Heart's Surrender

by Rosanne Bittner

  “Do not cry, agiya. It is over now. We will go home. Your sons wait for you not far from here—all three of them.”

  She clung tightly to him. It was real! Adam was here, holding her. He still loved her, and her son, her first-born son had found his father and brothers. “Adam, I’m scared,” she sobbed. “How can I face them? How?”

  He smiled sadly, kissing her hair, rocking her. “It will be easy. You are their mother. A son never stops loving his mother, and one of your sons has never even known his mother. There is nothing more he wants in the whole world than to see you, agiya. We all love you. They came with me through hellish terrain and Comanche country to find you. Does a man do that for someone he does not love? Even now Mexican soldiers could be after us, so we have hidden ourselves well.” He pulled away slightly, kissing her forehead. “Let me fix your hair. I brought perfume and powders and a couple of your prettiest dresses. Let’s go see our sons, Andrea.”

  She hung her head. “But I’m so…thin, and I must look—”

  He took her chin gently and raised it. “Look at me, agiya.”

  She raised sky-blue eyes to meet his dark ones. It was the first time she had allowed herself to look directly at him, and in that moment she knew nothing had changed. How beautiful he still was, and there was so much love in those dark, hypnotic eyes. It seemed impossible he could still love her.

  “When a man loves a woman, he does not love her only if everything goes right and all is perfect. If he loves her, he loves her.” He kissed her lips, gently, ever so gently. “One day you will again know the beauty of that love, the beauty of a kiss, the beauty of touching—all the things we once shared, agiya. If it takes a month, a year, five years, it does not matter. It will happen, because nothing can change our love for each other.”

  “But, Adam—”

  He put his fingers to her lips. “Your husband has spoken. Do you think we went through all that hell just to find you and leave you here? We love you. You are a Chandler. You belong with us. Now let’s get you dressed. Don’t you want to see your sons?”

  Her lips quivered. “I don’t even know…how old they are,” she said softly.

  He smoothed back her hair. “Stephen—that’s what our Nathan calls himself—he is nearly twenty-one. Jonas is eighteen and John Ross is close to seventeen.”

  Tears of love and sorrow slipped down her cheeks. “Grown! All grown.”

  He brushed at the tears. “Never too grown to love and need their mother. Come now. Stop crying so your eyes won’t be all red.”

  “I can’t…stop. I’ll never stop.”

  “Yes you will.” He kissed her cheek. “We are going to have the peaceful, comfortable life I promised you so many years ago, Andrea. Finally we will be happy and together. It is not too late for us. Come now. Let’s fix you up, then go to our sons and get the hell out of this country.” He helped her up and walked her back toward their camp. “We have a pretty little house in St. Louis. We’ll stay there a while. And then we just might go back to Georgia. I have everything now—my sons, my wife, my land. We’re going back, Andrea. We’re going to go and sit under that oak tree, just you and me, like when we met.”

  She leaned on him. Adam. This was Adam. This was real.

  “I hope they come pretty soon,” John Ross mumbled, poking at the fire with a stick. “I want to get out of this country and go back to St. Louis.”

  “You and me both,” Jonas answered, lighting a cigar.

  John Ross sighed. “What do you think she’s like? Father wouldn’t even let us look at her.”

  Jonas blinked back tears. “She must have been pretty bad. He handed her to me to hold while he got on his horse and it was like holding a—” he choked up—“a damned bag of bones. It makes me sick,” he hissed.

  John Ross threw the stick aside. “At least we found her. If anybody can help her, Father sure can. He sure loves her a lot.”

  Jonas smiled sadly. “Don’t we all? I hope I can find somebody someday I’d love that much.”

  Stephen had been several feet away, quietly watching the horizon. He came over to them then and sat down. “You two, do you think…well, do you think…she’ll like me?” They both looked at him in surprise. “Well, I mean…she’s never met me or anything.”

  Jonas burst into laughter then, and John Ross snickered. Stephen scowled. “What’s so funny?”

  “Jesus, Stephen, what a dumb question! You’re her son!” Jonas sobered then, realizing Stephen had been serious. He punched his arm. “Hey, brother, as far back as I can remember our mother and father talked about you, wondered about you. Mom cried over you I don’t know how many times. She gave birth to you. Of course she’ll like you. Fact is, Father was probably right. I know how much she loves me and John Ross, but like Father said, you’re the trump card. The way she must be feeling, well, she might just want to die or something. But when Father tells her you’re with us, hell, how can she resist that?” He puffed on his cigar and then threw it aside before reaching over to squeeze Stephen’s arm. “Stephen, she’s going to be pretty low.” He looked at John Ross. “Look, we all have to make her know how much she’s loved, and show her that she’s just as respected and honored as she ever was. Let’s help Father get her back to normal, and let’s surround her with so much love that she can’t turn away from it or consider something dumb like killing herself.”

  John Ross looked at him in surprise. “Do you think she would?”

  Jonas shrugged. “Who knows what goes through the mind of a woman who’s been in the kind of hellhole she was in? We can’t let her see any doubt in our eyes, understand? There can’t be any doubt. The best way to get her back to normal is to just surround her with love. Father will need our help for a while.”

  John Ross picked up a stone and threw it. “That won’t be hard.”

  Stephen sighed. “I don’t know about you two, but I’m nervous as hell.”

  Jonas and John Ross looked at each other. “Hey, John, remember when we used to wrestle in the mud back in Indian Territory and Mom used to get so mad at us?”

  John Ross nodded and Jonas winked. In the next instant they both landed into Stephen and the match was on. The young men tumbled and growled and laughed, rolling in the dust like children. After several minutes of scrambling and twisting, Stephen picked up the smaller John, hoisting him across his shoulders and standing up, yelling like a victor. He whirled his brother around, then stopped cold. There, close by, stood Adam, with a frail-looking but beautiful woman.

  “Mother,” he whispered. He let go of John Ross, and the boy landed hard on the ground.

  “Hey, I’ll get you for—”

  John Ross saw her then. Jonas was already walking up to her. He hesitated when he reached her, his eyes full of tears. He ran a hand through his hair.

  “I’m a mess,” he told her awkwardly. “We didn’t know…” He swallowed back a lump in his throat. “Mom!” He reached out and hugged her close then, breaking into tears. John Ross was beside them now. He glanced at his father, who smiled as though to tell him she’d be all right. He put a hand on her shoulder.

  “Mom?”

  She reached out then, and was soon hugging both of her sons, weeping because they were full grown and she’d missed all those years.

  “Hell, we still need our mom,” John Ross told her, kissing her cheek. “You’re gonna be okay, aren’t you? You’ll come home with us and we’ll all be together.”

  They hugged each other and cried for several seconds. Then Adam glanced at Stephen, who stood back, watching them nervously. He broke in on all the hugging, and took Andrea’s arm. “Jonas, John Ross, somebody is waiting to meet his mother.”

  Both boys pulled away, sniffing and wiping at their eyes, and Adam walked Andrea closer to Stephen, who just stared at her. She was beautiful, more beautiful than he had pictured. So, this was his mysterious mother, the cat who had had the kitten that was taken from her, the woman who had sacrificed so much for his father.

>   “Stephen, this is your mother,” Adam was saying.

  Andrea just stared at her first-born. Adam! It was like seeing the young Adam she had first met. Here he stood! But of course this was their son! How handsome and tall and beautiful he was, the son she had never known! If only she could have cradled him in her arms when he was a baby, loved and protected him. What horrors had this son experienced?

  “I’m…so sorry, Stephen,” she said in a near whisper. “They took you against my will. I wanted you.”

  He nodded and swallowed. “I know.”

  In the next moment she reached out to him. But he was so tall and strong it was he who held her, so tightly she could barely breathe. “Mother, my mother,” he whispered. It was all she needed to hear.

  They climbed the ridge together, two people ravaged by injustice, but finding strength in their love, and in experiencing this final victory.

  “Do you think it will still be there?” Andrea asked.

  Adam squeezed her hand. “Of course it will. Man can change the laws, Andrea, but he cannot change the land.” He kept a firm hold of her frail hand. He had got her the best medical care available in St. Louis. There would never be any more children, but she would be all right, in time. And they had their handsome, successful sons, Jonas, John Ross, and Stephen, precious Stephen. Now Adam led Andrea to the place where they had known sweet, pure, innocent love, so many years ago. They had left the horses tied below and now made the ascent, their hearts pounding with dread that for some reason someone might have cut down the tree. Below them, on the very location of Jonas Chandler’s burned-out home, sat a new one, a fine, two-story, brick structure, expensively decorated and furnished. Andrea had servants to help take care of it. They had come full circle, and Adam Chandler once again traveled often to Washington, continuing the legal battle for fair treatment of the thousands of Cherokee who now lived in Indian Territory. Perhaps one day more of them could return to this, their beloved homeland.

  Now it came into view, its sprawling, golden branches stretched out as though to defy time and man. Andrea ran to touch it, pressing her face against the rough bark and weeping. The oak tree still stood. Adam walked around beneath it, looking up, stretching out his arms and thanking Esaugetuh Emissee. And his heart was strengthened in knowing man had removed the Cherokee from this place in body only. But no law on earth could govern the spirit. His eyes filled with tears, and he smiled. “I got it back, Father, just like I promised,” he said softly. “I have come home.”

  “It affords me sincere pleasure to apprise the Congress of the entire removal of the Cherokee Nation of Indians to their new homes west of the Mississippi. The measures authorized by Congress at its last session have had the happiest effects. By an agreement concluded with them by the commanding general in that country, their removal has been principally under the conduct of their own chiefs, and they have emigrated without any apparent reluctance.”

  —President Van Buren’s message to Congress in December, 1838.

  Across America lie the buried bones of the Indian, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, Iroquois and Cherokee; Cheyenne and Nez Perce. In truth, all of America’s soil was once sacred to these people. It remains so. Beneath the concrete walks and heaven-bound skyscrapers lie their bones, quietly waiting. For the day will surely come when the real American will again walk this continent and call it his own. Perhaps it will be in another time…perhaps after the “war of wars.” But it will happen. The Indian will return to his sacred lands, and never again will they be taken from him. It is the ultimate dream of all remaining full-blooded Indians that one day their ancestors will rise, their bones will be fleshed out, and they will walk again. The cities will vanish, the green grass will return. The waters will flow clean again, and the earth will abound with buffalo and all sorts of wild game. Those will be happy times, good times, an age of plenty. All Indians wait patiently for this moment. And it will come…

  Also by Rosanne Bittner

  The Bride Series

  Tennessee Bride

  Texas Bride

  Oregon Bride

  Caress

  Comanche Sunset

  Heart’s Surrender

  In the Shadow of the Mountains

  Indian Summer

  Lawless Love

  Love’s Bounty

  Rapture’s Gold

  Shameless

  Sweet Mountain Magic

  Tame the Wild Wind

  Tender Betrayal

  The Forever Tree

  Unforgettable

  Until Tomorrow

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