B000XUBEHA EBOK (2 page)

Her mouth went dry and she pressed her hands together. “It’s a letter. From Clarence?” She sounded like an idiot. Of course the letter was from Clarence.

“Mrs. Ward? I’ll just step outside.”

“What?” Blinking, she raised her head, abruptly aware that she hadn’t moved or spoken for several minutes. “No. That’s not necessary.” Mr. Cameron would have read the letter, of course. It wasn’t in an envelope, wasn’t sealed.

“If the stain is what’s upsetting you, it is blood, but it’s mine, not your husband’s.”

She’d been looking at a stain on the exposed portion of the letter, but the significance hadn’t penetrated. Dropping her hands, she pushed back into her chair. She had imagined a verbal message. Never had she considered that Clarence might have had time to respond to her last terrible letter.

“Are you a drinking man, Mr. Cameron?”

“On occasion.”

“This is an occasion.”

Until the year she’d worked in the saloon, Della wouldn’t have dreamed of pouring herself a glass of whisky. Ladies sipped mild sherry or perhaps a glass of rum punch.

“This isn’t good whisky,” she said, taking the bottle from under the sink. “It’s cheap. But it does what whisky is supposed to do.” She poured two fingers of liquor into thick glasses and slid one across the table.

She glanced at Cameron, then looked at the folds of oilcloth. “The last thing I said to him was ‘I hate you.’ ” The whisky burned like raw flame against the back of her throat.

In ten years, not a day had passed that she didn’t plead with God to turn back the clock and let her write a different letter. At least let her erase that final terrible line. But time didn’t flow backward. Clarence had died believing that she hated him. Maybe if Clarence had believed she loved him, maybe he would have fought harder to survive.

Mr. Cameron didn’t recoil in disgust as she’d half expected, and he didn’t ask the question she deserved. So Della asked it for him. “What kind of woman would send her soldier husband a letter that ended with ‘I hate you’?”

Standing, she gripped the whisky glass in both hands and returned to the window, keeping her back to the man at her table. By the time she spoke again, she’d forgotten him entirely.

“I was seventeen and pregnant, and I’d just received word that Mama had died. The slaves had run off weeks earlier, and Mrs. Ward and I were trying to keep the house up. What a joke that was. Neither of us knew how to do much of anything.” The whisky flamed in her stomach. “Everyone said the Yankees were coming, burning everything in their path. But we couldn’t leave because Mr. Ward was ill and Mrs. Ward was slowly losing her mind.”

The years fell away and she was there again. Terrified and helpless. Listening to the boom of artillery in the distance. Smelling the slop bucket in Mr. Ward’s sickroom, watching Clarence’s mother scratch her arms and cry. There was no one to assist with the birthing, and her time was near. No one to turn to, no one to tell her what to do.

“I just wanted my husband to come home.” Clarence would rescue her. Clarence would make the world right again. “I needed him to come home. Everyone knew the damned war was lost. There was no reason for Clarence to go on fighting, to continue putting his life at risk. There was no reason! We needed him at home.”

Right now it seemed impossible that she’d ever been so young, or so helpless and completely overwhelmed. So pregnant and far from home and living with people who couldn’t forgive her for being a Northerner. And every minute was overlaid by the nightmarish fear of Clarence being captured by the Yankees, or wounded, or coming home in pieces.

“I just wanted him to come home,” she whispered. “And for one hour of one dismal, hopeless day, I hated him for putting his obligation to the Confederacy above his obligation to me.” Her hands curled around the whisky glass. “I prayed that Clarence didn’t receive that letter. But of course he did.”

Weeks after Clarence’s death, she’d encountered Colonel George. Believing he offered comfort, he’d assured her that he had placed her letter in Clarence’s hands.

When she turned from the window, the room had grown dark, and it startled her to see that Cameron was still there. He sat tilted back in his chair, one hand on his glass, watching her.

“I would give the rest of my life not to have written that last letter.” Stiff with bitterness, she lit a candle stub near the pump handle, then lit the lamp on the table before she sat down. “You were there,” she said finally, glancing at him, then touching the edge of the oilcloth packet with her fingertip. “What would you have said to your wife if she’d written that she hated you?”

“I’ve never had a wife.”

“You have an imagination, don’t you?” Anger flashed in her breast like a grease fire, hot and crackling. At the back of her mind she remembered the old adage about not shooting the messenger, but she didn’t care. “Imagine you’re in the thick of a war that’s already lost, getting shot at and bombed for reasons you can’t adequately explain. But it’s your goddamned duty and you’re doing it. You can imagine that, can’t you? Wasn’t that what it was like?” Cameron stared back at her. “Then here comes a self-pitying letter from your wife, doing her best to shame you or worry you into deserting, and the letter ends with ‘I hate you.’ She knows you could die, knows those could be the last words you’ll ever hear from her. But she writes them anyway. Are you so dull witted, Mr. Cameron, that you can’t imagine how you’d feel or how you’d respond?”

Holding his gaze on hers, Cameron stood and put on his hat, dropped the duster over his arm. “The answer you’re looking for is there,” he said, nodding toward the packet. “Or maybe it isn’t. I’m going to water my horse. I’ll check back before I leave.”

The screen door banged softly behind him.

Della dropped her head in her hands. He’d come from God-knew-where to deliver a packet he could have mailed. He might be ten years late, but he had paid her the courtesy and respect of a personal call. Moreover, Cameron had been her husband’s friend and had been with Clarence when Clarence died. Despite all that, she wanted to scream and pound him into bloody bits because— because he was here. That’s all. Wearily, she pushed up from the table and carried a lantern to the porch.

“Mr. Cameron?” He stood beside his horse in the shadows, just beyond the reach of the light. “I apologize. I know it doesn’t sound like it, but I’m grateful that you brought Clarence’s letter.” She chewed her lip, thinking about hospitality and how her manners had deteriorated and how Clarence would have expected her to treat his friend. “If you want, you can put your horse in the corral.” The scent of rain lay heavy on the night air, and fast moving clouds blotted the stars to the northwest. “You could sleep in the barn if you don’t want to risk a wet ride back to town.” He’d probably still get wet. The barn roof was more like a sieve than a lid.

She waited, then added, “I’ll give you breakfast.” When he still didn’t respond, she bit her tongue then appealed to whatever had brought him here. “There are questions I’d like to ask, but I can’t do it now. I’m too wrought up. It would mean a lot if you’d stay until morning and give me a chance to settle my thoughts before we talk again.”

Finally his voice floated out of the darkness. “I’d be obliged for the use of your barn.” A creak of leather told her he’d swung into his saddle. For a long moment nothing more happened, sharpening her awareness that he could see her standing on the porch in the light, but the shadows concealed him.

“Shall I fetch you some soap?” she asked.

“I have my own. Good night, Mrs. Ward.”

“There’s a lamp hanging next to the side door,” she added as she heard the horse moving toward the corner of the house. Cameron didn’t answer.

Clarence’s friends had been men of aristocratic breeding and background, and Mr. Cameron would be no different. By virtue of his friendship with Clarence, Della could confidently make definite assumptions.

Mr. Cameron would be well educated, had probably attended a Northern or European university. He would read voraciously and enjoy a spirited debate. He would have grown up in privileged circumstances and, before the war, mothers of marriageable daughters undoubtedly viewed him as a man with brilliant prospects.

The war had changed Mr. Cameron.

That thought led her to wonder if Clarence would have dramatically changed had he survived the conflict. Would he have turned inward and become distant? Frowning, she peered toward the barn. Would Clarence have come home so damaged that she no longer knew him? That was as hard to imagine as it was to conceive of Mr. Cameron once being a laughing, carefree young man who liked to dance and race fast horses and sing in the moonlight.

Della blew out the lantern, but she didn’t immediately go inside. Instead she strained to hear any sounds coming from the barn. Who was this man? Why did he carry a small arsenal of firearms? What had happened to him during the war, and where had he been in the years since? These were questions she knew she wouldn’t ask. She wasn’t sure that she’d even ask the questions that did concern her.

Listening to the rain songs of crickets and frogs, she closed her eyes and rubbed her fingertips across her forehead. She could stand in the darkness until the storm came, chewing on questions about a man she would never see again after tomorrow morning. Or she could go inside and face the past.

Tilting her head, she looked south at the few stars not yet smothered by clouds. Hope was a feeling she’d stamped out years ago, so at first she didn’t recognize the tightness in her throat.

Maybe Clarence had understood about her letter. Maybe he’d known she was terrified and exhausted and feeling alone. Maybe he’d forgiven her rash, thoughtless, hateful words. Absolution could be in his letter.

Hope was such a terrible thing. A tease, a seduction, a trap.

After taking a deep breath, she gathered her courage and straightened her shoulders. Then she marched inside and slowly slipped his letter out of the oilcloth.

Della,

Not Dearest, not Darling Delly, not Mine Own. Just her name, stark and bare. Angry. Impatient.

What would you have me do? Turn coward and
desert the cause and my comrades? Is that how you see
me, Della, as a man without honor or sense of duty?

Surely he knew that wasn’t true. She’d always seen him as brave and honorable, a man of integrity.

I know you need me and my parents need me. How
can you suggest that I don’t care what’s happening at
home? I think of you all every day. I worry about the
crops dying in the fields, about the house crumbling or
being burned. I worry that Daddy will die or be disabled, or that Mama will injure herself trying to accomplish tasks she has no training or skills to attempt.
I worry about so much responsibility falling on your
shoulders, and if you can make the decisions that you
must make. I worry about your health and well-being.
With all my heart, I wish I could be with you when
your time comes.

But, Della, I cannot. I don’t know what I can say to
make you understand. Even if I could do as you demand and go home, I couldn’t fix the things that overwhelm you. I’d fail as apparently I have failed you in
so many ways.

You’re angry. Marriage isn’t what you hoped and
dreamed it would be. But, Della, you knew I was serving the Confederacy when you married me. You knew
we were in the midst of war. And you agreed when we
decided you would go to my parents during your pregnancy. It pains me deeply that your love has turned to
hate. My heart aches with

The letter ended mid sentence, the final words smeared by blood. After sitting very still, she swallowed the last of the whisky and let the flames burn away any lingering hope.

Clarence had died believing that she hated him and regretted their marriage. He died believing he had failed her and his parents. She had done that to him. She didn’t deserve forgiveness.

After wiping the backs of her hands across her eyes, she started to replace Clarence’s letter within the folds of the oilcloth, but stopped when she realized there were two more items. With a sinking heart, she recognized her last letter and a duplicate of their wedding photograph.

She didn’t need to read her letter. Every hateful word was engraved on her heart. Pushing the pages aside, she rubbed her palms on her sleeves, then lifted the wedding photograph toward the lamp.

Clarence stood tall and broad shouldered, solemn and handsome. He wore his dress uniform, every detail tailored to perfection. One gloved hand held his hat next to his chest, the other hand rested on Della’s shoulder. She sat in front of him, her gown artfully arranged to display a waterfall of lace and ribbons. Now, why wasn’t she wearing gloves? There must have been a reason that she had removed her gloves, but she could no longer recall.

The lamplight and the sepia tint of the photograph made her look so young, so impossibly, innocently, heartachingly young. How old had she been on her wedding day? Barely sixteen. Young enough to gaze at the camera with a confident half-smile, sublimely certain that her happiness would endure forever and could withstand any test. There was not a smidgeon of reality in her shining eyes.