From This Day Forward

by Victoria Thompson

  Someone cried out in protest, a primal wail that tore at Adam’s heart—until he realized the source of it.

  “Adam!” Lori screamed, holding up the baby for him to see. The little face was no longer white and still but pinched and purple with rage as Matthew howled out a protest against all the injustice in the world. “Look, he’s alive!”

  And he was alive and screaming like a banshee. But surely that meant he was terribly injured. No one could survive what he had been through.

  Forgetting about his brother and everything else, he said, “Let’s get him back to the house. I’ll send for the doctor right away. Oscar!” But when he looked up, Oscar was gone, running after Sudie who was running toward where Eric lay.

  And when he looked back at Lori, she was opening her bodice and offering the screaming baby her breast. Matthew was too angry to take it at first, but after a second or two, he decided to accept whatever comfort he could find, and to Adam’s everlasting amazement, the baby began to suckle just as greedily as if he hadn’t just been as good as dead a moment ago.

  Lori looked up at him with tear-filled eyes. “He must’ve just been stunned!” she guessed, looking pretty stunned herself. She had a streak of dirt across her cheek, and her hair had come loose and was falling down around her shoulders in raven ringlets. With the baby at her breast, Adam thought he had never seen her look more beautiful. “I felt him jump at the shot and... Oh, God, the shot! What was it?”

  But Adam covered her eyes when she tried to see. “No don’t,” he warned her. “Just look at Matthew now.”

  “Was it Eric?” she demanded. “Did he shoot someone?”

  “Himself, I think. It doesn’t matter.”

  She gazed at him with horror-filled eyes, and Adam wanted more than anything in the world to be able to tell her that everything would be all right now. But he couldn’t.

  “Lori,” he said instead, blinking at his own tears, “Matthew might still be badly hurt.”

  Plainly, she hadn’t even considered this possibility. She gazed down at her child in renewed alarm. “He can’t be. Look how he’s eating!”

  Adam had to agree, he seemed perfectly normal. The blanket in which he had been wrapped had fallen away and now Adam brushed aside his little wrapper to examine the tiny arms and legs. He poked and probed, expecting at any minute for the child to stiffen in pain, but he got no reaction at all until he started exploring the child’s so little belly. Matthew, who had been watching him avidly as he suckled suddenly released Lori’s nipple and gave Adam a big, milky, toothless grin.

  “My God, did you see that?” Adam asked incredulously.

  Lori nodded, speechless with wonder. Then she said, “We should still get him back to the house.” Quickly, she fastened her bodice and got to her feet, still clutching Matthew to her bosom. Only when she realized Adam had made no move to get up, did she notice what was wrong.

  “Adam, your leg! What have you done?” she cried in renewed horror.

  “I think I wrenched it,” he lied, knowing it was far worse than that. “Would you call Oscar. I think I’ll need some help—”

  But Lori was already calling for him. The big man came directly, his dark face grim as he loped across the field toward them. Only then did Adam allow himself to think about what had happened back there in the yard. Sudie was kneeling, holding Eric to her and rocking back and forth, as if she could make him better.

  “My brother?” he asked when Oscar stopped before him.

  “He dead, Massa.”

  Lori’s cry seemed to come from very far away as the pain in his leg merged with the pain in his heart and rose up in a crimson tide that threatened to drown him. “I’ll need a hand here,” he managed through his constricted throat. “I’ve hurt my leg and...”

  Oscar needed no other instruction. He immediately reached down to help Adam to his feet, but as Adam’s weight settled on his injured leg, the crimson tide rose up again and this time overwhelmed him, and he sank almost gratefully into the blissful oblivion of unconsciousness.

  Lori didn’t know how much more she could stand. On this day of horrors, she’d managed to hold herself together only because she’d had no other choice.

  After watching Adam turn chalk white and pass out from the pain in his injured leg, she’d followed Oscar as he’d carried her husband back to the house only to discover Sudie kneeling in the yard, holding Eric’s bloody, ruined head to her bosom.

  She’d stood frozen for a long moment, watching the macabre sight and wondering why she felt nothing. How many times had she wished Eric dead? And certainly no one deserved it more, after all the pain he had caused. She should have felt triumph or satisfaction or something, but she only felt numb.

  Then Sudie had looked up at her, her dark eyes full of the same anguish Lori had felt herself when she’d thought Matthew was dead.

  “He couldn’t help the way he was,” Sudie insisted desperately as the tears streamed down her face. “It was my fault! I should’ve kept him, but I wanted him to have a good life, not be a slave. I wanted him to have the kind of life Massa Adam had! I didn’t know what would happen! I didn’t know!”

  Of course, she didn’t know. How could she have?

  So many things made sense now. Sudie had been raped by her master and had borne him a son, which was why she understood so clearly the pain that Lori had endured at Eric’s hands. The fact that the son conceived by rape had become a rapist himself was an irony she might someday appreciate, but not quite yet. At the moment, she was only aware that she and Sudie were both holding their children to their bosoms. One was dead, but one was, praise God, still alive. And while Matthew appeared to be all right, she couldn’t be sure and most certainly Adam was not all right at all.

  She started issuing orders, sending one of the slaves for the doctor, even though it would be hours before he could get here, and giving instructions for Adam to be taken to the master bedroom.

  She should also decide what to do with Eric’s body, but when she looked at Sudie’s ashen face, she knew she couldn’t do what she wanted, which was to order it thrown into an unmarked hole and buried without ceremony.

  “I’ll take care of him, Missy,” Sudie told her brokenly, and Lori left her to do so.

  The night passed slowly as they waited for the doctor to arrive. Lori sat up through it in a chair beside Adam’s bed while Matthew slept in the cradle at her feet. Miraculously, the baby seemed perfectly fine, except for a few bruises, and he’d been awake and alert for a long time after his ordeal before finally falling asleep again.

  Lori would doze from time to time, then wake with a start and instantly lean over to check Matthew to be sure he was still breathing. Then she would check Adam who had been sipping brandy through the night to help with the pain. Sometimes he’d be sleeping and sometimes not, and if he wasn’t, he would smile at her and tell her he loved her, even though the pain from his leg was excruciating.

  The maids kept a steady stream of hot compresses coming, but no one could bring themselves to mention the black lump that had appeared at the site of Adam’s old scar. And Lori, at least, could not bring herself to think about what it might mean. Of course, Lori didn’t care if Adam had one leg or two. She would love him regardless, but she knew Adam cared very much. But perhaps her love would help him through this time.

  It was almost dawn when the doctor finally arrived. He was an old man, too old to go to war, which was the only reason he was still here. His white hair and lined face gave him an air of competence, however, that Lori greatly appreciated.

  “Well, well, Master Adam, what have you done to yourself?” he asked cheerfully as he came into the bedroom.

  Adam’s face was white, his lips bloodless and his eyes red rimmed, but he shook his head. “Look at the baby first,” he said in a near whisper. “Make sure he’s all right.”

  The doctor turned to Lori who was holding Matthew in her arms.

  “He seems fine now,” she told him. “But after
the accident, he was all white and still and we thought...”

  “Let’s see him,” the doctor said, setting his bag down on the floor by the bed. “Lay him down right here.”

  Lori laid the sleeping baby down on the bed beside Adam, and the doctor proceeded to undress him. Matthew protested being disturbed, his mewling cry quickly growing into a howl which didn’t seem to bother the doctor a bit.

  “His lungs seem fine,” he remarked cheerfully, as he probed and poked and wiggled and prodded. “Has he been nursing all right?”

  “Yes, just like always,” Lori reported.

  He asked a few more questions as he finished his examination. Then he wrapped Matthew in his blanket and handed him to Lori to soothe. “He seems perfectly fine.”

  “How can that be?” Adam demanded weakly. “He was thrown from the buggy and it fell over on him and—”

  “Yes, your boy told me what happened. This was in the field?”

  Lori nodded.

  “The ground would still be soft there, which would have helped absorb the shock, and children’s bones don’t break as easily as ours do. You should watch him closely for a few days, just in case, but he’s probably no worse for his experience. Now, let’s have a look at his father.”

  For a second Lori started, thinking he meant Eric, who was most certainly beyond any help, but of course he meant Adam. Adam, who really was Matthew’s father now.

  “I thought I told you not to ride horseback,” the doctor said as he folded back the covers to look at Adam’s leg.

  “This was an emergency,” Adam said as an excuse.

  Lori watched the doctor’s face as he removed the compress and saw the ugly lump, but he didn’t seem as alarmed as Lori had expected. In fact, he seemed simply puzzled for a moment.

  “Good heavens,” he exclaimed after he’d probed the area carefully, making Adam gasp in pain. Lori had to blink at tears.

  “You’re not cutting off my leg this time, either,” Adam warned him through gritted teeth, although Lori could see the fear in his eyes.

  “No,” the doctor said agreeably, “but I would like to do a little cutting, if you don’t mind. Do you know what you’ve done here?” He pointed at the leg.

  Adam had propped himself up on his elbows and now he looked down at the leg, too. He shook his head.

  “You’ve worked loose the minie ball, the one that’s been in your leg all this time. I couldn’t get it out before because it was in too deep, almost to the bone. But your little escapade last night has forced it out, or almost out, at any rate. That’s it, right there.” He pointed to the black lump. “With your permission, I’d like to make a small incision and remove it. It’s just under the skin now, so it would only take a moment and—”

  “Yes!” Adam cried. “Of course! Take it out!”

  “Does that mean Adam’s leg would be normal then?” Lori asked, rocking Matthew gently. He was still whimpering slightly.

  “I can’t promise that,” the doctor said. “I don’t know how much damage you did to the muscles today, so I can’t predict. But at the very least, I think you should have less pain and perhaps no pain at all once everything has healed.”

  Lori saw the hope in Adam’s eyes as he said, “What are you waiting for?”

  The doctor turned to Lori. “Mrs. Ross, I’ll need three strong men to help me hold him down. And I think you should take the baby into another room and nurse him.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t leave Adam!” she protested.

  “Lori,” Adam said gently. “The doctor doesn’t want you in here when he cuts my leg open.”

  Lori felt the blood rushing from her head and for a second she was afraid she might faint, but she fought the weakness until it passed. And then she knew the doctor was right.

  She reached out and took Adam’s hand. “You’re going to be fine,” she told him. His fingers were warm and strong as he squeezed her hand.

  “We’re all going to be fine,” he told her back.

  Lori gathered the baby’s clothes and carried them and him out into the hall. When she had summoned Oscar and sent him to fetch some other men to help the doctor with the operation, she decided to take Matthew to the parlor which, she hoped, would be far enough away so she wouldn’t be able to hear Adam if he cried out in pain.

  But as she reached the rear parlor, she was surprised to see a light in the room that had nothing to do with the dawn breaking over the horizon.

  She stepped through the doors, and what she saw made her gasp in horror. Several candles flickered, casting an eerie light, and at the far end of the room a coffin rested on a makeshift bier. Beside it Sudie sat in a straight backed chair her hands folded in her lap, her face as white and still as marble.

  She looked up when she heard Lori.

  “I laid him out, Missy,” she said, her voice oddly hollow. “He look real fine.”

  Lori remembered the blood and the gore and the gaping wound in Eric’s head, and knew he couldn’t possibly look fine at all. “That’s very nice, Sudie,” she said gently, purposely not making any move to look in the coffin.

  “Will you bury him in the family plot?” she asked, rising slowly to her feet. “I know you gots good reason to hate him, and now you know what I did and that he really ain’t... Well, he ain’t who you thought he was, but he was Mass Chet’s son, and—”

  “Of course he was,” Lori said, remembering all that Sudie had done for her, her kindness and her understanding when no one else had understood. Lori owed her a debt she might never be able to repay. Sudie’s only sin had been wanting a better life for her child, and it was a sin of which Lori had been guilty, too. She couldn’t hold Sudie responsible for what Eric had become or what he had done to her. If she had learned nothing else from all of this, she knew at least that Eric alone was responsible for that. If she no longer blamed herself, she could not blame Sudie, either. And Sudie had suffered enough. “And of course we’ll bury him in the family plot.” What harm could it do? He was dead now and would never hurt anyone else again.

  She could see Sudie’s rigid shoulders sag with relief at her promise. “He couldn’t stand the thought that he’d hurt your baby,” Sudie said. “That’s why he did it. That’s why he shot hisself.”

  Lori didn’t allow her surprise to show. She knew, of course, that Eric would have felt no guilt at all, even if Matthew had died. What had made him blow his brains out was the knowledge that Sudie was his real mother and that, in spite of his white skin, he was colored. Living with such knowledge would have been unbearable for him.

  Matthew stirred in her arms, rooting for her breast. She still hadn’t dressed him, and as she looked down at him, she suddenly realized the full implications of Sudie’s confession. If Eric had been the son of a slave, then Matthew was the grandson of a slave!

  “Nobody ever know, Missy,” Sudie said urgently. “I never tell, and as far as anybody else know, Massa Adam’s Mathew’s father.”

  Sudie was right, of course. No one else need ever know. And Lori knew it wouldn’t matter to her, but what about Adam? Would it matter to him? Would it make a difference?

  Just as the horrible doubt formed in her mind, she heard Adam cry out as the doctor’s knife sliced his living flesh. The sound was faint and far away, but unmistakable, and Lori’s blood went cold.

  EPILOGUE

  Everything was changing. Lori could feel it in the very air around her. The Yankees had apparently been driven out of Texas, but the news from elsewhere was bad. Rumor had it that the Confederate Army was barefooted and nearly always hungry, and everyone was saying the war couldn’t go on much longer. Lori should have been relieved, except that what no one was saying, at least out loud, was that the South was going to lose and no one knew what would happen then. Lori was very much afraid things wouldn’t get better, at least not for a long time. And if the slaves were freed and Adam didn’t have anyone to work the plantation... Well, that didn’t bear thinking of, either.

  Of course, Lori al
so had more immediate things to worry about. In the week since the doctor had removed the ball from Adam’s leg, he had recovered rapidly. He was up and walking within two days, even though the doctor had recommended at least a week of bed rest. But Adam hadn’t wanted the leg to stiffen up, so he had worked it every day. Lori knew it hurt him, but he claimed the pain was nothing compared to what he had endured for so many years. And it got better every day.

  But nothing else had gotten better, at least not yet, because neither of them had even mentioned the horrible story that Sudie had told, the one that had driven Eric to take his own life. Of course, talking about it might make things worse, too. For Adam to claim his brother’s child as his own had been more than enough to ask of any man. To expect him to claim the grandson of a slave, well, that was too much. Lori understood that only too well.

  At least he hadn’t asked her to leave, not yet, anyway. In fact, he’d been just as kind and affectionate to her as always. Still, she’d been sleeping in his old room while he recovered in the master bedroom and keeping the baby away from him, too. And also, Adam had been a bit self-absorbed, concerned as he was with his own recovery. When he was well, she would have to find out for sure. She would have to test him somehow so she would be certain. She couldn’t allow Matthew to grow up unwanted and unloved the way Eric had even if that meant living the rest of her life without Adam.

  “Lori?”

  Lori looked up in surprise from where she had been sitting sewing in the back parlor, to find Adam standing in the doorway. She smiled at the sight of him. Indeed, he looked more handsome than ever, dressed in a fresh shirt and tan duel trousers. His mere presence warmed her to her very soul and then he fully returned her smile.

  “I’d like to try out my new leg outside, and I was wondering if you’d like to walk with me.”

  She glanced down at Matthew, who was asleep in his cradle. He looked like a tiny angel.

  “I already asked Effie to keep an eye on him,” Adam said “We won’t be gone long.”