased her demons and recaptured her dreams.

“Beth?” he whispered, almost afraid she would answer, in hopes she would sleep and he would be free to leave without further entanglement. Where once she had been strong for him, helped him, he was now stronger and she the weaker. How could he leave her like this? Jim would care for her and make sure she made it back to her parents. The man was faithful and big-hearted. Beth would need someone.

He heard a scraping sound and turned toward the door. Nothing more broke through the stillness, and the tension melted from his shoulders. He knelt beside Beth’s still form,
aware of nothing more than her breathing and the pale skin of her cheek in the velvet contrast of night.

Gratitude for all she had sacrificed to care for him, for all the others, rose, not to be forgotten or ignored. Her sacrifice was like those made by countless others and he wondered why he felt such allegiance to her. Because he had come to know her. She had shared with him on the horrible journey of his recovery. The night scares. She had sought to soothe him as he had needed to be comforted. And now, in her moment of need, he was leaving?

A hand came down heavy on his shoulder. He gasped and twisted as he rose. A flood of strength bunched his muscles and he cocked his left arm to throw a punch. His wrist was caught in a vise grip.

“No.”

“What are you trying to do?” He could barely see Jim’s form, his skin tone molding him as one with the darkness. His eyes flashed.

“The Yanks will be on us by morning, if not sooner.”

“I need to go.”

Jim took a step toward Beth, his words a whisper floating back over his shoulder. “She has lost so much.”

He knew what loss was. The wrecking of a land and a way of life by a war that individuals fought more because of the damage they saw to their houses, lands, and loved ones, more than for any politician’s ideals.

Jim passed him and ducked through the doorway. Joe followed, closing the door behind him and leaning against it for support.