A Heartbeat Away: Quilts of Love Series (24 page)

Joe coaxed several blushes from Beth during their evening walks. Jim always lingered nearby. On the fourth night, Joe went without the crutch, not minding in the least when Beth stayed extra close, her anxious expression all concern for him.

Green eyes stared into his. “Have I told you how beautiful you are today?”

The hot blush had her drawing back, averting her face, and he chuckled as they continued toward the edge of the thick woods. His goal to increase his distance every day had been measured by both Jim and Beth. Though meeting the goals brought pleasure, it also dampened his spirits. For each day that slipped past meant he was closer to the time he would need to leave.

Beth brushed against his shoulder with each step of her left leg and he savored both her nearness and the reminder of her imperfection. Meredith’s perfection sickened him. Her
superficial airs and shallow personality, but every moment with Beth only deepened his love and admiration for the slight woman. He placed his hand over her cool fingers. In the next step, she jarred and twisted away from him. She was falling but he caught her around the waist and shifted her weight to him.

She choked out a gasp.

“Are you hurt? What happened.”

“I—there was a hole.”

He steadied her on her feet as she leaned to massage her knee. “We should head back.”

She didn’t respond. Didn’t look at him.

“Beth?” Her sniff was his first clue. She wiped at her face and he pulled her close and cradled her head against him. “Bethie, don’t cry.”

Her tears were not a torrent, but a trickle. When he pulled back, she still would not meet his eyes.

“Look at me.” He tried to lift her chin but she pulled away.

“This is what it’s like. I’m never ever the graceful woman that can—”

He put his hands on her shoulders. “Stop it, Bethie. Stop it. This coming from a woman holding the dead arm of a soldier.”

“It moves now. It’s stronger.”

“But it’s not quite right. What do I have to do to convince you that your injury doesn’t matter to me? It’s you I love. The woman caught inside a beautiful shell with a leg that doesn’t work quite as well as it did because she sacrificed herself while trying to help another.”

“Riley stopped loving me.”

“Then he’s a fool. A shallow fool and I’ll tell him to his face.”

Her head tilted and her eyes searched his, great wells of water filling her eyes. She blinked and tears spilled down her cheeks. He smudged them away with his thumbs, tilted her
head back. “No more of that. It hurts me to hear you think less of yourself.”

Gazing into his eyes, seeing the tenseness of his expression, hearing his words, Beth knew she had to stop the fear. To believe herself lovable and Joe capable of loving her. As much as she prayed for God to help her, the moment of truth had come. She could choose to take another step toward the hope, or retreat to the darkness. “I’m sorry.”

He crushed her in a hug that left her breathless, yet cherished. She squeezed out a laugh and elbowed him away. “Keep walking, soldier. You haven’t gone the whole way yet.”

“Only if you’ll go with me.”

He tried to hold out his right arm. She rested her hand on his, feeling the thinness of the limb. Muscle had developed, but she knew Joe’s frustration stemmed from the slowness with which his muscles responded.

“Now, tell me how many children you’d like to have.”

Heat surged into her cheeks. “Joseph Madison!”

He put on an innocent expression that melted into something else entirely. He stopped her, drew her close. “If only you could see the woman I see.”

Her heart slammed hard, and she wondered if he knew how much his words meant. How she would hang on to them in the days ahead of inevitable loneliness. She lifted her hands to his neck, touched the hair that skimmed the collar of his shirt, lifted on her toes to press her lips against his cheek. “Thank you.”

His arm snaked around her back. “I’d rather hear something else.”

She put her lips against his ear. “I love you, Joe.”

Joe wanted to hang on to every minute of every day that he could spend with Beth. Watching her joy over his recovery made him reluctant to leave. A dozen times he had made up his mind to stay, but he would take out that stiff piece of paper and the cigar he was sure Ben had left in his haversack, and he knew he needed to at least try and make sense of Ben’s actions and sudden death. Besides, he could not desert. Could not live his life running. Sometimes he caught Beth with the same heart-twisting sadness in her eyes that he felt as each evening’s good-night marked another day’s passing.

Jedidiah’s return came three weeks after the Union took over Sharpsburg. Anya’s sudden appearance in the open doorway of Joe’s room, her mouth pinched with anxiousness, said more than the booming voice of Beth’s father greeting someone.

“I thought I should warn you.” Anya’s mouth curved into a smile. “I know if he will talk to you, he will come to love you as we have.”

Joe braced his hands on the arms of the chair they’d brought into his room to push to a stand. Beth was already on her feet. “You don’t have to—”

But Joe captured her hand. “I will not hide. Not if you are to become my bride.”

She opened her mouth, then clamped it shut again. Anya led the way down the hallway. Joe could hear the unfamiliar voice that sounded so much like Nicklaus’s but different, too.

Nicklaus moved forward as Joe reached the landing. Beth stood beside him, her nervousness apparent in the stiffness with which she met her brother’s enthusiastic hug.

Jedidiah’s gaze finally settled on him. He could see the man measuring him, a question in his eyes. He held out his hand. “I’m Joe Madison.”

Nicklaus moved forward. He clamped a hand on Joe’s shoulder, then Jed’s. “He’s a soldier your grandmother and sister took care of during Sharpsburg.”

Jed’s strong features and broad chest made up for his relative shortness. He stared between them. “I tried to find grandma but . . .”

“She’s gone,” Beth inserted into the heavy silence. “She worked so hard to take care of all the soldiers the Confederates brought to us. The Union, too.” Joe heard the catch in her voice.

Joe held out his hand to the man. “I am sorry for your grandmother’s death. But she took good care of me, just as she hoped someone would care for you if you were wounded and in the South.”

Jed gripped his hand hard, the words penetrating and revealing Joe’s secret. Joe decided to have it all out there. He would not leave Nicklaus to defend him; he would meet Jedidiah’s disapproval head-on. He released Jed’s hand.

“Beth has spoken often of you, and has worried at your reaction to our . . . affections. Whether you approve or not, I cannot help but love her.” Beth’s hand slipped into his.

Nicklaus squeezed his shoulder, as Jedidiah searched Beth’s face. A flare of anger surged, then faded to be replaced by chagrin. A smile broke through. Relief seemed to swirl through the air. Jed pulled Beth into his arms and whispered something against her ear that made her gasp. And, finally, Jed worked Joe’s hand up and down. “Welcome to the family, brother.”

Only later, after they ate a hearty meal and Jed mounted a scrawny horse to head back to Sharpsburg, did Joe find out Jed’s secret. He and Beth sat on the porch step in the fading light of day, he sitting in the darker shadows where he could not be so easily seen, she in the rocking chair with the quilt blocks spread on her lap. She was working on sewing one of the last two. Just watching her silhouette stirred his joy and tumbled his emotions. So much like those days during the battle when she had sat next to him and sewed. They had shared so little, yet so very much.

“What did Jed tell you, Beth?”

She shot him a glance filled with good humor as she pulled the needle through and the thread taut. “He told me he was in love with a Southern woman.”

Joe bent a knee and draped his arm across it, shaking his head as he chuckled. “Worry comes so easy, and then God smooths things out and we wonder why we worried at all.” Beth didn’t comment. When he glanced at her, her downcast eyes told him she was battling her worries again. He scooted from the shadows, closer to the light until he could look up into her face and see the traces of the silver tears along her cheeks.

“Bethie . . .” He went up on his knees and gathered her close.

“I’ve tried all day not to cry.”

Me too
, he wanted to say but for a very different reason.

“Jim told you it’s time, didn’t he?”

He sat back on his heels. He should have known she had overheard his conversation with Jim the previous evening. She had gone inside for coffee and Jim had appeared from the barn to whisper to him the plans made to get him across the Potomac. Roy would help, as would Pearl. But when Jim had slipped away and Joe had turned, she’d been standing there.

“Yes,” he braced his arm against the back of the rocker, hoping to ease the reality of what he would say. “He did.”

Already her eyes were wet, though she fought the tears. “When?”

He swallowed. He’d done his best to shove aside the thoughts of his looming departure. So much sooner than he wanted it to be. He swallowed, caught her gaze, begging for her understanding, wishing so much it was already done and he didn’t have to go away at all. “Tomorrow night.”

She squeezed her eyes shut.

He sat back and covered her hand with his, careful to avoid getting stuck in the fabric. Her fingers felt cool against his hand, but it was a perfect fit. There would be dark days ahead and he didn’t know when he’d be able to return, though Jim had mentioned a way Joe could communicate when he was ready to come North again. He had given a list of names, slaves most likely. Relatives? He didn’t ask, only committed the names to memory and promised to protect the information. “They will get the message to me,” Jim had assured him. Joe’s throat had burned with gratitude over the man’s help. “They know of your sacrifice for Roy, Jonah, and Pearl. They will do what they can to help you in return.”

But now, here, as time ticked off with every sweep of the cold breeze and tick of the grandfather clock . . . he’d thought about it long and hard. He needed so much to take something with him to remind him of Beth. Something to offer him comfort and hope. His request would sound strange to most, but
she would understand. “I want to take the last block with me, Beth.”

Her brows drew together. “Block?”

“The last quilt block. It’s my symbol of comfort and hope. It reminds me that God cares, of my love for you and yours for me. And,” it was harder to talk now but he pressed on. “The quilt will forever remain unfinished until that last block is brought home again. We’ll both be incomplete without each other and the quilt—”

His voice caught and his eyes filled.

In slow motion, she released his hand and used the block to touch away the moisture fading down his cheeks, even as tears spilled down her own. In the silence, she spread the block out again and made slow work of folding it into a small square. It seemed such a small thing. So inconsequential in the face of what he felt for her. He stroked the hair back from her face and smiled his promise into her eyes.

Eighteen Months Later, Beth’s Journal

At first there were no letters from Joe. I did my best to be patient, knowing the war raged on, but my imagination sometimes spun out of control and I would seek out my mother to pray with me, over me. After six months, Roy brought a packet of envelopes to me. I didn’t ask and he didn’t offer any explanation, only that smile that seemed so much like Jim’s—secretive but sure.

The stack held five letters from Joe, and he promised more. He wrote of missing me, of his adventures, of securing his discharge, of his visit to his home that was no longer there. My heart ached for all he endured and I wondered about Ben, if Joe had found out anything. None of the letters said anything of that.

After those letters, I received nothing else. I wanted so much to ask Roy if he should check or talk to Jim, but I was afraid to compromise whatever communications the blacks might have. I had to trust them. How strong I had wanted to be in Joe’s love, but his lingering absence and the lack of letters gnawed at me as surely as a rat gnawed at a sack of grain. Not a day went by that I didn’t pray for strength to believe in his promise of hope.

I worked harder than ever, sewing quilts for the men and visiting the few field hospitals still in operation after Sharpsburg. Slowly, things were becoming more normal. Then, one night, my mother came to my room, a smile on her face. She motioned me to follow her and I did, hope growing with each step as the hum of voices greeted me. I descended the steps to find Roy, Jim, and Pearl standing with my father, and in the center, Joe. My heart beat so hard I thought I might faint but when he caught me and twirled me around, when I saw the emotion brimming in his eyes and felt the slam of his heart against mine, I knew my wait was over.

He said nothing, couldn’t, for we were too busy crying, savoring our togetherness. I touched the hair that had grown long against his neck. He rocked me, his face buried in my hair, saying all the words I’d longed to hear again. When Joe finally pulled back, he led me to the porch where his haversack lay amid a bundle of other things and we would have privacy. He settled me in the rocking chair. We couldn’t stop smiling at each other. He lifted out two things, the cigar and the piece of paper, and sat across from me.