Sometime in September, on a Saturday after the new school year had started, the compulsion to see her was so strong that he hauled himself over a mile on his crutches, straight to the boardinghouse they had visited two years before. He camped out on a nearby corner for three hours, half-hidden, hoping for a glimpse of her. He had no idea if she had returned to the city, if she lived there, or what he’d do if they met. He only hoped that if he could see her happy, maybe he could forget her. Maybe he could find some contentment in releasing her live her life. Or at least free himself to die.
As he kept watch, he saw a young woman with a tangle of black hair nearly as wild as Johanna’s exit the front door and stroll off toward downtown. He saw a pair of twins leave and then return. And he recognized the boardinghouse’s proprietress, Mrs. Calkins, when she returned from some errand. But Emily didn’t appear. At the end of the afternoon, he took himself home with keen disappointment.
He made no further attempts to see her, and for the next month he went out of his way to avoid all areas of town containing any association with her. The visit had been a weak and foolish gesture. What would he have done if she’d spotted him? Made a quick getaway? On crutches? What if they’d spoken? What could he possibly have said to her?
He’d been stupid. He vowed it wouldn’t happen again.
Summer slid into the cooler, shorter days of fall, and the nights grew cold and long. His job provided the one incentive to leave his room, to maintain his tenuous grasp on the world. It was the only time his mind and body were busy enough to forget past and future and focus solely on the present. After that afternoon in front of Emily’s boardinghouse, he worked as many hours as possible. The lot adjacent to the train yard was the one place her memory failed to follow him.
He never expected her physical presence to ambush him there.
On the last day of October, Jovie swung around the corner of the dray company’s recessed doorway and nearly ran into a woman coming out the door. He stepped back, his heart scorching. He recognized her instantly, but it took a moment for her to see past his ragged beard, his unkempt appearance. Her brow lifted with misgiving.
“Jovie?”
She looked so beautiful, hair upswept, cheeks pink, blue eyes wide and questioning. This was the face that had kept him grounded during two years of war. The face that had haunted his nights ever since. He could hardly contain his shock at confronting the living, breathing version.
Emily’s doubt turned to certainty. Her face radiated joy. She flung herself into his arms. “Jovie!”
His body grew rigid. “Emily, what are you doing here?” His words came out harsh, battered by the hasty walls he threw around himself. He’d barely been able to keep himself breathing these last few months. What was he supposed to do with this sudden appearance?
She pulled away, raking him with a questioning glance. His name came to her lips with more hesitation. “Jovie?”
He maintained his distance. She had the power to undo him completely. A thoughtless word, a careless gesture. He was on shaky ground. After everything he’d endured, could he possibly will himself to keep on living if she wounded him now? “Come with me.”
He wheeled abruptly, leading her away from the door and into a cramped alley where he spun to face her. “How did you find me?”
She lifted her chin. “Why did you hide? Jovie, you have people who love you. Family. Why didn’t you come home? Why didn’t you write?”
She was as forthright as he remembered, and the ammunition she used in her initial barrage bruised his heart. But he was accustomed to the feeling. He hunkered down safely behind his walls. “I didn’t want to.”
His words caused unexpected devastation. Her face crumpled. Her voice cracked. “Why?”
How could he answer? In a million years, how could he get to the end of that question? He looked away from her, out over the alley, where he couldn’t feel the reprimand of her gaze.
“Jovie, your parents held a memorial service for you. They sold Fairview because it held too many painful memories. They think you’re dead.”
Deep anguish flared through his heart. His mother. His father. He hadn’t meant for them to become casualties in his personal war. But this was no time to dwell on regrets. “You wouldn’t understand.”
Her gaze turned cool and accusatory. “You have seven minutes. Try to explain.”
Impatience tugged at him. “Everything’s different now, Emily. Everything’s changed.”
“What’s changed?”
“Everything. Life. The world.”
“Because you lost a leg?”
Yes! It changed his prospects. His outlook. The entire way he related to himself. It left him vulnerable and fragmented. Couldn’t she see that? “I saw no reason to go home,” he said tightly. “I’ve made a place for myself here. I have a job. I’ve moved on.”
“Have you given any thought to me?”
Every single day. Every minute. Every breath. His insides roiled with the answers, but he kept them tightly restrained. It was all he could do to hold them there.
“Will you at least tell me what happened?” she asked. “By all logic, you should be rotting in a prison right now.”
He glanced up and down the alley. The answer still held danger. “I posed as a Yankee.”
“How?”
“I switched uniforms.”
He could see the disbelief, the confusion in her expression.
“I took a bullet the second day at Gettysburg and spent the night too near the enemy for my own men to recover me. I knew I’d be as good as dead come morning, so I switched with the Yankee next to me—uniform, weapons, pack—and ended up in a hospital here in Baltimore.” He managed the entire explanation without a hint of emotion.
Her mouth fell open. “You stole a dead man’s clothes? With metal in your leg?”
“I didn’t say it was easy. But I had my knife, and I had all night.”
“Then that explains your letter and…my picture.”
He looked away again to hide the rawness of his emotion. A thousand times he had regretted leaving that daguerreotype in the dead man’s pocket.
“What if your own men had come back?”
“They weren’t coming back.”
“But how could you know?”
“You get a feel for these things after two years.” He let some of the bitterness he felt creep into his voice.
“How did you keep your identity hidden from the Yankees?”
“I kept my mouth shut. Everyone thought I’d lost my hearing. Maybe my mind.”
“You’ve been feigning deafness for a year?” She reached out a hand in sympathy.
He jerked back from her touch. He needed to maintain distance.
She chewed at her lip, a nervous habit he remembered from childhood. “Jovie, you once wanted to study science and make some kind of difference in the world.”
“That was a long time ago.” His tone was flat. Dead.
“Dreams like that don’t leave a person.”
“Dreams can die as easily as a man.”
The finality, the harshness of his reply seemed to put her off. Her next words came slow and hesitant. “The Maryland Institute has an exceptional chemistry program.”
“No, Emily.”
“Would you at least attend a lecture with me?”
“I said no.”
She suddenly erupted in anger. “Jovie, why are you shutting me out?”
Her outburst cut him to the quick. Their eyes locked. His heart trembled. Everything in him wanted to embrace her. To draw her close and hold on tight. But he didn’t dare. He’d become far too fragile to take chances.
Her words came earnestly. “Jovie, the last time we spoke, you delivered the terms of your friendship. All of me or none of me. That’s what you said. Then you walked away, and I knew immediately that I’d been a fool. I can’t say when you claimed my heart, but you had it then. If you still want me, every last cell belongs to you.”
&
nbsp; His heart crumpled like a tin can beneath a horse’s hoof. How he’d wanted to hear those words a year ago. Two years ago. Five. But it was too late. And they weren’t true. They couldn’t be. How could she possibly love him? A cripple. A killer. She might be blinded by emotion right now, but in time her eyes would open. She would despise him for it. And he couldn’t bear to be there when it happened.
He looked away in despair. “I’m not the same person you knew, Emily.”
“Of course you’re not. And I’m not the same person you left in the street.”
He shook his head, still looking at the ground. His greatest talents were murder. Anger. Hatred. Self-loathing. She deserved someone better. Someone as fresh and innocent as herself. He couldn’t pretend to be that man.
“We change. We grow. It’s to be expected,” she added.
“No, Emily.” He had to end this now. He would have to hurt her. Best to do it quickly. A clean break. “I mean I’m not the same man who loved you.”
The admission stopped her. Seized her up. She probed deeply into his eyes, searching for something. Verification? Weakness? He revealed nothing. “That does change things.” Her words were soft and pain-laced.
He pivoted slightly, turning away again, unable to watch the destruction he’d caused. But he could feel her studying his profile.
“Is there someone else?” she asked.
Thoughts of Johanna crossed his mind. The work they’d done together. The night in the hotel. None of it meant anything to him now. “There’s no one else. Please, just go.”
He didn’t turn to watch her walk away. But he heard her words whispered from the mouth of the alley. They hit his heart like a minie ball, shattering it like bone. “I will always regret loving you too late.”
He hung his head, forcing himself to let her go, and squeezed what was left of his spirit into a tiny, hard ball.
6
Over the next weeks, the conversation with Emily played again and again in his mind, digging him deeper into a well of despair. She was gone. He’d sent her away. But how could he have done any differently? The fact that she’d found him, that she knew he was alive, that they’d spoken, none of it changed anything. The past couldn’t be undone. What had happened, happened, and he could never go back to being the man he used to be.
As winter gathered its strength, Jovie took to wandering around town after work. It burned off the anger that always seemed to be simmering just below the surface, and it cut down on the hours he sat in his room drinking. A thousand times a week he fought the impulse to take himself past her boardinghouse. Instead he would pound his crutches in the other direction, making larger and larger circles around the city. With Christmas coming on, he needed the distraction the hard exercise gave him. Without it, he was certain he’d end up back on the seashore.
One night shortly after the new year, he came swinging up the walk with Emily on his brain, a bottle in his waistband, and hours to go before exhaustion would claim him. It was going to be a rough evening.
As he neared the front door, a figure raised itself off the stoop and squinted at him through the deepening twilight. “Is that you, Mister Jovie?”
He stopped dead. “Jeremiah?”
“Yes, sir. I stopped at your job. They told me where to find you.” Jeremiah glanced around. “I got things to say you might not want broadcast on your front porch. I suggest we take a walk.”
Jovie had no desire to speak with the man. He brought too many memories with him. “What if I ignore you and go inside?”
“I reckon I could stop you long enough to say my piece.”
Jovie sighed. “I reckon you could.” And objecting too loudly would only give away his secrets. He turned around and made for the street. “There’s a bench around the corner.”
Jeremiah fell in beside him, an oak cane tapping in time with his steps. Jovie gave him a sideways look. He didn’t seem to be limping. “You get hurt in the war?”
“No, sir. I don’t see so good anymore, and I got to get all the way back to Washington tonight. The cane helps me navigate after dark.”
“Not an injury?”
“The measles.”
When they reached the bench, Jovie pulled the whiskey bottle out of his trousers and set it beside him. Jeremiah’s squinty gaze landed on it. “I seem to recollect you had sharp words with Jack over just such a bottle.”
Jovie remembered. It was a long time ago. “What do you want, Jeremiah?”
“I came on behalf of Miss Emily.”
Jovie’s attention sharpened. “She sent you?”
“No. I’m here on my own. I thought you’d want to know she left Baltimore.”
“She quit school?” he asked in surprise.
“She finished school, Mister Jovie.”
“She graduated?”
“End of November. That’s the night she told me she was leaving. Too many reminders of you here.”
Jovie chewed on the inside of his lip. Perhaps it was good that he hadn’t known about the graduation. He still felt a kind of ownership in her education. He would have wanted to attend. “She’ll be better off for it,” he said morosely.
Jeremiah considered him thoughtfully. “You know what else they told me at your job, Mister Jovie? They said you’re deaf and dumb. That you don’t speak a word. I’m wondering how long it’s been since you’ve interacted with anybody. How long since you’ve spoken or counted anyone a friend.”
Irritated, Jovie muttered, “It’s safer this way.”
“You’re going to kill yourself, holding off from people like this.”
Jovie’s hands clenched into fists. “What right do you have to come here and lecture me, Jeremiah? You, a black man, for heaven’s sake. A former slave. It’s none of your business what I do or don’t do.” His scowl felt heavy on his face. “What do you care anyway?”
Jeremiah seemed to pull into himself. “This isn’t about color or history or how I feel,” he answered stiffly. “I didn’t come here for me.” He stared Jovie down without expression. “Did you know my sister searched for you for a year? When your family decided to put you in the ground, she sent your picture out to every hospital in the South. And when she got the message that I saw you last spring, she came back here straightaway. She didn’t rest a moment till she found you. Did you know that?”
“No.” And hearing it clamped a fist down over his heart.
“And do you know why?”
Jovie ground his toe into the sidewalk and didn’t answer.
“Because Miss Emily thinks the world of you.”
“Then her affection is misplaced.”
Jeremiah leaned on the handle of his cane, going on as if he hadn’t heard. “If I’m not mistaken, you’ve loved her for years. Do you still?”
“What does it matter, Jeremiah? Look at me. Look what I’ve become.” His voice rose as he gave vent to the anger and frustration building inside him. “Give me one good reason she should love me. Come on. Take a good hard look.”
Jeremiah’s answer was soft. “I can’t see so well anymore, sir.”
Jovie planted an elbow on his knee and dropped his head in his hand.
Jeremiah continued in the same calm voice. “I understand how you’re feeling. I’ve battled the same demons. You’re scared that there might not be anything good left inside you. You hate your insides; you hate your outsides. All you see are flaws, the splintered pieces, and it terrifies you to think the woman you love is looking at you through those same eyes. But I can tell you she isn’t. A woman’s got her own way of seeing things.” He paused. “Did Miss Emily tell you I’m married?”
“No.”
“Yes, sir. To Sarah, your old housemaid. After your parents moved away, Miss Emily helped her to Port Royal and later wrote to her when I was discharged. Sarah fought her way here to me, even after she learned I’m all but blind. She took an angry, bitter man and breathed love right down into my soul.”
“Your situation is different,”
Jovie ground out.
“How so?”
“You’re not…disfigured.”
“Did Miss Emily see you when she came to talk to you?”
“Yes.”
“Did she show any kind of negative reaction?”
“No.”
“Because it doesn’t matter to her. A leg is just a leg. My eyes are just eyes. Sarah loves me with or without my vision. Just as Miss Emily loves you.”
“But it’s so much more complicated than that,” Jovie burst out. “There are so many things to consider. I’m not fit for much, Jeremiah. I’ll never be able to give her what she’s accustomed to.”
Jeremiah gave him a funny look. “Have you seen how Miss Emily’s been living the last few years? Money doesn’t impress her one bit. You know that as well as I do.” He paused. “Every single reason you can put out there will be an excuse. Nothing but fear and pride. If you really want to find happiness again, you’re going to have to open yourself up to it. You’re going to have to trust Miss Emily.”
Jovie drew a shuddering breath. They’d arrived at the hardest, bleakest truth. “I don’t know if I can, Jeremiah. If I glimpsed the slightest hint that she sees what I see when I look in the mirror, it would break me completely.”
The silence of understanding passed between the two men. North, South, black, white—it was all the same in that moment. Then Jeremiah rose. “I got to be getting back to Washington, Mister Jovie.” He laid a hand on his shoulder. “Miss Emily’s in Detroit, at her Uncle Isaac’s, if you change your mind.”
***
It took nearly two months for Jeremiah’s words to battle all the way to Jovie’s core, the two longest, darkest, coldest months of winter. Fear and pride can stake a powerful claim on a man. Every evening became a desperate grappling match. Jeremiah’s story haunted him. Taunted him. He had suffered as Jovie had. The war had inflicted similar scars. Yet Jeremiah had found a way to live life again. To love life again. And at the point where their stories diverged stood a woman.
Ella Wood Novellas: Boxed Set Page 22