“That’s wonderful. But it isn’t what I asked.” A strand of hair blew across her freckled face before she hooked it behind her ear. Her eyes held his steady. “It must be so difficult for you, having doubt cast upon your relationship to Ana.”
He smiled. “There was never any doubt.”
“But—”
“I owe you an explanation.” His vision beginning to spin again, Noah sat on the porch steps and patted the rough boards next to him.
“It’s such a personal matter, please, if you’d rather not …” But she stepped closer, and he took her hand as she sat beside him.
“I want you to know. ” He pressed a kiss to the back of her hand, then released it. “Once upon a time, I was twenty-four years old, had been in America for four years, and all I did was work and study. I had no time to learn the rules of courtship in the South, let alone actually try my hand at it. I was as naïve as they come. But having left my entire family in Germany, I longed to one day have my own. I was so lonely. I longed for intimacy—not just the physical aspect, understand—but to know another person on the deepest level, and to be known, truly known, in return. I craved companionship and love.” Indeed, he was starved for it.
“Go on.”
Noah picked up a broken branch of boxwood and absently plucked the glossy leaves from it, one by one. “Susan’s father was a city council member who I had often seen and spoken with in city hall, where I worked as a legal clerk. One day, after I mentioned I’d be leaving soon to practice law in Georgia, he told me I was to court his daughter. That she was too shy to tell me herself, but she had fallen in love with me, and he was giving his permission and blessing to marry her. She was young and beautiful. Scores of men flocked to her all the time. I could hardly believe my good fortune, that of all those men, she wanted me. I’d assumed her to be a girl of froth rather than of substance, but if she saw something in me when so many shunned me for being an immigrant, perhaps I had misjudged her. Turns out, I hadn’t.”
Caitlin nodded, and Noah felt like the fool all over again. Shame wormed through his middle even now.
“We had a whirlwind courtship, her father pressing for a wedding right away. I was so blinded by her charm that I did not stop to ask why. And in that short amount of time, she had made me believe she loved me, though not nearly as much as I thought I loved her.”
“Thought?”
“It was the haze of infatuation. True love needs time to cultivate and grow, to be tested and refined, to mature.” He dropped her gaze like a hot coal, tossed his stripped branch to the ground.
Crossing his arms, he focused on a knot in the pine floorboard. “Well. It was not happily ever after for us. On our wedding night, she turned her back, both figuratively and literally. Other than a few chaste kisses before the wedding, I never touched her. She pushed me away completely, said I disgusted her.”
“But why?” Caitlin’s eyes were wide.
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“No, it is not!”
Noah stifled a chuckle when Caitlin’s cheeks flamed red. “I was not the man of her dreams. I was a nobody, from a foreign land, with no real money or family name to speak of. And she was in love with someone else.”
“Truly?”
“Truly.”
“But she must have had a change of heart about you.”
Noah shook his head. “She never did.”
She frowned. “Not one time?”
“No.” His eyes bore into hers, willing her to understand what he was loath to say. “The marriage was never consummated.”
Her hand covered her mouth. “But—but—”
“At nineteen years old, Susan was in the family way, courtesy of another woman’s husband. It wasn’t until we had moved to Decatur that I learned of her delicate condition, a secret she said even her father didn’t know.”
“Then why did he rush the marriage?”
“It would seem he had read the writing on the wall, so to speak. He decided to get her safely married off—and quickly—rather than risk the scandal she seemed so bent on creating. I was a convenient groom for the purpose, with my relocation already planned.” A grim smile bent his lips.
Caitlin whispered something he couldn’t hear, then nodded for him to continue.
“I told her I’d remain her husband, for what was a girl in her condition to do?” He shook his head. “She chose independence over motherhood. Susan was not ready to be—how did she put it? ‘Locked away in domestic isolation.’ So, no sooner was Ana’s name written in the family Bible than did we have our marriage annulled. We had a lawyer draw up paperwork renouncing any legal claim Susan had on Ana. She signed it without a backwards glance, went north to Chattanooga, and I brought Ana with me here, to this very house, along with a mammy to be her wet nurse. That was supposed to be the end of it.”
Noah risked a glance at Caitlin.
She shook her head, pressed her fingertips to her eyelids before speaking. “You could have given up the baby to an orphanage,” she said. “She is not your blood.”
He smiled. “No. But she is my Heart. After Susan, she was all I needed.” Noah’s heart was in his throat as his broad hand swallowed Caitlin’s. “Until now.”
Atlanta, Georgia
Thursday, September 1, 1864
How is he?” Noah laid a hand on Caitlin’s shoulder, and she covered it with her own.
“I fear he is worse.” The cuts in Jack’s chest had been superficial, but the ragged wound in his leg gaped, the edges bruised. Fever sweat soaked Jack’s saddle-brown hair, and delirium wagged his head. “Should we fetch a doctor?”
“No doctor would come, my dear.” Naomi soaked another strip of a parlor slipcover in fresh water and mopped the beads from his face. “Those that are left are stretched beyond their limits with cases far more severe than this. Let me tend him for a while. Ana will read and keep us company, won’t you, dear?”
Propped up in the corner, Ana held up Robinson Crusoe and grinned.
“I’d offer to take you for a walk to get some fresh air, but there is nothing fresh about Atlanta.” Noah’s lake-blue eyes soothed Caitlin’s raw nerves.
“I’d have to decline anyway. You aren’t exactly presentable.” She smiled and cocked an eyebrow at the hair overlapping his ears.
“Aha!” Naomi fished in her apron pocket. “There’s the scissors, dear.”
Warmth spread across her face.
“You were saying?” Noah winked.
“Yes, please, cut Papa’s hair, Miss McKae, he looks like a coondog!”
The reminder of Rascal’s absence darted through Caitlin and everyone else in the room, though no one spoke of it. Recovering, her lips tipped in a smile as she accepted the scissors and led the way to the back porch, ignoring the tripping of her heart.
“I’m not going to find any lice in here, now am I?” Caitlin teased as she pulled a comb through Noah’s hair, sending shivers down his spine.
“Oh no, they all evacuated along with the Yankees. Ana even confirmed it yesterday.”
“Did she now?” Caitlin’s laughter tickled his ears. “I can just imagine her inspecting you as if you were both chimpanzees.”
“That’s about the way it went, too.” He closed his eyes as the comb and Caitlin’s fingernails raked through his hair down to his neck. The ringing in his ears had receded, but his head still ached—less so, however, under Caitlin’s touch.
“The change in her spirit is remarkable since you’ve been home,” she murmured. “Her little heart was wasting away for missing you, I think.”
Noah started to nod, but she placed her palm against his brow. “Don’t move. I’m cutting now.”
“Not too short.”
“Don’t you trust me?”
If he could only see her face. “Trust is a fragile thing.”
“Look down please.” She tipped his head until his chin dipped almost to his chest. The cool blade of the scissors ran across the nape of his neck as she sn
ipped. “It is indeed.” Her breath feathered his skin.
“I’ve had a hard time trusting ever since Susan.”
“For good reason.” She combed and tugged his hair, snipping here and there.
“I had a hard time trusting you. You had secrets.”
“But is it any wonder I kept them?”
“No.” Caitlin had explained them to him shortly after he’d shared about his artificial marriage. The scar on her jaw. The scar on her arm. Her reckless enlistment. The Rebel’s New Testament found in her hand after the Battle of Fair Oaks, which had caused the misidentification that sent her to Atlanta. He had suspected she was from the North, but her soldiering had come as a shock. It also meant she could understand him, and what war did to a man’s soul, without him needing to explain himself.
“And are you quite disappointed I’m a—” She bent to his ear. “Yankee?”
There was nothing about her that disappointed him in the least. “Remember I told you I enlisted to defend my homeland. And the men I fought beside were some of the bravest I have ever known. But if I lived in the North, I would have fought with as much vigor to defend the Northern ideals of freedom and a united nation. That’s why I fought in Germany, with my brother, you know. For democracy and equal rights for all citizens.”
“ ‘There is an unseen battlefield, In every human breast, Where two opposing forces meet, And where they seldom rest.’ Sound familiar?”
“Yes!”
“It was printed on a page you tore from Balm for the Weary and The Wounded, on which you wrote one of your letters to me. I’ve always thought the lines were beautiful.”
“Now a Yankee is quoting from a Confederate devotional book. Maybe there is hope for this country yet.” He chuckled.
Caitlin circled to his front and cocked her head as she measured the length of his hair on both sides. “To tell you the truth, I wouldn’t care if I never heard about North, South, Union, Confederate, Rebel, or Yankee again. I’m more than ready for this war to be over.” Her tone carried the conviction that only a veteran could feel. He understood her. Finished trimming, she stood back. “The question is, are you?”
She handed him a looking glass and he inspected his reflection. What he saw—other than a man with a tidy haircut—was a soul conflicted. An unseen battlefield, indeed. He set the mirror down.
“I just—I just need to know if I should be bracing myself for you to go away again.” Caitlin dropped her scissors in her pocket and folded her hands in front of her apron. “If we should be preparing Ana for another departure.” Her gaze skipped his eyes and darted between his ears, instead, apparently still judging her handiwork. When she reached out to measure the lengths one more time, he caught her wrists, and stood.
Finally, her eyes met his. Her fingers twined in his hair. “I just don’t want the lengths to be uneven,” she whispered.
Noah felt somewhat uneven himself.
“Are you leaving again?” She repeated the question.
“I don’t want to.”
“But does that mean—”
Noah bent his head, kissed the freckles on her nose. His lips brushed hers as she turned her face to the side. Her hands slid down his arms, fingers digging into his biceps.
“Noah Becker, if you kiss me right now my heart will be yours forever whether you live through another battle or not. So please, have mercy. Don’t take my love until you know you can keep it safe.” Her pulse beat visibly in her neck. “I want this moment as much as you do,” she whispered. “But I don’t want to be made useless pining away for you if this is all I’ll ever have. A kiss would ruin me with longing for you.” She turned to face him once more. “Don’t you know I ache for you enough already?”
Noah’s heart seized as tears glossed Caitlin’s eyes. At length, he released her, though his arms felt hollow without her.
She nodded, lifting her chin in that determined way of hers. But her trembling lips said nothing.
“Caitlin! Mr. Becker!” Naomi burst onto the back porch. “The government warehouses have been thrown open to the city! We are free to carry away as many sacks of grain as we can!”
Noah frowned. “They are giving the food away?”
“Come see!”
Noah and Caitlin looked at each other, then hustled through the central hall and out the front door of the house. Sure enough, a handful of residents were carrying grain home, either on their shoulders or with wheelbarrows.
Naomi volunteered to go, and Noah pulled Caitlin back in the house. “They are evacuating the city.”
“Who is?”
“The government! The soldiers! They are giving Atlanta up! There is no other reason to abandon such a precious commodity. If I’m right, the army will march south out of the city yet this day.”
Noah was right. In fact, they marched out of town on McDonough Street, just beyond his front door. Battle raged afresh inside Noah. He wanted to stay home. But were his wants relevant? Didn’t every soldier now tramping south with bare feet and broken spirit long for their own family and hearth? What gave Noah the right to enjoy the comforts of home—even a torn-up home—when thousands of other men still marched though the fight had gone out of them completely?
The Confederacy was a lost cause now, anyone could see it. But Noah had committed to it.
I’ve also run from it. Twice. Visions of the fifteen deserters being executed scrolled across his mind. They will shoot me on sight if they recognize my face.
A dull headache pounded at his temples as he glanced at Jack’s young face. What was he, all of twenty years old? Noah had risked his life to bring Caitlin’s brother here, and he was hanging on to life by a thread. When Wilhelm had died, the grief had all but crushed Noah. How could he leave Caitlin to suffer this loss alone?
Noah’s gaze moved to Ana, his little girl with broken legs. How would the Yankees treat the people of Atlanta when they arrived? For certainly, they were on their way. Noah set his lips in a firm line. He could not stay, nor could he leave. Not yet.
The weary, mournful cadence of Noah’s comrades carried on the sticky breeze as they trudged past his house and out of Atlanta.
A hundred months have passed, Lorena,
Since last I held that hand in mine;
And felt the pulse beat fast, Lorena,
Tho’ mine beat faster far than thine …
Night was a void of both sight and sound. Not even crickets chirped. Everything in Atlanta was death-still.
Especially Jack.
By the light of the moon, Caitlin unwound the bandage from his leg, the odor becoming sharper with each layer removed. By the time the cloth was fully off, she could not help but cover her nose. Her stomach twisted as she bent closer. The bleeding seemed to have stopped, but—what color was the skin? Oh, for a decent light!
“Still up, I see.” Naomi’s soft voice drifted from the doorway. “And how is your patient?”
“Come look at this, if you can, please. I can’t make it out, but—”
Naomi’s stride hitched several feet from the table. “Oh no. That smell.”
Caitlin backed away, eyes wide, as Naomi swept closer to the table. “What do you need? More water?”
Shaking her head, Naomi released a weary sigh. “Water will not help him, now. It’s gangrene.”
Dread corkscrewed through Caitlin. “What do we do?”
“Nothing. You must brace yourself, dear. It will play out cruelly.”
“Surely you don’t mean—isn’t there anything that can be done?”
“Nitric acid might kill the infection before it eats away his leg. I heard the doctor say that iodine worked well, but we never had any of that at the Car Shed. An amputation would remove the infection before it could take his life.”
Caitlin’s pulse rocketed.
“Prepare yourself.” Naomi laid a hand on her shoulder. “I fear this is one battle he will not be able to win.”
Shock rippled over Caitlin’s skin, raising goose bumps
on her arms. “No. This does not end here, not like this. I’m going for a doctor. Dr. Periwinkle will come, I know he will. Stay with him?” She did not wait for Naomi’s response before running out the door. Her little brother had come for her. She would not fail him now.
The Car Shed. Whatever patients were still left in town would be gathered there for evacuation, Caitlin guessed. And where patients were, there was bound to be a doctor. She would start there, at the depot.
With her skirt in her fist, and her heart in her throat, her feet carried her north, around holes blasted in the streets during the siege, and over ruts carved by army wagons giving up on Atlanta. Gravel entered her shoes at the seams and ground her feet as she ran, but she did not stop. Her stays cut into her ribs as her lungs sought breath. Jack could not die. Dr. Periwinkle would help. He had to.
But before she even reached Hunter Street, a quarter mile south of the train tracks, an explosion ripped through the night with the force of a runaway locomotive, jolting the earth beneath her feet. Tongues of flame erupted skyward. Caitlin covered her ears against the tremendous noise and watched in awe as buildings rocked like cradles, the glass in every window shattering. Chinks of light appeared through brick and wood as shrapnel pierced the walls.
Suddenly rooted in the dirt road, Caitlin clapped her hands over her ears, waiting for it to end. The ghoulish red sky pulsed with flame and arcing rockets. Crash followed desperate crash while sparks filled the air with countless spangles. Time disappeared.
Strong arms circled Caitlin’s waist, pulling her back, away from the trembling buildings, breaking the spell that had bound her. It was Noah, she knew without looking. She would find no doctor tonight.
The explosions lasted for hours, the astounding booms punctuated by the rapid-fire rattle of musketry. The Rebel army was destroying its own munitions that had been loaded into the remaining trains.
To Caitlin, every hour lost was an hour closer to Jack’s death.
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