Jessie's War (Civil War Steam) (45 page)

Granddaughter.

Her grandfather
stood by her side. She kept dancing.

You have built me my bridge to peace.
Black eyes followed her in the beckoning
dark.
And now it’s time for us to go.

Take me
, she said. Her ancestors pulled her into their embrace.

Jessie’s lungs
began to burn, her heartbeat erratic, and she went down to her knees. Gentle,
ephemeral hands touched her, welcomed her and called her home.

“Take me,”
Jessie begged as her grandfather knelt in front of her. She closed her eyes and
readied for the inevitable end. She was prepared, and she wasn’t afraid. “Take
me home to Luke.”

Hands that felt
as real as flesh touched Jessie’s face and brushed her hair from her eyes. She
held her breath and waited.

You’ve given me the gift of peace
, Grandfather said.
Now it’s your turn to find it.

“Yes,” Jessie
said. “I am the last. Take me.”

You are not,
her grandfather whispered. Over the sound
of her own blood in her ears, she heard a new heartbeat, different from all the
others. Strong and pure, and a sound so different from the grief that had raged
in her ears for the last month.

Grandfather
kissed her, a whisper against her forehead.
Walk
in peace, Little Singer.

Jessie’s heart
seized in her chest as the darkness pulsed at the edges of her vision. “Go,”
she said. “Walk in peace, Grandfather.”

Darkness
enveloped her, and she heard nothing but the stillness of death.

Luke.

Jessie spent a
full two weeks in Chicago before she even made it to Luke’s house.

She stayed with
her father and Whitfield. Parker visited every day. The Jamesons had her over
to visit.

No one spoke of
Luke. Jessie couldn’t.

Even though she’d
decided to live, she still wasn’t sure how she’d go on without him, but she
knew she would. Her body refused to break, even once she discovered she wouldn’t
bear Luke’s child.

She added that
loss to the losses she already mourned.

Her new
family—Whitfield and Parker and Elizabeth and Jameson, as well as her
father—took care of her. They visited frequently. It took her a long time
to realize one of them was always with her. Whitfield would come home and
regale her stories while her father worked at night. Her father would join her
for meals and conversation, something that hadn’t happened since before Gideon
died. Elizabeth would come over on some pretense, or insist Jessie come to
visit her. Parker visited every evening and took her out for a turn around the
park, and each day brought new life.

The chill of
winter had yielded to birth of spring.

She looked
forward to those walks, as she and Parker came to understand one another.

On the rare
occasions when they allowed her some time alone, she would go out for a walk,
exploring her new city, watching the busy boulevards, crowded with
steam-powered carriages and horses and people, who all had someplace to go and
something to do. They moved as if they had purpose and meaning, while Jessie
spent her time trying to make some sense out of her new life as a native
without a tribe, a bride without a husband, and a mother without a child.

She was empty
and shiftless and her life carried no meaning. She couldn’t even pick up gears
and build something, which was what she’d done before when her heart had been
broken.

But it had
never suffered before as it suffered now. Her heart beat, but only barely. It was
enough to sustain her life, but not enough for her to feel anything. She hadn’t
given up hope that Luke would speak to her, but he didn’t. She’d heard her
ancestors and her grandfather and her mother, but never him. She hadn’t heard
Gideon either. She hoped that meant they were together, somewhere on the other
side.

She missed Luke
with every beat of her heat.

One clear
afternoon, Jessie found herself staring at a two-story brick row house in a
fashionable part of town, not far from where she stayed with her father. She’d
avoided coming down this street for weeks, and Parker had been careful to steer
her away whenever he’d taken her out for walks.

She touched the
stoop and closed her eyes. Behind her lids, a man in a dark suit and a black
slouch hat trudged wearily up these stone steps. His back was strong and proud,
but there was a sort of sadness in the way he carried himself.

Luke
.

Jessie must
have stood there a long time, because suddenly she felt a hand on her elbow.

“I saw you
standing here. You know that boy?” an elderly woman asked, nodding up at Luke’s
empty house.

“I’m his wife.”

The older woman
smiled. “Figured. He described you once, and the minute I saw you standing
here, I knew it was you. He said he hoped he’d be bringing you around soon. I’m
the housekeeper.” She looked behind her, but she didn’t ask, and Jessie wouldn’t
have answered.

All these weeks
later and she still couldn’t bring herself to voice that Luke was dead, as if
saying the words out loud was an admission he wasn’t coming back.

Her logical
mind knew he wasn’t, but that didn’t stop her heart from hoping.

“I hope we’ll
be seeing more of him, now that you’re here. Would you like me to show you
around the house? I’d be happy to.” She paused for a moment.

“I--No. Thank
you.”

“Would you like
me to make you some tea?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Are you
unwell, dear?”

“I’m fine.”
Jessie gave herself a little shake and trudged up the few stairs to his door. “I
think I’d like to be alone for a while,” she said over her shoulder, her voice
dull and quiet.

Because that’s
what she’d become.

She let herself
in to Luke’s house, and instantly, the impression of him overwhelmed her. She
felt him in this house. Not as she’d known him in that last week of his life,
when they’d been together, but as he’d been that first day when he’d walked
back into her life: hard and dangerous, self-reliant and confident.

Lonely.

She heard the
memory of his voice in her ears.
It’s
always been you
. Her fragile heart fractured just a little.

Jessie wandered
through his house, now hers. He had few belongings, though she supposed a
bachelor who traveled frequently didn’t really need much. But the place was big
and open, and for a moment, she entertained the image of this place filled with
the laughter of children. Pain spiraled through her. Luke wouldn’t see his
child born or hear his child’s laughter. He wouldn’t play with him or laugh
with him. He wouldn’t see his own image reflected in his child’s eyes.

Luke began and
ended with Luke, and the memories she carried.

She made her
way through the kitchen, which overlooked the back garden. She sat briefly on
the high backed, cushioned chairs in the sitting room, and listened to the
sounds of this hollow and lifeless house.

Eventually, she
found her way into his bedroom.

Of all the
rooms in this place, this one was distinctly Luke’s. He was all over—in
the bed, in the walls, in the floors. She could smell him, and for a moment,
she simply inhaled his familiar scent. The little time he’d spent in this house
he’d spent here.

Wanting more of
that, Jessie opened up his wardrobe. Found another of his hats and put it on.
She took one of his shirts and held it to her face, and the scent of desert
rain filled her nostrils. His smell wrapped itself around her heart and refused
to let go.

Taking off her
blouse, she put his shirt on and pretended for a moment that he held her. She
closed her eyes and wished with everything she had that he was here with her.

She sat on the
floor and imagined what it would be like to have him back.

When she opened
her eyes, she noticed the lock boxes on the floor. Two boxes, lining the floor
of his wardrobe. She tried the latches. Locked.

She took Luke’s
keys and, on the second try, the latch turned.

She didn’t know
what she expected to find. A special weapon, maybe. Money, perhaps. She didn’t
expect to find letters.

She pulled out
one envelope and immediately recognized the handwriting.

The first box
contained every letter Jessie had ever written while he was away at war,
starting with the first one, and ending with that last letter she’d written
before they’d found out about Gideon. Opening the letters was like reliving the
past, remembering the love and pain of those days after he’d left.

He’d kept her
letters.

With trembling
hands, she opened the second box.

It contained
letters too, all filed neatly away. At the front was that first letter she’d
written after Gideon had died.

Behind it was
his response. The one she’d never gotten.

There were
hundreds of letters addressed to her, each one bearing a stamp. He’d answered every
one of those letters she’d sent him and then filed them away. These were dead
letters from a dead man, put away until someone found them and sent them to
her.

He’d never
forgotten her.

Jessie
remembered some of those words she wrote, those love letters that had become a
testament to her pain of living without him, those final letters where she had
given him up for dead but still wrote. She found one of the final letters she
wrote and opened his response.

Dearest Jessie,

I’m so sorry for what I’ve done. If I
could write to you, I would. If I could tell you that I’m alive, I would. I
only want to touch you one more time, and to tell you how much I love you still
and always will.

But I can’t.

I hope you’ll move on. I hope you’ll
forget about me and find a man to love. I hope you’ll have children, because
you deserve that. But it kills me to think of you with someone else. The
thought of another man touching you tears me up, but it’s not fair of me to try
to keep you.

Just because letting you go is the right
thing for me to do doesn’t make this any easier. I want to keep getting your
letters, but one day soon you’ll give me up for dead. I hate that, because I
want you to write to me and I want you to wait for me.

I know it’s wrong to want that,
especially when I don’t know when this damn war will end and I can come back to
you. It’s not fair of me to ask that you wait for me while your life passes you
by.

The life I have now isn’t right for a
woman. When I first started with this job, my boss told me there was no room in
my life for anyone but my team. My loyalties must lie with them first. Then
country. Then God. There is no room for family.

But they don’t, and they never have. My
first loyalties are, and always have been, with you.

Forever yours,

Luke

For a long
time, Jessie held his letter in her hand and wept.

There were
other letters behind that one, too, letters written long after she had stopped
writing hers. Judging from the sheer volume, she’d wager he’d written at least
once a week for the two years after she’d stopped writing to him. She pulled
one out at random.

Dearest Jessie,

God, I miss you. I miss the feel of your
hair beneath my hands, the smell of you. I miss your hand in mine. I miss your
smile.

I saw a girl today who reminded me of you
when we were kids…

She put that
one down and read another.

Dearest Jessie,

I heard about your father. I’m so sorry.
I wish I could be there…

And another,
dated about seven months ago.

Dearest Jessie,

I’m sorry I haven’t written in some time.
There was some trouble a while back, and I’ve had a time of it recuperating…

And the last
one, dated right before he left.

Dearest Jessie,

I talked to the general, and he’s agreed
to assign my team to your case. I convinced him he needed someone the locals
would talk to. Because let’s face it, if you want information in Virginia City,
you don’t go to the sheriff. You go to the town whore. Who better than the son
of a whore to go then, right?

She could
almost hear his wry laughter as he wrote those words.

The general may have fallen for my line,
but Mordecai didn’t. He was going to send Whitfield, someone who could charm
any woman, including you. Whitfield has a thing for the West, and what’s more
western than cowboys and Indians? Mordecai seemed pretty certain his new
brother-in-law could get the information we need out of you, and that he’d
enjoy doing it.