by Natalie Dean
No matter how many times Bernadette Dixon played the words over in her mind, no matter how many times she read them on the wrinkled piece of parchment in front of her, she couldn’t make herself believe it.
Her husband, Frank Dixon, the man she had vowed to love forever, was gone. Dead on a battlefield in Virginia.
They said that General Robert E. Lee had surrendered there. At Appottomax Court House. They said the war was over.
Just yesterday, Bernadette had been elated by this news. She had laughed with her sister-in-law, Lizzie. Both women had joined others at Lizzie’s boarding house in drinking to the victorious Union.
Yesterday had been a day of celebration and good tidings on many fronts. Even Bernadette’s visit to the doctor, at first fear inducing, had proved to be a joyous occasion.
Now, sitting alone in her dark boarding room, the room she used to share with Frank, yesterday’s joy seemed little more than a distant memory.
Two letters sat side by side on the wooden writing desk beside the bed. One in Bernadette’s own happy, loopy handwriting, the other in the careful, measured hand of an unknown soldier.
She’d received the letter that morning, just as she made her way down the boarding house steps to mail her own letter to Frank. The letter telling him the good news that the doctor had given her one day before.
The letter that proved they were about to become a true family.
When Lizzie handed Bernadette the letter addressed to her, Bernadette had known instantly that it was not from Frank. She knew her husband’s writing as well as she knew her own. Frank’s hand was hurried, slanted and sometimes illegible. It always looked as though he was so eager to get his thoughts down on paper that he had no time to worry about form, penmanship or readability.
This straight, measured hand was as foreign to her bright, energetic husband as it was to her.
Her heart had attempted to prepare itself as she opened it. Her heart had told her that this could mean nothing good.
All the preparation in the world could not have kept her from crumpling against the wall when she read the words.
Mrs. Dixon,
It is my unfortunate duty to inform you that your husband, Frank Dixon, has perished on the battlefield.
Now, sitting at the writing desk, she stared at the words again. Hoping or perhaps fearing that, at last, they would sink in. At last, she could fully understand their meaning and begin to rebuild.
Rebuild.
Create a new life.
That seemed impossible now. For the past two years, when Bernadette thought of her life after the war, she had always imagined Frank by her side.
When the war ended, she had pictured them buying a piece of farm land in rural Pennsylvania. Of course, Bernadette had never worked on a farm before. She knew only the basics of cooking and nothing about hunting eggs or keeping livestock. But, in her fantasy, it wouldn’t matter, Frank would be there to help her, to guide her and show her what to do.
She imagined their children, at least three, surrounding them.
Now, all these fantasies disappeared in the foggy haze that had begun to form in her eyes again.
She tried to force them back as her eyes moved from the letters to the only other item on the desk. The one that had been sent to her along with the letter.
Swallowing hard, she lifted Frank’s tattered Bible from the desk. As she opened the leather cover, she could feel the age of it in her hands. The pages had yellowed and become brittle with wear. Some were slightly torn and smudged. The little book carried evidence that it had been read thoroughly.
This was the Bible Frank always carried with him. The Bible that his father had given him when Frank was baptized. The Bible she imagined she would give to their son…
Swallowing back more tears, she opened the cover to the first page. There, he’d copied down his favorite verse.
“Be strong and courageous,” it said. “Do not be afraid. For the Lord, your God will be with you wherever you go.”
Bernadette closed her eyes, trying her best to remember what those words meant. Trying her best to feel strong and courageous just as Frank would have wanted her to.
She did not feel either at the moment. And, despite her best attempts to feel strong, to take comfort in the Lord, she did indeed feel terrified.
Unable to stop it any longer, Bernadette felt a lone tear slide down her cheek. She opened her eyes just in time to see it splash onto the open Bible, smudging the words that Frank had written there.
Almost as soon as the tear splashed down and smudged the ink, a knock sounded from the door.
“Bernadette?” Lizzie’s voice sounded from the hallway. “Bernadette? May I come in?”
“Just a moment,” Bernadette called out, fully aware how thick with tears her voice sounded.
As she closed the Bible and set it back on the desk, she wiped her face with a nearby handkerchief. Her mother’s words from when she was a little girl came back to her inexplicably.
“You must always do your weeping in private, Bernadette,” she would say. “A true lady can never show her greatest weakness.”
After she had run off to marry Frank, Bernadette had made a great effort to forget about her parents. Indeed, when Frank was alive, there were days that she felt that she was just a simple soldier’s wife. That she was not a disgraced Philadelphia socialite.
But, today, all the habits and breeding her mother and various governesses had pressed on her from childhood came back. It was almost like a carrier pigeon who, while the world is falling apart around him, clings to the instinct to fly home.
It was this instinct that forced Bernadette to quickly pat down her dark blonde hair, making the knot atop her head as neat as she could manage. It was also this instinct that caused her to free her bright brown eyes of tears that still threatened to drop, straighten up as best she could and give Lizzie a sad smile as she opened the door in greeting.
“Please, come in,” Bernadette said quietly. Though, she knew her mother would have been proud to hear that her voice was no longer thick with tears.
Despite this, Lizzie looked at Bernadette critically, as though she was trying to see through the polite façade the other woman had so recently adopted. Finally, Lizzie heaved a sigh and nodded down to the cup and saucer in her hands.
“I brought you a cup of tea,” Lizzie said. “I thought it might do you some good after…”
“Thank you,” Bernadette said quickly, closing the door behind her sister-in-law. “Set it on the desk if you would, please.”
She moved across the room and placed the tea just above the letter Bernadette had received and next to the one she would now never send. Bernadette realized too late that both pieces of parchment held evidence of her tears.
Lizzie’s eyes glanced from these towards the now closed Bible.
“I feel I must apologize for making such a scene downstairs,” she said quickly, hoping to tear Lizzie’s attention away from the desk. Luckily, her sister in law did turn. The critical look Lizzie wore at the door had softened, and she now gave Bernadette a sympathetic smile.
“There’s no need,” Lizzie said. She grasped the chair from the desk and pulled it over towards the bed where Bernadette was now standing. As her sister-in-law lowered her large frame into the small chair, Bernadette also allowed herself to sink down onto the bed.
“I remember when I received the letter telling me about David,” Lizzie said. “I made much more of a scene than you did. In fact, I locked myself in my room for days and refused to venture out. Frank…” Lizzie’s voice stopped at the sound of her brother-in-law’s name. Her voice catching in her throat. “…Frank…minded the guests until I was ready. He was only seventeen at the time but, he wanted to take charge. Said he didn’t want to push me until I was ready to work again.”
Bernadette glanced up at Lizzie who was now looking down at the ground. Her chubby cheeks had gone redder than Bernadette had ever seen them, and she saw a hint of water forming in the
older woman’s eyes.
“He…he was kind that way,” Bernadette said. “Always eager to do what he could for others.”
Now it was her turn to glance at the ground. Half ashamed that she had been afraid to show her true feelings to Lizzie. After all, if anyone could understand what Bernadette felt, it was her.
David, Frank’s brother, and Lizzie’s husband, had been killed in one of the war’s earliest battles. Before Frank had joined up, before he and Bernadette had met at all.
Perhaps that was why Bernadette had never truly thought of Lizzie as a wife. When she thought of her sister-in-law, the word ‘widow’ always followed any other title. Now, when she looked at this woman, making very little attempt to hide the sorrow in her face, Bernadette realized that Lizzie had once been as she is now.
A happy wife, devastated by the sudden loss of a husband.
“Did the letter say how he passed?” Lizzie asked once she had dabbed a bit of the water from her eyes.
Bernadette nodded.
“A bullet to the side,” she said. “The letter was sent by one of the men in his unit. Before he died, Frank asked him to write to me and give me his last words.”
Bernadette regretted revealing this last secret. Now that the words were out, Lizzie might ask to hear her brother-in-laws last sentiment. After all, she and Frank had grown close since David’s death. Frank had become something of a brother to her.
But, Bernadette knew his parting words had been meant for her and her alone.
Luckily, Lizzie did not ask to hear her brother-in-law's parting remarks. She simply nodded at the news and took another breath.
“I suppose you did not have a chance to tell anyone but me of your…condition,” Lizzie said delicately. Bernadette shook her head.
“Only you and Dr. Wells know about the baby,” she said. “I wrote to Frank last night but…”
When she thought of the second letter in her own handwriting, sitting on the desk next to the first, she could not bear to finish the sentence. Water filled her eyes once more but, this time, she had no desire to wipe the tears away.
Several fell down her cheeks as Lizzie reached across the space between them and covered Bernadette’s small hand with her larger one.
Bernadette looked up at her sister-in-law and attempted a smile of gratitude, but the still falling tears stopped it from forming. Soon, going against all her mother’s advice about how proper ladies should handle tragedy, she found herself heaving great gasping sobs on the bed as tears rolled freely down her pale cheeks.
In a moment, Lizzie stood, crossed the room, and sank down onto the bed next to her. The larger woman wrapped her arms around Bernadette and, still sobbing uncontrollably, Bernadette laid her head against Lizzie’s ample chest.
She closed her eyes as the sobs continued. Lizzie stroked her hair and hummed a soothing song, the way a mother might comfort a child who has just awoken from a nightmare.
They stayed like that a long while. When Bernadette’s sobs finally subsided, she opened her eyes and raised her head.
“I fear I must apologize again,” Bernadette said. The manners she was raised with returning out of habit.
“Once again, there is no need,” Lizzie said firmly. She removed her arms from Bernadette’s shoulders and gave her back a last comforting pat. “After all, I understand what it is to lose a husband to war.”
Bernadette nodded and wiped her eyes with the handkerchief once more.
“And, though I do understand that you cannot consider anything now,” Lizzie said hesitantly. “I did wish to ask you if you’ve thought about what you will do, with Frank gone.”
Bernadette shook her head ‘no.' As hard as she’d tried, staring at that letter, she could not force herself to picture a life outside of Frank. No matter what his last words to her said.
“I know you are not on the best terms with your parents,” Lizzie said gently. “But, considering this, perhaps…”
“No,” Bernadette said firmly. She had burned the bridge between herself and her family too thoroughly for it to ever be rebuilt.
Lizzie nodded, though Bernadette noticed that her face fell just slightly.
She could not pretend she had not imagined this the moment she read the letter.
Lizzie had been allowing Bernadette to stay in a room at the boarding house rent free. With the understanding that, when Frank returned, the couple would move out and slowly begin to pay off the debt they had accrued.
Now, when there was no promise of the money being repaid. Not to mention a child, another mouth to feed on the way, the deal they had imagined was null and void.
“You know you are welcome to remain here until you are ready to make other arrangements,” Lizzie said as gently as she could. However, Bernadette knew that as kind as her sister-in-law was, this was meant to be a temporary solution.
“With regards to those other arrangements…” Lizzie trailed off, and she bit her lip as though unsure what she should say next. Finally, as though making a firm decision, she moved back to the chair she had been sitting in when she first arrived in the room.
Bernadette now realized that, on it, sat a black and white newspaper which had been turned to one of the back pages.
“I thought these might be of some use to you,” Lizzie said. She moved back to the bed and handed Bernadette the page. Bernadette took it slowly, curious, despite herself.
When she looked down, she saw what looked to be several advertisements of a very personal nature. They bore headlines like…Man, 35, slender build, seeking to make the acquaintance of a woman, 22 or older, with an eye towards matrimony.
There were four or five of these in a row, some bearing grainy photographs, most with physical descriptions. All of them were from men living in Texas or further west.
“I thought, with the child, it will be difficult to make do without a husband,” Lizzie said as gently as she could. “And, I do realize it is…soon…but, you might consider it when you are ready.”
Bernadette was silent for a good long while, staring at the advertisements, unable to fully take in their meaning. The idea of taking another husband was as foreign to her as the idea of Frank’s death. It seemed unfathomable, impossible.
None the less, here it was. One option out of the very few Bernadette had available to her.
Finally, realizing that Lizzie was standing, clearly expecting permission to leave the room, Bernadette looked up and cleared her throat before speaking.
“Thank you, Lizzie,” she said as kindly as she could. “I will consider it.”
Lizzie nodded before giving Bernadette another sympathetic smile and leaving the room.
When the door closed, Bernadette’s first thought was to crumple the advertisements and throw them across the room in disgust. She could not possibly consider marriage to any man while her husband was still warm in his grave.
But, when she took another deep breath, she realized just how foolish and sentimental that thinking was.
Those feelings might have been well and good were she not carrying her husband’s child. Lizzie was right. It would be impossible for Bernadette to raise a child on her own. With no family, no husband and very few skills that would lend themselves to a trade.
The longer she considered it, the more she realized that these advertisements were not just one option of a few. They were, perhaps, the only option she had available to her.
Carefully, she stood from the bed and, taking the newspaper page with her, moved back to the desk. She moved her two letters aside to make room for the new, thin parchment. As she did, she glanced back at the letter she had received that morning.
Looking down, she found her husband’s last words to her.
“Live on, my darling. For me. Pray to God. He will always help you.”
Frank expected her to live on. To, perhaps, realize their dream of a farm and a family. These advertisements presented one way in which to do that.
Pray to God.
Bernadette had never been as faithful in her Christianity as her husband had. She attended church with Frank. But, other than that, she was loath to admit that she gave God little thought.
But, now, she realized that Frank was right. God seemed one of the few friends she had left in the world.
So, closing her eyes, she prayed.
“God,” she said quietly. “Please help me to do what Frank asked of me. Help me to live on.”
She waited, with her eyes closed for a long while. It was as though she was hoping for a sign. Some lightning bolt or at least a warm feeling. Something to tell her that her prayer had been heard.
No such sign came.
But, she had to admit that, after sitting, still and silent with her eyes closed, she felt a small sense of peace. When she opened her eyes again, she felt a good deal calmer than she had one moment before.
So, with another deep breath to quiet her still grief-stricken heart, she began to read through the list of men searching for a wife.
Chapter 2
‘Nearly there,’ Bernadette thought as she was bumped and tossed about in the carriage on her way towards Fort Johnson in Wyoming Territory. ‘Not long now.’
As they hit another bump, she gasped and held her stomach. She had felt a sharp kick from the child within as though in protest at the rough ride.
“Are you sure you are well enough to continue Mrs. Dixon?” Doctor Parson, an elderly man with balding gray hair and small spectacles, asked squinting at her in concern. “I can ask the driver to stop for a bit if you need to rest.”
Bernadette shook her head fiercely and attempted to give him a smile.
“Thank you for your concern, Doctor,” she said. “But, it’s not long now. I am sure I will be able to ride the rest of the way.”
The doctor looked at Bernadette through narrowed eyes as though trying to see through her. Instinctively, she put her hands over her dress as though folding them in her lap, determined to hide the bump which was growing there.
His wife, a tall, stately woman seated beside her husband now turned to Bernadette as well. She attempted to give the woman a smile even as her face burned with shame.