Lorraine Heath (3 page)

From the corner of her eye, she glimpsed Clayton Holland and his brothers as they quietly rose and walked from the church. She poured her energy into the keyboard, allowing the force of the song to wash over her, cleanse her in ways Reverend Baxter’s sermon never could.

As the final note died away, she bowed her head for the closing prayer. When Reverend Baxter’s voice fell into silence, people scuffled out of the church, and Meg closed her music book.

“That was lovely, Meg.”

She bent her head back to meet Reverend Baxter’s amber eyes. He was a towering man. A sparse mustache topped his warm smile. She returned his smile. “Thank you.”

She started to rise and found his hand beneath her elbow, assisting her.

“I suppose you have a fine meal planned for this afternoon. Will you have your apple cobbler on the table?” he asked.

“Of course. We’d love to have you join us.”

His smile broadened. “Wonderful. I’ll ride over after I’ve visited with my parishioners. In an hour or so. Will that be all right?”

“That’ll be fine.” She skirted him and walked from the dais. Her steps echoed through the church as she continued along the aisle. She stepped into the sultry heat, avoiding the puddles dotting the ground.

She stopped numerous times to visit briefly with old friends, girls with whom she’d grown up, wives and mothers of men who would never come home. They shared a bond that a war had forged. She worked her way through the gathering until she finally reached her father’s wagon.

‘"Bout time, girl,” her father said as she approached. “Thought I was going to have to go into church and get you myself.”

“I invited Reverend Baxter to join us for dinner,” she said as he helped her onto the seat of the wagon.

“You invited him? Or did he invite himself?” her brother asked from the back of the wagon.

Turning slightly, she slapped his arm. “Daniel Crawford, you have the manners of a Yankee. I invited him, just as I said.”

“I bet he did some powerful hinting, though,” Daniel teased, his blue eyes sparkling. “I think he’s sweet on you, Meg.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. He’s twice as old as I am. Besides, I don’t ever plan to marry again. I could never love anyone as I loved Kirk.”

Her father glanced at her, his bushy white eyebrows shifting up over blue eyes that greatly favored hers. “You can’t spend your life in mourning.”

“Why not? You have.”

Thomas Crawford tipped his hat back off his brow. “It’s different with me. Me and your ma had fifteen years to make memories and five children. Those memories will carry me through until I join her. You were left with much less than that, girl.”

“It’s not the number of memories a person has, but how wonderful they are. My memories of Kirk will sustain me.”

Sadly, he shook his head. “Still, you might consider the reverend. You have a good heart, Meg. You’d make a fine preacher’s wife, and it wouldn’t be such a bad life.”

She couldn’t imagine that it would be such a good life either. She didn’t get that warm melting feeling inside her whenever she looked at Reverend Baxter. “I’m thinking of planting petunias around the boys’ graves,” she said to change the subject.

“Damn it, Meg! They ain’t boys!” Daniel cried.

Thomas glared over his shoulder. “Don’t use profanity around your sister.”

“But she keeps calling ‘em boys. They were soldiers.”

“You’re right, Daniel,” she said kindly, trying to soothe the guilt she knew still filled his heart. “But in my mind, I still see them as they were the day they left. Remember how Kirk and I came over for breakfast, and we all had to go into the kitchen and watch Michael shave for the first time that morning?”

“I wish I’d been old enough to fight with them. If only I’d been born sooner …” Wistfully, his voice trailed off.

“You wanted to go,” Thomas said gruffly. “That counts for a lot.”

“Wantin’ to go don’t count for nothing, Pa. I should have lied about my age. I should have gone—”

“He should have gone!” Thomas bellowed pointing a finger toward the far horizon and a wagon rolling off into the distance. “By God, he should have gone.”

Meg heard the bitter edge in his voice, unusual in the man who had held her on his lap when she was a child and laughed until his burly body shook. She couldn’t remember when she’d last heard him laugh, and she knew she wouldn’t hear him laugh today.

The war had cut deep wounds into the hearts of her family and the whole town of Cedar Grove. Every Sunday, Clayton Holland reopened those wounds when he stepped inside the church.

Sighing into the night, Meg buried herself beneath the quilts. After Reverend Baxter finished his meal and left, her father grabbed his bottle of corn whiskey and headed to the barn. She knew exactly how long it took him to drink himself into oblivion because he did it every night. At just the right moment she’d walked to the last stall in the barn and draped a blanket over the man who had once tucked blankets around her.

Daniel was nowhere to be found, and she was certain he’d run off to meet with his friends and talk about a war that had ended long before they were ready for it to end.

Meg wished it had never started. She longed for the days before the war, for the father who had held her on his lap, for the brothers who had teased her.

She longed for the man who had loved her.

Touching her breast, she remembered Kirk’s caress. When they became man and wife, she was seventeen, he an older and wiser nineteen. For less than a year, they shared the pleasures of marriage.

She’d loved Kirk with all her heart and soul. She’d wanted to grow old holding his hand. She’d wanted to bring his children into the world, but they had not been blessed with children. Now, alone in her bed at night, the emptiness was often a searing pain that engulfed her.

She let her hand whisper across her stomach as his had so many nights, but she dared go no farther. Her hand was not his, rough and callused from working the farm. Her hand was not his, gentle and patient with love.

“Always wear your hair down for me, Meg love,” he whispered as he fanned her ebony strands across his chest.

Then his mouth took possession of hers, and she threaded her fingers through the thick pelt covering his chest.

“Touch me, love, touch me,” he rasped. Slowly, he glided her hand along his stomach, lower, lower still until he groaned, “God, I love you, Meg.” Then he showed her, in all the ways a man could, how much he loved her.

Her tears slipped onto the pillow. She’d been afraid whenever those around her talked in quiet voices about the possibility of war. The small word conjured stark images of blood and death. Kirk consoled her, calmed her fears. Then, just as quickly as lightning flashes through the sky, people no longer mentioned the word in hushed whispers, but yelled it across the land.

It never occurred to them that he would not enlist. When the South asked her people to give their sons, Meg gave her husband. Willingly. Proudly.

And three of her brothers.

That last morning, when they gathered in town, the men had looked dashing in their hand-sewn gray uniforms. Full of confidence. Full of life. Perhaps death had come to them because they dared to laugh in its face and believe they were invincible. They were certain their presence alone would vanquish the enemy.

With pride, she had presented a large Confederate flag to the company, a flag she and the other ladies of Cedar Grove had worked day and night to complete in time for the soldiers’ departure. The men accepted the silk offering with a whoop and rebel yell that still echoed across the land.

Meg’s heart swelled with devotion as they reared their horses before galloping away to face the bitter foe.

Her heart broke with their deaths.

Rolling to her side, she studied the granite figurine that graced her bedside table. A doe protectively shielded her fawn beneath an intricately carved bush. Kirk had given her the statuette because they had seen the deer the day he asked her to become his wife.

But Clayton Holland had sculpted it.

Clay and his father had cut the words into most of the headstones in the cemetery beside the church. Sometimes they carved small statues, particularly for the children’s resting places. She had been tempted to ask Clay to carve granite markers for Kirk and her brothers, but she could not bring herself to ask anything of the town’s coward.

The Union army buried Kirk and her brothers where they’d fallen, along with so many others. As the months rolled into years, she remembered them through a misty gray fog, their features veiled by the passage of time. She could no longer remember the exact shade of Kirk’s eyes. Were they the blue of a sky at dawn or sunset?

Crudely, she’d carved Kirk’s name and her brothers’ names in wood and set the markers in the family plot. Her action constituted a vain attempt to hold onto them, a desperate need to have something by which to remember them. But her makeshift memorial didn’t stop their images from slipping away or ease her pain.

With trembling fingers, she touched the fawn. How could Clay have returned? How could he hold his head up knowing he was a coward? He owed the young men of Cedar Grove, owed them something for not standing beside them. She wanted him to suffer as much as they had before death, as much as she did now in life.

Daniel often said he wanted to pound Clay into the ground, but Meg wanted more. In time, the pain from a physical beating would recede, heal, and scar, but wounds inflicted to the heart left scars that never stopped hurting.

She wanted Clayton Holland to experience the kind of invisible pain that cut thoroughly. She wanted, needed him to face his cowardice, to have it carved into his heart so deeply that he would feel it with every breath he took for as long as he lived.

M
EG HALTED HER MARE BENEATH THE SHADE OF A PECAN TREE
that bordered the Holland property.

His bare bronzed back glistening with the sweat of his labors, Lucian toiled in the field using a hoe to shift the soil over the seeds. Clay, with damp splotches circling the back and sleeves of his shirt, was guiding the plow through the field as the mule dragged it. Somehow she was not surprised that Clay wore a shirt while he worked. She’d not forgotten how quiet and soft-spoken he’d been in his youth.

As she prodded her horse through the furrowed field, Lucian spotted her. He straightened, propped his elbow on the hoe, and smiled. “Good day, Mrs. Warner!”

Irritated that Clay continued to plow the field as though company had not come to call, she drew her horse to a halt beside Lucian. “How are you, Mr. Holland?”

“Hot. And you?”

“A bit warm. I need to speak with your brother.” He raised his eyebrows in disbelief. “You’re here to see Clay?”

“I have some business to discuss with him.”

“Business?” He chuckled. “The last person to discuss business with Clay did it with his fist. Is that what you’re planning?”

“No, it is not.”

“Too bad.” He gave her a sheepish grin. “Guess I’d best let him know you’re here. He dreams while he plows the field.” He turned on his heel. “Clay!” Lucian peered at her when his brother failed to respond. “See what I mean? I’ll get him for you.”

He ran across the field, caught up with Clay, and spoke words Meg couldn’t hear. Clay drew the mule to a halt and glanced over his shoulder. The brim of his hat shadowed his face so she had no idea what he was thinking. He ambled toward her while Lucian politely stayed with the mule.

As he neared, he removed his hat and squinted against the harshness of the sun. She hadn’t seen Clay up close since his return. The abundant streaks of white feathering through the brown hair at his temples astonished her. He and Kirk had been of the same age, and yet he looked considerably older than she imagined Kirk would have looked at twenty-five.

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

His solemnly spoken words caused her to realize she’d been staring at him for some time. Thrusting up her chin, she narrowed her eyes. “Are you indeed?”

“Yes, ma’am, I am. Your husband and brothers were fine men.”

“They died with courage and honor.”

“Yes, ma’am, they did. Kirk came—”

“How dare you!” she hissed, her fingers tightening on the reins. “How dare you speak his name!”

Despair flashed through his eyes. “I meant no disrespect.”

“No disrespect! Your very presence here is a disrespect.”

Slowly, he shook his head and slid his gaze past her. “Shall I gather up the stones?”

“What?”

“Nothing. Just say what you came to say and be done with it.”

He met her gaze, and she wondered when his brown eyes had grown so aged.

“I didn’t come here to fight.” Preparing to dismount, she swung her leg over the saddle. He took a step forward to help her. She stopped his movements with a cold look of disdain. Sighing, he stepped back. She placed her feet on the ground, holding the reins loosely threaded through her fingers.

Yesterday morning during the church service while she watched Clay as he sat in the last pew, she’d planted the seeds for retribution in her mind. The idea had blossomed by the end of the day and kept her awake most of the night. When she had made the final decision in the hours before dawn to come here, she’d decided she would not address him. “Mr. Holland” showed a measure of respect for which she felt none, and “Clay” indicated an intimacy, a friendship that she would never share with this man.

Gently, she slapped the reins against her thigh. “Do you remember the small figurine you made for my husband?”

The memory of a happier time flitted across his face and lit his eyes. “The one with the deer?”

“Yes. There have been times when I’ve wanted to smash it against the wall and watch it crumble into a thousand pieces because your hands touched it. I haven’t because it was a gift from my husband. I tell you this because I don’t want you to have any doubts as to what my feelings for you are. Do you understand?”

Her words effectively snuffed out the light in his eyes. “Perfectly.”

Meg swallowed, wondering if she’d been too harsh. She’d meant to lash out at him, but now that she had, she felt little satisfaction. Deep creases lined his weathered face. At first, she thought they’d surfaced because he was squinting at the sun, but even now, when his eyes had adjusted to the sunlight and he was no longer squinting, the grooves remained.