by Karen White
I straightened, my anger brimming like static electricity. “What if . . . What if the truth was so insane—so unspeakable—that you wouldn’t even recognize it as the truth?” I slammed my fist on the railing. “I don’t even know what the truth is anymore—and I really don’t care. I just want to find Annie and go home. I just want to go home with my daughter.”
“Where is home? And what is there that is so important to you—more important than staying here, where so many people have grown to care for you?”
I didn’t realize I was crying until he reached up and brushed a tear from my cheek. Pushing his hand aside, I used my sleeve to wipe my cheeks. “My memories—of my husband and our lives. Of our perfect little life with our daughter.”
Stuart’s voice was low and measured. “I have watched my boyhood friends die for this cause. I held the head of my best friend while his brains drained into my haversack, and all I could think of was my rations being spoiled.”
His words drew me toward him and I faced him again. He threw down his cigar and ground it out with the heel of his boot.
“Why are you telling me this?”
His eyes were dark pools of still water. “Life goes on, Laura. Memories will not keep you warm on a winter’s night.” He inhaled deeply. “And I also want you to understand what is at stake. We have sacrificed so much, and I do not want to give away what is left so easily.”
“I won’t take anything from you. I just need shelter until I can go home.”
“It is too late for that.”
My hand clutched his sleeve. “Too late to go home?”
“No. Too late to leave without taking anything with you. You have already captured hearts, Laura. You could not leave without taking at least one casualty.”
I knew he wasn’t talking about Julia or the children. The moonlight lent his face an eerie blue cast, giving him the appearance of a ghost. I felt the goose bumps on my arms when I realized that, to me, he was a ghost—at least somebody who had lived in my own distant past. He saw my shiver and slipped off his coat, placing it gently on my shoulders.
His eyes were clouded in shadow as he looked down at me. “I might as well tell you this now. Charles has told me that I will not be fit for combat duty for a few months yet, but I have some business to attend to and will be making several short trips before I return to my regiment.”
I opened my mouth to mention the conversation I had overheard between him and Pamela, but stopped. He would never let me go into town if he realized I knew Matt Kimball wanted to speak with me.
“Will you miss me?” he asked suddenly.
I was glad of the darkness. “Yes, I will. A lot,” I answered, without hesitation. With a trembling voice, I added, “There’s nobody else here who can play backgammon.”
He chuckled lightly as he placed his hands behind my neck and tilted my face toward his. He leaned down and kissed me softly. His lips lingered over mine, and a faint sigh escaped me as I tasted cigar smoke and whiskey.
“This might be considered by my superiors as consorting with the enemy, you know.”
I kept my head back in the hopes he’d kiss me again. “I’m not your enemy, Stuart.”
“This coming from the woman who said she wanted a cannonball to land on my head.”
His lips were so close, I shut my eyes. My voice sounded languid in the night air. “I didn’t really mean that, you know. I might even be upset.”
His kiss this time was anything but gentle, his lips bruising mine. His mouth traveled to my ear and he whispered, “Memories cannot compete with flesh and blood, can they?”
The front door opened and we stepped apart. Julia looked at us knowingly, a tight smile on her face, and I was glad again for the darkness to hide the stain of red creeping up my face.
“I was wondering where you two had gone off to. Laura, we were hoping you might play something for us on the piano.”
We followed her inside, but she stopped me before I entered the parlor so she could adjust my hair. With a raised eyebrow at Stuart, she swept past us and settled herself onto the sofa, waiting demurely as I sat at the piano and began to play.
Much later, as I lay in my lonely bed, I tossed and turned, unable to sleep. The full moon turned the blackness in my room to gray, reminding me of how my life was no longer black-and-white but instead had fallen between the colored cracks of reality. Finally, in the last stages of wakefulness when the world tends to blur its edges, I imagined I heard the tap-tapping of a black crow’s beak against a windowpane, and my blood chilled with dread.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The past is only the present become invisible and mute;
and because it is invisible and mute, its memoried
glances and its murmurs are infinitely precious.
We are tomorrow’s past.
—MARY WEBB
I walked in the henhouse with authority. I had found that this worked with even the most stubborn chicken. Let them know you were afraid of their pesky little beaks, and the result would be something out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Not that I was in a mood to care about being pecked—I was going into town alone. Stuart had left on his trip to deliver whatever information Pamela had given him, and Julia needed me to go into town to fetch cloth at the company store for new pants for Willie. They no longer accepted Confederate money, and we had to rely on what we could trade.
I thrust my hand under chicken number one, whom I had dubbed Cher, and snatched away a lone egg, placing it in the folded-up skirt of my dress. Number two just as easily acquiesced, until I got greedy and reached for the second egg. She responded with a resonant squawk and a well-aimed peck of her beak on my forearm.
Despite her protests, I unceremoniously removed her from her perch and found yet another egg. I left the henhouse ignoring the squawks of disapproval and feeling a bit smug.
Hastily depositing the eggs in a basket, I changed clothes and headed for the buggy. I had received informal training on how to maneuver the thing, and I was fine just as long as I didn’t have to get too close to the horse. I’d been assured it was an old and docile horse—too old and docile to have been confiscated—but I still planned to keep my distance.
Julia ran out of the house and handed me an empty basket and a list. She shielded her eyes with her hand as she looked up at me. “Goodbye, Laura. And thank you.”
She looked so forlorn, I felt the need to reassure her. “Don’t worry, Julia. I’m not running off. I’ll be back shortly.”
She waved a hand at me and stepped back from the buggy. “I know that, Laura. It is just that . . . Oh, never mind.”
I slapped the horse’s rump with a whip, and we trotted off in the cool afternoon air. I recognized the brick facade of the company store, remembering how I had eaten several times at the restaurant that would eventually be housed in the building.
The door was propped open, allowing the fresh, crisp air inside and lighting the dim interior. Waiting a moment for my eyes to adjust, I soon made out a counter at the end of the room with a man standing behind it.
The thick smell of dust, presumably from the sacks of grain propped against the counter, permeated the room, making me sneeze. Tall, empty glass jars lined the top of the counter. I imagined them filled with assortments of fudge and gumdrops. A little girl walked over to one filled with honeyed popcorn balls and touched it gently, but, with a firm shake of her mother’s head, she retreated to the back of the store. I knew how dear sugar had become at this point in the war, and the prices for the candy were exorbitant.
“Good afternoon, ma’am.” The tall, lanky shopkeeper wore a loose apron over his shirt and pants and had long wisps of sparse hair creeping across his scalp like spider legs. “Mr. Northcutt, proprietor, at your service. Is there anything I can help you with today?”
“Nice to meet you. I’m Laura Truitt. I’m staying at Phoen
ix Hall.” I handed him Julia’s list. “Julia Elliott sent me to pick up a few things.” I lifted the egg basket. “I’ve brought eggs.”
He settled bifocals and regarded the list. “I will get these things together for you, if you care to wait.”
A woman I remembered vaguely from church leaned across the counter next to me. “Is that coffee on the shelf behind you, Mr. Northcutt?”
“Yes, ma’am. I have five pounds of it. Brought to me yesterday by Samuel Baker, who is on leave on account of an injury to his arm. Says he got it off a dead Yankee.”
“How much are you asking?”
“It is worth about thirty dollars for a pound. Or half a hog.”
The woman slowly shook her head. “You tempt me, Mr. Northcutt. But I just cannot afford it.” She sighed and gave me a brief nod, then left the store.
While Mr. Northcutt gathered the items for Julia, I strolled around the store, my feet kicking up the sawdust scattered on the floor, and examined the mostly empty shelves. I was surprised to see a few cans of corn and other vegetables, and thought that this was mostly a modern technology. I wondered if their source was the same as the coffee beans.
Empty hooks hung from the rafters with a few batches of tobacco leaves hung upside down on them. The fading stench of raw meat told me what had been hung previously.
My toe struck something hard and I turned to see a wooden barrel on the floor. Lifting the lid, I was met with the biting smell of pickles that wafted up, and I could see the dark green pickles floating within. Every available shelf space and much of the floor was littered with all sorts of baskets, most empty but some full, and sacks and barrels filled with a few things I recognized, like eggs and molasses, and many items I didn’t. The tempting aroma of baked goods led me to the front of the store again, where an assortment of fresh-baked pies sat suggestively on a low shelf. The Elliott house had not had sweets for some time because of the scarcity of sugar, and my mouth watered as I looked at the flaky edges of the piecrusts.
My heels tapped across the oak floor planks, echoing in the small room. A shadow blocked the light from the doorway, and I turned to see who had entered.
The woman was dressed in head-to-toe black mourning. The severity of her costume was not even alleviated by a single jet brooch or other piece of jewelry. A little girl of about seven or eight, also dressed in black, followed her, her eyes never leaving the floor.
Stepping into the shop, the woman raised the black veil that had covered her face. Piercing gray eyes alighted on me momentarily before moving on toward Mr. Northcutt. The woman seemed to be in her early forties, but the signs of strain under her eyes and stretching across her forehead added years to her face. I remembered seeing her at church but had not been introduced. Her only son had been killed at Gettysburg, and for this reason she had snubbed Julia. Despite the hours Julia spent rolling bandages and knitting socks for the Confederates, and all the food stores she had given to the Southern armies, her marriage to a Yankee branded her.
My attention was drawn to the little girl, who was now standing facing a wall full of shelves. A doll with a porcelain face and exquisite clothes was propped up on the lowest shelf, and the girl was staring at it.
My heart jumped at the sight of the strawberry blond hair. It had been pulled back in a single braid running down her back. It was the shade of Annie’s hair, although I had always assumed it would darken, as most children’s did, as she grew older.
One small hand reached up to stroke the lace skirt of the doll, and I noticed the smattering of freckles on her hand and wrist. My heart thumped wildly and my mouth went dry as I slowly walked over to stand next to the girl.
She looked at me with wide eyes, withdrawing her hand guiltily. Her large brown eyes answered my question: She was not my Annie. My heart sank in disappointment, but I smiled at her and returned to the front counter to settle the account with Mr. Northcutt.
As he handed me the items, I asked, “Would you by any chance know where I might find Matthew Kimball?”
The shopkeeper looked at me with tight lips, and the bereaved mother sent me a withering glance. “No. I am afraid not, Mrs. Truitt,” he said, his clipped words effectively informing me that even if he had, he wouldn’t have shared the information with me.
Embarrassed, I thanked him and stepped outside. I was immediately confronted by a blast of wind sending an icy chill up my skirts. I loaded the baskets into the buggy and was contemplating driving around the town in the hopes I might catch sight of Matt Kimball when I spotted the man crossing the town square.
Recognizing that yelling to him wouldn’t be appropriate, I followed him with my gaze until he disappeared inside a two-story brick building on the east side of the square.
Making sure the reins were tethered properly, I turned and walked toward the building.
I stopped in front, under the painted sign that read AUNT CLAIRE’S ROOMING HOUSE. I knew this was a bad idea, that if Stuart, or even Julia, found out that I had followed Matt Kimball into a rooming house my credibility would be gone. But I’d been searching for Annie for so long, and my desperation erased any second thoughts. I knocked, and when nobody answered, I turned the knob.
It swung open into a deserted hallway. Tall, narrow stairs led upward against the wall on the right, and a short corridor stretched out in front of me on the left. A baby cried somewhere above me but was quickly drowned out by a man and woman shouting. Two closed doors, old brown stain faded to gray, could be approached by the hallway. There were no mailboxes, signs, or anything else to tell me who lived in the house. With shaking hands, I knocked on the first door.
I stood in the still hallway, listening to the hushed sound of other people’s lives around me and trying to hear any movement behind the door. I knocked again for good measure before moving on to the next door.
Before my fist struck the wood panel, the door flew open. A hatless Matt Kimball stood in the doorway, a darkened room behind him.
I forced a smile. “Hello, Mr. Kimball. I’m Laura Truitt. We met at church.”
“Of course. Not a person I am likely to forget.” He separated his lips, showing the bottom edges of his teeth, in an apparent smile. “What brings you to my door?”
I decided to be blunt, not really wanting to prolong any conversation with him. “I understand you have information regarding my daughter.”
He nodded. “Ah yes. I am surprised it took you this long.” He remained in the doorway, making no move to invite me in.
“I wasn’t able to come any sooner.” I deliberately shifted my gaze over his shoulder. “May I enter so we can talk?”
He raised his eyebrows, and I knew I had crossed the boundary of propriety. But I didn’t want to think about that. I needed the information about Annie and would get it any way I could.
With a mocking grin, he moved back. “Why, of course.”
The stench of sweat and unwashed sheets hit me and I immediately regretted my decision. Resisting the impulse to cover my nose with my hand, I glanced around for a place to sit and was horrified to find the only furnishings consisted of a bed and a chest of drawers. A scrawny black cat sat upon the grimy pillow and acknowledged my presence with a bored yawn. The back of my nose tickled, calling to mind my cat allergy.
I stayed with my back against the closed door and tried to appear calm. He didn’t step back, but remained directly in front of me, so close I could see specks of food on his collar.
“Mr. Kimball.” I swallowed hard, trying not to sneeze or choke on the filthy air. “I heard you had news of my daughter.”
He looked confused for a moment and then a grin slipped over his face. “Oh yes. Now I remember. Your daughter.” He leaned toward me with an outstretched arm, bracing his hand on the door behind me.
I didn’t flinch but surreptitiously felt behind me for the doorknob. I looked up at him expectantly. “My daught
er disappeared on Moon Mountain when she was two and I haven’t seen her since. I heard you might know something about that.”
He leaned nearer to me, his stale breath washing over me. “And just what did you have in mind as payment?” His gaze shifted to my chest and insolently traveled back to my face.
I had had my doubts about Mr. Kimball, but I had never once anticipated this turn of events. “Payment? You want payment for telling me about my own daughter? Believe me, Mr. Kimball, I have no intention of paying you for anything in the manner you are insinuating.” I pressed my back against the door, my hand clutching the cold brass knob.
“Why else would a woman come alone to a man’s room?”
My fists clenched in rage, and I struck out without thinking. I managed to clobber him on both sides of the head, making him reel backward. I was sure it was more from the shock of a woman hitting him than from any pain I might have caused. Regardless, it gave me the opportunity to twist the knob and run out into the foyer. He had made it to his doorway by the time I reached the outer door. I yanked it open and ran outside and down the short flight of steps to the pavement. I looked back at the rooming house in time to see the front door slam shut.
My breath came in deep gulps of air, and I noticed to my dismay that a thick strand of hair had fallen from my upsweep and dangled in front of my face. I raised my hands to fix it, and at that moment noticed Miss Eliza Smith on the sidewalk, stock-still and staring directly at me.
Her pinched face had the eerie resemblance to an apple that had been on the ground too long. I would have laughed if I weren’t so shaken, and if I hadn’t realized that whatever she thought she had seen would be quickly transported back to Stuart.
“Eliza, it’s not what you think. . . .”
But before the words were out of my mouth, she had turned without acknowledging me and walked quickly away, her wide skirts billowing around her like a circus tent.