Lorraine Heath (31 page)

“The pain—”

“I fought the pain. I can’t close my hand.”

“Once it’s healed—”

“It won’t make a difference.” He struggled to his feet. “They say you reap what you sow. Well, take a good look at your monument, Mrs. Warner. They took away my ability to finish it, and they left you with nothing but shadows to honor those you loved.”

M
EG CRAWLED THROUGH HER BEDROOM WINDOW
. S
HE WALKED
to the washstand and splashed the cool water on her face, but it couldn’t wash away the dark circles beneath her eyes or the heaviness that had settled in her heart.

She needed to cook breakfast, and all she wanted to do was crawl into bed and cry, long and hard, until she was so exhausted that she’d sleep without dreaming of Clay.

Lethargically, she walked to the kitchen and took a pot off the wall. Her father and brother would have to be content with porridge because she didn’t have the energy to fix anything else.

She heard Daniel coming down the hallway whistling “Dixie.” Perhaps his hatred toward Clay would be less if her father had let him leave and be the drummer boy for the Confederacy that he’d wanted to be. Unfortunately, drummer boys had died as well.

“Mornin', Meg.” He came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. “What are you fixin'?”

“Porridge.”

“Sounds good.”

Smiling, she looked at him over her shoulder. Porridge was his least favorite meal. “You seem awfully happy this morning.”

“Yes, ma’am. You don’t have to worry about that yellow-bellied coward touching you no more.”

Meg’s heart constricted so tightly she thought it might stop beating. “What?”

He released her, dragged a chair out from the table, and dropped his body into the seat. “We took care of him last night. Didn’t we, Pa?”

Meg spun around. Her father averted his gaze as he took his chair. “That’s right,” he said quietly.

Daniel planted his elbows on the table. “He won’t be touching any of our women any time soon, that’s for damn sure. My brothers would have been proud of us.”

Meg thought she was going to be sick to her stomach. The room began to spin and tilt.

A hard knock sounded on the door, and Meg took a deep breath, trying to right her world, wondering if anything would ever feel right again.

Robert stepped into the kitchen, and Meg knew from the sadness in his eyes what was coming before he spoke.

“Mama Warner’s taken a turn for the worse.”

Easing onto the bed, Meg brushed the wisps of silver hair away from the wrinkled brow. “Were you here with Mama Warner throughout the night?”

“Where else would I have been?” Robert asked.

She lifted her gaze to the man standing beside her. “My father, my brother, and some other men attacked Clay last night. They put a knife through his hand. I think they did it because he touched me after church yesterday.”

Robert knelt beside her. “What is Holland to you, Meg?”

She felt the tears well in her eyes.

Reaching out with his thumb, he captured a fallen tear. “So that’s the way of it, is it?” He smiled sadly. “I suppose I’d be wasting my breath if I asked you to marry me.”

“I love him, Robert. I didn’t want to. Things would certainly be simpler if I’d fallen in love with you.”

“Would it have made a difference if I had two arms?”

She cradled his cheek. “No.”

He laid his hand over hers. “I didn’t think my loss would matter to you. You’re a special lady, Meg. You don’t look like you’re aware of that this morning, but you are.” He stood. “Once word gets out about Mama Warner, we’ll have more company than we can shake a stick at. I’ll try and keep as many as I can out of here because you sure don’t look like you need company today.”

“Thank you, Robert.”

He walked from the room, and Meg took the frail hand into her own. She leaned over Mama Warner. “Can you hear me, or are you too close to heaven to hear us anymore? I feel like I’m in hell.”

She studied the pale features that time had lined with wisdom. “You knew Clay wasn’t a coward. If you’d told me, I wouldn’t have believed you, but he showed me in so many ways. The irony is that he’s the only one among us who isn’t a coward. I think that’s why we all hated him so much. He is exactly what we believed ourselves to be.”

Lucian had a strong urge to punch Clay in the jaw. Not out of hatred, but out of love. He wanted to knock some sense into his brother.

In the days after the attack, Clay took his meals on the porch—alone—and spent his time walking through the fields of corn stalks, pulling weeds.

He never raised the shutters on the shed. He didn’t talk about his past or the future. He didn’t talk at all unless the twins asked him a question, and then he discouraged them by giving them an abrupt answer.

Sometimes, Lucian would see him staring in the direction of the Warner farm. For long moments, he wouldn’t move. Then he’d look toward the shed, shove his hands into his pockets, bow his head, and begin walking through the fields of growing corn.

Lucian walked along the row of corn until his shadow fell across Clay, who was kneeling beside a corn stalk. “I was thinking, next year we could rent those oxen to help us plow the fields, maybe take in an extra acre or two.”

Clay tugged a weed out of the soil. “Whatever you think is best.” Standing, he removed his hat and squinted against the sunlight. “Once we harvest the crops, I’ll be moving on, so any time you want we can go into town and have the deed to the farm put in your name.”

“What about the monument?”

“It’s served its purpose.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

Clay looked toward the shed. “It was never meant to be more than shadows of a dream.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Clay squinted into the distance. “Do you see that?”

Lucian followed his gaze. Black clouds billowed up from the earth. “Looks like smoke.”

“Joe, Josh!” Clay yelled.

The boys stopped hoeing and rushed to his side. “Go to the barn and get some blankets. It looks like Sam Johnson’s field is on fire. Hurry.”

“You’re not gonna help put it out, are you?” Lucian asked.

“How will he make it through the winter if he loses his crop?”

Lucian jerked his hat off his head. “God damn it! Not one of them would come over here and piss on our crops if they were on fire.”

“I can’t help the way they are, but I’ll be damned before I become like them.”

Clay began running across the field. Lucian followed. He was beginning to think his older brother was the most aggravating man he knew.

The twins caught up with them, their faces filled with exuberance. Clay yanked a blanket away from Josh. “Don’t get too close to the fire and don’t breathe in the smoke.”

Against his better judgment, Lucian took the blanket that Joe offered him.

By the time they arrived, neighbors were already pitching in, beating back the fire. Lucian took his place beside his brothers, slapping the blanket against the bright orange flames. In their eagerness, the twins kept getting too close to the fire, and he and Clay continually dragged them back to safety.

Lucian glanced at Clay’s blackened sweaty face. He probably looked as grimy, but he felt good. It had been a long time since he’d felt as though they were a family, united in a cause. He wished now that he had helped Clay with his side of the barn. His past regrets were many. He was determined to have fewer in the future.

The flames before them died a quiet death, and Clay rubbed each boy’s head. “Good job.”

They began walking over the charred field. Sam Johnson was shaking hands with his neighbors and thanking them for their help. He came to an abrupt halt when his eyes fell on Clay. Clay met his gaze.

“Clay, your hand’s bleedin',” Josh said.

Clay glanced at the blood seeping through the bandage. “It’ll be all right. Come on, we need to get home now.”

In long strides, Lucian set out to follow his brothers.

“Lucian?”

Stopping and turning, he stared at Sam. Sam extended his hand. “I wanted to thank you for helping me out here.”

Lucian ignored his hand. “Don’t thank me. If it’d been left up to me, we wouldn’t have come, but Clay’s the head of the family, and he was worried you might have a hard winter if you lost your crops.”

Sam ducked his head, his face turning beet red. “Look, things got out of hand the other night. He wasn’t supposed to get hurt. We were just going to frighten him.”

“You didn’t do anything to stop them from hurting him though, did you?”

Sam snapped his head up. “I didn’t see you out there stopping us either.”

Lucian took a menacing step forward and Sam flinched. “No, you didn’t, but I won’t make that mistake again. You and your friends show up on our land again with flour sacks over your heads, and you’ll have to put knives through four of us.”

Meg was grateful that Mama Warner had drifted closer to heaven and was unaware of all that had happened the last night Meg saw Clay. The knowledge would have broken the older woman’s heart.

It very nearly broke Meg’s.

Each day she sat in the rocker beside the bed and read
The Scarlet Letter
aloud. She could not read the words without thinking of the puckered pink scar that Clay bore upon his chest. The army had hurt him. The people in the area had hurt him. Yet she knew she’d hurt him most of all.

“Meg?”

She glanced up and gave Robert a warm smile.

“You have company. The Holland twins.”

Rising from the rocker, she set the book on the table and slipped past Robert. She hurried into the kitchen. She’d never been so happy to see anyone in her life as she wrapped her arms around both boys.

“I’ve missed you,” Meg said as she planted a kiss on each boy’s forehead.

“Yes, ma’am, we been missin’ you, too,” Josh said.

“Do you want a piece of pie? I made it fresh this morning.”

“No, ma’am, we didn’t come here for ourselves. We come about Clay.”

“How’s his hand?”

“It ain’t bandaged no more, but he don’t never use it. He just keeps it buried in his pocket like he’s ashamed of it or something. Thought maybe you could come talk to him—”

Shaking her head, she stepped back. “I can’t.”

“But, Miz Meg, he just walks up one row of corn and down the other all day long. We know he said some powerful ugly words the night he was hurt, but that was pain talkin', Miz Meg. Not Clay. He didn’t mean none of it. Wish you’d come back and let him apologize.”

Placing her hands on their shoulders, she felt the tears sting the back of her eyes. They had such earnest faces. “I wish it were that simple, but it isn’t. Nothing would be solved if I went to your farm. Things would only worsen.”

The boys released baleful sighs as their shoulders slouched. “Reckon we’ll mosey on then,” Josh said. The boys shuffled to the door.

“Would you like to take a pie with you?” Meg asked.

“No, ma’am, but thank you. People just ain’t eatin’ much around our house these days.”

When they disappeared through the door, Meg slumped into a chair, buried her face in her hands, and fought back the tears. She heard Robert’s footsteps echo through the room. Why wasn’t he in the fields where he belonged?

“Meg, I know this is none of my business—”

She dropped her hands and found him kneeling beside her. “You’re right, Robert. This is none of your business.”

He gave her a disarming smile. “Think you need some low talking, girl. Why didn’t you go with those boys?”

“Mama Warner needs me.”

“Meg, you and I both know that she’s not even aware that you’re here. Why didn’t you go with those boys?”

She intertwined her fingers and squeezed her hands until they ached. “Because I’m afraid. My brother put the knife through Clay’s hand. I’m sure of it, although he didn’t say it exactly. If my father discovered that I’d spent time with Clay, I think he’d kill him.”

“So you think it’s best if you stay away?”

“He wanted me to walk out of the church with him, and I wouldn’t do it because I was afraid of what might happen. All these months, I’ve called him a coward, and I’m the coward.”

“Being scared doesn’t make you a coward, Meg.”

“It certainly makes me feel like one.”

He wrapped his hand around hers. “When Kirk left, were you afraid the Union soldiers might kill him?”

“I was terrified. I didn’t sleep for weeks worrying about him.”

“So, the morning he left, you stayed in bed under the covers.”

“No, sir, I did not. I went to town with him and stood proudly …” She searched Robert’s serious face. “I stood by his side.”

“And they killed him anyway.”

Tears welled in her eyes. “And they killed him,” she whispered, bringing her hand to her lips.

“How would you have felt, Meg, if he’d died, and you’d stayed home that morning?”

Sitting cross-legged on the foot of her bed, Meg stared at the wooden box. Mama Warner’s wooden box.

Meg had brought it home the day after Mama Warner had asked Clay to make her headstone.

But she hadn’t looked inside it.

Why did Mama Warner want her to have it?

Easing off the bed, she knelt beside the box. With trembling fingers, she opened it.

The carving of Kirk rested on top. Gently, she removed it, placed it in her lap, and brushed her fingers over his youthful features. Mama Warner was right. She did want the carving. Now that she understood Clay wasn’t a coward, she wanted everything he’d ever touched.

She peered into the box, wondering what other treasures it held. Her breath caught at the sight of an envelope bearing Kirk’s scrawled script.

She hadn’t realized that he’d written to others while he was away. She wondered why Mama Warner hadn’t shared the letters. She picked up the letter and turned it slowly in her hands. Mama Warner must have meant for her to read it, or she wouldn’t have left it in the box.

Meg opened the envelope and removed the single sheet of paper. She wanted to capture every memory of Kirk that existed, even those that weren’t her own. Slowly, she read the scrawled words her husband had written.