Surrender at Orchard Rest

by Denney, Hope

  “I went and visited Charleston to see little Theodore and Elizabeth not long before Theodore died. I told myself I would redeem myself for being lily-livered and talk to him. I made a remark about people being in business with him not making it long. He looked like a man without a soul and asked me what I meant. He knew that I suspected. It wasn’t long after that he died. There’s the part where I don’t know what to believe. Was there an explosion or did he cause an explosion? I’ll never know what to think. Was it an accident or not? Did his conscience reawaken in the end so that he had to kill himself?”

  Joseph stopped and stared into space.

  Ivy curled up beside him on the bed and threw her arms around him.

  “You’re going to get through this,” she said. “You only have to live minute by minute and there will come a day where you wonder how you ever let yourself be punished for someone else’s misdeeds. We all punish ourselves for the wrongdoings of those around us. It’s time to stop. It’s a new day.”

  Joseph raked his hands through his hair.

  “I don’t know how to live anymore. I don’t know that I want to.”

  Dr. Harlow stepped forward with a drink offered to Joseph. He pulled a seat close to the bed.

  “Son, you’ve been through the worst thing a man can go through, and now that I’ve heard the words out of your mouth, I understand you better than I ever thought possible. It’s a cold comfort to try to work to hold a family together on a principle that you know isn’t real. You’re going to have to be strong now. You need a drink now, but don’t drown yourself in drink. You lived through a bad thing but it’s over now. You’re a strong, righteous man because you tested yourself. It’s good that you told the truth. You might get better because of it.”

  “I ruined my sister’s life,” said Joseph. “I suspected and suspected, and then I knew the truth. Yet I let her flounder through this life hurt and lost. If I had told the truth, she’d be happy with Sawyer right now and no one would be dead because of me.”

  “You didn’t ruin my life!” said Somerset. “I ruined it. I loved Sawyer, but I never got over Eric. Phillip still would have come to Century Grove for his birthday, and I would have fallen for him because he looked like Eric. I’ve been in a land of make-believe for weeks now where all I had to do was skew my vision and I had Eric back. Sawyer has always been a sight too good for me. I hope one of you will tell him so when he comes back.

  “I’ve hurt more people than I can count and I’ll never make it up to everyone. If you want to blame someone living, blame me, but beyond that, this is Teddie’s fault.”

  “Joseph, I put you in a prison long before Theodore did,” said Blanche. “I favored him and esteemed him. I told you to aspire to be him. If I hadn’t been driven by blind love and favoritism, more of my children might have made it through the war intact.”

  She looked more frail and ill than Somerset knew was possible, worse than the night she tried to kill herself. She thought Blanche aged ten years in the time it took Joseph to tell his story. Somehow her face was more graceful. With the hard façade of youth down, she looked like a graceful, loving woman.

  There might be hope for her after all, thought Somerset, and she excused herself.

  She trudged down the hall and out the back door in her bare feet.

  She’d learned everything about herself that she would ever need to know in an hour.

  She might be a twenty-three-year-old spinster, but she was also fickle and easily swayed. Helping others was in her heart but she had no business chasing down a dream until she had grown up herself. For all her intellect, she was as blind and deaf to people’s hearts and minds as a small child.

  A child is more perceptive, she thought. I’ve wrought madness on everyone I ever touched just because I wanted one thing.

  Eric.

  He wasn’t out there somewhere like Sawyer, on horseback in the Badlands, carving out a new life. He didn’t walk out of a hospital a different man and disappear into the streets not knowing who he was and take a new name only to fall in love with a new woman. He didn’t die of exposure within harsh prison conditions, a blanket of holes and fleas draped over him while his bedmates died night after night.

  He was in a scratched-out grave on the Chickamauga, a bloodied and battered weapon thrown on top of him and hidden with scant mud and branches.

  She found herself at his ugly monument in the middle of Century Grove cemetery. She wasn’t surprised. If she lost her sight, her feet would know the way.

  “I miss you,” she said. “I’ve survived everything that came my way in life because you taught me love. If I don’t live another day, even with all my failures, my life is worth plenty because I know what love is. It’s the only lesson I ever learned. It might be the only lesson I ever need.”

  “Somerset! Somerset!”

  Myra was riding at full gallop toward the cemetery, her skirts flying all around her in whirlwind clouds. She managed to rein in at the gates. Her eyes looked as big as the silk flowers on her hat.

  “Honey, Franklin was at Maple Pool visiting the help, and he came back to say that Sawyer just arrived at Riverside. He came back for you. Franklin said that he was homesick at the end of three days and turned around and came home. Can you imagine what all he’s walked into? Oh, Somerset!”

  “Do you have any money?” asked Somerset.

  “I have fifteen dollars in greenbacks in my corset. Why?”

  “I need your shoes, your horse, and your money,” said Somerset. “You can’t expect me to stay here after I shamed Sawyer, myself, and everyone else in the Grove. I have to leave. Mother has you, and Ivy and Joseph have each other. I won’t stay here and let him tell me that I’m not to blame. He’ll tell me this is all his fault.”

  Myra dismounted from her mare and began pulling money out of her dress. She crammed the bills into Somerset’s waiting hands and slipped off her silly little slippers.

  “Am I to tell everyone the truth about where you went?” asked Myra. “Or am I to say you sneaked off when you heard Franklin’s rumor?”

  “I’m done with secrets,” said Somerset. “You might as well let Sawyer know I’m at Somerset Manor in Baton Rouge. He’s crossed the country for me already. If he doesn’t hate me upon finding out about Phillip, a few more hundred miles aren’t going to stop him.”

  She got on the mare’s back and turned her head in the general direction of Tuscaloosa.

  “Wait,” she said.

  She took a scrap sheet of wrapping paper from her pocket and the pencil she used for writing receipts and scratched a message.

  This is not your fault. I am to blame.

  The most beautiful gift I’ve ever been given is the thought behind seven crocuses on an outstretched palm.

  She folded the paper and handed it down to Myra.

  “When you see him, give this message to him. I don’t care if you read it. You won’t understand it. No one will but Sawyer.”

  “I love you, Somerset. Send a telegram when you get there safely.”

  “I will.”

  Somerset dug her heels into the horse’s side and took off for Tuscaloosa. She had to get away from her mistakes, away from the impending funeral, away from the hurt she inflicted. She needed solitude to figure out who she was and what she wanted. She wanted the easy freedom of a relaxed town where no one would recognize her if she took care to be discreet.

  As she rode on the dirt lanes and country paths toward town, she gazed at the tall pines on either side of the road. The spiky needles were as green as Sawyer Russell’s eyes.

  The thought should have made her nervous or sad, but it was a natural comparison. Sawyer was home and when he found out she left, he would come after her.

  She didn’t know what she would say to him. The words in her apology didn’t matter as much as the fact that she would be glad to look upon his face once more, the same way one is glad to see the face of long-gone loved one in a dream, even if all he did was upbraid he
r when he arrived.

  The fact that he returned was hope that some things could be set right. The promise of better times was all she needed to sustain her until a better day arrived. They could talk on the river without the loud hustle of Orchard Rest as a spectator. They could ruminate and blame and apologize without half of Orchard Rest asking the outcome. They might walk away friends.

  Somerset smiled as the horse leapt to evade a pine branch and then again over a hole in the road.

  She found it in her heart to forgive Blanche, who lacked as a mother but was turning out to be sweet and complex. She loved her new sister. She understood Joseph to his core, and, despite his pain, she envied anyone knowing themselves to such a finite point. She would reach that point with herself.

  And Sawyer. Poor, misunderstood, serious Sawyer.

  Sawyer had come home.

  The expectation of a resolution made her want to turn the horse and head home, but she resolved to press forward, to stay away from the influence and noise.

  Sawyer would come for her.

  ***