A Place Called Home

by Elizabeth Grayson

  The black man's mouth narrowed. A furrow came and went between his eyes.

  "If those men had know'd their letters, Miz 'Livia woulda been as deep in trouble as us. Is that what you want?"

  The two women waited in silence for his reply.

  Eustace finally gave in. "Make up the papers," he said.

  Chapter 9

  Go three mils past Crab Orchard. Look for a streem on left under high stone banc. Follow the streem south a mile and a haf to wher I cleard the fields.

  Livi knew the passage by heart. The last one in David's journal. The passage that would lead her and her children to David's land. She searched the road ahead for landmarks, her hands damp on her horse's reins. She'd traveled two hundred miles to reach this place. She'd fought terrible hardship, suffered unendurable loss. Before this day was out, Livi would walk the open fields her husband had loved, feather the fertile soil between her fingertips. And when she did, she hoped she would finally understand David's dream and claim her share of it.

  They had descended from the mountains the previous afternoon. As the road wound its way out of the hills, long vistas opened up, spring-green trees rustled in the wind and stopped in flower-studded meadows that lay lush in the sun. Kentucky was a beautiful land, but, Livi couldn't help but wondering if it was place she would have been willing to trade for David's life?

  Today they'd ridden through the area David called the Crab Orchard, and as they passed, the petals from the blossoming apple trees fluttered in the wind like gentle snow. From there they'd continued to the west and the north, until Livi spotted the first of the landmarks that would take them to David's land and the promise of their journey's end.

  "There," she cried. "That's the stream David wrote about."

  Gurgling around a towering limestone overhang, the water pooled in the curve of a rocky creek, Livi urged her horse along the path that traced the bank. The trees grew taller, broader here. The verdant woods closed in, breathtaking in its magnificence and silence descended as the loamy earth muffled even their voices, raised in cries of excitement.

  Still in the lead, Livi pushed her horse up the trail above the water, and from the crest of the hill she could see the whole of David's dream spread out before her.

  "Our land lies in a basin between the hills," he'd told her more times than she could count. "It's a small green valley with a creek winding through and a good, sweet spring."

  This little hollow was everything David had promised, and Livi waited for the sense of belonging to envelop her. Instead she felt nothing at all.

  "Are we here?" Cissy demanded breathlessly, topping the rise. "We're home now, aren't we, Mama?"

  Livi didn't know how to answer.

  Not waiting for one, the little girl darted down the hillside. Tad swung out of the saddle and followed his sister. Livi stared after them, feeling abandoned and lost.

  "You goin' on ahead?" Eustace asked her, coming to gather up the reins to Tad's horse.

  She nodded and urged her mare toward the four cleared fields that lay below. More than an acre of ground had been hacked out of woods grown thick with black walnut, sugar maples, and honey locust. With sumac, wild grape, and may-apples. How hard her husband must have worked, she thought, to open this patch of earth to the sky.

  How wounded he would be by my indifference.

  Then Livi saw something David had never seen fit to tell her about, something that softened the first terrible moments of alienation. Tears blurred her sight. Her chest contracted with almost unendurable grief. She bypassed the fields where her children were whooping and chasing each other around. She clopped across the bridge that spanned the creek and eased her horse up the rise.

  Standing on the knoll overlooking those four cleared fields and that rippling stream was a fine, strong cabin. Set on a solid limestone foundation and facing south, the cabin was comprised of two separate buildings roofed in tandem. The cabin on the left was by far the larger, its wide oak door padlocked with one of the brass-and-iron locks David had crafted himself. It explained the mysterious key she'd found among his things.

  Sliding down from her horse, Livi rummaged at the bottom of her canvas bag and pulled out the key. She mounted the wide stone steps that ran across the front of the two linked buildings and fit the key into the lock.

  The dank mustiness of a closed-up house rose to meet her as the door swung wide. By the slash of sunlight that fell across the rough, planked floor, Livi could see that the inside of the cabin was commodious, longer than it was wide. A head-high limestone fireplace dominated the west end of the room, with andirons and a lug pole already in place. Above the room was a half-open loft, its access ladder set into the wall.

  The children swept past where Livi stood in the doorway.

  "Is this our house, Mama?" Cissy demanded, her small voice echoing from the shadowy corners. "Is this where we're going to live?"

  "Of course," Tad answered. "There's even a bed."

  Indeed there was, not just a bedstead propped up and wedged into the corner, either. It was a tall, freestanding bed frame lovingly crafted of peeled logs and already laced with rope. Nor was the fine bed the only furniture. An oak-slab table with puncheon benches stood just to the right of the fireplace.

  Livi moved inside on a tide of overwhelming gratitude and devastating loss. David must have worked so hard to prepare this place for them. He must have been so sure about the future. Her throat tightened and her eyes burned.

  "Miz 'Livia, ma'am," Eustace interrupted. "They's a woodpile 'round back. You want me to get a fire goin' to chase off the chill?"

  Livi could only nod. She made her way to one of the benches and sat down hard. They were here in Kentucky. Finally. On David's land. And all she felt was exhaustion.

  It took an effort for her to move, to breathe.

  As the children ran out to continue their exploration Livi heard Violet admonish them, "Don't go too far. We can't have you gettin' lost first thing."

  Violet came in with a broom and began to sweep. Eustace bustled past with a load of logs in his arms.

  She should stir herself, Livi thought. See to the horses. Unload the packsaddles one last time. She could set her house to rights at last. This beautiful house. This strangely empty house.

  She was still sitting on the bench when Eustace approached. The fire was lit and casting warm yellow light on what she suddenly realized were whitewashed walls.

  "Oh, David," she breathed. "How hard you tried to make this place like home!"

  "Miz 'Livia, ma'am," Eustace offered deferentially. "Miz 'Livia? This paper was on the mantel shelf."

  Livi's hands trembled as she opened the folds. A note, she thought. From David.

  But instead of her husband's scrawl, this writing was broad and graceful. She recognized it as Reid Campbell's hand.

  David—

  I have gone off to trade for furs as we discussed. Hope your journey from Virginia was swift and uneventful. Will be back this way once I have run out of things to barter.

  Reid

  Reid, she thought. Oh, God, Reid!

  Even here in the house David had built for her, the house that sang of her husband's devotion more clearly than any love song, Reid Campbell had found a way to intrude.

  Resentment rose in her. She could not bear to think of him here, within the walls of the cabin David had built. She could not bear to think that Reid would remain part of her life when David was lost.

  As long as she lived, Livi would never forget the way Reid had thrown her trunk on the floor of the inn the day she'd run away with David. The way he'd pinned her with those cold blue eyes and pronounced her unfit to wed his friend. That memory stirred the fierce, slow-burning anger Reid had always been able to rouse in her. The jolt of antipathy brought her to her feet.

  She had a house to set to rights and fields to plow. She had a family to care for and animals to tend. Somehow she had managed to bring them to David's house and David's land. Somehow she would ma
ke a life for all of them here—for Tad and Cissy, for Violet and Eustace, but most especially for the babe nestled and growing beneath her heart. That baby and this house were David's final gifts to her, and she would treasure each of them to the end of her days.

  And no matter when he came or what he said, she'd give Reid Campbell no part of this, no part of what was hers.

  * * *

  Settling the cabin took the rest of the day. Livi knocked down the spans of spiderwebs and washed the walls while Violet swept and scrubbed the floor. Eustace hauled the creels into the house for the women to unpack. They scoured and found places for the buckets, the basins and bowls, the pans and cups and trenchers. They tucked away extra shoes and clothes and bolts of cloth.

  Then Violet jumped down into the rectangular root cellar that had been carefully lined in stone and concealed beneath the cabin's floorboards. The "turnip hole" served as storage for the cold-weather foodstuffs, and while Livi and Cissy handed down turnips, potatoes, and the last of the carrots, Tad and Eustace ferried sacks of seed corn and meal up to the loft. Together they saw to the animals. As the light waned and the birds winged home to their nests, the Talbots and the Hadleys downed a simple meal and dragged themselves to bed.

  Weary to the marrow of her bones, secure in the house David had built for her, Livi should have slept as she had not been able to sleep in weeks. Instead she lay awake.

  She listened to the faint hiss of the fire, to the easy cadence of her children's breathing. She breathed air thick with the tang of resinous pine and the smell of the coffee they'd brewed for supper. She watched the shadows dance against her whitewashed walls and tried to tell herself all was well.

  That was hard for her to believe when restlessness crawled across her skin and hummed along her nerves like a swarm of bees. She shifted and stirred in her fine new bed. She fought the urge to move, fought the need to escape, fought the raw desolation that bloomed around her heart.

  For weeks Livi had held tight to her anguish and despair, denied her loneliness and grief. But tonight, in the safety and the silence of David's house, those emotions crushed past the last of her fragile defenses. As the turmoil rose in her throat, Livi fled the bed she was sharing with her daughter. She crept around Tad's pallet near the fire and took care not to wake the Hadleys in the loft. From habit as much as from need, she caught up her pistol and pulled her cloak off the peg by the door. Without making a sound, she lifted the latch and stole outside.

  The moon rode high, casting the clearing, the fields, and the woods beyond in shades of indigo and black. The air was chill, the stone steps cold beneath her feet. Wrapping herself in the folds of her cloak, Livi sank down on the top step.

  She must be mad to come out here alone, she told herself. She must be mad to eschew the safety of her bed for the dark and empty night. Yet she'd fled the cabin instinctively, needing space for her emotions. Needing solitude to let them free. Needing to know that her children were tucked safely away so she could spare them the sounds of her grieving.

  "David." Her husband's name worked its way up her throat on a sob. "David."

  She was more aware of losing David here, where his dreams were furrowed into every acre of ground, than she would have been any place on Earth. He should be walking these fields, welcoming her to this house, filling the clearing with hope and joy and purpose. He should be here to hold her in his arms and spin the fragile span between this crude beginning and the glorious future he had envisioned for all of them.

  But David was gone.

  Livi curled in upon herself, shrunken by the scope of her despair, the emptiness inside her. Tears scorched down her cheeks. She balled the cloth of her cloak in her fists, wept silently and openmouthed. She shook with spasms of dread and hopelessness. She was desolate in a way she'd never even begun to imagine.

  David was dead. She had held him as he breathed his last. She had buried him with her own two hands. But for her children's sake and her own. For the sake of the journey she'd felt compelled to complete, she had tried to deny the truth. Instead she had cloaked herself in David's ambitions, in David's dreams. She had told herself that if she reached this patch of rich Kentucky earth, David would somehow be with her.

  He was not here.

  There was only this valley, some cleared fields, and a log cabin to console her. So little, when she'd convinced herself there would be something more.

  With the final acknowledgment of her husband's death came the realization that she was truly alone. No longer could she draw warmth from David's fire, live her life beneath the arc of his embrace, claim his hope as her prerogative. Without David, there was nothing for her to cling to for support, for courage.

  Grief twisted her insides, wringing from her pride and fortitude. And leaving in it's wake a deeper and even more terrifying truth.

  From the night they'd met, Livi had defined herself by what she'd seen reflected in David's eyes. Without him, she was formless, soulless. Without David to remind her who she was, Livi had lost herself. She didn't know what she wanted or who she was. She didn't know where to go to find resolution, perseverance, and strength. Realizing that she was nothing without David frightened her more than being alone in the wilds, battling Indians, facing her own death.

  David's passing had destroyed something down deep where her own dreams lived. Each one of the sweet, fragile visions she'd harbored of the future had David at its heart. She'd drawn serenity and strength from imagining them standing arm in arm, surveying the life they'd built together. Imagining them dancing at their children's weddings. Imagining them dandling fair-haired grandchildren on their knees.

  Hers were dreams all wives and mothers shared, but now that David was dead those dreams became impossible. There was no core to form her life around; all she had left were the ashes of a future that would never be. Now that there was no one to give her substance, the Olivia Talbot David had loved had ceased to be.

  She wept again—for David, for herself, for the destructions of every hope she'd ever cherished. She and David had had so much together—love and passion, unity and friendship, security and hope. They'd taken joy in the good times and somehow weathered the bad. On this cold and lonely night deep in the Kentucky wilderness, Livi clung to her memories of the days they'd shared in Lynchburg.

  * * *

  Lynchburg, Virginia

  November 1768

  Loving David was easy. Making a life with him was the hardest thing Livi had ever done.

  They'd been married less than a week when Livi got her first glimpse of David's home, a rough-hewn structure plopped down in the middle of a windblown field. It was only then that Livi began to realize the scope of the change in store for her.

  "I know the house isn't much," David began, his gaze not quite meeting hers, "but we'll fix it up. I promise you."

  Livi nodded, taking note of the crooked chimney, the sagging steps, the barnyard shed that slumped against the south wall of the house. The interior was no more inviting. It was neat enough, but there were no curtains on the windows, no rugs on the floor, no sense that David lived here. The furniture consisted of a bed just barely wide enough for two and a table with one lone chair.

  My father's slaves live more comfortably than this, Livi thought and was instantly overcome with shame at her disloyalty.

  "I'm sure the house will be fine," she assured her husband, lying to him for the first time.

  But it wasn't fine. The roof leaked and the chimney smoked. There were mice in the cupboard, and the smell of the animals in the lean-to permeated the house. Dirt sifted between the wallboards and down from the roof, so no matter how often she wiped the table or swept the floor, a fine layer of grit glazed every surface.

  The nights when Livi lay in David's arms, enchanted and petted and cherished, she was filled with unimagined joy. The mornings when she awoke alone, the cold and loneliness replaced the magic with despair.

  David worked at George Wilkins' blacksmith shop in town three days
a week. The demands of the woods and fields and animals that were part of the leased property took up the rest of his time. His long absences left Livi with hours alone and nothing but housework to do.

  Her mother might well have overseen Livi's lessons in sewing and deportment, might have approved of her daughter learning to read and cipher. She might even have turned a blind eye when Livi sat in on her brother's lessons in Latin and Greek. But Jessica Chesterton hadn't taught Livi the first thing about keeping house—except that no lady dirtied her hands with such menial tasks.

  In David's cabin domestic responsibilities fell to Livi herself. Making the bed, sweeping, and dusting did not tax her overmuch. Cooking, on the other hand, seemed some mysterious alchemy, as complex and impossible as trying to turn lead to gold.

  Livi made beans and corn bread for their first supper in her new home. It seemed simple fare, something she could manage by herself. When David returned from the blacksmith shop, he exclaimed over the table as if it were laid with porcelain and silver instead of with wooden cups and trenchers. They took their places with Livi in the chair and David balanced on a three-legged stool he'd brought in from the barn. They bowed their heads for grace then spooned up the meal Livi had slaved over most of the afternoon. The beans clattered onto the plates, hard as pebbles and swimming in a pale, noxious broth. The corn bread, which was burned black at the edges, ran raw in the center. The next night she boiled the potatoes dry and charred the slice of ham she was frying. The third night she caught the hem of her gown afire.

  After each domestic disaster, Livi wept and David took her in his arms. "You'll learn to cook," he assured her, kissing away each tear. "All it takes is a little time and practice. There are some simple things I can show you that might help..."

  The next time he went into town, David brought back the cow Mr. Wilkins had been boarding. Minnie came with lessons on milking, on caring for the milking paraphernalia, and on making butter.