A Heartbeat Away: Quilts of Love Series

by S. Dionne Moore

  Beth escaped to check on Joe who slept through most of the excitement. She let him sleep, contenting herself with watching the quiet rise and fall of his chest. Gratified to know that answers might await him in the form of Pearl and Roy. It would be Joe’s chance to learn the truth of what happened that night, instead of living with the fragments his traumatized mind served up in splinters.

  Beneath the window she watched the new wave of women arrive, their sons or daughters doing the driving as the women tried to keep their youngsters in check. Beth drank in the willingness of the townsfolk to help. They asked her about the battle, slack-jawed at the stories she told of the dead and wounded in the fields surrounding Sharpsburg. Smells of death. Of Teresa Kretzer’s flag and the noise of the Confederate retreat. She knew nothing more firsthand, but was gratified to see the way her stories sparked a caring and renewed dedication in the women toward helping those South of them.

  She noted that Pearl said little, that Roy never said anything, and that he stayed close to her father in the buildings surrounding the farmhouse, always busy loading something more into the bed of an already full wagon. She knew that the reason for the man’s silence extended beyond working hard. She wondered if the very women who flocked to hear the stories of the battle would gasp in horror and brand the Bumgartners as traitors if they knew a Rebel soldier lingered in a spare bedroom upstairs, or that Pearl and Roy, and Roy’s father Jonah, were all from the Deep South, escaped slaves that had found a home with her mother and father.

  With every wave of women, her stories had to be retold. Until, finally, the telling had chipped at her and she sought out Joe as she had sought him out during the dark days. He slept, and as he did she nestled her hand beneath his and lowered her head to her arms.

  Joe blinked awake feeling like a great bear waking after a long winter. The thought brought a smile. The pain in his shoulder wrestled him back to reality and twisted his lips into a grimace. There was something else, too. A subtle vibration that had woken him.

  He cracked open an eye and saw a black woman at his side. She was smoothing a cool cloth over his warm skin. Every time she leaned forward, the bed wiggled.

  When she saw him watching her, she lowered her eyes and let the rag she’d been using fall back into the basin of water. “I am Pearl.”

  She did not turn and scurry away as so many blacks did in the South in the presence of a white man. Except Lela. The housemaid who had cared for him, Ben, and Sue in their youth, seldom backed down to any man or woman, white, black or otherwise. He’d loved Lela.

  He licked his lips. “Could I have a drink?”

  She raised her gaze to his. “I’ll get you one.”

  “And Beth—I mean M—”

  “I’ll fetch her for you.”

  Her voice nudged him. It was more than the obvious southern drawl. It was familiar. When Pearl returned with water, he drank long and deep. Muscles bunched from disuse. A soreness that registered through his back and sides. Stretching upward, he wiggled himself to a sitting position needing to work the stiffness from his muscles. Pearl took a step back, grabbed up a shirt, and handed it to him without saying a word. He squinted at her. “I know you.”

  She returned his stare, saying nothing.

  Her smooth skin glowed. Her head, wrapped in a kerchief, barred him from seeing her hair to determine her age. Thirties would be his best guess. Southern . . . a V appeared between his eyes as he tried to combine the voice with the face. And then it came to him. He used the footboard to get to his feet, the surprise coursing through him.

  “Ben. You were the ones we rescued.” His world tilted. Spun. He hung on.

  “We’re forever thankful for your sacrifice.” Her gaze went to her feet. “For your brother’s kindness to us.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  She passed him the tin of water.

  He ignored it.

  “You found us in that rundown—”

  He waved his hand impatiently. “No. Ben. My brother was shot. What do you remember?”

  Pearl shrank back, sensitive to the forcefulness in his voice.

  He stuffed back his anxiousness. He reached for the tin of water and gulped it down, passing it back to her with a smile he did not feel. “Please.”

  She stared at her feet. “He rose up out of nowhere. Your brother was helping you along the way as fast as he dared to go, aiming us toward Maryland. We was almost there when that man rose up in front of us. He had no eyes for us, just your brother.”

  Her words stirred the memories. He remembered falling. A sudden thrust away from Ben’s side.

  “Shoved you away from him and went to swing his rifle around, but the man raised his and fired before your brother had a chance. He crumpled to the ground. Ray tried to carry him, but your brother was bleeding too much . . . he was dead. You were all we had left and you’d already told us the direction we needed to take. We vowed we’d get ourselves North, then find you some help. Roy asked around for a woman who might be kind to a Rebel and we waited ’til midnight to go to the woman’s house. She fed us. Told us to go to Jim.”

  His anger rose hot, hotter than the fever that raged off and on. He didn’t want the general story, he wanted specifics. His rage gave him strength and he took a step closer to her. “You must know who shot him.”

  She shrank away from him, her eyes wide.

  He stilled and tried to rein in his emotion. “A description.” But it had been dark. Even his image was vague, the mismatched uniform his only clear clue and he often wondered if that had been a product of his dreams. “Sounds. The time or place. Did Ben say anything?” Hadn’t he heard Ben’s voice utter something in his dreams?

  “Please, sir!”

  Her shriek pulled him back to what he was doing. His hand on her wrist. His grip tight. He released her immediately and retreated.

  She burst into tears and his anger blew away like chaff on the wind. He stared at his left hand as if its grip had betrayed him. Pearl slid away from him and bolted out the door just as Beth entered the room, confusion knitting her brows.

  “Joe?”

  He half-turned. “I scared her.” Truth be told, he’d scared himself.

  “They’re the ones who brought you to us that night. Her and—”

  “I know,” he turned his back to her, gaze landing on the overflowing wagon and the women and men working hard to fill another wagon. More people arrived by the minute. The temptation to go down there and reveal his identity rubbed at him.

  He heard her take a step closer, her skirts swishing as she moved. Her hand on his arm. “Perhaps you should lie down again. I’ll bring you something to eat.”

  He faced her. Her expression glowed. She was home. Happy and whole. And he was miles away.

  Her expression softened and a smile lit her face and set her eyes to dancing. “I think my mother has a pie for you.”

  He drank in the high color of her cheeks, the smooth gloss of her hair, the strand that fluttered around the corner of her left eye. Her smile faded and he wondered if her heart beat as hard as his, or if she understood that she was all he had that was comfortable and familiar.

  His left hand gripped the post, then slipped out to rest at her waist. When he leaned forward, she didn’t gasp in horror or step away, which he took as a good sign. She met his kiss with a gasp that melted to surprise. She allowed her lips to linger on his, took a tiny step closer. She broke the kiss as she stepped back, her expression both amazed and horrified. Her fingers stroked the place where his lips had just lingered. His heart beat like the drone of men marching hard toward the next battle.

  “Beth . . .” her name slipped from his lips and he knew not what he was asking or why he had kissed her. It meant something, a kiss, but he only knew she had been there and he had needed comfort. A sign. Affirmation. But he would not apologize.

  Beth felt bruised by the kiss. She had allowed him a liberty she should not have, while enjoying the unexpected attention much more
than she should. The two points warred within her. She should slap him, but her response had been a chokehold. Her mind told her it was too soon for love. Once he saw her on a daily basis, her limp, whatever affection he held for her would fade.

  They stared at each other for a languorous minute, breathless with the shock of the moment, or the depth of the response the contact stirred. She was his nurse. He had been her support of sorts. A friend.

  Nothing more.

  The milling of people outside the window penetrated the silence of the moment. She still could not look away from his penetrating gaze. No rebuke formed on her lips and she wondered if this would be the first and only chance she would ever have of being kissed. She took a bold step forward. He met her with a hand to her waist, swayed slightly toward her as she rose on tiptoe to taste of his lips again. Maybe he would love her . . .

  His hand circled to the middle of her back though he held her away from him, eyes searching hers. “I’ve got to leave.”

  She didn’t want to hear it. Not while her heart was soaring on the gossamer wings of a new hope.

  He lowered his face to hers, his arm urging her closer. Salt added to the taste of the moment and she didn’t know whether the tears were hers or his or both. She lifted her hand to his face and touched wetness. She pulled back as a sob swelled and choked. Her throat clutched for air and she swiped hard at the tears on her cheeks as his words chanted through her mind. She would soon be alone again.

  25

  He swallowed hard, bereft of her warmth, dizzy. He gripped the banister and sank to the bed, watching Beth. Everything in him wanted to drown out the crazy world and the infernal war and continue this moment forever. But it wasn’t right and they would both regret giving in to whatever was drawing them together.

  Leaving would mean finding answers about Ben. Locating his body and taking it back down South to rest next to his mother and father. He could at least do that. He could rejoin his regiment in some capacity that didn’t require shooting a gun or marching for long distances. Supply wagons needed drivers. But rejoining the fray meant pitting himself against Beth’s North. Somehow claiming sides seemed trivial in the face of what they shared. Though he was not foolish enough to think all would share his view.

  “I’ll write to you.”

  She hugged herself, nodding, not meeting his gaze.

  Her silence was killing him. “Beth, say something.”

  “There is nothing to say. You must do what you think is best.”

  He closed his eyes and massaged his head. Even now he still would not have the strength to travel far. They might still have a few weeks before the fever stopped draining the little strength he did have.

  Her shoulders squared and her chin came up.

  “We have time, Beth.” He didn’t know if he said it for himself or for her, only that he hated the awkwardness of what he had set into motion. “Maybe weeks.”

  “There are men out there who need our help. My help. You expect me to be here by your side as they suffer?”

  “Then maybe I should leave now.” He flung the words at her.

  Her gaze stabbed at him. “If that’s what you want.”

  Beth’s mother waited for her at the bottom of the steps. Flour smeared along the backs of her hands and a smudge marred her soft cheek. “Is all well, daughter?”

  What could she answer?

  Anya’s worry ran deeper, Beth knew, but her mother was and always had been a woman of few words. “Jim has offered to take him across the Potomac so he will avoid being taken prisoner.”

  She shuddered at the thought of Joe hauled off to a Union prison.

  Her mother wiped her hands down her apron, face angled back toward the kitchen and the women who came and went in and out of the house. “Make sure he is fed well and he’ll gain his strength quickly.”

  “If the fever would just go away.”

  Her attention returned to Beth. “It will. Give it time. Give him time.”

  She glanced hard at her mother, wondering at the emphasis of the statement, but Anya was heading back toward the kitchen, out of earshot.

  By nightfall, the wagons were packed and ready. The men would drive them into Sharpsburg in the morning. She had volunteered to return, but her moment of bravery melted as the grandfather clock ticked toward midnight. Every horror she’d witnessed beat at her. Too easily, she could recall the unreality of going about a normal routine while surrounded by the groans of men mauled by an enemy to whom they could not put a name. She felt, again, the stretch of nerves they labored under for those three days leading up to Wednesday. Again and again she recalled those moments in the cellar when all three of them had huddled with Joe as the dying soldiers’ breaths became more and more labored, more ragged. The shells raining down with no thought for the damage they had already incurred or the men who twitched or screamed at the familiar sounds that had already claimed legs or arms or sanity.

  She sighed and swept back the light blanket knowing sleep would not come while her mind spun. Sitting up, she let her feet touch the floor, swung them back and forth, returning, for an instant, to the childlike innocence of measuring the distance of her feet to the floor. She sprang up as the image dissolved and shrugged into her dressing gown.

  Her hand had just clasped the doorknob when a board outside her door released a groan. Someone was moving down the hall. Panic gripped her. Joe. It had to be him packing up in preparation of leaving. He had seemed so determined. She had sent Jim to care for him after their kiss, unable to face him or the result of the cross words she’d spoken.

  When she stepped into the hallway, she saw that the broad back at the head of the steps was too wide to be Joe’s.

  “Jim.”

  The black man glanced over his shoulder at her, but kept moving. She followed, determined to know whether Joe had made plans. If his fever still raged. If Jim judged Joe strong enough to cross the Potomac on his own . . .

  At the landing, she stepped into the circle of light that encompassed Jim and was surprised to see her mother and father.

  “It is late, daughter,” her father admonished.

  “Shouldn’t you be to bed as well?”

  “Your mother was worried.”

  “You said yourself you couldn’t sleep either,” Anya protested.

  Her father’s soft chuckle was his admission. “Sit and join us, Bethie”

  She turned to Jim. “How is Joe?”

  The black man sagged onto a bench. “When I took him food, he picked at it. I told him he should eat and he tried . . .”

  “Jim came to get me,” her mother inserted. “His fever is back. I checked the wound and replaced the bandage but I fear there is something deep inside him that is causing the redness. Doctor Bradley is a risk.”

  She knew it to be true. The Mercersville doctor had no use for anyone with secesher sympathies.

  “What about . . .”

  “They’ve all headed south to aid our army. I’ve done what I could. Pearl helped me open the wound and clean it out. All we can do now is pray.”

  “But he was so much better this afternoon.”

  “The conditions under which you and Gerta worked were less than ideal and her eyes were old. You can’t blame yourself, daughter.”

  She wondered, then, if Pearl had told her mother of her encounter with Joe.

  “He seems bent on leaving to find his brother.”

  “Ben is dead,” she said, her voice flat.

  “Oh.”

  She didn’t miss the anxious glance her mother sent her father, no doubt sharing her distress over the thought of Jedidiah dying. “Have you . . . heard word from Jed?”

  “He is well. He hopes to slip away to see us but they are busy burying those that fell and he doubts he will be able to come.”

  Her heart rose with the news. Jedidiah. In Sharpsburg. Walking, talking, alive.

  “His message confirms that it is the nightmare you expressed.”

  She shuddered and
pulled the edges of her wrapper tighter. Jim rose and slipped out the back door leaving them alone as a family. Her father and mother shared a look she could not interpret.

  “If Jed returns, it could be a problem, Bethie.”

  Her father let the statement dangle. Her knees went weak as the meaning dawned and she slipped onto the last empty chair in the room. “Joe.”

  “Jim seems to think he means something to you. He says Gerta saw it, too.”

  “Saw what?”

  Her father fidgeted. “A bond. Something more than that of a woman caring for a sick man.”

  She wanted to laugh. To dismiss the statement as absurd. Her, a cripple, loving a man? She’d loved Riley and he had turned his back on her. Beth’s attempt at dismissing her mother’s words sounded more like a strangled groan than a laugh. Was this the reason Gerta and Jim had brought Joe along? Despite him being the enemy. The kiss had changed everything. Unexpected though it was, she couldn’t deny the emotion it had stirred. All the feelings she thought herself incapable of, dead to, had surged to the forefront. For a moment, too, she had hoped for something more than the menial existence the injury had left her. And then Joe had talked of his need to leave . . .

  When she focused on her mother and father, they were sharing a long look. She would have to let Joe go. She had no choice.

  “You must stay here with him,” her father stated. “I don’t want you back in Sharpsburg, or Boonsboro. Not now. Stay here. See Joe back to health.”

  “He’s leaving.”

  Anya frowned. “Not in the condition he’s in now.”

  It was her turn to frown. He would grow restless again. She’d seen it before in his unconsciousness and it would be there again. While she could understand his need to discover what had happened to his brother, she didn’t understand why he had to leave to do that. He could stay and make a vow. But he would have to have a reason to do so, and Joe had never expressed love for her.