by Kelli Estes
“Kaia has been living with me.” Grams led the way up the stairs. “She’s saving money for a down payment on a house, which we all know will take a while in this market, and I love having her company. It’s a win-win situation, and now I get you, too.”
Grams flicked on the overhead bedroom light and crossed to the adjoining bathroom to turn that light on as well. “Towels are under the sink where they always are, but if you need more, you can find them in the laundry room. I put new shampoo, conditioner, and body wash in there for you, but if you want something different, we can go to the store tomorrow. Is there anything else you need tonight?”
Larkin looked around the small corner room and let the peace envelop her. Grams had decorated this room in soft moss and cream tones with splashes of pink, Larkin’s favorite color. The queen-size bed butted against one wall with a window over each of the nightstands. The other wall was filled with floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out on the strip of forest separating Grams from the neighbors. Larkin wouldn’t need to close the blinds for privacy if she didn’t want to. “It’s perfect, Grams. Thank you for letting me stay here.” She dropped her bags on the floor but kept the urn in her arms.
Grams laid a warm hand on her arm. Her intense gaze made Larkin want to look away. “You girls have always had a home here.”
The pesky ball of emotion that had plagued Larkin since she left Missouri was back, stronger than ever and filling her throat until she felt like she was choking. All she could do was nod and hug her grandma when she was pulled into her arms. The urn felt awkward between them, a reminder that she would never hug Sarah again and that Larkin didn’t deserve all the love Grams heaped on her. Tears started spilling from her tightly clenched eyes. Unwilling to let them show, Larkin turned away from Grams. “I’ll see you in the morning, Grams. Good night.”
She hurried into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her, and held her breath until she heard Grams leave. Then she slid to the floor, still hugging the urn. With a bath towel pressed to her face, she sobbed.
* * *
Larkin lay in bed for what felt like hours, but sleep would not come. Her mind was alert, her body ached, her heart felt like a raw wound. Coming home was the best thing—the only thing—she could do right now, but it was also difficult. Out in the world, she could pretend to be strong and unwounded. Here, they knew her. Knew her innermost self and all the not-so-pretty things that hid there.
But they didn’t know it all. They didn’t know what she’d done.
Before her thoughts could go further down that road, Larkin clicked on the bedside lamp next to Sarah’s urn and got out of bed to dig through her rucksack, looking for the diary she’d found in the storage unit. It had put her to sleep last night. Maybe it would do the trick again.
With the book in hand, she settled back in bed and opened the diary to where she’d left off.
July 22, 1861: My heart aches so that I fear it will never be healed. My worst fear has happened. Pa has been killed. The captain of the 9th Indiana Infantry wrote in his letter to us that the skirmish at Laurel Hill, Virginia, had been a Union victory, so Pa’s death was not in vain. I feel such anger when I think about that, as though his life meant nothing more than his usefulness to the Federal cause. His usefulness to us, his family, was much, much greater, and now he has been taken from us. He will never read these words. He will never stand beside me at my wedding. He will never hold a grandchild. He will never again look across his fields with his eyes crinkling in the corners the way they always did and say, “We are blessed.” No one is blessed now. Not so long as there is war.
Also received a letter from David today with more terrible news: he is reenlisting after his term is up in a few weeks. Now that he is the head of the family, he feels the enlistment bounty will be of more use to us than his return right now. They’ve both gone and left us here alone.
Larkin closed the diary and shut it away in her nightstand drawer, regretting that she’d read it at all. Emily’s list of all that her father would miss echoed through her mind and turned into a list of all that Sarah would miss. Falling in love, getting married, having kids, growing old.
She was so stupid. People got killed in war all the time. Why had she thought reading this Civil War diary would be a good idea? She could only imagine what her therapist would say if she knew. This is a sensitive subject for you. Maybe you should read something different, something life-affirming.
Or nothing at all. That’s what she’d do. She’d avoid all books. She’d avoid everything, in fact. And since her doctors did not trust her with prescription anti-anxiety meds, she’d use the next best thing.
Larkin cracked open her bedroom door and listened. Silence. Grams and Kaia must be asleep by now.
In the dark, she tiptoed down the stairs to the corner cabinet in the family room where Gramps used to store his booze. It was too dark to see what was there, but she didn’t care. Anything would do. Grabbing the first bottle she saw, Larkin unscrewed the cap and took a slug, ignoring the sting as it went down her throat.
Vodka.
Pausing to breathe, she felt tears leaking from her eyes and used her sleeve to wipe them away.
With the bottle in hand, she settled on Gramps’s old recliner, sitting sideways so she could see through the windows to the dark backyard and know if anything was out there. Too bad she didn’t have her night-vision goggles. Then she could really protect her family.
Protect her family. Yes. That’s what she must do.
Gulping more vodka, she got to her feet and started to clear the room—search it for threats—when she remembered she didn’t have a weapon.
Gramps had guns, but they were locked away, and besides, Grams probably took all weapons out of the house before Larkin arrived. They couldn’t let a suicide risk be near weapons, now could they?
Larkin laughed at the image of herself as a crazed person searching for a gun so she could blow her brains out. That’s not how she’d do it. It’s not how she’d tried it. She’d used pills. Guns were too messy. With pills she could go to sleep and never wake again.
She took another drink and stumbled into the kitchen in search of something to use as a weapon. A knife? No. Grams would kill her if a perp got blood on the carpet. The metal meat mallet? Yes. Perfect.
With her new weapon in one hand and the vodka in the other, Larkin set about clearing the house of threats. Methodically, she went room to room on the ground floor, searching all dark corners and potential hiding spots for invaders, insurgents…bad guys. She giggled at that one and then hushed herself. This was serious work. She checked every window and door lock twice, tugging on them to make sure they were tightly latched.
When she was satisfied the first floor was secure, she moved up the stairs to repeat the process there. Four bedrooms, four bathrooms, one linen closet. Larkin started with the empty guest bedroom and bathroom, then she moved to Kaia’s room.
Easing the door open, Larkin peered inside and could just make out the shape of her cousin lying on the bed. The only noise was Kaia’s deep, even breathing. Still, that didn’t mean there wasn’t someone else in here, waiting to attack. Moving quickly, Larkin checked behind the door. Clear. She went to the windows and made sure each was closed and locked. The deep shadow between the wall and the dresser could hide a person, so she swung the mallet into the space, hitting nothing. Getting on her hands and knees, she peered under the bed and wished she’d brought a flashlight with her. Awkwardly, she shifted onto her stomach and swung the mallet into the dark. When the mallet hit something, she hit it again, harder, before realizing she was hammering on a plastic storage box.
She pushed up to standing and realized with dismay that the vodka bottle had spilled onto the carpet. Damn. She left the empty bottle on the dresser. Kaia’s room was secure. Now for her bathroom.
Out of habit, Larkin switched on the overhead lights as she
crept into the bathroom, and then cursed as they seared into her brain. “Damn it!”
Still cursing, she threw back the shower curtain to make sure no one was hiding behind it.
“Larkin?” She froze. Kaia’s voice. Uh-oh. “Larkin, is something wrong?”
Larkin forced a laugh. “No, no, nothing’s wrong. Go back to sleep.” She turned off the light and hurried to the door.
“Want me to make you some tea or something?” Kaia was standing next to her, but she didn’t look right. Larkin squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again. Where her blond hair should be, Kaia had a dark cloth over her head. Instead of her kind blue eyes, Kaia looked at her with angry black eyes.
Larkin swung the mallet.
“Larkin, stop!” Kaia caught her arm in her surprisingly strong grip. “What are you doing?”
Kaia’s bedroom flooded with light. Larkin blinked and saw that it was only Kaia standing there, not the insurgent she thought she’d seen. She didn’t know what she’d thought she’d seen, now that she considered it. The room had been too dark to see much of anything at all.
“What’s going on in here?” Grams stood in the bedroom doorway, her hair a mess and her knee-length pink nightgown making her look like a little girl.
Larkin dropped her arm to her side and tried to make sense of what was happening.
“I think Larkin was having a flashback or something,” Kaia answered. “And she’s drunk.”
Larkin tried to think of something to say to apologize to Kaia for attacking her, to apologize to Grams for waking her, but nothing came.
“Come on, Lark.” Grams gently took the mallet away from her, handed it to Kaia, and wrapped her arm around Larkin’s shoulders. “Let’s get you to bed. You must be exhausted.”
Larkin let Grams escort her back to her room where she tucked her into bed as though she were five. Just before switching off the light, Grams sent her a look that was something between sadness and fear. “Try to get some rest.”
She clicked off the lights and Larkin was left in the dark, wondering what the hell had happened.
Nightmares plagued her the rest of the night, and it wasn’t until sunrise that she finally fell into a restful sleep.
Chapter Six
October 2, 1861: Washington, DC
For nearly two months Emily did her best to be helpful on the farm, but her mind was always elsewhere. If she wasn’t thinking about Pa and wondering if he could have been saved, had she or Ben been with him, she was thinking about David and wondering if today would be the day she would learn of his death.
She felt their absence in her body, as though a piece of her own flesh had been ripped away and discarded. The remaining wound stung and festered.
A surprising idea sprang to life one hot afternoon when they were threshing the wheat. Emily normally loved when she was allowed to do farmwork rather than women’s work at the house, but her uncle was in a bad mood all day. From the way he yelled, one would think they had completely neglected to separate any grain from the seed heads, but when Emily looked at the pile of discarded straw, she could find few missed grains. Samuel’s anger put them all on edge and turned Ben’s ears red.
Emily had wanted nothing more than to step between her uncle and brother and yell back, but she knew better than to embarrass Ben and anger her uncle even more. Instead, she had kept silent and continued her own threshing work, all the while dreaming about a day when she and Ben wouldn’t have to live under Samuel’s rage.
She didn’t know how it happened, but that dream had shifted into plans. They could escape Samuel, she knew, simply by walking off the farm.
They could go to David and stop worrying once and for all that he had been cut down by a rebel bullet.
They could follow his regiment and see that he got enough food and rest. She could wash his laundry, and Ben could hunt for squirrels to supplement David’s rations.
It would be an adventure, and they would be a family again. What was left of it, anyway.
Without knowing she’d made a decision, Emily started preparing to set her plan into motion. She secreted food from Harriet’s larder little by little until she had enough to sustain her and Ben during their travels to western Virginia, where David’s last letter had come from. She collected clothing and some personal things she could not leave behind, like their family Bible, the diary Pa had given her, two steel nib pens, a bottle of ink, soap, and the money David had sent.
Convincing Ben to join her proved a bit more difficult.
“What would Harriet and Samuel and the kids do without us? They need us to keep the farm running.”
Guilt nagged at Emily, but she pushed it away. “Andrew is old enough to do more work than they ask of him,” she’d answered. “And you know they can always ask neighbors to help with the harvesting and canning and trading. Besides, nothing we do is ever up to Uncle Samuel’s standards. He would be happy to be rid of us.”
Ben had reluctantly agreed to think about the idea.
Emily knew she’d miss Harriet and Ada. She loved them as though they were her own mother and sister, but Harriet had never once defended Emily or Ben against her husband, and Emily knew Harriet would always put them last. It was time for Emily to follow her aunt’s example and put her own family first.
She’d finally convinced Ben to leave by reminding him that his eighteenth birthday was only a few weeks away. If he still wanted to, he could enlist and fight the secesh alongside David. She did not want to see him in danger, but she would be there with him, following the camp and taking care of her brothers. She’d keep them safe.
All that was left to do was to choose their day of departure, and that’s when another letter arrived. This one was sent by a Private Thompson who informed them that David had taken ill and was being cared for at a hospital in Washington, DC.
Without knowing the nature of David’s illness, Emily was beside herself with worry. She informed Ben that they would leave in two days.
They snuck away late on Saturday night after Emily told her aunt that Ben was sick and unable to attend church the following morning and that she, Emily, would stay home to care for him. She hoped their absence wouldn’t be discovered until Sunday afternoon, or even Monday morning when they didn’t show up for chores, giving them a large-enough head start that no one would come after them.
Traveling to the capital turned out to be much more difficult than they’d anticipated. With the help of strangers and railroad employees, they found their way, but it was more indirect than expected. They had to take five different trains—each with its own ticket—plus sleep a night in each town where they transferred.
Emily had never traveled beyond Orange County. She found that she loved watching the landscape pass by from her window seat on the trains, and she loved imagining what people’s lives were like on the farms or in the cities they passed through. Emily could have managed on her own, and it rankled when fellow travelers looked to Ben as though he, being a man, was her caretaker.
By the time they finally arrived in Washington a week later, they were exhausted and down to half their cash.
Emily had never seen so many people and animals in one place, and the sights, sounds, and scents were overwhelming. She was grateful for the protection of her brother’s strong arm as they crossed through traffic on a busy street, picking their way past wagons groaning under the weight of their loads, high-stepping horses with riders who did not seem to see pedestrians, and both open and closed carriages of every size. The number of people and horses on that street alone had to be more than the entire population of Stampers Creek.
Men had an advantage in a city such as this, Emily quickly learned. The trousers and boots they wore made stepping through mud and horse refuse much less of an ordeal. Emily did her best, but she could not move as fast as Ben as they made their way from the railroad depot to the hospital. He hi
d his frustration at having to slow for her, but she was equally frustrated. Now that they were this close to reaching David, they could not get there fast enough.
The partial dome of the Capitol Building under construction served as a landmark, and they headed that direction until it was time to veer down a side street to the private home turned into a hospital where David had been delivered two weeks prior.
They rushed up the steps and through the doors, where they were met by a stench that had Emily reaching for the handkerchief she carried in her sleeve. She gagged as the smell of rotting flesh and putrid wounds worked through the thin cotton she pressed to her nose. Through watery eyes, she watched a confusion of commotion as people bustled in all directions. Nurses in their starched aprons and caps carried armfuls of linens or trays of food. One passed them carrying a basket full of bloodied bandages. Soldiers, still muddy from the battlefields, leaned against the walls in various states of misery, awaiting attention. From a back room somewhere, she heard a man calling out for his mother and another yelling at him to shut his trap.
It all made Emily’s feet want to turn right around and head out the door. But David needed her. She gripped Ben’s arm tighter.
“Excuse me,” Ben said to a nurse in a starched uniform rushing past with a brown bottle in one hand and a leather strap in the other. “We’re here to see our brother. Can you tell us where we can find Private David Wilson?”
She did not break her stride as she shook her head and called back over her shoulder, “Ask the nun at the desk.”
Seeing no desk, they pushed their way farther into the wide entry hall and finally found a reception desk near the back, although no one was working there. Emily looked around and spotted a soldier coming toward them from a side room. “Excuse me,” she called to him.
The man had short, curly brown hair cut close to his head, and his rounded cheeks reminded Emily of Teddy back home. Although his arms were full of what looked to be bandages and bottles of medicine and he clearly had someplace he needed to be, he politely stopped for them. “I only have a moment. What do you need?”