“I couldn’t believe he was really here—really alive. I still…loved the man he once was, so I tried to…persuade…him to stay—the only way I knew how.” She sighed heavily. “He left anyway, and he never looked back.”
“But he knew about the baby. He came back for you.”
“No. I never told him. There was no place for a baby in his life—or me. He would have been even less of a father than Phelan was.” She sighed again and wiped at her eyes. “I didn’t want to live like Suzanne,” she said simply.
“And then Billy heard about the marriage. He sent Phelan. He wanted Phelan to bring me and the boys to Mexico. I told Phelan I wouldn’t go. I told him I was happy in the marriage, that his boys were happy now, as well. I thought—hoped—he believed me, but I was afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Of the man Billy had become. Without the war, he had no direction, no purpose. I thought he might come here—not out of love for me, but because he needed another justification for his ’cause.’ He was going to use my marriage to you. But then I lost the baby, and there was no reason for the marriage anymore—”
“I am sorry about the child, Maria,” he said quietly, and she gave him such a stricken look that he reached up to touch her cheek. “I know you have regrets now—”
“What I regret is that I nearly got you killed. I should have told you.”
“I saw Phelan here, Maria.”
“You saw him?”
“I waited for you to tell me. You didn’t.”
Tears rolled down her cheeks. “What you must think of me—”
“It hurt my pride that you didn’t trust me enough to say—I can’t deny that. But my knowing the details wouldn’t have changed anything.”
“It might have.”
“No. Billy Canfield would have still come for you. And I can’t blame him for that.”
She sighed and rested her head against his shoulder again.
“You told him you loved me,” Max said quietly.
“Yes,” she said. “I told him.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s true.”
“Is it?” he asked, lifting her chin so that he could look into her eyes.
“Yes.”
“And if I say I love you, as well. If I say I love you with all my heart and I want us to start again—then what?”
“Then…I suppose…the part about ‘no emotional attachment’ goes right out the window,” she answered.
The response was so unexpected and so typically her that he laughed out loud and tightened his arms around her.
Maria.
“How did we ever get here—you and I?” he whispered, echoing the question he’d asked once before.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “It’s where we go now that counts.”
“I love you, Maria. I love you—”
He kissed her, and then again, and he held her close to him, the love he felt for her so strong it was akin to physical pain. And he realized that what she said was true. It was the future that mattered, not the past.
He and Maria and the boys would start again. None of them were untouched by the war, but they would still go forward, loving each other, picking up the pieces of their shattered lives and their shattered country as they went. The bond between them had been forged by all that had come before, and whatever happened in the future, they would face—together.
Epilogue
July 4, 1869
The ceremony and the speeches were over. Maria hadn’t been able to brave the intense summer heat to attend, but now, in the cool of the early evening, she rode with Max in the buggy to the prison.
Max had wanted her to see all the bunting decorating the town—in spite of her recent politics—and she wondered if he realized that the route he had chosen, past the depot, mirrored that same ride they had taken the first day he arrived. He had been an arrogant stranger to her then, the very personification of the enemy.
Today, people on the streets nodded to them as they rode past, some of the same people who had been shocked to see Maria Markham in a buggy with the new military commander all those months ago. She tried not to smile at the well-chaperoned officers out promenading with young local girls on their arms, wondering if they realized that they were knee-deep in the “bride fair.”
Max was very quiet, and understandably so. When they had crossed the railroad bridge, and he stopped the buggy, she got down with him, taking his arm to walk the grounds. How different the place was now. All the brambles and debris had been cleared away, replaced by grass and flowering shrubs and neatly graveled paths.
And rows of white headstones—all of them “Unknown.”
But they weren’t unknown to the man beside her. He had been imprisoned with many of them, and he had ultimately survived. And today the town was filled with former soldiers who, at his invitation, had come to pay their last respects to those who had forever remained behind.
Maria stood in this quiet place, acutely aware of the still terrible past.
So many lives lost.
The old infantryman who had taught Max to whittle was here.
“Rest in peace,” she whispered.
She thought suddenly of Billy and Phelan, who desperately wanted to keep the war going. And of Rob and Samuel, hoping that wherever they lay, someone cared enough to make their graves a place of honor as these were.
The baby kicked her ribs suddenly, and she caught her breath.
“Are you all right?” Max asked, placing his hand over hers.
“Your son or daughter, the acrobat—that’s all,” she said.
He looked into her eyes for a long moment, then smiled. He would always carry the sadness of this place with him. She knew that. But he smiled much more easily these days.
And she liked to think that Maria Rose Markham Woodard had some hand in it.
Author Note
I was eleven years old the first time I visited the National Cemetery located on the site of the Confederate Prison in Salisbury, N.C. The rows of unmarked graves had a profound effect on me, so much so, that this is my second work of fiction dealing with soldiers who were imprisoned there.
There are no “real” people in this book, only those created in my imagination, but, if you would like more historical information about the prison itself, you can find it online at:
http://www.salisbury.nc.us/prison/csprison1.htm
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IMPRINT: Special Releases
ISBN: 9781489273307
TITLE: THE BRIDE FAIR
First Australian Publication 2018
Copyright © 2018 Cheryl Reavis
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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